Sil came awake with a jerk, covered with sweat and blue eyes bulging with fright, before she remembered where she was—a boxcar on the train, one of the empty ones toward its back end. Her skin felt overheated from the nightmare, her breathing still heavy and fast. The steady vibrations through the matted straw beneath almost lulled her back to sleep, then an unidentified shape moved in the darkness, coming at her too quickly and with a moist, sliding sound alarmingly like the one moments ago in her dream. Sil’s eyes widened again in surprise as a man lunged at her, a hobo wearing a filthy, tattered jacket and grime-encrusted jeans. She hadn’t had much time to think about her nightmare, but she had learned a valuable lesson from it—if she didn’t move fast enough, she wouldn’t escape a predator. She jerked out of range as his nails snatched at her arm and she saw him grin, saw his nicotine-stained teeth yawn open and glimmer as gold fillings winked in the wildly flashing red-and-white lights of a crossroads warning signal. He lumbered forward and clutched at her again, mouth stretching wider; more glimpses of teeth and winks of light in a mouth that looked as dangerous as her dream creature’s. She scrambled away and her hand brushed something in the straw: a liquor bottle, the remnants of the hobo’s evening imbibing sloshing as it wobbled on its side with the movements of the train. But when Sil’s arm shot forward and she struck him in the chest, the bottle stayed where it was on the debris-strewn floor of the boxcar; she didn’t need a weapon.
The hobo made no noise as his body snapped backward and his face contorted in agony. He fell away from her almost gently, his weight settling into the small, uneven mounds of straw with hardly a sound. The dusty fingers of one hand twitched slightly, mindless electrical impulses, then he was still.
Heart jackhammering, Sil cowered in the corner of the car, as far away from her attacker as possible. Was he dead or would he leap at her again? She waited anxiously, ready to fight, feeling her double-time exhalations slowly return to normal as the minutes slipped by in the thundering darkness. But nothing about the hunched shaped moved, and as Sil’s fear seeped away and her nerves calmed, she noticed something odd rising from the slit of a side pocket in the man’s jacket, faint, enticing pink fumes that gave off a maddening smell. While she was sure the man was dead, she was still cautious as she crept forward and probed at the fabric with two fingers, primed to jump out of reach. Convinced at last, she tore eagerly at the dead man’s coat until she found the source of the appetizing vapors—a half-eaten hamburger inside a wad of aluminized paper. It wasn’t much; three, maybe four bites and it was gone, barely chewed before she swallowed.
Later Sil found the hobo’s ratty travel bag and went through it. She dug all the way to its grimy bottom, but there wasn’t any more food, and although she opened it and sniffed the contents inquisitively, the bottle of Mad Dog lying in the straw held no interest for her. She let it drop uncapped onto the lap of the dead drifter, where its contents emptied in steady burbles and diluted the drying puddle of blood surrounding his torso. Sil did find extra clothes, though, something to substitute for the flowered hospital gown that was all she’d ever been allowed to wear. They were oversized but not hard to figure out; she’d seen the same items on the technicians and guards who had continually come and gone during her short life. The workers around her had seemed to believe she could neither understand them nor think intelligently, so most of what she had learned so far had been on her own, by simple observation and deduction. The picture books had been simple but accurate, and she had a feeling those childish tools would be the ones upon which she relied the most heavily in the very near future. The ease with which she had escaped made her again wonder why Dr. Fitch had tried to destroy her; she believed now that it was because they—Dr. Fitch and the others she had met so far—were weaker than she. There was something else inside her that Dr. Fitch had not intentionally planned to give her, and whatever the mystery part was, it made her better and stronger . . . dominant.
When the travel bag was emptied, Sil nearly had a complete outfit. No socks or shoes, but she would deal with that later. The squalid-looking cadaver could keep the ones on his feet right now; they smelled far too repellent to pull free of his body.
Dressed but still very hungry, Sil sat back and waited for the train to take her to an unknown destination.
5
The morning’s desert sun was red and bloody looking against the scrub-scattered horizon. Barely risen, its full girth not even clear of the skyline, its rays already coaxed dancing heat ripples from the surface of the earth, warping the shapes of the helicopters and trucks that fanned across the landscape.
Xavier Fitch stood between the set of twin silver train rails, his fists bunched at his sides. The only reason they were able to guess at Sil’s direction was the information, sent via a scrambled radio transmission, that a couple of freight trains had made their scheduled runs through here at about the same time as her escape.
“Those trains passed through here over two hours ago,” Fitch said thoughtfully. “She could have stayed on . . . or gotten off . . . anywhere.” Where was the girl now? Perhaps she’d been leaping onto a Utah-bound car even as that foolish search-and-destroy gunner in the Apache chopper had gotten all their hopes up by locking on a target with his chaingun, then pulverizing something in the brush that had turned out to be only a coyote. Fitch recalled the young man’s face and how it had turned scarlet when he’d had to report that he’d discharged several hundred .30mm rounds through his chaingun at a twenty-pound canid. He wondered what would have happened had the gunner’s target been authentic and found himself shying away from the thought.
The replacement aide assigned to Fitch was Robert Minjha. Dark-skinned and watchful, Robert was younger than Kyle Jacobson and ignorant of the more . . . delicate aspects of the project. Kyle had known everything about Sil, and it annoyed Xavier to be forced to pick and choose the bits of information he should feed his new assistant. Robert’s bright eyes took it all in and hinted that he understood more than what was said, but he didn’t question Fitch’s orders as much as Kyle had; Fitch thought he was as dull as the sand-colored landscape around them. This time, though, Robert did have a question.
“Is she that fast?”
Fitch hesitated before answering. He could lie, but it would be ludicrously obvious—after all, why else were they looking so far out in the desolate Mojave? All the aides had known about the project from its onset anyway; the current replacements simply hadn’t been able to get as close to it before the . . . accident.
“Yes,” he admitted softly. “She’s that fast.”
6
Brigham City, Utah reminded Sil, in the most tenuous way, of the complex in which she’d been born, and when the freight train had finally stopped in the rear of the train yard, she had been drawn in spite of herself to the busiest part of the station. Clean, bright, and filled with neatly dressed, freshly scrubbed people, even the travelers seemed to have left their road dirt behind, not daring to bring it into this tidy little metropolis. Sil knew there must have been other hobos in the surrounding boxcars; she had sensed a group of them only one car away, waited to see if their roady curiosity would lead them down the same trail as their now dead comrade. When no one else had come, she had eventually slipped into a fragmented sleep, troubled by broken bits of her previous nightmare.
She didn’t know where the hobos had gone this morning—perhaps they had stayed in the boxcars, waiting for the train to carry them to another town or larger city in which they could blend more naturally. Standing on the cleanly swept sidewalk next to the train station, Sil was a flagrant outsider amid the carefully tended pots of marigolds and petunias. Everything about the people milling past was different from anything she’d ever encountered—their clothes, the pleasant expressions on their faces, the way they smiled at each other. Looking down at the smudged and greasy pants and shirt she’d found in the hobo’s bag and at her bare feet, Sil realized her hands had started to shake. How long before someone in . . . aut
hority began to question her? This was no dark and private boxcar speeding through the desert at night; retaliation and escape would not be so effortless in Brigham City at midmorning.
But it was so fascinating. Dozens of people hustled through the station carrying everything from shoulder bags and briefcases to overstuffed suitcases they could barely lift. Others stood in line to talk to a woman on the other side of a window above which was a sign labeled TICKETS, while yet another line had formed at a cart painted gaudy red and yellow with western-style wheels that were far larger than necessary. Her gaze sharpened as she focused on something inside an oversized glass box on top of the cart—hot dogs, turning and sizzling on a roaster and sending up familiar feathery fumes, their color a stronger, tantalizing pink that drifted above the cart like a beacon for the hunger twisting painfully in her belly.
Sil turned away. Too many people encircled the cart, and the meat itself wasn’t in the open where she could run by and snatch at it. Dressed in a white coat and a paper hat with points at each end, the man who seemed to own the cart and the hot dogs was stationed next to it; the backs of the people in line were blocking Sil’s view, and she had no idea what was required to persuade the man to give her one. She wandered closer, trying to see, but the cart and the line were too close to the wall. She turned away; better to try something more in the open.
After a five-second scan of the interior of the train station Sil headed toward the snack shop at its other end, attracted by its brightly decorated window. She stopped outside the entrance and stared at the posters crowded on the surface of the glass, photographs of adults eating snacks and drinking sodas, all of which she assumed where available inside. Could she just walk in and take what she wanted? She looked back at the hot-dog cart and frowned; it seemed so, yet didn’t make sense, and she was already glaringly conspicuous. But she was so hungry. After a moment of hesitation, she decided to go in.
The snack shop was small, shaped like a long rectangle rather than a square. Sil’s gaze automatically went to a narrow counter at its far end, where she saw a couple of patrons sitting on stools covered with red vinyl. Behind the counter a teenager with acne-spotted cheeks and hair hanging in his eyes moved back and forth, serving milkshakes and ice-cream dishes with a bored expression on his face. Again Sil saw the pink fumes, this time drifting from the thick glass dishes scattered along the countertop. She turned away; the length of the room, with its only door at the front, made the far end of the shop seem too much like a trap. Staying close to the front seemed her best bet.
The first display she came across was immediately to the right inside the first of the three cramped aisles. The rows of beef jerky and chocolate-chip cookies looked edible, but they lacked the lovely pink fumes and smells that she associated with food. Perplexed, Sil gnawed on one fingernail, then touched one of the packets of jerky and made the connection—they were wrapped, that was all, covered by a false skin. If she broke through the covering, she would find the food. Satisfied, she tugged half a dozen packets of beef jerky free of their hook, then added as many of the wrapped cookies as she could hold in her other hand.
Now what? Unsure, Sil turned back toward the front of the snack shop and began to move toward the exit. As she stepped into the main area she almost collided with another person and stopped herself just short of instinctively lashing out.
“Sorry,” the other started to mumble. It was a boy her own age, trying to walk and tear open the waxy wrapping on a candy bar at the same time. He looked up from his task and his apology stuttered away as Sil gaped at him. She’d never seen anyone her own age before—he looked like a much younger version of Kyle, the sandy-haired lab assistant at the complex who had been her friend until his final treachery. Would this boy talk to her? Could she talk to him?
The boy’s lips parted, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he lifted the candy bar, something called a Butterfinger, to his mouth. He bit into it, chewing methodically as he scrutinized Sil and her raggedy clothes. His gaze slid to her naked feet, and he looked like he was going to speak when an adult woman touched him on the shoulder. If the woman saw Sil and the condition of her garments, she never acknowledged it.
“Don’t eat that until I pay for it,” she admonished gently. “Come on, let’s go.” The boy nodded and folded the excess wrapper over the bitten end of the Butterfinger bar, then followed his mother to the cash register. Sil got another peculiar look from him, then the boy’s mother kissed the top of his head as he turned his attention to the man at the checkout counter. Still puzzling over the affectionate ritual, Sil watched with rapt attention as the clerk tapped several keys on the register and a man in front of the woman and boy gave him three folded pieces of paper and some small pieces of round metal. After the clerk handed him a scrap of white paper, the guy left with a plastic bag filled with items—a bag of potato chips, a magazine, a few travel toiletries. Then it was the woman’s turn and Sil frowned, trying to watch the boy watch her at the same time as she tried to understand the procedure the woman was following. Rather than the green paper, she offered the clerk a small, colorful plastic card; the cashier accepted it, ran it through a small machine, punched more keys on the cash register, then handed it back—along with the bagged purchases. Whatever had transpired, it had given the boy the right to begin eating his candy bar again, and the Butterfinger was already half-gone before he and his mother stepped out of the snack shop.
“You going to buy those?”
Sil gasped at the sound of the clerk’s voice. She was standing right in front of him; without realizing it, she had drifted toward the checkout counter, her contemplation making her unwittingly follow the small line of customers. Buy them? It wasn’t difficult to figure out that this was a trading situation—if you wanted something in the store, you gave something in return. The problem was, Sil still didn’t grasp exactly what. Green paper, or plastic cards, yes—but where and how could she get those things?
The clerk started to say something else, then turned his head toward the entrance to the snack shop as a group of teenagers came in. Except for being loud, the four older boys seemed too close in age to most of her former lab technicians for Sil to pay them any mind, but the clerk’s attention sharpened visibly. While he was looking elsewhere Sil saw her chance; she dropped the packets of beef jerky and cookies on the counter and ran out, her fleet-footed dodge around the older boys making them whoop in admiration and cheer her on.
She found the boy and his mother again, this time standing with a trio of suitcases out on the train platform. Far enough away not to be noticed, she watched as the woman and her son each lifted a suitcase and a porter picked up the third to help them board a train. This train was different from the rust-stained boxcar that had sheltered Sil last night; each car was sleek and silver and had plenty of windows, and under all of them the word AMTRAK was painted in sprawling red-and-blue letters.
After the woman and boy disappeared into the train car, Sil watched the other boarding passengers thoughtfully. The train, she concluded, was leaving shortly, and with its impression of cleanliness and speed, was an infinitely better way to get somewhere, anywhere, as long as it wasn’t back to the laboratory. More porters were loading luggage here and there along the length of the train, and as the one nearest her struggled with a particularly heavy wooden chest, Sil snuck past and scooped an undersized blue suitcase from the jumble of bags at his back. She walked away as nonchalantly as she could, dreading the sound of his shout. It never came; relieved, she let her breath out—she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it—and boarded the train at a different car, following the mother and son. Half the train car away, she saw the woman and boy open a door and go into a sleeping compartment.
Following their example, Sil strolled down the narrow corridor, glanced around quickly, then slipped into the one next to them. There wasn’t much room inside, and what she did find was the antithesis of the environment back at the lab. Everything here was small and dark and varyi
ng shades of gray, from the iron-gray vinyl upholstery on the two facing seats to the silvery gray of the metal walls. There was another doorway, half the normal width, on the wall to the right of the window, and when Sil looked through it she found a tiny bathroom with a toilet, sink, and cramped shower stall. Outside the window and a few feet below her compartment, a middle-aged man holding a larger version of the suitcase Sil had stolen spoke animatedly with a conductor, who spread his hands and gestured at the empty platform, then shook his head. As she watched, the train jerked into motion and began to pull out of the station.
A full five minutes passed before Sil felt she could open the suitcase without fear that the train would suddenly stop and someone would start a car-by-car search. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she had expected to find clothes inside; instead she discovered a miniature portable television and several stacks of papers held together by rubber bands. The television called to mind the cameras mounted high on the walls of the laboratory at regular intervals, and she turned it on uncertainly, wondering if doing so would enable the men and women at the complex to see where she was. But the image that flickered on was reassuring; the fuzzy but luminously colored cartoon images fleeing across the four-inch screen couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the complex in the desert. She pushed a different button on the front and the image lost its color and changed to one of a man and woman kissing; they were dressed oddly, the man’s suit and the woman’s long, elaborate gown resembling nothing Sil had seen so far. She thought the dress, with its ruffled layers and multitude of bows sewn across the neckline, was pretty but not very practical. A poke at another button and the screen went dark; frowning, she pushed the same button again and the screen lit back up. On, off; it wasn’t that hard to figure out.
Species Page 3
