Feast

by Jeremiah Knight

  And not just any man—Peter.

  “Kenyon!” Peter shouted, his voice cutting through the din.

  Eddie spun around and dropped Anne, his reflexes guiding him to defend himself. But there was nothing he could do to stop the two hundred pounds of solid Marine barreling toward him. Peter struck Kenyon head on. The pair crashed through the wooden railing, sailed off the balcony and struck the greenhouse’s glass dome.

  The impact knocked both men unconscious, and while Peter slid down the glass and out of view, Kenyon was lifted skyward like bait on the end of a fishing line. Ella bumbled to the end of the hall. Tried to pick up the AK-47, but lacked the strength to lift its slick body. When Anne groaned, she fell by the girl’s side and checked her over. Aside from a number of superficial wounds, she found nothing life-threatening.

  “Was that Dad?” Anne asked, wincing as she sat up.

  Ella crawled to the edge of the balcony and looked over the side. She expected to see Peter’s twisted body three stories down, but she found him lying just ten feet below, sprawled on top of the decontamination unit linking the house to the biodome.

  He blinked and opened his eyes.

  When he saw her looking down at him, he smiled. “You have terrible taste in men.”

  “No shit,” she said.

  Gunfire from around the farmhouse filled the air. It was joined by the rumbling thud of Beastmaster’s machine gun. The second Apache cruised past overhead, following the Black Hawk, as Eddie was reeled up by a winch. Bullets pinged off the fuselage until it was out of range. The two choppers rumbled away, headed north, and slowly faded from view.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Anne asked, pushing herself up.

  “No.” It was Jakob, standing in the doorway, covered in coagulation. Alia stood beside him, a blood soaked towel held against her cheek. “They don’t need to.”

  “Why not?” Ella asked.

  “Because,” Jakob said. “They know where we’re going.”

  37

  Kenyon woke to the familiar white noise and vibration of a helicopter. Over the past year, he’d woken up under similar circumstances, and for a moment, his memories of the more recent past remained distant. But they returned with the pain. His body ached, just about everywhere. His left arm burned at a constant rate. It was the scorch of an open wound. And then it flared white hot.

  He saw the Black Hawk’s ceiling above. Then Hutchins leaning over him, concerned and annoyed. “Stop moving, God damnit.”

  The man had a hooked needle pinched between his fingers, a taut thread leading back down to Kenyon’s arm. Kenyon relaxed. The pain was a good thing. If Hutchins was sewing him back together, it meant he would survive.

  “Where is she?” Kenyon asked. As far as he could see, they were the only two in the chopper.

  “Who?”

  “Anne.”

  Hutchins slipped the hook through two folds of skin, pulled them tight and then said, “You don’t remember?”

  Kenyon closed his eyes. His memory was splotchy, still trying to catch up to the here and now. But he couldn’t get past the pounding in his head, the nausea and the ringing in his ears. He recognized the symptoms. Had suffered from them, and others, on multiple occasions during the past year, and during his former life as a high school and college football running back. “I have a concussion.”

  “Makes sense,” Hutchins said.

  “Why?”

  “You got tackled off a third floor balcony, fell nearly a story and crashed into a wall of solid glass strong enough to stand up to four hundred pounds of falling man meat.”

  “I was tackled?”

  “Hard,” Hutchins said. “After that, it was limp city. Honestly, I thought you were dead when I pulled you in.”

  A memory of falling flickered through his thoughts. Of pain. And disappointment. “I lost her.”

  “Yeah, you dropped Anne before—”

  “Not Anne.”

  Hutchins frowned. “Right. Ella. I didn’t see her.”

  Kenyon turned his face away from Hutchins, who might mistake his sadness for weakness. He remembered the fight with Ella. Remembered her nearly killing him, and what that felt like, to know she didn’t love him. To consider the possibility that she never really had. Who had duped who? But after that...after opening the balcony door, Anne in hand, his memory was reduced to a twisting coil of emotions.

  Desperation. Surprise. Rage.

  The deep welling anger filled in one of the blanks. “It was Peter.”

  “Hit you like a missile,” Hutchins confirmed. “For what it’s worth, while you were pulled up, he fell. He’s either dead or very broken. No way he could fall three stories without getting fucked up.”

  Kenyon turned back to Hutchins, his despair replaced by a growing anger. “You didn’t stop to check?”

  “We were under fire,” Hutchins said. “You were completely exposed.”

  Kenyon grumbled his understanding, but he still wasn’t happy about it.

  “I can send the Apache back,” Hutchins said. “Level the place.”

  “Apache?”

  “We lost Drummond to an ExoGen. An alligator I think. Used to be, anyway.”

  None of this was acceptable, but he wasn’t surprised. Viper Squad, without its leader, had lost its venom. And though their numbers had been drastically reduced, they still had firepower enough to kill their enemies and capture Anne and Ella. She might not love him now. Maybe hadn’t before. But she would learn to. And if she didn’t, maybe Mason had the right idea.

  “Should I send Manke back?” Hutchins asked.

  Kenyon shook his head. “He might kill our targets.”

  Hutchins nodded. He already knew that, but wanted Kenyon to make the call, and Kenyon respected him for it. He might not be a good leader, but he was loyal, and nowadays, that counted for something. Counted for a lot.

  “We don’t need to go back.” Kenyon hissed in pain as Hutchins tugged on the stitch, cinching it tight and tying it off. “I know where they’re going.”

  Not only that, but he was in no condition to fight. Not against Ella, or even Anne, and certainly not Peter—if he survived. But there was time to heal. Time to prepare. Instead of chasing their prey across the country, they could lay in wait. He always did appreciate ambush predators. The shock and panic of prey caught off guard was comical. And he longed to see that look on Peter’s face.

  Hutchins placed a bandage over the sealed wound. “Couple weeks and you’ll be good to go.”

  Kenyon disagreed with the prognosis. As tough as Hutchins remembered him to be, Kenyon knew he was stronger than that now. Life with the Chunta had thickened his skin. Pushing past pain and injuries were part of life, and his body had already begun to adapt to it. He thought of Feesa for a moment, wondering what would become of the beast and if she was still alive. Part of him would miss her companionship. In the most basic sense, they were two of a kind, hunters both. But they would have clashed eventually, and Kenyon had no illusions about who would have won that fight. Parting ways with the Chunta was a good thing. And if they were all dead, even better.

  Hutchins’s hand went to his ear. He wasn’t wearing the earphones that were customary in helicopters, blocking out the ambient noise, but he must have been wearing an earbud. “Copy that, weapons free. Engage.” When he took his hand away, he said, “We have incoming.”

  Kenyon started to sit up, but his body protested.

  “Sir,” Hutchins said. “You shouldn’t—”

  Kenyon lifted his good arm up. “I want to see.”

  Hutchins shook his head, but smiled. “Nothing can keep you down.”

  “Not for long. Not yet.”

  Hutchins pulled Kenyon up, helped him onto a bench, and quickly strapped him in. “Give us a view,” Hutchins said into his comms.

  The chopper banked and turned. Through the side window, they watched the Apache tear through the sky on a collision course with what looked like an inflated squid
, pulsing and flapping through the sky. Kenyon had no idea if the thing had started out as a denizen of the sea or not, but he didn’t care. All that really mattered was that it be killed.

  While he had allied himself with the Chunta, their days had always been numbered. That was the point of RC-714 and the Change it kicked off. Why bother culling life on Earth through a virus, a nuclear war or some other equally messy means, when you could let the planet eat itself into extinction? There was no radioactivity to deal with and no corpses to clean up. The Change had whittled life down to a few million Apex predators, and they would slowly but surely come into contact with each other. In the end, there might be a few hundred creatures separated by vast distances. When that happened, ExoGen would take care of the rest. The planet would be pristine once more, Eden reborn and awaiting its inheritors. Killing the ExoGenetic creatures they came across only hastened that eventuality, so he watched the event with a smile on his face.

  When the flying creature turned to face the pair of helicopters, its tendrils open, ready to grasp, a series of bright flashes flared on either side of the Apache. Smoke trails snaked through the sky, chasing a swarm of rockets. Fire and flesh ruptured into the blue sky.

  Beautiful, Kenyon thought, as the liquefied creature rained down toward the land below. When they flew through the pink mist lingering in the sky, Kenyon sat back, feeling hopeful.

  “Where to?” Hutchins asked. “We need to stop for supplies and fuel, but we can map out a route once we have a destination.”

  Kenyon looked out the window, watching the blur of trees and empty homes passing by below them. The world was nearly empty, but not quite empty enough, and it wouldn’t be until Peter Crane and his son, were dead. Lost and feral among the Chunta, he had desired Ella and Anne’s lives too, but that was when he thought his dreams of the future were dead. But now...now everything could be his.

  Everything.

  “Beantown,” he said, smiling at his blood-caked reflection. He turned to Hutchins, who looked as confused as Kenyon expected him to. “Boston. Take me to Boston.”

  38

  When it came to war, people generally focused on the fighting. It’s dramatic, and violent, painful and exciting. Adrenaline pumps. Bullets fly. Hoorahs fill the air as the enemy falls. Fewer people think about what follows a war, which for a soldier, is sometimes physically agonizing, sometimes emotionally taxing and always—always—long winded.

  Everyday noises become explosions.

  Kids playing sound like kids burning.

  Life transforms into a confusing world of chaotic illusion, and soldiers lie awake at night with the realization that the enemy they killed were human beings.

  And no one liked to talk about that. Better to pretend it’s not a problem. They’re soldiers, after all. They can deal, right?

  Peter had dealt, but not on his own. PTSD had left him shaken and exhausted, but he had pushed through it with the help of family, friends and three good therapists. It was a longer, harder battle than the war itself, and now, in the wake of the fight for Hellhole Bay, he felt the familiar emotional and physical twitches creeping up on him.

  The war’s not over, he told himself, trying to stuff the emotions back down. Deal with this shit when we’re done.

  Done with what? he wondered, and then answered, Saving the human race. But it was simpler than that. He never really focused on the big picture, just on what was in front of him. His family. His son. They were reason enough to fight a war. As determination took root, the PTSD symptoms retreated, biding their time.

  But Peter was not alone in his struggles. All around Hellhole Bay were the faces of men and women who had fought for their lives. And their battle began long before Peter or Kenyon set foot in the compound. Mason had seen to that.

  And he had received his just reward, but that didn’t change what he had done. Nor did it help those who dutifully obeyed him.

  Boone was alive, but in the new status quo, he was the lowest of the low. The man looked relieved when he saw Mason’s dead body, but it would be a long time before the people of Hellhole Bay trusted him.

  Although they didn’t have much of a choice. With all of Boone’s men killed, and most of the still living residents of Hellhole lacking any kind of fighting ability, he was their best chance of survival. In the days following the attack, people had rallied against Boone, demanding his weapons, but Peter had stood beside the man. Technically, he’d sat beside the man. Three days passed before he could stand without much pain. A week before he could walk.

  It had now been two weeks.

  Boone wasn’t their leader. Hellhole Bay was now a democracy of sorts, split into mini-sections of government that covered food, energy, sanitation and defense. Given their knowledge of most of the camp’s functionality, the three former maids, Shawna, Charlotte and Sabine wound up in charge of the first three. They had begrudgingly allowed Boone to oversee the camp’s defense, along with some unlikely allies.

  The Chunta were staying. Five females, including Feesa, along with two Woolies, had survived the battle. There had been some tension at first. The citizens of Hellhole had killed a few of the Chunta, but Feesa explained Kenyon’s deception and that Peter and his kin were family, a title never bestowed on Eddie. The creatures, who were already predisposed to symbiotic living, now resided in the swamps surrounding the compound, watching over the people within. And Boone was busy training those who were willing and able to carry weapons. Willie was his second-in-command and would be more than willing to put a bullet in his boss, if Boone ever got out of control. Said as much, right to his face, which Boone accepted with a grateful nod. He knew it was more than he deserved.

  The girl who had helped Anne and Jakob’s insurrection, Carrie, survived the knife in her chest. Barely. She was laid up in one of the beds, and would likely stay there for another few weeks. The wound had been deep, but missed her heart, lungs and major arteries. Shawna and Charlotte had experience patching up Boone’s men in the past, and Sabine had been a nurse. Without them, Carrie would have died. The three women had been busy since the two choppers flew away, patching up the wounded and getting food and water to everyone.

  They had tended to Peter and his family, and had even sewn up Alia’s cheek, inside and out. The girl would have scars, emotional and physical, for the rest of her life, but she had survived. It didn’t change the haunted look in her eyes, though. Kenyon had broken her.

  Kenyon...

  As far as they knew, he was alive. And Peter now knew better than to assume the opposite. Peter wouldn’t believe the man was dead until he saw him bleeding out at his feet. Until he saw the life leave Kenyon’s eyes. War was generally not a personal affair. But Kenyon had made it one. At the same time, Peter would do his best to avoid the man. Better to win the war without fighting. A soldier who could do that was the very best.

  At the same time, Kenyon knew they were headed to Boston. He didn’t know where, which was good for the people already on George’s Island, but he’d be there, waiting for them.

  Hope for the best, Peter thought, prepare for the worst.

  He dropped Beastmaster’s hood and pronounced the vehicle fit for duty. It had a lot of cosmetic damage, but it had survived the battle in one piece.

  “Good to go?” Jakob asked. He stood in the bed, cleaning the machine gun. During the day, he seemed like his old self. At night...not so much. Nightmares were common, especially when they walked the Earth, but Jakob’s fears got the best of him. He was plagued by doubt, and by guilt over what had happened to Alia. Blamed himself for letting her be part of that fight. For not reaching her sooner. According to Ella, it was chivalrous bullshit, but Peter understood. He blamed himself for everything that happened after running into Boone on the road. He could have backtracked. Could have run and found another way around. Could’a, would’a, should’a. It was all bullshit. Hindsight and all that. What happened wasn’t Jakob’s fault any more than it was Peter’s. They’d done their best, and their f
amily was alive and present because of it.

  “Good as it’s going to get,” Peter said, patting his hand against the armored siding. “Are you ready?”

  Anne leaned out of the truck’s open side window. “To live without big walls, and beds, and electricity and running water? Ooh, can’t wait.”

  Peter grinned at the girl’s sarcasm, which had slowly returned with each passing day. She had taken her lumps along with the rest of them, but she seemed to recover more resiliently. Then again, she, like Ella, had fought her way through the wild for far longer than Peter and Jakob. For her, living out there might feel more normal. And what was normal for Anne? Before trekking through the ExoGenetic landscape, she’d lived in a protected facility. Until she and Ella fled with a group of scientists, the girl hadn’t set foot outside. Weird was her normal.

  “I’m good,” Jakob said, but he didn’t sound very convincing. Then his face lit up a little. Alia was headed toward them.

  Jakob hopped down from the side of the truck and wiped his greasy hands off on his pants. “Where’s your stuff?”

  As reward for aiding in the liberation of Hellhole Bay, the residents had made sure they were leaving fully stocked. They had fresh clothes and plenty of food and water. Of course, they would cover the clothing and their clean bodies with mud after leaving the compound, but they didn’t tell them that.

  Alia’s eyes flicked from Jakob to Peter and back again. Peter knew what was coming before the girl spoke. Had suspected it for more than a week now. “I-I’m not coming.”

  Jakob deflated, but he didn’t seem surprised.

  “It’s for the best,” Anne said. “She’d just get you killed.”

  “Screw off, Anne,” Jakob said.

  Anne was about to launch a verbal counterstrike when Peter gave her a look that mirrored Jakob’s message and defused the girl’s bravado. She rolled her eyes and sat back in the truck.

  “She’s right,” Alia said. “You’re distracted when I’m around. Everyone is. I can’t track, or forage, or fight, or even stay out of the way. I can’t even get canned food from an empty grocery store without freaking out. What you’re doing... I can’t do it.”