Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2)

by Chris Pourteau

  This is beyond me, Lauryn thought. It’s beyond me.

  “You can do this Mom,” whispered Megan as she placed a hand on Lauryn’s arm. “You’ve got an iron heart, remember? And you won’t be alone.”

  Lauryn jerked her head up as Megan repeated Mark’s old gibe. Early in their marriage, he’d accused her of being hard as iron, able to weather anything with a thick shell and a sharp tongue. He’d meant it playfully then, before every word between them became a barb that pricked her heart, iron or not. “What did you say? How do you know about—”

  “Dad told me,” smiled her daughter. “When we moved out, when you weren’t saying anything to anyone. You just had that look on your face constantly, the one you get when you’re super pissed. He said whenever you shut down like that, you’re really just gathering your strength. He said it was the calm before the storm. ‘Your mother’s got a heart of iron,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it’s what you need to get through life. Once she comes out of it, though, best to stand back and give her room.’ So I did. Remember?”

  Lauryn looked into her daughter’s eyes and saw Mark staring back. Piercing with their insight, often uncomfortably so. But also kind and patient. She cupped Megan’s cheek in her hand. She was so much her father’s daughter. And that thought—Lauryn realized rather suddenly and with some surprise—was a good thing.

  The weight bearing down on her lifted, leaving behind it a grim determination in Lauryn to see this through. She took a deep breath, reached up and squeezed Megan’s hand once, and climbed out of the cab.

  “Sorry guys. Sometimes, this gets so …” The look Lauryn shared with the others finished the thought for all of them.

  “So, how do we get in there?” asked Colt, turning back to the problem at hand. “It’s not like we can just walk through the front door.”

  “I think I know a way,” said Megan, walking around the front of the truck. “Mom, remember when I used to come to work with Dad during the summer? Remember the time the toilets backed up so bad?”

  Lauryn nodded, closing her eyes with a sigh. Her emotions were still getting their legs under them. The calm before the storm, huh? she poked at Mark in her mind. And just when I thought we’d had enough of those.

  “How does that help us?” asked Eamon.

  “There’s an old sewer system that runs under the road here,” explained Lauryn. Her mind was finally starting to focus. “It runs under I-10 and into Memorial Park. Used to empty into Buffalo Bayou, but the system’s been rerouted now. It flooded once. Backed up every toilet in TranStar till they built out the system and brought it up to code.”

  “Underground?” asked Colt.

  Lauryn noted his reluctant tone. “It’s a way in,” she reminded him.

  “I don’t much like being underground,” said the boy. He remembered the Tunnels they’d found under the Farm before the attack, before the huge herd of Exers came. When he’d ventured once into those long, dark holes in the ground, a paralyzing claustrophobia had taken him. Like the Earth was just waiting for him to walk deep enough before it buried him alive.

  Megan walked over and interlaced her fingers with Colt’s. Lauryn saw but didn’t mind, and when Jasper reached his nose up to lick their joined hands, her breath caught in her throat. Even the dog knew—they all needed one another now.

  “Where’s the entrance?” asked Eamon. “It’s almost daylight. People will be coming. We need to hurry.”

  Lauryn gestured across Katy Road, past the Bud Light warehouse. “Like I said, it’s in the park. But I have no idea where. We might be able to—”

  “Dad showed me.”

  Lauryn turned to her daughter, head cocked to one side.

  “What? I was bored and the whole building stank like shit. We went for a walk in the park and he showed me.”

  Strange how the human mind works sometimes, Lauryn thought. Death is just around the corner, and I’m resisting the urge to tell my teenage daughter to watch her language.

  “All right, then,” she said, shrugging. Her shoulders actually did feel lighter.

  “Hey, before we go,” said Eamon, “here, we need to distribute these now. Might not be time later.” He reached into the back of the Ranger and pulled out a Mason jar. It had a dark, red liquid in it, and one-inch nails rolled around in the bottom of the glass jar. “Three of these each,” he said, handing the first one to Lauryn. “Pack them in tight in your backpacks, and watch the firecracker fuses. They’re wedged pretty tight, but if that kerosene starts leaking, you’ll become a fire hazard.” He handed her a gas lighter.

  “Where’d you learn to make this kind of stuff?” asked Colt. “You don’t seem like the type.”

  Eamon regarded him coolly for a moment then, totally out of character, winked. “When you’re an undergrad and bored in organic chemistry, you occupy your mind with other things.” He handed the boy his allotment of homemade grenades.

  Packing the last of them in her pack and ensuring they were as tight and upright as they could be, Lauryn said, “I really wish I’d known chemistry was this interesting in college.”

  After the others had packed and double-checked the newest asset in their arsenal, Lauryn glanced around at them and even down at Jasper, who wagged his tail lazily. He was tired too, she realized. But not giving up.

  “We ready?”

  Colt nodded and started toward the park.

  “Hang on,” said Eamon. He took his voice recorder out of his pocket and stared at it a moment, as if reluctant to part with it. Lauryn wondered what was going through his mind. What was on that tiny machine, for that matter. She watched him toss it with a sigh onto the front seat of the Ranger. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Looking both ways before they crossed the street, they made their way into the dark, damp greenery of Memorial Park, looking for the entrance to the wolf’s lair.

  Stavros’ Journal: Wednesday, early morning.

  So, I got my shopping list filled: nails, firecrackers, ice packs for the ammonium nitrate, and the other stuff. Lucky they had those camping lamps too, the ones with kerosene. And the bowling bag—that was pure inspiration. Dark humor at its finest.

  The boy and I spent the last hour making some surprises for Peter and his friends. Not easy to do in the bed of a moving vehicle. But at least Lauryn’s driving slowly, and that helped.

  Luckily, those Mad Maxes with the semi-automatics haven’t found us again. We’ve all started to relax a little bit. In fact, the boy seems to have fallen asleep. Probably smart.

  Okay, I’m wasting time. I’m getting punchy. Come on, Dr. Stavros. You’re a tenured professor of genetics at The University of Texas. Holder of the George Streisinger Endowed Chair for Genetics Research. Get your shit together.

  But until I have Peter on the table, until I slice into that lizard brain of his and analyze the sections of gray matter it yields up… Honestly, I’m tired of thinking. Hell, I’m just tired. The last week has been crazy. Cue rimshot.

  Yeah, punchy.

  Lauryn made a valid point earlier—getting Peter away from that mob, dead or alive, won’t be easy. That’s why I’ve decided to leave this recorder in the truck when we go in. In case … well, in case I’m the one that ends up with my brain sliced open on the autopsy table instead of Peter. Maybe someone smarter than me will come along and find it and listen to it and figure out a way to undo what I’ve done. Maybe a witch doctor will happen by on his way home to the suburbs and hear it and smile with that Eureka! gleam in his eye and save the world. Just remember to include me as a co-author on the paper, bub! Credit where it’s due!

  Or maybe not.

  God, I’m bored and I’ve run out of ideas and I’m wasting your time by having you listen to this nonsense. Look, it’s not my fault really. I’m a scientist who’s reached the apex of what he knows. I’m standing on top of the mountain looking down, trying to see through an orange fog that’s hiding the truth beneath it. What was that old Beatles’ song? The Fool on the Hill. Yeah, that. Sitt
ing here, blub-blub-blubbing my index finger between my lips.

  Maybe you think I’m crazy.

  And speaking of total mysteries: Megan’s visions. There’s something deep inside me, something older and wiser, that knows that girl is seeing things we can’t. That is, I’m aware of its factualness without really knowing, because I can’t even begin to understand how it’s possible.

  Is God sending the visions? Or maybe it’s Satan. Or maybe the same evolutionary engine that seems to have turned Serenity on its head has unlocked some kind of psychic potential in her. But why would that have happened? Maybe none of this has anything to do with Serenity.

  You may be right; I may be crazy.

  You know, thinking about what I said about Megan’s visions, something strikes me. Maybe I’m tapping into my own lizard brain with that. Into something beyond the instinctive, certainly way beyond the frontal-lobe capacity for rational thought. Is it that place inside us where we just know? What we like to call our sixth sense? Woman’s intuition?

  Could it be that flicking middle finger against our forehead in the middle of the night that wakes us, sweating and shivering with fear, and prompts us against all reason to call a loved one; only to find out that, yes, some tragedy has just struck that we couldn’t possibly have known about? Yet, we did know. And our knowledge woke us up and made us dial the number.

  Is it the lubricant that greases the wheel of faith past the focal point of knowledge? Is it what prompted Colt to attack me in that shop? Is it what I changed with Serenity?

  Something beyond the HTR2B gene. Something more fundamental. That inner switch that tells us right from wrong whatever our cultures, the switch that’s broken in those individuals the psychologists deem psychopathic, the switch that protects us all from the dark demons of our own nature?

  I bet Salk never had to worry about this kind of crap. Or Einstein. Or Streisinger, sitting in his damned endowed chair.

  Lauryn’s slowing down. I see lights. Very bright lights. I think we’re here. Okay, then, one last thought before I leave you. Hopefully not for good….

  I’m not crazy. Think what you want having listened to this. But I’m not.

  Make that two last thoughts.

  Maybe when I’ve got Peter’s skull opened up, I’ll snap some of the bones out like it’s a crab shell. Toss ’em in the air, and watch the pattern they make when they land. Predict the future. Replicate the experiment and toss them again to see if they land the same way a second time.

  What would you think of that, you witch doctor sonofabitch? And while I’ve got you on the line—want to assist?

  Yeah, punchy. Gotta go.

  Eamon

  Part 3

  Down the Road

  Chapter 15: Wednesday, near dawn.

  The night noises of Memorial Park were dying away with the first fingers of sunlight reaching over the horizon. Lauryn was on one knee and peering down into the sewer, Jasper’s muzzle beside her. She moved the flashlight right and left.

  “Well?”

  Eamon was always anxious to get going, she thought. And always wanting answers yesterday.

  “Looks clear,” Lauryn answered him. “But it smells like…” She turned her head and found Jasper beside her, checking out the hole with her. He panted at her a moment, then returned his nose to the hole and sniffed enthusiastically, wagging his tail. “Yeah, like that.”

  “How do we get down?” asked Megan.

  “There’s a ladder.”

  “Oh.”

  “Let me go first,” said Colt.

  Lauryn glanced up at him. Even in the dim rays of pre-dawn, she could see the anxiety lining his face. The boy did not like tunnels, she remembered.

  “Are you sure?”

  He rubbed his hands together as if the swelter of the September breeze carried a frosty winter chill instead. “Yeah. I should go first. Unless you’ve been learning to look for traps and tripwires everywhere you go for the last five years, like I have.” He smiled, and Lauryn could see he was bracing his fear with bravado. A good start, at least.

  “Be my guest,” she said, motioning at the manhole.

  Colt secured his backpack.

  “Be careful,” said Eamon, eyeing the boy’s back. “Those grenades are as sealed as I could make them. But, you know … be careful.”

  Colt nodded as he found his purchase on the metal rungs of the ladder leading down and scraped his way past the half-moved, heavy manhole cover. It’d taken all four of them to move it, with Jasper egging them on. Colt climbed down into the foul smelling, mid-century sewer system, Lauryn lighting his way with the flashlight. They heard a wet, squishing sound as he reached the bottom.

  “Well?” asked Eamon again.

  “Not so much,” said Colt from beneath them. “More of a shithole.”

  The scientist gave Lauryn a questioning glance, then caught her amused eye. “Oh. He’s making a joke.”

  “Not so much!” Colt called up.

  “Okay, okay,” said Lauryn, “let’s keep it moving. Megan, you’re next.”

  “How will we get Jasper down?” Megan asked as she steadied herself on the ladder.

  Lauryn considered it as she helped her daughter begin the descent. She didn’t want to chance lowering the dog down with a rope. His ribs still seemed too fragile, though you wouldn’t know it by the way he carried himself.

  “I’m not sure, honey. Maybe we should leave him up here, you know, to guard—”

  “I’ll carry him down,” offered Eamon.

  As Megan reached the bottom, Lauryn turned to him. “Are you sure? What about his ribs?”

  “I don’t think they’re as bad as we thought at first. There’s no other way to get him down.” Turning to Jasper, Eamon knelt down and ruffled his ears. “And we’re not leaving him up here.”

  Lauryn nodded, assessing the look on the man’s face as he petted Jasper. In the last day or so, Jasper had bounced back. So much so, he’d become one of their anchors to sanity, Lauryn realized. Having a dog, even during an apocalypse, had done them all some good.

  “Stop, Colt,” she heard Megan say below. “Wait till they get down here. Come on, Mom!”

  “Here, take my pack,” said Eamon. “Can you carry two? But be careful. Don’t break those Mason jars. Or—”

  “I know. I smell like kerosene and we lose our grenades.”

  Eamon grunted. “Yeah.”

  Lauryn strapped one pack around each shoulder, feeling their dense weight, and made her way—carefully—down the ladder. As she reached the bottom, Eamon mounted the ladder, calling Jasper over to him. With one hand on the iron rung, the scientist urged the reluctant dog closer to him, then grabbed him. With both of his front paws on the man’s shoulders, Jasper stared down at Lauryn with a look that reminded her of Colt’s reluctant approval of the sewer strategy.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she called up. “You’ll be okay.”

  Mindful of the dog’s sore ribs and using the ladder to keep Jasper secured lightly against his chest, Eamon descended as quickly as he could. When he reached the bottom, Lauryn took Jasper off his hands, and with the dog on all fours again, she pointed the flashlight down the tunnel.

  “How far do we have to go?” wondered Colt.

  “It’s a pretty good ways,” said Lauryn. “It’s underneath the park and I-10 before we come up inside the basement of TranStar. Half a mile, maybe? Fortunately, that’s the end of the line for this tunnel or we’d never know when to come up.”

  “And where will we come up?” Colt asked. He wanted to know as much as he could, Lauryn realized. Especially when they’d see the surface again.

  “There’s a room under TranStar that houses their computer servers and stuff,” said Megan. “Dad took me down there once to show me around. It was built around the old sewer access. We’ll come up there. Right?”

  Lauryn nodded.

  “Let’s go,” said Eamon, “This tunnel feels like a tomb. And I’m tired. If we’re going to do
this, we need to do it now.”

  Jasper barked in seeming agreement. The sound echoed down the tunnel.

  “Me first, remember?”

  Colt stepped out, the muck sucking at his sneakers, his flashlight bobbing ahead. Eamon retrieved his backpack from Lauryn and trailed after him. Jasper stuck close to Megan, whose expletives of disgust followed on Eamon’s heels. Lauryn brought up the rear, her pistol in her hand. All of them did their best to breathe through their mouths.

  Eamon wanted to move faster, but Colt kept their pace in check. He’d seen too many people die by taking ten seconds to get somewhere when a minute would’ve saved their lives, he told them. He kept his light on the next step, with regular glances down the narrow tunnel ahead.

  Lauryn appreciated his cautious, stealthy approach. As rearguard, she glanced backward now and then, and each time, the growing sunlight of dawn streaming in from the manhole grew dimmer. Without their flashlights, they’d be walking through the reek in total darkness.

  “I’m not sure which is worse,” said Megan in a nasal whine, two fingers clipping her nostrils together. “The bodies on the surface or the—”

  “I’m sure,” replied Lauryn, suddenly grateful for the brownish-green mud they were walking in. They’d rounded a small bend in the tunnel, and, looking back, she could no longer see the ladder to the surface. Each of them was now entirely reliant on the staying power of a handful of D-cell batteries.

  As she shone her light along the cold stonework around them, the sewer walls seemed to her like they belonged in another time. Not merely a half-century earlier, either. Not the product of a public work to improve hygiene in a city on a never-ending quest for westward expansion from the coast; rather, they seemed more like the tunnels beneath a castle keep in medieval times. Maybe the escape route for a conscientious lord concerned that a rival might breach the walls of his fortress home.