Adrian (Genetic Apocalypse Book 2)

by Boyd Craven Jr.

  Adrian

  The Tribe

  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, and 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

  On the last Wednesday of September, 2031, a month before my seventh birthday, I ran away with my best friend Donald Peterson and his dad, Dave on a one-way road trip to Florida. Dave didn’t want to take me at first, because of my age, but Donald and I convinced him that if I stayed here, the consequences I faced would be unfairly severe.

  ~

  The day had started out as fun, but had spun out of control faster than we could blink an eye. Nine of us hybrid kids (we called ourselves big kids back then) had gone up the Shiawassee River a long way in our kayaks from where we lived to downtown Linden, MI on market day, to hear an outdoor band play. Segregation had already been restarted more than a year earlier, so we knew that we weren’t supposed to hang around town. What we didn’t understand was why everyone hated us so much; we just wanted to be treated like everyone else and get to hear a real band. None of us ever had. It never occurred to us that things would turn out the way they did.

  We were allowed by our parents to kayak on the river. Admittedly, we “pushed it” a little by kayaking right up behind the gazebo stage that the band was playing on to hear them. Some old men fishing there yelled at us to “get our gray asses outta there, and quit scaring the fish.” That made me really angry, but I kept my cool. Pretty soon a cop came along and told us that if we wanted to listen to the band, we had to sit in the bleachers like everyone else, so we did. After we’d listened to just one song, some woman sitting behind us called Suzy, the girl with me, a whore for “flaunting herself in front of the men.” Hello? We had been kayaking. Suzy had her bathing suit on…

  The cop came back because I had lost my temper and told that woman to shut up. He ran us out of the bleachers, jerking his thumb to indicate “this way”. How embarrassing. We followed his orders, but I was boiling mad. The way he had us headed took us across the top of the dam, and right into the farmers market.

  Now, we knew that we weren’t supposed to be there, and while we were figuring out what to do, the vendors all started yelling at us to get out of there and quit scaring their customers away! Someone called us “stinking grays”, another called us “animals”. Suzy started to cry, and I blew a gasket. I screamed; “Shut the hell up! We’re tryin’ to leave!” We really were…

  All of a sudden, in my face, was my dad. He had a vendor stall there. “You and your gray friends get your asses out of here this instant!” he yelled in my face, his spit flying all over me. “I’m gonna tan your hide when I get home tonight, boy!” Then he slapped me across my face, really, really hard.

  At that point, I saw red. My rage was out of control, and I hit him back. Several times. I yelled; “I won’t be there when you get home!” and we tried to hurry back the way we came. Several men came running out of their stalls trying to take me down, and the fight was on. I hit one, Donald hit another. Some woman grabbed Suzy, and got her nose poked for her trouble. The fight was getting bigger and bigger fast, until that cop showed up again. The same one. He already had his pistol in his hand when he got there. He shot Donald in the left shoulder without saying a word to him. It looked to all of us like he was trying for a heart shot to kill Donald, but missed.

  Well, everybody froze for just an instant. You could’ve heard a pin drop. Then Donald swatted the gun out of the cop’s hand, grabbed him, and threw him into the closest stall. As we started to run for the kayaks, the tent caught fire and the propane tank in it took off like a torpedo, right into the front of the library. People were screaming; “Fire! Fire!” So, we beat feet out of there as fast as we could to our kayaks, and flew down the river towards home. We were scared shitless.

  Later, we found out that the library had burned down, fell on the dam, and took it out. It just kept getting worse…

  ~

  “Really Mr. Peterson, I need to get away from here. I don’t stand a chance of anybody listening to my side of things. My dad might even kill me this time. He’s always smacking me around and telling me what a disappointment I am to him.”

  “I doubt very much that your dad would kill you Adrian,” Dave said.

  “Oh yeah, he really could Dad,” Donald piped in. “He can’t even say a word to Adrian without his voice sounding mean. Mr. Powell will beat the crap outta him with that thick leather strap he has hanging inside the kitchen door at the least. Probably worse, after today.”

  That stopped Dave in his tracks.

  “And he’s always telling me that he should just rid the world of me one of these times,” I added. “He says that nobody would even care, except Mom, but that she’d get over it quick enough. That scares me, Mr. Peterson. Wouldn’t it scare you?”

  “Well crap kiddo. I dunno what we’re gonna do about you. I can’t send you home for that kind of treatment, and I can’t very well go to the authorities and claim abuse for you. They wouldn’t care. What they would do, is lock both of you boys up and throw away the key, after what you did today. Arson, assaulting a police officer, inciting a riot, the list goes on and on. This whole thing sucks, that’s for sure. If you boys were heirloom kids, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, but you’re not, so we have to deal with it, and protect you both. It’s not your fault that you were born this way,” he said, “but you two had better be telling me the truth, and not exaggerating.”

  “We’re not Mr. Peterson, I promise,” I said. I remembered how hard Dad had slapped me at the market, and also the three punches I’d landed on him in return. One in the gut that doubled him over, one in the jaw where I’d heard or felt something break, and the last on the back of his head as he was going down that drove him into the pavement, all in front of his friends. Yeah, he might just kill me for that, but I’d had enough of his abuse, and I had just snapped. “You’re probably saving my life!”

  ~

  You may be thinking this all sounds pretty far-fetched for kids of our age. In a different time, I’m sure you’d have been right, but not now. Things just aren’t like they used to be. Allow me to explain:

  My name is Adrian Powell. I’m thirteen years old as I write this, but don’t let that give you the wrong impression, I’m not a child. I’m one of the hybrid-generation that began appearing in 2021. That’s actually not an accurate term, but we like it better than the GM-generation, as in genetically modified, which is what we really are. Anyway, unless you’re one of us, thirteen is different for you than it is for us. Way different in fact, both physically and mentally. We hybrids are much larger than heirloom humans. As far as I know, I am the largest, at 7’1”, 305lbs. and growing. No one knows just how big we’ll get yet. Our generation is the first, and supposedly it will b
e the last. I just happen not to believe that.

  Our bodies, apart from having different colored skin than anyone else before, are very similar looking to yours, but they function differently inside. We’re part human and part plant, thanks to a gigantic blunder by Walsanto Seed and the U.S. Government. We seem to have inherited the strongest features of each. Our skeletal systems took on the traits of the bamboo genes we have inside us. Our bones are light weight and hollow, but in some ways are stronger than steel. We grow in fast spurts in the spring of each year, just like a bamboo plant does. Driven by this fast growth of our skeletal system, our flesh stretches to keep up to our height, giving us periods of time where we look kind of goofy, like a tall, skinny, grayish green, hairless cartoon person. Then our muscular system, thanks to the algae genes we have inside us, grows like crazy until it reaches optimal proportions to our skeletal system. Optimal meaning very athletic. There is no such thing as a fat hybrid person, any more than there is a fat oak tree.

  We are much stronger too. I don’t know all of the details yet, (I’m still learning) but an adult heirloom person in very good shape is supposed to be able to lift their own weight. Right now, I can lift three times my weight over my head, and throw it quite a ways.

  Every day, the sunshine here makes me feel better and stronger than the day before. I know enough now, to know that our skin performs photosynthesis, helping to feed and fuel our bodies, much as the leaves of a tree do for it. So, we eat differently than an heirloom person. Since being away from our families, and living as a tribe, we have abandoned the old eating habits that our parents had forced on us. We’ve discovered that we need little else besides daily meat protein and a little fiber, sunshine, and water for optimal growth and strength. We prefer eating the flesh of carnivorous animals to that of an herbivore, but we do ok on either. Feeding vegetables to a being that is partially plant, does little for it. We pretty much only use vegetables for flavor and texture, to satisfy our heirloom taste buds. In fact, eating vegetables seems to slow our growth. I guess that’s why those of us that live with the tribe are so much bigger than those who still live with their parents.

  I was born in November of 2024. I had what an heirloom kid would consider a very normal family from as far back as I can remember, which is two years old by the way. Most people can’t remember that far back. I can’t forget. I remember everything that’s ever happened to me, everything anyone’s ever said to me, and everything I’ve ever read. EVER. I used to think that everyone was like that. Nope.

  I can still see my older brother Adam as a seven year old, with his head full of reddish brown hair poking out everywhere, and a face full of freckles, as clear as a picture in my mind. His skin was so white that the slightest bit of sun burned and reddened it. His body was weak and he was tiny. I was big and I was strong, but neither of us dwelled on our differences. We were just brothers. I remember my mother, who showed me nothing but love when I was small. She cared for my needs always, but towards the end of my time with my family, even she had begun to become afraid of me. My father started out being by being embarrassed of me. Later, he too became afraid of me. His way of dealing with that fear, was to be physical with me. He thought the way to control me, was to beat me regularly, to keep me afraid of him, like a wild animal. That worked until the day I just described to you. I showed him different that day.

  Here, I kind of feel alone among many. Understand; many means something entirely different now, than it did back in 2020 before the world began to change. Maybe you’re a kid that’s misunderstood by your parents. Probably. Get over it. Maybe you’re an heirloom minority, if there still is such a thing among heirlooms, and think life would be easier for you if you weren’t. I doubt it. Not now. We are what we are. We all have our problems. Trust me; you wouldn’t want to trade your problems for mine. I was an accident, not meant to be. Hated. In a country of three hundred million people, where black Americans number about fourteen percent, Hispanic Americans about twenty five percent, white and all other Americans sixty percent, about five million of us were born into the race I am lumped into, the hybrids. The grays. That’s a little over one percent, yet I am different even from all of them, although I’m careful to never let any of them know it. Not yet. They think I’m a light complected gray from up north. I’m not. I think of me as a green. I don’t fit in anywhere.

  You may think I’m bitter about this. You may think I’m going to whine and complain. Think again. Since before my seventh birthday when I left Michigan to come live in the sunshine of southern Florida, I have never been sick or felt weak. Not once. Every day I grow bigger and stronger. I never get tired here in the sun. If I get injured somehow, my wounds heal within hours. My fellow hybrids my age, at least all of which I have seen, also have the bodies of an adult heirloom more than twice their age, but most of them still have the mind of a child. They do suffer some occasional minor illnesses, and their more mature bodies give them urges that they don’t really understand yet. They heal faster than heirlooms, but nothing like the way I do. I have to be careful to keep that part concealed.

  Anyhow, there’s quite a story to get me from where I came from that day, to where I am now. Let me tell you about it…

  2

  Once Dave had finally agreed that I could go with them, all we had had in our heads was getting out of there as quickly as possible, before we got busted. We emptied everything out of his work van into the middle of his garage for sorting, and swept the back of the van out good. Then all of us started carrying things out of the house, and putting them on the drive-way beside the back doors of the van for Dave to pack for the trip. Dave pointed, and we carried. We didn’t take any furniture or decorations. We didn’t take any electric powered gadgets or tools, because Dave said the place we were going to didn’t have electricity, but we took everything else from the kitchen, like silverware, knives, cutting boards and pots and pans. We took any food that didn’t have to be refrigerated. We didn’t pack it in boxes. Dave said we’d have more room if we just rolled up the silverware in the towels, so they wouldn’t rattle and drive us crazy on the way.

  There was a pipe framed rack up by the ceiling of the van that Dave carried sheets of plywood and such on for work, but we used it to hang all of their clothes on, still on their hangers, so they wouldn’t get all grungy on the floor. Dave said we didn’t dare go to my house after any of my stuff, so they’d just have to share theirs with me. We didn’t know what all we’d need, so we took it all. Even clothes that Donald had outgrown, we used to pack between things that might rattle.

  We had some room left, so Dave suggested that we get the cushions off the couches and make a bed on the floor under the hanging clothes. Then, since we could, we got our two 8’ kayaks and suspended them from the rack on the other side with ropes, one above the other. We put all of their fishing poles and tackle boxes, nets, long handled rakes, shovels and gardening stuff into the lower one. Then, we crammed coats, shoes and boots inside to hold everything still. We got his whole tool box, hand saws, hammers and everything non-electric we could find. We gathered all of the screws, nails, bolts and rolls of twine or electrical wire that he had lying around the garage too. He said there was no way to know what we may need once we got there. Inside the higher up one, Dave put all of his guns and light-weight hunting and camping gear in, then crammed bath towels, hand towels, washcloths and stuff like socks and underwear in all around them. We stuffed everything really full, so it’d travel good.

  Last, we got all of the sheets, blankets, bedspreads, pillows and rugs that they had and fixed up the make-shift bed underneath of the hanging things. It kind of reminded me of Adam and I making forts out of blankets in our rooms.

  “Well, I think that that about does it,” Dave said. “I’d really appreciate it if the rest of you kids kind of forgot where we said we were going. That would help us a lot. Like, all you know is that we were going to bug-out of here and head somewhere to some family property that was off-grid… Don
’t lie, just if you can, don’t tell the whole truth. Be safe kids! I’ll miss you!

  “You boys say your good-byes to your friends, while I take one last look through the house,” Dave said to Donald and me, “then we’re outta here.”

  Everyone promised they’d keep quiet about what they knew, even if they got in trouble for it. We all said good-bye to each other and hugged and cried a lot. It was pretty emotional. I asked Suzy to tell Adam as soon as she could in secret, that I was ok, that I love him and not to worry about me, but I wasn’t coming back. I asked her to tell him that I’d contact him on Facebook someday. She promised she’d tell him. I knew I could trust Suzy. We had always been close. Out of all the kids we were leaving behind, after my brother, she was the one I would miss the most. I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and promised I’d see her again someday. She said; “You better!” and stepped back.

  Dave came back out of the house and locked it and the garage up. He told the other kids to walk the roads home and to get there before dark. We all climbed into the van and our adventure began.

  The gang of kids turned left down the road, towards home. We turned right and took the backroads over to Fenton and got on US-23 southbound. We were all totally silent for quite some time. I was excited, but at the same time, I had tears running down my cheeks. I looked at Donald, and he was doing the same. I’d been wishing for something to change in my life for a long, long time, but I never expected it to be this drastic. The logical side of me knew that there was no turning back now…

  3

  “Do you think any of the rest of the family will have gone there Dad?” asked Donald.

  “I sure hope so,” he said. “It would make it easier, if there were more of us.”