It took about ten minutes for them to fill the duffle bag they’d brought. The entire time, I sat, sweating and trembling, curled under the gurney. Even after they’d left the infirmary, I stayed, folded in on myself, clutching my knife and shaking because they were still out there. Not just Olivia and the man, but the whole group, calling back and forth to one another as they ransacked the compound and took whatever they wanted. It sounded like there were six or seven, and they were so confident, and casual, and cocky, that my fear slowly turned to white hot rage. What would my old man say if he saw me cowering under a table? I was a Williams and we did not hide: we hunted.
I quietly extracted myself from under the gurney and grabbed as many of the antibiotics off the floor as I could, jamming them into my pocket. I’d have to endure the pain, or come back when I could for different pain killers. Then, I palmed my knife and checked the door. I couldn’t see the intruders and their voices were distant.
I didn’t understand how, but Olivia was alive and well, and she had her hand back.
The Holders must have won the conflict for the dome. They must have ousted Fineman and rescued her and somehow restored her PSS. And now that they’d broken through to the CAMFer side, they would take everything.
That minus bitch thought she was safe here in her ivory tower. She thought she’d won.
I should have cut off more than her hand when I’d had the chance. I should have ended her. I had been too soft.
But not this time.
21
DAVID MARCUS
“I’m not going to the medical tent,” Gordon insisted, sipping at his coffee as Kaylee buttered him some toast. “I feel better. I’ll be fine.”
I should have waited until Mia had come back to broach the subject. She’d gone off to find Reiny and Lonan. Still, even with her here, the conversation would have been the same. Arguing with Gordon was like banging your head against a brick wall. It hadn’t done any good last night when we’d arrived at the dome either. Plus, we’d had no idea where the medical tent was. Now, in the bright morning light, the large white tent off to the east with the Red Cross flag flying over it was pretty obvious. But Gordon had insisted we find Reiny and Lonan before we did anything else, and I couldn’t exactly drag him away against his will. I couldn’t drive him either. As soon as we’d pulled onto a dusty patch of earth last night, vehicles and campers had parked around us blocking us in. By the time we’d woken up this morning, you couldn’t see the end of them, which made me think there had to be more than one illegal entrance into the depot. Those locals must be raking in some serious cash.
Maybe Gordon was okay. His color was better, and Kaylee’s touch seemed to help. She was sitting next to him now at the little fold-down RV table, close enough that their legs were touching. She looked well-rested. She must have slept better than I had last night, but then she’d gotten the bed over the cab and I’d slept hanging off the edge of a skinny-ass bench seat.
Kaylee glanced up and caught my eye. He’s okay for now, she mind-spoke to me. I’ll keep close to him and let you know if anything changes.
It took me a moment to realize I’d heard her without any physical contact.
“How did I just hear you?” I blurted. Then I turned to Gordon, blinking and trying to come up with a good reason to have blurted it.
“I can hear her too,” he said. “I know she’s telepathic.”
The more I talk to someone the easier it is to make myself heard without touching them, Kaylee explained. And it helps if I’m upset.
“Are you upset with me?” I asked.
A little, she answered. You made me hide in the RV last night when I could have helped Gordon. You can’t keep me hidden away forever, you know? I might be a freak, but I still deserve to have a life.
“A freak? Kaylee, that’s not what this is about. It’s just too dangerous. We don’t know who we can trust, and if there are CAMFers—”
That’s the same thing you said at the reservation, and people saw me and it was fine, she insisted. Besides, you can’t stop me from doing what I want. I’m not a child. I’m older than you are. And I didn’t escape being a prisoner in a dome to be kept prisoner by you. She tossed her head and raised a hand, pulling aside one of the RV window curtains behind her and looking out. I’m not hiding anymore. There’s a whole world out there and I intend to see it.
“Sounds like she knows what she wants,” Gordon mumbled between bites of toast.
“No, it sounds to me like your pig-headedness is contagious,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Forgive me for trying to keep both of you alive.” I knew Kaylee wasn’t a little girl, but she still needed protection. “Listen.” I reached past her, pulling the curtain shut. “Mike Palmer is out there, and we barely lost him last night. If it wasn’t for the traffic and the dust, he might be camping right next to us, and I don’t want him anywhere near you.”
Mike Palmer isn’t dangerous, Kaylee said, as if explaining something to a toddler. He helped me escape when no one else would. He isn’t who you think he is.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Gordon murmured.
God, I wanted to pick that man’s brains about how he knew Palmer, but he was holding those cards very close to his chest. That was yet another reason to worry for Kaylee’s safety. Everyone was hiding things, especially crotchety old Gordon. I could feel people and events stacking up, colliding with one another, racing toward an outcome I couldn’t possibly predict, and it scared the hell out of me.
Suddenly, there was a loud knock, the RV door rattling on its hinges.
“Who is it?” I called, crossing to the door and grasping the handle.
“Mike Palmer,” a deep voice said. “And you might want to remember you’ve got thin walls and close neighbors. I heard you arguing from three camps away.”
There was no point in panicking, or running, so I opened the door and faced him head on. He was standing at the bottom of the RV’s two metal steps.
Kaylee pushed past me and flung herself into his arms. He barely caught her, looking almost as startled as I was.
“All right, kiddo. It’s good to see you too,” he said, peeling her from his chest and setting her down on her feet next to him. “By the way”—he turned back to me—“you didn’t lose me last night. We’re camped a few rows over. I just thought I’d give you some space. Plus, we had gear to unload before we could use the camper and it took a while. Jason’s over there selling the last of it as we speak. But”—he peered past me at Gordon—“I thought you might want help getting this stubborn old coot the medical attention he needs.”
“I’m not going,” Gordon growled.
“Gordon,” Palmer said, climbing the steps and pushing past me. “At the very least, you need some oxygen and a good once over.”
“I’m fine,” Gordon insisted, showing no signs of budging from behind his little table. “Sit down, Nathan. You and I have a lot to talk about.”
Palmer sat across from Gordon at the table. Kaylee took her spot back at Gordon’s side, and I swiveled the front passenger seat around and sat in it.
Maybe Kaylee was in danger from Palmer. Maybe we all were, but better to have him here right where I could watch him, than out there somewhere doing who knew what. Besides, I was pretty sure Gordon and Palmer were about to spill major info on what the hell was going on.
“Okay, let’s talk,” Palmer said. “What is it you wanted to say?”
“I don’t know where the hell you’ve been or what you’ve been doing all these years,” Gordon said, “but we started this mess and it’s time to finish it.”
We started this mess? What did that mean? I knew why Gordon felt responsible, but why would he include Palmer? Unless—I turned, scanning Palmer’s face. Had he been the guy in that picture of the NAM group, the one with the beard and glasses? Oh shit. It was him.
“It isn’t you and me who are going to finish this,” Palmer said. “We had our chance. Now, it’s their turn.” He nodded at me
and Kaylee.
“They’re not ready,” Gordon said, glancing at me. “What if they botch it?”
“They can’t do worse than we did,” Palmer said.
“Maybe not,” Gordon conceded. “Did you have a vision of PSS during the blast? The rest of us did.”
Gordon had thought Palmer was dead, which meant Palmer had been one of the people outside the building who’d supposedly been disintegrated.
“Yes,” Palmer said, blinking. “I had visions.”
“And what about your body?” Gordon asked excitedly. “Did anything unusual happen to your body afterwards?”
“What do you mean?” Palmer asked.
Gordon set his coffee cup down and scooted on the bench a little. Then he bent over and began unlacing his right boot. It was such a weird thing to do in the middle of a conversation, and Palmer seemed as puzzled as I was. Gordon yanked off his boot and pulled down his sock, a familiar glow filling the RV.
Fuck me. Gordon Lightfoot had a PSS foot.
“When did this happen?” Palmer asked, his face void of expression.
“It changed a few days after Umatilla,” Gordon said. “One day I put my boot on a normal foot, and the next time I took it off, it was like this. Hell, discovering it scared the tar right out of me. There wasn’t a hint of this when they inspected us at the hospital. I know that much. They never would have let me go if there had been.”
My mind was reeling. Gordon, a guy decades older than the first recorded occurrence of PSS, was sitting in front of me with it. He was the first case, not Thea Frandsen of Norway or Kaylee. And he hadn’t been born with it. It had been a side-effect of the gas explosion he and my mother had caused.
“And you’re the only one this happened to?” Mike asked.
“As far as I know,” Gordon said. “Then again, I thought you were dead until last night. What about the others? The ones outside the bunker with you?”
“They survived as well,” Mike said. “We all displaced to different locations, but I didn’t know that at first. I found out later. And if they manifested PSS, they certainly didn’t tell me about it.”
“Perhaps it affected me most because I was closest to the gas,” Gordon postulated, putting his sock and boot back on.
I stared at the two of them, utterly stunned. Did they not understand what this meant?
Gordon Lightfoot and his band of vandals had caused PSS. My own mother, and my uncle, and the two men in front of me. They were the reason I’d been born with a giant hole in my chest filled with blue energy. They had inflicted a birth defect on innocent children and an ethereal epidemic on the entire population of the planet. True, only eleven people had been directly exposed to that unknown chemical agent, but it had altered their DNA in some way. Gordon’s had obviously changed almost instantly, but in the others it must have lain dormant until they’d reproduced, passing on PSS to their offspring. Still, that didn’t explain everything. There were thousands of cases of PSS worldwide, and that didn’t include the more subtle, internal PSS Reiny and Pete had discovered from my uncle’s research study. So, how could one localized incident have impacted human DNA on a global scale?
Wait. What had Gordon said when he’d described that night? You could see the strange cloud in the sky for days afterwards, like a fading Polaroid. No, not a Polaroid. More like the eruption plume of a volcano. I’d read once that the gas and ash from volcanoes get incorporated into the atmosphere almost immediately, traveling thousands of miles a day and encircling the earth in a matter of weeks. Whatever gasses had combined and combusted in that little building thirty-three years ago had not stayed put. Instead, the agent created by that reaction had been quickly disseminated all over the world. PSS was in the very air we breathed and the water we drank. Gordon Lightfoot and his little NAM group had perpetuated the biggest environmental accident known to mankind, and they’d managed to keep it a secret for decades.
Now it all made sense, my mother’s driving guilt. Her obsession with protecting my grandparents from The Hold and protecting The Hold from itself. No wonder she’d almost ruined her marriage trying to micro-manage the impact of PSS on those around her. Every day she’d had to look at Danielle and me, knowing it was her fault—that her rash, youthful actions had burdened us forever.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gordon said, his eyes locked on mine. “You think it was our fault.” There was true grief in those eyes and a lifetime of agony and remorse. I could see it there, but I didn’t care.
“Yeah, because it was,” I spat at him.
“No.” Gordon shook his head. “The government made those chemicals. They’re the ones who stored them dangerously and without adequate security. And after the accident, they did nothing. They didn’t help the victims. They didn’t warn people or investigate. They just covered it up and pretended it never happened.”
“Informing the populace would have been a mistake,” Mike interjected. “You can’t tell people an unknown chemical agent was released into the atmosphere, but you don’t know what it is or what it will do. That would have caused global panic. I’m not saying it was right, but I understand why they didn’t tell people.”
“So what?” I demanded. “Instead, you keep an entire planet in the dark and when their kids are born with glowing chests and hands years later, you kill their parents, abandon them, and let some maniac scientist torture them for sport? No shit, we can’t fuck this up any worse than you guys did.”
David, Kaylee said. Calm down, please. Don’t you understand it could have been so much worse?
“Worse?” I exhaled, thinking of my sister and what had happened to her. “How could this be any worse?”
I’ll tell you how, Kaylee said, her voice firm and almost scolding. That agent the accident created, that combination of random chemicals never meant to be joined—by every right of chance and logic, it should have wiped mankind off the face of the earth. But instead, it revealed the power and light inside of us. Instead, it gave humanity the ability to manifest our true, ethereal, eternal, selves.
“Are you serious?” I laughed bitterly.
“Yes, she’s serious,” Palmer said, standing up. “And it’s about time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and got with the program. Teenage angst is not going to fix this.”
“Fix this?” I scoffed, standing up too so he couldn’t loom over me. “Nothing is going to fix this.”
“Really?” Palmer asked. “Look around you. It’s already started. Why do you think all these people are here?”
“They came for some kind of land grab,” I pointed out. “Those people out there don’t know anything about PSS or the accident. They’re campers and hitchhikers and homeless people. They’re not going to unite and magically fix a problem you guys created years ago.”
“Not magically, no,” he said. “But Olivia and some of the others have possession of the dome along with all the data from The Hold and the CAMFers. With that information, we may be able to turn the tide of public opinion. At the very least, we can offer people the truth about PSS.”
Olivia was in the dome? How long had Palmer been keeping that under wraps?
“The truth about PSS? You mean the truth that you caused it?”
“If it comes to that, yes,” Palmer said, staring me down. “Are you and me gonna have a problem?”
Stop it, both of you, Kaylee cried inside my head. Something is wrong with Gordon. He needs help. Now.
Palmer and I turned toward her. Gordon was slumped across the table, Kaylee standing over him, her hands pressed to his back and tears streaming down her face.
22
DAVID MARCUS
“Help me get him out of here,” Palmer ordered, as Kaylee moved out of our way.
Despite the table and the close quarters, we each managed to get an arm under one of Gordon’s and maneuver him toward the narrow RV door, but I didn’t see how all three of us were going to fit through it.
Kaylee slipped around me, opened it,
and we came face-to-face with Mia. Lonan and Reiny were standing behind her at the bottom of the RV steps.
“What happened?” she cried, grabbing Gordon’s limp hand.
“I’m fine,” Gordon mumbled, coming to a little and lifting his head at the sound of her voice.
“Bullshit,” Palmer said. “Your lips are blue. You need oxygen. And we’re taking you to the Red Cross Tent right now. Lonan, give us a hand.”
By the time we maneuvered down the steps, Lonan had somehow taken my place under Gordon’s left arm.
“Clear the way!” Palmer bellowed, as he and Lonan lifted Gordon off his feet and charged through the camps, making a bee-line to the medical tent.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Kaylee’s hand, the rest of us following as fast as we could, winding through a dusty crowd of concerned onlookers.
When we finally got to the tent, we found Palmer just inside, drilling the terrified, white-clad attendants on what kind of training they had for treating acute heart failure. Further in, Gordon was on a gurney in a small alcove wearing an oxygen mask, Lonan standing over him looking helpless.
Mia rushed to Gordon’s side, bursting into sobs.
“Now, don’t do that,” he said, as he took her hand, his voice muffled through the mask. “We always knew I’d go before you.”
“They’ve radioed for an evac helicopter,” Palmer told us, striding over. “It’ll be here in ten minutes if we can make room for it to land. Let’s go.” He looked at Lonan and me. “Time to move some campers.”
“No,” Gordon said, pulling his oxygen mask aside a little. “I need to talk to David.”
“You should save your strength,” Mia pleaded with him.
“It will only take a minute,” Gordon insisted, looking from Mia to Palmer.
He and Palmer stared at one another a moment longer, and then Palmer simply nodded, gesturing to Lonan, and the two of them left. As soon as they exited the tent, we could hear Palmer bellowing, “Move these fucking tents! Move these vehicles now, people! We have an emergency helicopter coming in any minute.”
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