The Enoch Plague (The Enoch Pill Book 2)

by Matthew William

  “I don’t care,” Kizzy said.

  “They took him to get to you.”

  “They’ll kill him,” Kizzy said.

  “As long as you’re alive they won’t,” Josephine said. “They’re after you, aren’t they? Get me to Uncle, we’ll get the odds in our favor and then we can get him back.”

  “Girls, this is our last opportunity,” Leo said with worry in his voice. “We’ve got to go now.”

  “What if I say he’s the only one I would be willing to have kids with?” Kizzy announced, digging her feet in the ground.

  “Is that true?” Josephine asked, loosening her grip on the backpack.

  “What if it was?” Kizzy asked, suddenly trembling, unsure as to why.

  “Then I’d say you’re being ridiculous,” Josephine said, but it didn’t sound as if she really believed it.

  Kizzy didn’t know what to say. It was a lie of course. At least as far as Kizzy could tell it was. The process of having children repulsed her so much that she could never in a million years sully her relationship with Diego by dragging him into it.

  “I can go alone,” Kizzy announced. “I can follow him.”

  “I won’t let you do that,” Josephine answered.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do to get you girls to go?” Leo snapped.

  “Kizzy, look,” Josephine said. “If we don’t get a cure, you won’t survive to see him again. There were only three days until the effects kick in on the rest of the men. If we don’t do this, you’re a goner.”

  Josephine let go of the backpack.

  Kizzy laid there with the bag in her hands. She thought again of Diego’s limp body dragged away by the women. Leaving that spot was the hardest thing she would ever have to do.

  “Fine,” Kizzy said, climbing out of the hole and slinging the backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  They trotted through the woods following after Leo’s galloping limp.

  “They’re over here!” came a woman’s voice from behind them.

  Through the gray trees, they could hear them following, the unnerving sound of a predator giving chase, but making no noise. A woman came down the hill at them and viciously grabbed Kizzy by the shirt. Kizzy took a tree branch and smashed it over the woman’s back. She fell to the ground and Kizzy was able to get away.

  “This way,” Josephine said waving them towards the edge of the woods.

  Leo limped on with a grimace. Kizzy ran to his bad side and propped him up. He nodded in thanks. They came upon a clearing where a dirt road separated them from a large, overgrown field. A jeep came screeching to a halt in front of them. It was the constable.

  “Hop in,” she said.

  Leo and Kizzy looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Josephine hopped right in. The frenzied roar of the woman charging through the forest made the decision much easier. They got in and the constable peeled out of the little valley. They drove over the bumpy dirt road until they came to a much smoother main road.

  “You’re not with them, I assume?” Kizzy asked.

  “No, but I’ve been tracking you,” the constable said as she drove. “And I’m not sure how they found you, to be honest.” She looked back at Kizzy and nodded to Josephine and Leo. “Are they forcing you to do anything Kizzy?”

  “No, we’re past that,” Josephine began to say.

  “I want to hear it from her,” the constable interrupted.

  “There’s a plan now,” Kizzy said.

  “And that is?”

  “We’re headed to a secret computer facility,” Josephine said. “It houses an AI that we believe can fix this mess. We need to get there ASAP.”

  “Why?” asked the constable. “What are you going to fix?”

  “The mutation that’s affected those men, is going to happen to all of them.”

  The constable was quiet for a second.

  “I’m guessing they’ve been more than you can handle?” Leo asked.

  “They’ve killed 18 women so far. I haven’t figured out a way to stop them yet.”

  “I don’t think you will,” Leo said. “And now there’s only five of them. Imagine a hundred thousand.”

  “And they’re after me,” Kizzy added. “First and foremost.”

  The constable looked over at Josephine. “You can have my help, but you can’t force Kizzy to have kids.”

  “We’ve come to that conclusion ourselves,” Josephine said.

  Kizzy smiled, then thought of that child in the picture on Josephine’s laptop, the combination of her and Diego. She wouldn’t ever exist now and it gave Kizzy a sadness in her chest.

  “We need to head back to my campsite first,” the constable said. “I have something there I think you should see.”

  Twenty minutes later they came to a little camp the constable had set up beneath an oak tree in the middle of a meadow. There was a man tied to the oak tree. He was asleep. As they approached Kizzy could see that his skin was beginning to turn white and his eyes were going dark and droopy.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Josephine asked.

  “You tell me,” the constable answered as she stopped the car.

  “How did he get all the way out here?” Leo asked.

  “I don’t know,” the constable said. “I haven’t heard of any search parties leaving the city. They always alert me, so that I can warn my people.”

  “What should we do about this one then?” Josephine asked.

  “We can’t stay here too long,” Leo said.

  “Should we kill him?” the constable asked.

  “No,” Leo snapped. “We don’t know if we can save them yet.”

  “He’ll be another mutant soon,” the constable said.

  “There’s going to be a hundred thousand of them soon,” Leo said. “One more won’t make a difference.”

  “If you say so,” the constable said.

  “Those ropes are pretty much useless by the way,” Leo added.

  “I didn’t tie him up.”

  Kizzy stared at the man who looked almost peaceful in his slumber. Was he dreaming? Could he even imagine the insane things he’d do once he became a monster.

  The constable’s tent reminded Kizzy of the safari camps she’d seen in old movies. On a foldout table sat a monitor connected to a radar and a spread out map.

  “Where’s the facility?” the constable asked, standing over the table.

  Leo nudged Josephine who seemed reluctant to give up the secret location.

  “It’s here, by the reservoir,” she said, pointing on the map to a coast of a large body of water.

  “You’re joking,” the constable said. “That was my old jurisdiction. I thought it was just an abandoned Nuclear Plant.”

  “There was one there,” Leo said. “And that’s the cover they used. It was on a need-to-know basis.”

  “What’s the plan once we get there?” the constable asked.

  “We turn the AI on and ask it to save us,” Josephine said. “More or less.”

  “And what about Kizzy?” the constable asked.

  “I was thinking it could be beneficial to take her in to meet Uncle, so that he could see what we’re working with.”

  “And if he says the only way out is for her to have kids?”

  “Then we ask him for more options,” Josephine said.

  “And if there are none?”

  Josephine shook her head and shrugged. “Then I guess we’re screwed.”

  The constable exhaled and nodded. “We better get this over with then.”

  They began to head back to the jeep.

  “Wait, what about Diego?” Kizzy asked.

  “Who?” the constable asked.

  “My friend,” Kizzy said. “The women took him.”

  “Could you track the kid?” the constable asked, looking to Leo.

  “Dividing our numbers might not be the best idea right now,” Josephine said.

  “What do you suggest then?” the constable asked
.

  “We can’t just leave him,” Kizzy said.

  “They’ll be coming after you, Kizzy,” Josephine said.

  “They won’t expect us to come for him,” Kizzy said.

  “That’s exactly what they’d expect,” Leo said. “I can find the kid, get him out, then catch up with you guys. I’m a cop, Jo, remember?”

  “Yeah I remember,” Josephine said, worry evident in her voice.

  16

  After dinner Leo taped up his ankle and took some pain killers. He paced around the tent and was able to walk with a little pain. He was going to circle around and see what the women of the country had done with Diego and save him if possible.

  Kizzy, the constable, and Josephine were headed for the Uncle facility in the jeep. Leo wasn’t sure if he was ready to trust the constable with Josephine and the girl. But he had no other choice, it was what Kizzy wanted. He sighed. A daughter. This had been waiting for almost twenty years to blow up in his face. He decided he was going to ignore that fact for as long as humanly possible. He slung the backpack over his shoulder.

  Josephine sat on a rock outside the tent all by herself, finishing her dinner.

  “Do you think this is a good idea?” he asked her.

  “Frankly, I’m tired of ideas. I need to be alone for a while. Restarting Uncle might be the best thing for me.”

  “Might be best to keep Kizzy on the move anyway,” Leo said.

  “Don’t act like you care what she does,” Josephine said.

  Leo nodded and walked away.

  Kizzy sat in the distance and watched this all happen. Watched as the two people who had cared about each other so deeply and for so long, parted with such apathy. Kizzy realized that she could only understand a sliver of what their relationship was. She and Diego had only known each other a couple months and it was already complicated in its own way. She couldn’t begin to fathom theirs.

  Leo walked up to Kizzy and leaned against the tree, right next to the sleeping man who was slowly becoming a mutant. Leo reached for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. He had forgotten them at the house.

  “Do you think we can trust her?” Leo asked, nodding to the constable who was packing her camp into the jeep.

  “Yeah, we can,” Kizzy said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I just am,” Kizzy said. “Are you and Josephine going to be alright?”

  “I hope so,” Leo said. “To be honest, I’m not the best person to ask. Relationships aren’t my strong suit.”

  “You mean like with my mom?” Kizzy asked.

  “I mean like your mom and about 15 other relationships that I’ve screwed up in my time.”

  This came as a shock to Kizzy. “There were others?”

  “There are others for everybody kid. Anyone who tells you otherwise is… dumb.” He sighed. “Look, I didn’t know you even existed until yesterday. I mean, I knew you existed, but I didn’t know you were my daughter. That’s really weird for me.”

  “It’s weird for me too.”

  “Yeah, so you get it. There was this piece of me... out there, that I didn’t know was out there. How am I supposed to treat that person?”

  Treat me the way you treated me before you knew who I was, Kizzy thought.

  “I gotta go,” Leo grumbled.

  He stomped off into the woods. Soon the trees enveloped him and he was gone. Kizzy wondered if she would ever see him again. This father who had come into her life so suddenly and out of nowhere, could be going out in the exact same way.

  “Be careful,” she cried out as an afterthought. She was unsure if he heard her.

  “We better be getting out of here before this one turns,” said the constable, nodding to the man tied to the tree.

  There was a gunshot. Kizzy jumped out of her skin. She turned to see Josephine holding a handgun and the man with a bullet wound in his chest.

  “It’s one less thing to worry about,” Josephine said.

  They drove in silence towards the reservoir. Kizzy imagined the two women in the front seat were thinking of all the death they caused. Josephine with the Enoch Pill disaster, this second plague, and the man she had just shot. The constable with the mayor and the women in the square. Kizzy thought of all the people who now laid dead because of her. The them of them shared her aunt Patty.

  They were dangerous women. Haunted by the lives they ended, haunted by themselves..

  They drove in silence for about a half-hour before Josephine spoke up.

  “It should be somewhere around here,” she said, pointing to the left side of the road. “I think… It was a little dirt path.”

  “That would have grown over years ago,” the constable said.

  “Damn it.”

  “You think they’ll have a working bathroom?” the constable asked. “If we ever find this place.”

  “Probably not,” Josephine said.

  “Well, I better stop then.”

  She pulled the car over and walked out towards a patch of trees.

  “It has to be somewhere along this road” Josephine said looking on her laptop.

  “You better look at this,” shouted the constable.

  “What’s she yelling about?” Josephine asked. “Is it the facility?”

  The constable stood frozen amidst the trees on the side of the road staring down the hill. Kizzy and Josephine got out and approached her.

  From the top of the mountain they could see for miles and miles and in the center of the valley below was a large forest of pine trees grown in the shape of a perfect arrow. Around the forest was bare, brown dirt. It was so large and prominent it could be seen from miles away with ease. Except the surrounding mountains blocked all views. It had to have been planted there. But by whom? And why?

  “Was this here before?” the constable asked.

  Josephine shook her head.

  “Looks like it was meant to be seen from the sky.”

  “That’s the direction of the Uncle facility,” Josephine said.

  They descended the mountain with the large arrow as an end goal. Kizzy stared at the oddly satisfying shape, tripping over the rocky terrain because she couldn’t keep her eyes on her feet.

  When they reached the edge of the valley they walked out onto bare soil. Josephine scooped up a sample and examined it with her phone.

  “It’s laced with sodium chloride,” she said. “It would stop anything from growing here for a good long time.” She pointed to the dense forest. “My guess is, the soil in there isn’t.”

  “How old is it?” the constable asked.

  “It’s not older than 18 years,” Josephine said.

  They passed the forest and climbed the second hill in the direction that the arrow was pointing. Once they reached the top they could see down into the next valley and nestled into the landscape was a small white facility with a domed roof. It almost looked like as if an alien space ship had crashed and half submerged itself into the earth.

  “There it is,” Josephine said and led them down the hill.

  Kizzy developed a method of falling into a tree then the next, letting them catch her as she skipped down the mountain side.

  The way into the facility took them past the parking lot.

  “That’s Patel’s old car,” said Josephine thoughtfully, standing at a respectful distance from the dirty old green automobile. “Hasn’t moved an inch in eighteen years.”

  “Is the other one yours?” the constable asked.

  It was an old black Mercedes, and appeared to have the same eighteen years worth of built-up dirt as Patel’s.

  “I have no idea,” Josephine said. “Probably some sub-contractor.” With a shrug she went up to the front door, took a keycard from her backpack and opened up the facility.

  17

  Leo hiked through the woods alone and took a long, deep breath of the fresh air. This time by himself was soothing.

  For a moment he relaxed. Then he remembered he had a long-lost
daughter and his relationship was on the rocks because of it. He groaned, shook his head, and tried to see through the anxiety that clouded his vision so he could read the goddamn compass.

  There came voices. His ears tingled and he quickly glanced in all directions to see where they were coming from. But there were no signs of life. That was distressing. No matter who he ran into, he would be outnumbered and not kindly received. He needed cover. There sat a little abandoned shack a few paces away and he ran to take shelter within.

  For a few minutes he kept perfectly still and breathed gently. Suddenly, a woman walked past outside, carrying a large backpack. Was she with the group that had attacked them in the car?

  Leo crawled to the window and peeked out to see other woman walking past. They were all lugging bags and cases through the forest. Some were even leading horses and cows. Leo looked out the other windows to see that there was in fact a large army of women marching through the woods. He sunk back down and waited until the crowd had passed. He would follow from a distance. It was nearly an hour before the last of them had gone. Leo emerged from the shack. Goodness, it must have been a few thousand of them out there. But where were they headed?

  An old woman with white hair and a pink backpack came around the corner. Leo froze.

  “Hello stranger, you coming with?” she asked.

  Leo stood for a good second, unsure if he was dreaming or seeing a ghost. “Uh... depends where you’re going.”

  “We’re heading out,’’ said the woman as she walked right past him. “Gotta go!”

  “Wait a second,” Leo said.

  But the woman didn’t stop, she just kept on moving. And Leo had no choice but to follow. Soon he began to hear music playing.

  They came upon a clearing where 15 houses sat together, a little town of sorts. The clearing was in a valley of three larger hills. Leo remained atop one of the hills, still under the cover of the changing autumn leaves. The old woman in the pink backpack stood beside him.

  “What is this place?” Leo asked.

  “Quiet Valley,” the woman said. “The last of our towns before the wilderness.”

  “What’s everyone doing here?” Leo asked.

  “We’re just passing through,” the old woman said. “On our way out.”