Madelyn's Last Dance

by Ike Hamill

  “No disrespect to the dead, but maybe she was just a busybody.”

  Elijah smiled. “As soon as she was better, she came looking for me again. I wasn’t so hard to find the second time. I was staying just on the outskirts of town. I never strayed close enough for anyone to know I was there, but Robin was persistent. Eventually, she tracked me down. It was a sad day for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I could see the change in her. She had been healed, but she was dying. It’s impossible to explain, but it’s the same way you looked when you came back to Fairbanks to serve your sentence. You eventually told me that you kidnapped Harper. She told me a very different story. You turned the truck around and came back to save her life. In doing so, you were nearly taken by Roamers. They infected you and began to convert you then. You never would have survived if not for stubbornness, luck, and what I gave you.”

  “Maybe you should explain,” Madelyn said. “I’m a little confused.”

  Elijah nodded in the dark.

  # # # # #

  “Back when I took the Option, it was a painless affair. My whole family signed up early. We were flown down to a special facility in Ecuador. Of course, this is before the sun turned. It was beautiful down there in the mountains. It was paradise. They took us into quarantine and gave us each a special bed where we would rest while our bodies were tended to. Our minds were treated to a vacation. My brother and I chose to visit the pioneers out on the belt. Without bodies to weigh us down, we could move anywhere. We flew through space, zipping in and out of their tiny spaceships and saw the colonies they were building. It was magical.”

  “So there was pain, but they drugged you so you wouldn’t notice?” Madelyn asked.

  “No, not drugs. It was telepresence. They transmitted our minds out to the asteroid belt. We were able to communicate with the people there.”

  Madelyn laughed at him.

  Elijah shrugged. “When we came back, the conversion was done. In the laboratory setting, they called the tiny robots ‘Tailors’. It wasn’t until they got out of the lab that people started calling them Roamers, Hunters, or even Zumbidos. For us, the Tailors were perfectly beneficial. They were merely going to take away the threat of disease. They were going to let us live our lives without worrying about starvation or injury. The lab assured us that we would still mature and grow old. I’m not sure they even knew how quickly everything would evolve.”

  “You can’t even take responsibility for what you did to yourself?” Madelyn asked. “You’re going to hide behind the excuse that you didn’t know?”

  “I was young,” Elijah said, “and this was when the Option was first available. It was probably decades before you even heard of it. You don’t have to believe me, but I only went along with it because it was what my whole family was doing. I never had any desire to hoard the planet’s resources, or kill off all the regular people. Maybe that’s something my father talked about with his friends, but my brother and I weren’t interested in any of that. We simply wanted to live our lives and that meant we obeyed our father.”

  Madelyn shook her head.

  “I can understand your perspective. As the years passed, I began to hate my father and his cronies. I hated the way they manipulated society as the world crumbled. I saw what they were doing. They shut down food distribution and shut down healthcare. As the environment turned against the lower class, they put the squeeze on to make it impossible for anyone but themselves to survive. And that’s when the Roamers got loose. At first, it helped their cause. The Roamers lived in the temperate zone, between the ice and the sun. They seemed to be the natural solution to supplement the cull. For me, it was like watching a volcano explode and knowing that I would never be able to outrun the ash cloud. As I told you before, my brother and I fled to the mountains.”

  “While everyone who wasn’t rich was left to die,” Madelyn said.

  Elijah nodded. “We didn’t know any way to fight it. We begged our father to stop. When he refused, we killed our father, but he was just one part of an unstoppable machine.”

  Madelyn looked at Elijah while he collected his thoughts.

  “As the Roamers became more and more dangerous, my brother and I did some research. We traveled to Mexico, where there was a branch office of the place that Optioned us. They were barricaded in a bunker under a hill. We managed to infiltrate the place and demanded answers. They didn’t know much more than anyone else. The Tailors had evolved in the laboratory. It was always a danger, so they had a process where they were supposed to sterilize the colony between procedures. Apparently, some of the Tailors survived and were smart enough to hide amongst the newly created. Over time, they became Roamers and plotted their escape.”

  “They’re intelligent?”

  “As a group,” Elijah said. “Individually, they’re no more intelligent than a single ant, but as a group they’re capable of astounding behavior. The new Roamers were so aggressive that they would kill a host before conversion. It wasn’t a matter of sending someone off on a telepresence trip while their body was converted—anyone exposed to the Roamers would simply disintegrate. But the lab was working on a way to slowly expose people to Roamers while giving them an antidote to allow the person to survive the process.”

  “That’s stupid,” Madelyn said.

  “It saved you.”

  “No, I mean it’s stupid to create something and not put a control in there to stop it. Who would be irresponsible enough to create these Tailors without thinking that they might need a way to turn them off at some point? Now they’re loose in the wild because these people didn’t think ahead? That’s stupid.”

  Elijah smiled and laughed. “You would have loved my brother. He made the same point to the man in charge while he pressed a gun to the man’s chest. I can’t justify it, but I can tell you his answer. They didn’t create the Tailors, they discovered them. According to the man we questioned, they are a natural consequence of the ether. Imagine if you spent all your time trying to prove that there’s a heaven. On the day you succeed, you find out that because you proved there’s a heaven, you’ve also proved that there’s a hell. Then, because its existence is concrete, hell unleashes its demons.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. What gave you the right to give me this antidote? I didn’t ask for it,” Madelyn said.

  “In that jail cell, when you collapsed, you begged me to save your life.”

  “I don’t remember it that way.”

  “Honestly, I never thought it would work. The way it was explained to me, the antidote has a tiny chance of success. The person has to be exposed to just enough of the Roamers to infect them without killing them. The people in the lab hadn’t come up with a way to consistently make that happen. It has to be pure luck that you managed the trick in the truck.”

  “Why didn’t you give the antidote to Robin?”

  He didn’t speak for a few seconds. “She begged me to let her die.”

  # # # # #

  Madelyn thought of a lot of things that she could have said. She might have pointed out that she wasn’t really given a choice. How could she have known that her desire to live would be perverted into what he had done to her? What difference would it make now? She could hold it against him, but she couldn’t go back in time and beg for death.

  “So what exactly was happening in Building Three?” Madelyn asked instead. At least with that information she might be able to find something actionable.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Elijah said. “I think they were bringing in Tailors right from the source, but it’s impossible to know for sure.”

  “So they’re going to be like you.”

  “Maybe,” Elijah said. “Like I said, Tailors weren’t created, they were discovered. I don’t think there’s a guarantee that they were exposed to exactly the same thing that I was, or that you were. Those things are constantly evolving.”

  “Tell me again how you killed your brother.”

&nbs
p; Elijah looked at her in the starlight. He studied her face.

  “I cut out his heart. Even with that, it took a long time for him to die.”

  “Explain that to me,” Madelyn said. “How does a person live for any amount of time without a heart?”

  “I know what you’re asking,” Elijah said. “You either want to know how to kill me or you want to know how to kill yourself.”

  “And you’ll tell me, or I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  Elijah sighed. His constant smile had finally faded.

  “Even after they’re done altering a person, the Tailors aren’t really finished. I don’t know the mechanism, but they somehow teach your body how to survive even when it shouldn’t. The heart is the most efficient muscle for pumping blood through your body, and the lungs are the most efficient way to oxygenate. But those are not the only mechanisms to get those things accomplished. Imagine if all your muscles could be enlisted to make your blood move. Imagine if every cell exposed to the air could learn how to pull in oxygen. Amphibians take in oxygen through their skin.”

  “I get it,” she said. “So why did your brother die?”

  “He had already lost some blood and his body was working hard to repair all the injuries. A healthy Optioner in a controlled environment could maybe survive without a heart for hours if they didn’t try to move around. With all the trauma he had already sustained, my brother only lasted a minute or two. It’s impossible to know how long his brain was alive behind his eyes.”

  “Why not just put a bullet through his brain then?”

  “That wouldn’t necessarily kill his body. You should know that better than anyone. Your spine was severed when you were hanged and your body had no nerve contact with your brain for hours. It managed to stay alive anyway. It went into a kind of emergency survival mode, but it stayed alive. If my bullet took out half of his brain, I hate to imagine what the other half would have been left to think.”

  Madelyn turned her head and spat at the idea.

  She thought of another question that had troubled her.

  “What was with those two young men who were tied up in Building Three? They were Optioners, right?” Madelyn asked.

  “I suppose. I gather that they’re the ones who figured out how to reproduce the conversion process.”

  “So why did that one have such a messed up hand? And why did it look like the other one was trying to eat him?”

  “Caleb was the one with the bad hand. The other one—the young one—is named Niren. Honestly, I’m not sure what they were doing. They both had injuries that didn’t make any sense to me. All I can think is that the conversion process hadn’t completed, but they certainly moved like they were Optioners. They were certainly too fast to be normal.”

  Madelyn tried to remember the incident precisely. Her memories were still cloudy. Anything before the accident in Building Three seemed like it had happened to a different person. It was like a half-remembered movie that she had seen when she wasn’t really paying attention.

  “Are you going to try to kill me now?” Elijah asked. “Would it help if I apologized for what I did to you? I know it was selfish. You did ask me to help you stay alive, but I have to admit, I fell in love with you as I watched you weld that cell. I didn’t want to see you die, and I might have considered giving you the antidote even if I’d known how angry it would make you.”

  Madelyn didn’t answer him.

  “Tell me what you know about The Wisdom. Is it connected to the Roamers?”

  Elijah seemed disappointed by the question. She figured that he was simply disappointed because she hadn’t acknowledged his heartfelt admission.

  “Honestly, I don’t know much. Even amongst people who knew everything about the Option, nobody seemed to have any real information when The Wisdom first appeared. Like I said, the Tailors were discovered. I think the opposite is true about The Wisdom. I have the feeling that it was created by people. I can’t imagine what their goal was.”

  “You and your brother split from the other Optioners and killed your father, right? Is there a place where the others are gathered? Would they know about The Wisdom?”

  “Maybe,” Elijah said. “I really don’t know. But most of the people who took the Option were isolationists. They set up family compounds and didn’t trust anyone from any other family. Sure, there were places where they would all meet. And, of course, the young people would sometime migrate from one house to another when they would pair up. The head of the family was the king or queen of their own little domain. It’s hard for me to imagine that they’re grouped together now.”

  Madelyn stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Elijah asked.

  “There are still people here who I care about,” she said. “I can’t worry about my own problems until I help them figure this all out.”

  He looked up at her. “Are you going to try to kill me?”

  “Right now, I may need your help,” she said. She put out her hand.

  Chapter 32

  {Hunting}

  SCARLETT FOLLOWED THE TRAIL as best she could. It was too dark to see clearly, and the signs were confusing. Sometimes it seemed that she was tracking two people. Other times, she only found one set of prints. The smear of blood on a leaf let her know that she was headed in the right direction. It was still wet.

  She tried to orient herself. She hadn’t spent much time on this side of town and only had a couple of landmarks to work with. But she knew that if she kept heading north, she would have to eventually come to Birch Road. Once she hit that, she would have a sense of how far it was to the center of town.

  Scarlett glanced back. Amelia had lost her. That wasn’t terrible news. Without having to worry about Amelia, Scarlett could move as fast as she wanted to. Even though she hadn’t seen him commit the act, she was sure that Niren was responsible for her brother’s death, and nothing was going to stop her from hunting him down.

  The tracks led out to a clearing. Scarlett slowed down as she stepped out. Her instincts told her that danger waited. The clearing was a hundred meters across. Niren had to know that he was being tracked—why would he step out into a clearing where she would be able to spot him?

  At the sound of the footstep behind her, Scarlett spun and dropped into a crouch. She was ready for him.

  Niren stood at the edge of the clearing. He had doubled back on her somehow. He took a step forward.

  Scarlett heard another sound and whipped her head back around. She saw Caleb on her other side. She backed up, trying to keep them both in her sight.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Niren said. “But you have to understand—it’s hard for us. Right now our bodies need nutrients, and people are the easiest prey.”

  “Just run,” Caleb said. “We won’t chase you if you run. It’s too much work.”

  “Shut up,” Niren said. “Don’t listen to him.”

  Scarlett had made her decision. Niren was smaller, and he was closer to the trees. As she backed up, she angled herself towards him.

  Niren smiled. Overhead, the clouds had moved in, giving the night a strange glow. She prayed for him to stand still just a few more seconds so she could get close enough to grab him and smash him against the trunk of one of the big trees.

  Scarlett took another step closer.

  Niren and Caleb both turned at a sound from across the clearing. Scarlett didn’t fall for it. She used the distraction and rushed forward. He moved like smoke. It was if the air she exhaled had blown him to the side. Niren slid out of the way of her charge and she ran directly into the tree. Her arms wrapped around it in a surprised hug. Scarlett grunted and spun.

  Niren and Caleb didn’t seem to care about her charge. They were facing across the clearing at whatever was emerging from the woods on the far side. She saw it start to blot out the cloudy sky, but she didn’t care.

  # # # # #

  When the thing stepped, the ground seemed to shake. Scarlett knew it had to be her imaginat
ion. Nothing could be big enough to shake the ground just by walking. Still fifty meters away, the thing tilted its head back and roared. Scarlett felt the sound in her chest. It was so loud that it made her insides ache. She took a step backwards.

  “It’s a bear,” Caleb said.

  “There’s no bear that big,” Niren said. He didn’t sound confident in his declaration. He sounded like he was wishing it not to be true, even though he knew it was.

  Scarlett took another step backwards. It was her brother’s old joke—she didn’t have to be faster than the bear, she just had to be faster than Niren and Caleb.

  The animal—bear or not—dropped down to all four feet. When it landed, the world definitely shook. She heard the leaves rattle in the trees. The animal picked up its pace with a grunt.

  Caleb began to run to his right.

  The animal didn’t alter its course.

  Scarlett had seen enough. She turned and ran between the trees. Caleb’s strategy had been pretty decent—he would make good speed by running along the edge of the clearing, and the animal hadn’t followed him. Scarlett liked her odds better. The animal was too big to make good time through the trees and she had Niren behind her. She didn’t have to be faster than the bear.

  Both of her assurances dissolved before she got very far into the woods.

  She saw Niren as his spindly shape move right past her. He had never been an athlete. Niren’s older brother had always been the strong and fast one. Somehow the little guy had learned to run very fast through the woods. Scarlett poured on speed, trying to lift her legs extra high with each stride so she wouldn’t accidentally trip on a downed branch or bush. Still, he easily outpaced her.

  Behind her, the animal traversed the clearing in an instant. She heard it reach the edge of the woods, and her second hope disappeared. The animal was enormous and the trees were close together, but that didn’t seem to slow it down. It crashed into the forest, tearing through the limbs as if they weren’t even there.