THE TRIBE 2 (GENETIC APOCALYPSE - THE TRIBE)

by Boyd Craven Jr.

  Genetic Apocalypse

  The Tribe 2

  Boyd Craven Jr.

  The characters and circumstances in this story are a product of the author’s imagination, and represent no real person, living or dead. Any real public places or names are used only to build atmosphere for the reader’s mind.

  Copyright © 2015

  Boyd Craven, Jr.

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this story may be reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of the author.

  The suggested reading order for the Genetic Apocalypse saga starts with Adam, then goes to Adrian. These two brothers each get a series of short-read stories. The Homesteaders series will follow Adam’s life in Michigan, The Tribe series will follow Adrian’s life in Florida.

  The back-story of what happened in the world ten years earlier to get us to this point is in The Rise of Walsanto. Read that at any time. Then, to follow how the world fares after the first hybrid is born, and for the 10 years before the Adam story takes place, read Hannah, followed by The Guardians series.

  1

  Adrian:

  After a long but thankfully uneventful night of us all taking turns at keeping watch, the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, painting the water and the glades with shades of red and orange. While I stand in the still dark office, looking through the bullet shattered glass, taking in the view; Tom goes right about the business of making a pot of coffee in the kitchen. It somehow feels odd to watch him flick on the light over the sink, and a minute later to hear and smell it brewing. I go out on the deck, taking my rifle with me, to look around. I’d left Sarah Mae sleeping on the couch. I’m standing here watching the water birds, scattered all the way from the docks, clean out of sight around the bend thinking, ‘It’s funny that everything is so different here than just down the road at the homestead on the river.’

  Tom interrupts my thoughts, coming out the door with a cup in each hand. “Here’s some coffee for you Adrian,” he says. “Do you think they’ll be coming back, since they didn’t last night?”

  “Naw. After seeing their boss get whacked by a sniper, and getting his brains blown all over them, I doubt they’ll be brave enough to bother us anymore. Besides, from what I’m told by those that know, he was the one with the big ambitions. The rest of ‘em are just employees, trying to follow orders to make a buck. Hey, do very many people come by here these days? Is there a lot of traffic?”

  “None. When we first got here nearly a year ago, there used to be a few now and then that stopped in from the road, mostly looking for directions, or some water. No customers, if that’s what you mean,” he answers.

  “It’s a real shame that Ms. Sonja and Jeff left when they did. Since I’m betting that we won’t be bothered by The Island’s men anymore, I’m thinking that our only worry will be from the road,” I say.

  “Well,” Tom says, “Ms. Sonja had been looking for a reason to go to her sister’s place for quite a while now. She would’ve gone pretty soon anyhow, but that new truck synched it. Hers is pretty iffy. That’s it downstairs. She’s been tinkering with it for a long time now. It just don’t wanna run right.”

  “That so? I don’t know how to drive anyhow, do you?”

  “Nope,” he answers.

  “Hey, I’m gonna go check the gate. Will you keep watch from up here till I get back?”

  “Sure thing Adrian.”

  ~

  Later, the three of us are walking around the property, just seeing what there is. Tom says there’s ten acres here, so that’s twice as much land as we’d had back in Michigan, except for a good part of this is wet. Not really everglades kind of wet, but right on the edge of it. There are still quite a few trees up along the road, so that means there’s some dry ground. Along the road and at both ends of the property, there’s a six foot cyclone fence, with barbed wire over the top of that. There’s no fence at all on the south side, as the ground gets to mushy to walk on. ‘Fences are just to keep honest people honest, is what Dad used to say,’ I thought.

  “The longest side of the property is the side along the road, I know,” Tom says, “but I don’t remember Ms. Sonja ever saying what the measurements are.”

  “The back-side being open lets a lot of deer and other critters in I’ll bet,” Sarah Mae says.

  “And pigs,” Tom responds. “Lots of pigs.”

  “What do you guys do for meat here?” I ask Tom.

  “Ms. Sonja bought everything at the grocery store way down this road,” he answers.

  “Walsanto Foods?” Sara Mae asks.

  “Yep, that’s it!” Tom says.

  “Well, we hunt and fish for ours, since none of us can drive,” I tell him. “Plus, we have no money except what we took off of the dead guys, and that won’t last forever. Where’s the best fishing around here?” I ask.

  “If you go out the channel a ways, it hits a natural waterway that goes to the river to the right, and a chain of lakes to the left. Those lakes are supposed to be awesome for fishing. That’s what most of the customers came here for. Especially the regular ones, I guess. So Jeff told me, at least.”

  “That’s great! We can get water birds galore here with the pellet gun, but other than that, it’s the same menu that we have at the homestead,” Sara Mae says. “It’s got everything we need.”

  “What about bread, and cheese, and cereal and milk and stuff?” Tom asks.

  “We don’t use any of that,” she tells him. “We eat different now than we did before. I think that’s one of the reasons we’re so big compared to you and Steve. We just eat meat, drink lots of water, and make a salad out of good weeds every couple of days, so we don’t get bound up.”

  “That sounds kinda boring,” Tom says.

  Sara Mae just looks at me and smiles. ‘No sense in arguing with Tom,’ I think. ‘He’s kinda slow.’

  “Over here are the storage units. Ms. Sonja told us to never mess around with them,” he says. “There’s seven on this side, and seven on the other side. That’s all I know about ‘em. Past ‘em, over here, is where some customers used to camp I guess. There’s a water pipe and an electric plug at each camping spot.”

  “Cool! That’s an awesome bonus,” I say.

  “Why’s that?” he asks.

  “It just is, like in case we ever have guests or something,” I tell him, making eye contact with Sarah Mae. She knows I’m thinking about other hybrid kids at some point in the future.

  “Right here in front of the camping spots, are the kayaks and canoes, in their racks. This is the best place to launch them,” Tom says.

  I count twelve dark green kayaks that are bigger than ours, all matching, and four canoes. “Where’s the paddles and stuff? In this little shed?” I ask.

  “Yep. See?” He opens the door to the shed, and there are paddles for everything, plus a whole bunch of life jackets.

  Next, we go to the docks where the two airboats are, and the big flat bottomed Jon-boat, or skiff like they call them down here.

  ‘I doubt very much that we’ll be using those air boats for anything,’ I think, ‘but oaring or poling around in that big flat bottom might prove useful. Especially for hunting and hauling stuff around.’

  That brings us back to the house, outside the basement. Well, I guess it’s not really a basement, like people had in Michigan, but more like one built on top of the ground, with steps leading up to the office and house. Still, it’s built of cement blocks, with a cement floor. Inside there, we take a better look around today, and find lots of sporting goods equipment and tools. Jeff’s dad’s crossbow and bolts, some camouflage clothes, a couple of back
packs, boots and hip waders. Decoy ducks and geese, fishing poles and a couple of tackle boxes. Pretty much all the kinds of stuff that the men back in our community in Michigan had. There’s three bicycles, probably one for each member of Jeff’s family, since two were boys and one was a girls.

  “When’s Steve coming back?” Tom asks.

  “I dunno. I hadn’t thought about that yet,” I tell him.

  “I want to see him. I don’t like not being with Steve,” he says.

  “Ok. We can take care of that,” I tell him. “At dark tonight, we can all walk over there. It’s only a couple of miles. Then you can be with Steve.” Sarah Mae gives me an odd look, like ‘What?’ I just shrug.

  ~

  As we approached the house at the homestead after dark, Sarah Mae makes a loud bird sound a couple of times. We wait for a second, and then Maya says, “C’mon up!”

  The girls hug each other, Donald fake punches me in the shoulder and Tom goes and stands right beside Steve, so close that their shoulders are touching, but he doesn’t say a word.

  “Did you guys have any trouble last night?” Donald asks me.

  “Naw, didn’t see anything,” I tell him. “You?”

  “Nope.”

  Everyone but Donald and I go inside, where an oil lamp is burning on the table. We stay on the porch to talk a bit. “What are we gonna do Adrian?” he asks.

  “Well, one thing I know is that we need to keep control of that other place. It’s really valuable to our future plans of giving other hybrid kids a safe place, but I like it a lot better here. I had an idea earlier today. Tell me what you think of this. How’s about we talk Sunny and Sofie into living there, once we’re sure it’s safe, and have Steve and Tom stay there with them? The growing season is over until spring anyhow. Sunny said that the other day.”

  “That’s a great idea!” he says. “I really want you to stay here anyhow. Let’s go run it by Maya.”

  We go into the kitchen, where the girls are talking at the table. Donald explains what I’d said to Maya. She thinks it’s a great idea and thinks that Sunny will jump at the chance.

  “We need an adult heirloom there somehow. There’s no way we could have the electric bill in any of our names,” I tell them. “I don’t know how all that works, but we’ll figure it out somehow. It’s a pretty good thing to have available, for a while at least. We’ll have to figure out how to make money to pay for it after a bit, but right now we have almost a thousand dollars, if we add up what Dave had and what we’ve taken off of the heirlooms we’ve killed. I don’t know how much it costs, but I bet Sunny does. I think Sarah Mae and I’ll kayak over there late tomorrow morning to talk to her. How’s about you two take the trail and meet us there? Hey, speaking of two, where’s Steve and Tom?”

  “Out on the back deck. Maya says. Tom told Steve he needed to talk to him for a minute.”

  “Ok. Everything alright?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what’s up,” she says. “I know Steve isn’t crazy about the way we eat, or living without TV and electricity.”

  “Tom neither,” I say. I hear the door knob turn, so I shut up.

  Steve says, “Hey guys, we were talking and we think we’re gonna move on the way we were going when we stopped here a year ago. If it’s ok with you Adrian and Sarah Mae, since Ms. Sonja gave everything to you two, we’d like to take the two men’s bikes downstairs. That’ll make it so we can go from town to town a lot quicker and easier.”

  I look at Sarah Mae and she shrugs like, I don’t care. “Well sure you can guys, but, I mean, why?”

  “It’s not that we don’t like you guys. We do, but we like living different than this. We thought we wanted to get away from people, but I guess we’ve proved to ourselves that we like civilization more than we thought. Sorry,” Steve says.

  “Well, if you’re set on that, we should give you part of the money that we took off those dead guys over there,” I tell them. “It’s about four hundred dollars, so you can have two hundred of it to help you along. You should take the guns and ammo that you each already have too, just don’t go walking into stores with them or anything.”

  Steve gives me the stink-eye.

  “Hey man, I’m teasing! Don’t be so serious! Is there anything else you need?”

  “No thanks, but that money will help a lot,” says Steve.

  “Can I ask a favor of you though?” I ask. “Don’t mention the homestead here to anyone. If you run across any hybrid kids, where ever you wind up, that need somewhere to go, and if they seem decent, tell them about us and how we live. If that interests them, then tell them about Ms. Sonja’s place. Send them there. Tell them to bring whatever hunting and fishing stuff they have, though. Everyone needs to contribute, if they can.”

  “We sure will Adrian, I promise.”

  “Well, let’s walk back over there then. We’ll spend the night, and if you still feel like this is the right thing in the morning, then I guess if you start early, you should be able to make that Walsanto store by mid-day. I don’t know what’s past there. We’ve never been any further, but there were houses and stuff around there, for sure.

  “So, Donald, Maya, let’s make our plans for the day after tomorrow then, alright?” I ask, making good eye contact with Donald.

  “Ok. Sounds like a plan then,” he says.

  “Be careful, and keep your eyes open. Keep your weapons on you at all times,” I caution them, and off we walked, single file, down the side of the road in the dark. We can see really well in the dark. Did I mention that before?

  2

  Sarah Mae:

  I was really surprised to hear that Steve and Tom are gonna leave us, but I guess it’s kinda like when I came here with Mom and Dad. I thought this was way civilized compared to living with the Seminoles. Now I’m at a place with electricity and everything, I wouldn’t want to go back to the way I used to live.

  ‘Speaking of which; I can’t wait to try out that bathtub. Of all the simple things these guys take for granted, a bathtub is something I’ve never used in my whole life.’ I guess once you get used to certain things, it’d be hard to give them up, if you didn’t have to.

  When we get back to the new place, location 7, everything is quiet. No problems.

  ‘We really need to put some thought into what we’re gonna call this place,’ I tell myself.

  Steve and Tom went right downstairs to check out the condition of the bikes and get them ready. Adrian told me he’d take first watch, so I should get some sleep. I curled up on the couch and was out like a light.

  ~

  I’m having a nice dream about Adrian asking me to marry him, when I suddenly realize there’s something crawling on my cheek. My eyes pop open, thinking spider; but its daylight and Adrian is standing beside me brushing my face with his fingers and telling me softly to wake up. “Oh. Hi,” I tell him. I know darn well that I’m blushing, so I hustle off to the bathroom.

  When I come out, I see Adrian giving the money he’d promised to give them to Steve. “So you guys be careful now. If you don’t find what you’re looking for out there, come on back here. You’ll always have a home with us, if you want one,” he tells them.

  “Thanks Adrian. It means a lot to know that we have a backup plan. That makes this a lot less scary,” Steve says. Tom is quiet, like usual, when he’s with Steve.

  We all go outside, shake hands, and off the two boys go, peddling out the drive. “I sure hope they took some food with them,” I say.

  “Yeah, they made a bunch of peanut butter sandwiches and took some bottles of pop and water. I told them to go ahead and use all the bread up, cause we don’t eat it anyhow.”

  I put my arms around his neck and say, “So why’d you tell Donald that we’d meet them tomorrow? Hmm? Got something in mind?”

  I thought for sure that he’d be the one blushing now, but he just says, with a straight face, “I figure we’ll keep watch and make sure nobody sees them leaving and thinks it’s an opp
ortunity to come back here and loot the place.”

  ‘Ugh. Boys! He doesn’t even have a clue!’

  We sit here quietly, side by side, listening to the water birds wake up, and gradually all the daytime noises start taking over. “Hey, do you know how to run that electric coffee machine?” I ask him.

  “Uh huh. I watched Tom yesterday. It’s easy. Want me to make a pot?”

  “Yes please. I watch him walk into the kitchen, thinking, ‘What a nice butt... Girl! What is wrong with you today?’

  I turn my chair to face the sun better, and let the back down, so I can lean back. I hear a big truck going by, out on the road, the opposite way that the boys went. ‘That’s the first thing I’ve heard go down the road here, other than the two trucks from The Island, since the day before yesterday. There’s a lot less traffic than there used to be. I used to be able to hear them from the cabin sometimes, if there was no wind. I haven’t seen any airplanes in a long time either.’

  Adrian brings our coffees out and sits them on the little table between our chairs. We sit there making small talk about what we see and hear. We decide that we’re not doing anything today, except relaxing and lying here in the sun. Adrian stands up and pulls his shirt off.

  “The sun down here feels awesome,” he says.

  That gives me an idea that makes me blush again. “Hey, can you show me how to work that bathtub?” I ask.

  “What? Whatd’ya mean?” he laughs.

  That kinda hits me wrong, but I bite my tongue and say, “I’ve just never used one is all. You don’t have to laugh at me.”

  “I’m sorry. Sure I’ll show you, c’mon.”

  We go in there and he explains turning on both the hot and the cold water to mix them until it feels just right, and how to drain it when I’m done. I thank him, rub my hand across his bare chest, give him a small kiss and send him on his way, so I can soak in this and enjoy it.