The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2)

by Matthew William

  “Oh, wow,” Patty said and stared down at the water. “Yeah, we lost a lot of girls that summer.”

  “I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Kizzy said.

  “No, don’t be. We should never forget them,” Patty said as she dipped a dish with her one good arm into the stream. “I haven’t had it nearly as hard as you have. You lost your mother.”

  “Yeah, well you lost a sister,” Kizzy said.

  “I did. But I guess I should tell you that me and your mom weren’t actually sisters.”

  Kizzy stopped and stared. “What?”

  “I mean, not biologically. We chose to become sisters. I didn’t have any relatives after the plague and I had my daughter to take care of. Your mom was pregnant with you and she and her sisters took me in. We had to depend on each other to survive back then.”

  Kizzy was shocked, although she really shouldn’t have been. Patty and her mother shared no resemblance whatsoever. “Does it make her less important to you?” Kizzy asked finally.

  “No,” Patty shook her head. “If anything, it makes her more important. She saved my life, and Cynthia’s too. And we got to choose each other as sisters. Most people don’t get that option.”

  Kizzy tried to smile.

  “I’ll miss her,” Patty said. “And I promise I’ll take care of you Kizzy. That’s a promise me and your mother made to each other years ago. We’d take care of each other’s kids.”

  As they walked back to the camp Kizzy realized that with Patty there, they would be one sleeping bag short.

  “How are we supposed to sleep?” she asked Josephine.

  “Hmm that’s a problem,” Josephine said, looking at the bags laid out. “I suppose that you and Diego could share a bag?”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Leo chimed in. “You can take mine. I’m going to keep watch for a while.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Kizzy said. “We can share the bag. That way you can just go to sleep. As long as it’s okay for you Diego?”

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug.

  Leo laid his sleeping bag out and went to make a scan of the area. Everyone else got ready for bed and climbed into their sleeping bags. Kizzy took off her pants and sweater. Diego did the same. They went to bed. The skin of Diego’s legs were cool against hers. As they laid there close to each other Kizzy began to feel something within her.

  “I’m feeling it again,” she whispered to Diego. “Are you?”

  “No, not this time,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, her skin on her chest was beginning to flush.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Do you need some water or something?”

  Kizzy shook her head and rolled over. With her eyes shut she tried to force the sleep to come, but it eluded her. She felt too bothered. It reminded her of the feeling she would get when she drank too much coffee. She looked over and saw a few crows sitting in a tree not so far away, silently staring at her. At first she was startled, then surprised, then annoyed. She wondered how many more of them were in the woods out here with them. There was a time that she saw through their their eyes and felt through their nerve endings. Those moments flashed before her eyes and she shuddered. It was overwhelming.

  Kizzy thought of what might lay ahead for her. She wanted to go with Josephine, because if that artificial intelligence could fix this mess, then she wouldn’t be needed. Her remaining years would be hers and hers alone and she could do whatever she wanted with them. And being a mother was not on her bucket list.

  Eventually she fell asleep and dreamt of wandering around a large hedge maze. It wasn’t scary, but it wasn’t fun either. Just boring and tiresome.

  Kizzy awoke in the middle of the night, Diego wasn’t in the sleeping bag next to her.

  She rolled over to find the barrel of a shotgun in her face. The black metal glinted in the firelight.

  “You’re coming with us Kizzy,” came the calm, low whisper of the constable. “Don’t make a sound.”

  Kizzy instinctively looked over to where Leo had laid his sleeping bag, but he was nowhere to be seen. Josephine and Patty were still peacefully asleep in their bags. Kizzy was frozen to the ground. The constable jabbed her in the ribs with the gun. Kizzy reluctantly began to get up. She didn’t want to, but she didn’t want to be shot either.

  “Get dressed,” the constable commanded.

  “Hold up,” said Leo, emerging from the darkness, his gun drawn. “We’re closed for business.”

  The constable turned to him, but kept her gun locked on Kizzy. “You used to be a cop.”

  “Yep. You’re kidnapping.”

  “You’re the kidnappers,” the constable said.

  “What?”

  “You’re taking her against her will.”

  Kizzy looked around. Josephine and Patty were now awake, sitting erect in their sleeping bags.

  “She’s with us by choice,” Leo said. “Are you even still the acting constable?”

  “That’s not important anymore,” the woman said. “Nothing is important anymore, except for what’s right. Kizzy’s coming with me.”

  “She’s more important than you know.”

  “Oh I know,” the constable said.

  “What do you know exactly?”

  “She can have kids.”

  “And still you want to arrest her?” Leo asked.

  “I want to protect her from you,” the constable snapped.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Your plan is to force her to have kids,” the constable said. “That’s paramount to rape. I won’t allow that.”

  Kizzy looked over to Josephine who rolled her eyes.

  “It’s not the plan A,” Leo said.

  “It shouldn’t be any plan,” the constable said.

  “You lost all right to say what’s right and wrong when you went berserk on those civilians,” Leo said.

  From the woods behind Leo emerged Meg, carrying another shotgun. She held it to Leo’s back. He froze.

  An instant later Diego sprang from the darkness and was at the constable’s neck with a knife.

  “Drop the gun,” Diego said.

  Kizzy sat paralyzed in her sleeping bag. Leo with a gun aimed at his back and his own aimed at the constable. The constable, in turn, stood with a knife at her throat and her shotgun pointed at Kizzy.

  “Okay everybody, let’s play this smart,” said Leo. “No one needs to get hurt.”

  Kizzy trembled. Please don’t let anyone die, she thought to herself. It was a strange situation she found herself in. She didn’t know who she wanted to go with. Of course she wanted Leo and Diego to be unharmed, but ultimately she just wanted to be out of this situation and free from all responsibility. Kizzy sat there in that unsure limbo, unsure of what to feel.

  An instant later a large white mutant emerged from the woods behind Leo.

  “Look out!” Kizzy screamed.

  The following things flashed before her eyes.

  Meg turned, saw the huge beast looming over her and fired her shotgun, a flash of flame and smoke.

  Kizzy’s ears rang.

  The spray from the shot hit the beast in its stomach. Black blood seeped to the surface in a dozen tiny black holes.

  The constable elbowed Diego and threw him to the ground.

  There was a hand on Kizzy’s shoulder. She turned to see Patty lifting her up.

  “Hold on,” Kizzy said, as she ran to get her backpack.

  Diego scrambled to Kizzy and together they started towards Patty. Suddenly, a mutant emerged from the darkness and tried to grab Kizzy. Kizzy dodged him and he collapsed onto the fire. Another mutant came after her and Patty threw herself in between the monster and her niece. In one motion the beast grabbed her and threw her clear across the campsite and into a tree. She fell to the ground with a thud.

  Another mutant came with a large rock and smashed it down onto the woman.

  Kizzy screamed with all her lungs.

  Leo fired at the
mutant with his handgun, but it was worthless against these monsters.

  The constable and Meg ran off into the woods dodging the mutants that walked past them. The mutants ignored them. They only had eyes for Kizzy. More mutants emerged from the darkness and all were approaching Kizzy in the firelight. Their black eyes darker and their white skin paler in the moonlight. Kizzy’s heart began to beat like a drum. The beasts began to growl.

  She and Diego backed away from the approaching monsters until they bumped into a tree.

  There was nowhere to run. They were surrounded.

  Josephine came out of nowhere and stood in front of Kizzy with her arms outstretched.

  “You can’t take her!” she yelled.

  A mutant leapt at her.

  Suddenly the cop car came flying back in reverse and smashed into the mutant. The back of the car crumpled like tin foil and the mutant yelped like an injured dog. The car blocked the remaining mutants.

  “Get in now please,” Leo said, popping open the passenger side door.

  Kizzy, Diego, and Josephine jumped into the car and Leo stomped on the gas.

  “But Patty?” Kizzy said, looking back at the body of her aunt. Another member of Kizzy’s family now laid dead.

  “She’s gone,” Josephine said.

  Leo tried to drive back out towards the road, but one of the mutants grabbed onto the rear bumper and everyone in the car was jerked backwards. Leo floored it and the bumper was ripped from the car. They fishtailed out onto the road.

  Leo swerved around the men. Hitting one of them would have been like hitting a tree. A mutant reached out and grabbed the driver’s side window frame, shattering the windshield and breaking the driver side window. The car rotated around the mutant until its grip broke and the car was freed. Kizzy noticed one of the mutant’s fingers still attached to the metal.

  Leo looked back, visibly shaken. He turned his attention forward. The windshield was in pieces on the dashboard and the autumn air blew over Kizzy’s face.

  When the headlights shined on the road ahead they suddenly remembered why they had stopped for the night. It was blocked by that giant tree. Leo looked back. The road behind was blocked by a wall of mutants.

  “Drive around them,” Josephine said.

  “I covered the road up pretty good,” Diego said.

  “We’ll have try it,” Leo said.

  Leo swerved way around the beasts this time, knowing how strong they really were. Farther down the road the car’s light came upon the pile of debris Diego had made, nearly as large as the downed tree.

  “Seriously?” Leo asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Diego yelped from the back seat.

  “Looks like there’s a gap over there,” Josephine said, pointing to the edge of the road.

  Leo revved the engine and drove full speed into a small gap between the pile of debris and a tree.

  They were almost through when suddenly they jerked to a stop.

  “Did they get us?” Josephine asked looking back.

  “We got us,” Leo said. “We’re stuck on a branch.”

  “We have to run,” said Diego, opening his door.

  Kizzy turned and saw the mutants barely 15 yards away.

  “Those things are faster than us,” Leo said. “We won’t make it.”

  “What about the crows?” Diego asked in a panic.

  Josephine looked through her backpack in a fret. “Damn it!”

  “What?” Diego asked.

  “I left the laptop out there. How could I be so...”

  “Do you have the cross?” Kizzy snapped.

  “It’s no good without the laptop,” Josephine said.

  “Do you have it?” Kizzy screamed.

  “It’s here,” Josephine said, taking it from the backpack and holding it up in her bare hand.

  Kizzy was shocked. Josephine was holding the cross against her bare skin, the flesh of her hands and fingers naked on the metal with no effect. Had Kizzy merely imagined the power it held? Was it all some elaborate dream? Or had the power left the USB?

  Kizzy snatched it from Josephine’s hands and in that very instant her version was shattered like glass, seeing from the point of view of the dozens and dozens of crows who sat upon the branches of the trees in the forest around them. Most importantly, she felt what they felt and her feelings were theirs.

  Her rage burned at the mutants.

  The crows swept into the clearing from all around, grabbing onto shoulders, arms and legs, and the ragged clothing of the beasts. The crows flapped their wings and lifted them from the ground. But the beasts were strong and did not want to go. They fought back. Kizzy felt the pain as the crow’s heads were smashed in and theirs wings were torn off. They fell from the air and laid dying upon the ground. Kizzy’s anger swelled and she tried to tear the beasts apart. More crows came and pulled the mutants in every direction, but they were too strong and there were too many of them to concentrate on a task so difficult. It caused the death of many a crow.

  But more came, and took the places of their fallen brethren. And they grabbed the mutants upon their bodies where they couldn’t be reached, and flew them high, high, high up into the air. They carried them far away through the autumn moonlight and dropped them far, far, far away from the car. Kizzy felt as if her head was about to explode, but the pile of debris needed to be moved before she slept. In one last burst of empathy fifty crows swept in and flapped their powerful wings, dragging the wood and branches from the road and lifting the car from where it was stuck.

  The second the coast was clear, when the car was on solid ground and the mutants were far away, Kizzy thought she was done. But the crows said no. There was still sadness within Kizzy that needed to be healed. Kizzy turned her attention to her now dead aunt.

  Kizzy wanted her back, back to life. But the crows told her they couldn’t do anything like that. Instead, they took branches and leaves and covered the woman’s body on the ground, giving her a final burial. That’s all we can do, they told her.

  Finally Kizzy dropped the cross. It fell to the floor. She was back in the front seat and dizzy as hell, feeling as if she was about to vomit. Her eyes bulged from her head, her brain was pulsating and her ears bled. Every part of her body was pins and needles.

  “How did you do that?” Josephine asked with shock and fear in her voice.

  Kizzy shook her head and tried to keep from falling over. Her lips tried to form words, but without warning her vision went to black and she lost consciousness.

  “Drive, Leo! Drive!” Josephine shouted.

  Leo floored it and the car sped off. In the foggy, misty night he drove the rest of the way to Josephine’s house on the long and lonely coastal road.

  Halfway through the night Leo passed the summer house where he and his wife used to spend their summer weekends together. A twinge of bitter melancholy sprang up in his chest. The memories, they weren’t good and they weren’t bad either. They just weren’t any more.

  12

  Devon called the faculty IT desk at NYU.

  “Hi, this is Bill Gold,” he said in a friendly tone. “I forgot my email password. Would I be able to get it from you guys?”

  “Do you have your IT code?” the technician asked.

  “No, thing is I’m away from my desk at a meeting with the governor at the moment and my phone logged me out.”

  “You need your IT code to do this.”

  “Yeah, I understand, I’m sorry... I really need it though.”

  The technician sighed. “Alright. I’ll just go ahead and reset your password. You can make it whatever you want now. Just remember for next time you need your IT code to do this.”

  “Believe me I’ll remember!” Devon said with a chuckle. “Alright thanks, bye.”

  That was easy. The only prep work he had to do was look in the news to see who Bill Gold, CFO of NYU, was meeting with that day. The rest was good old fashion human gullibility. Most hacking was.

  He found Gold�
�s desktop VPN address from an email the man had sent to the security desk the previous April. With the VPN address as a target he was able to set up a program that went through the university’s internal network and access Bill Gold’s work tablet. From there he found the finance records in a folder entitled, funnily enough, Unimportant Files. It was all too easy, really. He didn’t know why Josephine was paying him so much to do this. If she knew how to encrypt a call made over the internet she could have easily figured out how to do all that he had just done. Ten thousand dollars seemed too steep a price.

  He felt worried, he didn’t like that. Over the years he had learned to always trust his gut when something seemed fishy. But this situation was all messed up. He needed to get back in control and continuing forward was the only way.

  He contacted Josephine via the encrypted dating channel.

  “I got what you asked for,” he said, sending her a blank file. Sending her the actual file was too risky, he still didn’t know her motives.

  “You’re good,” she answered. “And fast.”

  “And effective, or so they tell me. But I want to know what’s up.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice nervous.

  “Why didn’t you just do this yourself?”

  “I don’t know how,” she answered.

  “You’ could have figured it out,” Devon said. “Why pay me so much?”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Maybe I wanted to find out what type of person you were. Maybe I wanted to see what you were capable of.”

  “And what did you find out?” Devon asked.

  “I’m not sure yet, to be honest. But as a symbol of good faith I’ve transferred the money already.”

  Devon checked his account. The ten thousand dollars were sitting there, just as she had promised.

  “For the record,” Devon announced. “The file I sent you wasn’t the actual file. I could get into serious trouble for that.”

  “You’re kidding,” Josephine said.

  “Not that it matters,” he said as he scrolled through the records nonchalantly. “But there’s nothing really interesting in here.”

  The accounts were crooked to be sure, but it was nothing a bribed official or two couldn’t clear up.