“What’s your name?” Devon asked.
“Now you know better than to ask me that.”
“Why? You know my mine.”
“I’ll let you think about that for a second.”
Devon was starting to get annoyed. He wasn’t used to dealing with people as smart as he was. “I’ll have the report by tomorrow. This channel works for you?”
“It sure does,” she said and hung up.
The second she disconnected, Devon scrambled like a mad dog trying to find out who she was. The channel she used was encrypted of course, she was obviously smart enough to do that. But if you weren’t careful with encryption it was easy to make a mistake. He ran a diagnostic on her channel and found another call she had made earlier to someone named Bryson Patel. Devon ran a check on his channel, whoever the hell he was, and found the calls had made that matched the time signature on the woman’s encrypted line. There sat the naked ID’s of both callers. He smiled and wrote a message to the woman.
“Nice talking to you Josephine Yanloo. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
Now who exactly was she? He did a quick google search and his browser nearly exploded. She was important. The actual creator of the Enoch Pill. The woman who had discovered immortality. This was a great find. Of all the women in the world, she was the most important. Not even his brother could match that.
She sent a message back to him. “Nice talking to you too, Morrigan.”
Devon’s nodded and rubbed his face. She knew who he really was. There was no going back now. The only way out was to push forward.
11
Kizzy sat in the backseat of a car, unsure of its destination as it sped down the country road. The mutants were in pursuit, so wherever they were heading they needed to get there quickly. The police officer in prisoner’s clothes drove, with the window open, the cool air blew back on Kizzy’s forehead. In the passenger seat Josephine held a laptop with a cross USB plugged into it. The USB almost seemed to be whistling in Kizzy’s ears.
“Have you tried attacking the mutants with the crows?” Kizzy asked, shaking away the whistling.
“You can’t do anything that precise with them,” Josephine said. “Not without Morrigan’s suit, and even then it’s shaky at best.”
Kizzy furrowed her brow, then tried to conceal it. Her ability didn’t need to be broadcast. It was too disturbing an ordeal. She shuddered as she remembered connecting minds with all those crows; feeling their pain and loneliness, their hunger and sorrow. It was something she didn’t want to relive.
“Can you hear me?” Diego asked, agitated.
“What?” Kizzy asked.
“I asked if you were okay.”
“Yeah, I am,” Kizzy said. “Thanks.”
He laughed. “I asked and you just stared off into space for like a minute.”
Kizzy shook her head and smiled. “Sorry, I guess I was just somewhere else.”
“Kizzy probably has a lot on her mind,” Josephine said.
“I gotta know, where have you been Kizzy?” Patty asked. “And where’s your mother?”
Kizzy was quiet for a long moment. “She died in New York City,” she said finally, becoming sad at the mention of her mother again. Would it ever not hurt?
“Are you serious?” Patty asked.
Kizzy nodded and looked over at her aunt and tried not to cry.
The woman looked away out the window and covered her trembling mouth. “What was she doing in New York City?” she asked looking back, visibly having trouble breathing. Her mouth opened like she was gasping for air, like she was drowning.
Kizzy thought back to her mother plummeting down away from her.
“She fell,” was all Kizzy could say.
Patty’s eyes shut and she covered her face with her left hand.
“Let me out,” she announced to the car.
“I can’t,” Leo said looking in the rearview mirror.
“Let me out. Let me out!” Patty sad as she pounded on the back of the passenger seat.
“What are you doing?” Leo said.
“Leo, she lost someone,” Josephine said.
Leo sighed and pulled the car off to the side of the road. Patty got out and tumbled down onto the grass. Kizzy stared for a second, then instinctively got out, went around the car, and put her arm around the woman.
“It’ll be okay,” Kizzy said.
“No, it won’t,” Patty said.
Seeing Patty crying caused the tears to swell up in Kizzy’s eyes. She realized she had never allowed herself to fully mourn her mother. Now, sharing it with her aunt, Kizzy had no choice.
“I’m sorry,” Kizzy said. “I’m sorry.”
Patty punched the earth.
“I hate to be that person,” Josephine said from the passenger seat. “But we’ve really got to go.”
Kizzy turned and was about to tell her she was heartless, until she saw what Josephine was pointing at. Up the road the band of mutants was approaching. Kizzy could make out three of them, who knew where the others were.
“Come on,” Kizzy said to Patty, lifting her by the arm.
“Leave me,” Patty cried.
“No, come on,” Kizzy commanded. “We’ve got to go.”
Patty grabbed hold of the grass with her left arm, clutching tightly with her fingers, refusing to let go. “Leave me!”
“Kizzy, come on,” Josephine pleaded.
“I can’t lose you too!” Kizzy shouted to her aunt.
That seemed to awaken something in the woman. She let go of the grass and reluctantly climbed into the car. The cop peeled out, shooting up dust on the country road.
“Wow, those mutants can run,” Leo said in astonishment as he gazed into the rear view mirror. “Holy cow they’re fast.”
Kizzy just stayed quiet. There was no point in talking, even though there were a million questions to ask. Instead, she stared out the window at the endless fields of corn and Enoch beans. Her silence allowed her pain to come to the surface and she just sat in it for a while. Soon she could take no more.
“Where are we headed?” she asked.
“My old lab,” Josephine answered, watching a program on her laptop that resembled a school of fish.
“And what’s at your old lab?” Kizzy asked.
“Codes and the schematics that will help us restart an artificial intelligence.”
“They treat you alright, kid?” Leo asked from the front seat, looking at Kizzy in the rear-view mirror. A look of real worry was evident on his face.
Kizzy felt embarrassed for being so quiet, since he must have been worried about her now. “They were going to execute me,” she said. “So no, not really.”
“You should have told them how important you are,” Josephine said.
“I did.”
“And they still wanted to execute you?”
“Yep.”
Josephine shook her head and looked to the cop in disbelief.
“The constable said things were too good now to mess up,” Kizzy said.
“Well that’s gone out the window,” Leo said.
“For the country too,” Kizzy added. “There was a riot, they were trying to kill me.”
“That’s what that mess was,” Leo said as if the mystery had been bothering him.
“The constable shot people,” Kizzy said. “She deserves to die now, doesn’t she?”
Leo glanced down at his bright orange jumpsuit. “I’m not really the best guy to ask.”
“But she was protecting you,” Diego stated.
“That’s not how she thinks,” Kizzy replied.
“Her name is Theresa Mazel right?” Leo asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Kizzy. “You know her?”
“She was in my neighboring precinct back before the plague.”
Josephine turned back to Kizzy.
“Kizzy, we’ve decided to keep you in a safe place until all this is fixed.”
“What do you mean?” Kizzy asked.
“My old house, the lab doubles as a bunker and you can stay there until this all blows over.”
“You’re kidding,” Kizzy said, feeling her gut go hollow, as if the controls had been torn from her fingers once more.
“No, we’re not kidding,” Josephine said, looking over to Leo, as if she expected him to chime in with something.
He merely stared ahead at the road.
Josephine went on. “You’re too valuable to come along. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not going to stay behind,” Kizzy said flatly.
“Yeah, shouldn’t we have some sort of vote?” Diego asked.
“This isn’t up for debate,” Josephine said.
“I’m not debating,” Kizzy said. “I’m saying I want to be part of this.”
“You will be part of this, a most essential part. Just from a safe distance. And if we can’t fix this, you’ll be the most important part. You’ll be our savior.”
“What if I don’t want to be?” Kizzy asked.
“Don’t want to be?” Josephine asked. She shook her head and her face showed how unbelievable she thought those words were. “What are you talking about? It’s a privilege Kizzy, you’ll be... the most important person in all of history.” Josephine turned away and looked out the window. “Plus, we might not have any other option.”
“You can have kids?” Patty asked, stopping her crying for a moment.
Kizzy shrugged and looked out the window.
Leo made a left turn and slammed on the brakes. Kizzy braced herself against the driver’s seat and looked past him. Two large mutants stood, blocking the road. They had run around and cut them off.
“I need a detour please,” Leo said to Josephine as he shifted the car into reverse. “Detour!”
The monsters came hurtling towards them. Josephine scrolled around on her laptop, visibly nervous, trying to figure out where they were on the map.
“Any day now,” Leo said, looking back and driving in reverse at a reckless speed.
Kizzy’s gut went to her throat.
“I’m trying,” Josephine said.
“You can turn here,” Kizzy said knocking on her window, as they passed a nearly over-grown country road.
Leo slammed on the brakes. “Are you sure?”
“Are we headed for the ocean?”
“Yeah,” said Leo.
“Then yes.”
Leo turned the wheel with both hands and drove the car down the little road.
Josephine turned back and patted Kizzy on the knee in the form of a thank you.
I can be very valuable to a mission like this, Kizzy thought. You just don’t know it yet.
“This isn’t the only road,” Kizzy said, eager to show her knowledge of the area. “This one’s abandoned. There’s another, faster one. But it’s too late to take that one now.”
“We’ll take what we can get,” Leo said.
They drove on the winding road as fast as they could go without destroying the car’s suspension and soon they came close to the ocean.
The briny air filled Kizzy’s mind with the memory of when she went to the old beach house with her mother, and the month she had spent in isolation there, at the same time. The two distinct, lonesome feelings swirled in her chest.
Once they passed the last of the country houses and crops, the road turned extra rough and they entered a dark, thick forest. Kizzy knew the road had been abandoned here, but even she was surprised at just how abandoned it was.
They bounced over fallen branches and every now and then Leo would have everyone rush out to move a particularly large log or rock, which time and weather had placed in the road. Kizzy would always look back down the road behind them with dread, hoping the mutants wouldn’t be there on the horizon. As they went deeper into the forest, everyone, including Leo, took turns hurrying out to move the debris. Once the way was clear they would immediately drive the car past and place some branches back over the road to cover their tracks.
“This is starting to be a pain in the ass,” Leo said, hopping back into the car. Josephine had taken over driving duties and the sun was beginning to set.
Soon, they came to a massive fallen oak tree that blocked the road. Josephine stopped the car and everyone stared out the window.
“I’m not about to move that son of a bitch,” Leo said.
“Should we stop for the night?” Josephine asked. “What’s the consensus?”
“I don’t think the mutants can run nonstop,” Leo said.
“What about the constable?” Kizzy asked. “Do you think she could have tracked us the whole way here?”
“I doubt it,” said Leo. “We covered our tracks pretty good.”
They got out and began to make camp for the night. Diego went back to cover their tracks on the road.
Leo lit a fire. Kizzy was secretly obsessed with the lighter fluid, although Leo seemed almost afraid of it. Josephine sat against a tree and did some work on her computer.
With one arm, Patty prepared the food in a pot over the fire. The rest of the group seemed a little wary of her, but being Kizzy’s aunt went a long way. Plus, they were too far out now for her to not be part of the group.
eo had Kizzy help him unload the sleeping bags from the back of the cruiser.
“It must be a lot of pressure,” Leo said to her. “To have to be mother if this whole thing doesn’t work out.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Kizzy said. Understatement of the century she thought.
“Well, look,” he glanced over both shoulders to make sure no one else was listening. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You get to choose in the end.”
“What do you mean?” Kizzy asked, a little shocked. No had ever treated her like an adult before.
“I mean if you don’t want to have kids, you don’t have to have kids.”
“Seriously?” Kizzy asked, surprised that the weight of the world that had been lifted off her shoulders so easily.
“Yeah, of course. That’s one of the perks of being an adult, you get to do what you want.”
Kizzy smiled and tried to ignore the fact that he was wearing a prison jumpsuit as he said those words.
“Just don’t tell Josephine I told you that,” he said. “Now, hey, come here.”
He reached into the trunk of the car and pulled a small black handgun from a duffel bag. The sight of the gun made the blood in Kizzy’s arms run cold.
“This is for you,” he said. “For protection. I can teach you how to shoot it.”
“No,” Kizzy said, shaking her head. “I don’t want it.”
“Yeah, but you need it.”
“I’ve seen too many people die already,” Kizzy said, leaning against the trunk of the car. “And they all still haunt me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Leo said. He put the gun back into the bag. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need. I got your back, alright?”
Kizzy smiled and gave him a thumbs up and immediately regretted it. It was lame.
“I covered the road up pretty good,” Diego said when he got back to camp. “They won’t be able to drive through that mess.”
“That’s good,” said Josephine. “We just need some time to get our bearings.”
They gathered around the fire and ate the food Patty had prepared.
“Thanks for the noodles,” Diego said to Josephine as he scooped the steaming food into his bowl.
“Thank Patty, she made them.”
“Thanks Patty,” Diego said.
“Screw you,” Patty said.
“Okay then,” said Diego sitting down on a log.
“Patty,” Kizzy scolded, she had never been so surprised by something her aunt had said.
“He shot me,” Patty said.
“What?”
“He did this to me,” she exclaimed, pointing to her arm in the sling.
“You did that?” Kizzy asked Diego.
“It was an accident,”
Diego said.
“Accident my ass. You could’ve killed me.”
“You abducted Josephine!” Diego shouted.
“So, how much do you kids remember of the Pill disaster?” Josephine asked loudly.
Everyone went quiet and looked down at their food. The plague was the perfect morbid topic to restore the peace. But apparently no one wanted to go first.
“What about you Kizzy?” Josephine asked.
Kizzy sighed. “My mom had me in her stomach when it happened. So all I know is what they taught us in school, the fact that the plague spread through the air and mutated all the men. Most of it was lies.”
“They did that to protect you,” Patty said.
“I know,” Kizzy said. She thought of her cousin, Cynthia, Patty’s daughter. Kizzy glanced at her aunt. The woman seemed to be caught in the past for a moment then met Kizzy’s gaze and gave half a smile.
“What about you, Diego?” Josephine asked.
“Me? Oh, I was almost two,” he said. “I don’t remember a whole lot. I remember leaving home in a bus and a bunch of traffic was going out over a bridge. My mom was holding me. The next thing I remember, me and a bunch of kids were gathered up in the church in Yanloo City. We were all sitting on the wooden pews. My mom was gone, I don’t remember when she had left me, it’s like she was there one second, gone the next. I was crying, I remember. And I was confused why none of the other kids were crying.”
“It was just supposed to be temporary,” Josephine said. “The segregation. Everything was supposed to be temporary.”
“Do you remember your mother?” Kizzy asked.
“Just glimpses.”
“And your father?” Josephine asked.
“He must have died in the plague.”
There was a silence again.
“Were you two married?” Kizzy asked Leo and Josephine.
“Uh,” Leo said as he swayed his head back and forth and looked to Josephine.
She looked down at her noodles.
“It’s a little complicated,” Leo said. “We were going to get married, right? Wouldn’t you say that Jo?”
“It’s getting late,” Josephine said. “We should start cleaning up.”
Kizzy and Patty went to wash the dishes in a nearby stream.
“I know about Cynthia,” Kizzy said. “I read about her at the mayor’s office.”
The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2) Page 12
