“C’mon,” Jakob said. “Let’s go check downstairs, cover ourselves in dirt and spend the night cowering in a basement.”
Anne let the curtain fall back into place, sighed and said, “If we’re lucky.”
22
Peter took first watch. He sat alone in the Sunday School room overlooking what should have been a parking lot, but was just an endless field of moonlit cabbage. The plants took on a dark blue hue at night, visible, but distorted by shadow, like ocean waves frozen in place. He could see the truck beyond, parked in the middle of the road, light from the half moon glinting off the side mirror. The dead Echo was a dark silhouette, blotting out a part of the field, the details of its demise concealed by the darkness.
How did it come to this? he wondered.
He knew the answer. Understood the science and the sequence of events that had led to disaster. The reality that was the world was old news. What he couldn’t fathom was how the people in charge, at ExoGen and in the Government, had missed the gene-altering capabilities of RC-714. Even more, he didn’t understand how Ella had missed it.
Never had.
She was smarter than that. But she was also ambitious. But not selfishly so. As long as he’d known her, she’d been concerned about starving people. Feeding the hungry masses had always been a pipe dream for you, Ella. But then she grew up and saw a path to eradicating hunger, through genetics. It was a noble cause, but in the end, it had blinded her.
That was what he told himself, because the alternative, that she had knowingly released the gene-altering crops that resulted in the destruction of mankind, was unthinkable. And yet, someone had known. Someone had loaded that gun and pulled the trigger with the same lethal intent of a firing squad.
“Wine still make you sleepy?” Ella asked from the doorway.
Peter’s heart slammed against his chest, but he managed to hide how badly she’d startled him. She was lucky he hadn’t spun around and shot her.
“It does,” he confessed.
She stepped into the dull moonlight filtering through the window. Like him, she was covered in grime, bits and pieces of soil clinging to her body. She smelled of earth and the outdoors. It wasn’t unpleasant, at least not to a farmer. Good dirt meant life, or at least it used to.
Ella lifted an open bottle of wine and poured the dark liquid into a plastic cup. “Found it in the kitchen. The canned food is too new to eat, but the wine is from 2000.” She finished pouring and turned the bottle around so he could see the vintage on the label.
“Old school communion,” Peter said, taking the cup. “I thought only Catholics did that.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ella said.
Peter placed the cup on the short, round table without taking a drink. “I can’t drink it, though.”
“It’s 2:00 am,” she said. “I’ve got second watch. Anne will take over at five.”
“Anne is going to keep watch?” Peter’s surprise was impossible to hide. The kid was twelve years old. How could she have the discipline to stay awake while the sun was still down? He wouldn’t trust Jakob with the job. The boy could fall asleep standing up.
“It’s been just the two of us for a long time,” Ella said. “We’re used to splitting the night watch fifty-fifty, so this is a treat.”
When Peter didn’t look convinced, Ella put her hand on his shoulder. The touch sent his stomach swirling. Knock it off, he told himself. Stay focused. She might not be the person you remember, or even the person you thought she was.
“I checked the doors. Still locked. Still barricaded. Nothing is getting inside. At least not without making a hell of a lot of noise and getting a face full of shotgun.” She hoisted the shotgun off her shoulder and leaned it against the wall beneath the window. Her small frame, silhouetted by the moonlight, looked fragile. In need of protection. But that wasn’t the case. Not at all. She was a stronger person than he’d have ever believed. And capable of more than he could imagine.
“Did you know?” he asked.
She turned toward him. “Know what?”
“What RC-714 would do to the human race.”
He couldn’t see her frown, but something in her silhouetted body language got the message across. “I warned you about it.”
“Before then,” he said. “Before it was released.”
“What?”
The sudden swell of anger made Peter lean back, but he took it as a good sign.
“You think I knowingly released this hell on the world? Peter, you know me. You know—”
“I knew you,” he said. “You’re different.”
“I’ve been fighting for my life. For my, for our, daughter’s life. You don’t think I’d rather be tucked away in a lab? Why would I choose this life for anyone? I wanted to save the world, not kill it.” She turned away from him. “When did you become an asshole?”
Peter picked up the cup of wine and stood beside Ella. He looked out the window for a moment, took a sip of wine and let their emotions settle. “Here’s the thing. Someone knew what would happen. Probably several someones. You might have missed it, and I really hope that’s the case—that you wanted to feed the world so badly that you made a mistake. I’m willing to believe that because...I think I still know you. But someone knew. Someone at ExoGen. Someone still alive in San Francisco.”
Silence returned as the pair kept watch.
After several minutes, Ella took a swig from the wine bottle. “Doesn’t make me sleepy. A slut, maybe, but not sleepy.”
Peter said nothing. His silence kept the conversation from being derailed.
“I didn’t know,” she said again, “but you’re right.”
Despite being confident in his assessment, Peter still felt surprised. He turned his head toward her. She stared out the window, her face cast in pale blue light.
“I don’t know how many of them knew,” she said, “but it’s likely most of the board knew...the government liaisons, some of the security staff. Phil McKay, the CEO...he knew, for sure. The rest is speculation. I figured it out eventually. It was stupid, really.” She shook her head, exasperated by what she was about to reveal. “I was in an elevator at the ExoGen bio-dome. I was alone. And bored. So I read the old, out-of-date inspection certificate left on the elevator wall. I read it three times before a detail jumped out. The certificate was dated just five months after we discovered RC-714. Just two months after it had been released into the world.”
“So the ExoGen bio-dome hadn’t been built in response to the global metamorphosis—”
“Or even my discovery of what consuming RC-714 would eventually lead to, a month after that.”
“It was built in preparation for it,” Peter concluded.
“That’s what I realized, too.”
“Did you talk to anyone about it?”
She huffed out a laugh. “The atmosphere in the facility is...oppressive. Strict rules. Anyone breaking rules or causing problems is sent outside. If they survive a week, they can come back. No one ever came back. But once I knew, I began to see the course of events in reverse, and I understood. The development and release of RC-714 was a genocidal attack. A purge.
“It’s why I started looking for a way to undo the damage done. It’s why I left.”
“But you weren’t alone,” Peter said.
“I told people I trusted, and over time, we developed an escape plan.”
Peter felt dubious. “Including a cross-country trek to a lab on George’s Island?”
“I didn’t say it was a good plan, but it was only a matter of time before they found out and cast us out, unprepared. When we left, we had survival gear, weapons, even protection.”
“From Ed?”
“And others,” she said. “The point is, when we left...when we escaped, we thought we were prepared for what we’d find. But none of us knew the changes that... Traits observed two years ago continued to evolve. We were prepared for predators, not...what we found.”
“The Stalkers.�
�
She shook her head. “There were others before the Stalkers. Apex predators. Other Betas. Packs of horrible things. The Stalkers were the worst though.”
“And the Echo?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” she confessed. “Thank God there was just one of them.”
“How many are there?” he asked. “How many new species?”
“There’s no way to know, but there’s one thing I’m sure of; while the overall population of life on Earth has dropped significantly, the biodiversity of what is left, is at an all-time high. Take two of the same animal species, separated by just a few miles, give them a year and some ExoGenetic food, and you’ll have two totally different sets of adaptations. A dog living in the desert might adapt camel-like humps to retain water, while a dog living in the forest might develop hooked claws and larger pectoral muscles for climbing trees. Adaptation has been super-charged, and creatures are changing every day. In another year, I’m not sure we’ll even be able to tell what species the ExoGens started out as.”
“But you can undo it, right?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “We can’t change people back into people. But we can keep future generations from changing. The ExoGenetic crops can still feed the planet.”
Peter spoke quietly. The shadows outside were moving now. “I’m not sure that more genetic tinkering is the solution.”
“I see them,” Ella said, whispering, and then continued the conversation. “Altering humanity’s genetic code is the only solution. Humanity can make a comeback, but we’re going to have to fight for it. And to fight, we have to be fed. You’ll learn that in the next few weeks.”
Peter wanted to argue the point, but the sound of crunching bones announced the arrival of predators and the start of a feast. His belly growled.
Maybe she’s right, he thought, and he put down the wine glass. Death waited for them just outside the church. Sleep could wait.
23
Despite the sounds of rending flesh and breaking bones lasting a full hour, the night passed without incident. At 4:00 am, Peter had finally relinquished his post to Ella and had joined the kids in the basement kitchen.
Jakob had heard his father come in, and having a good sense of time, even in the middle of the night, he had known it was late. So as he crouched over his father now, he felt bad about having to wake him up. But it was 6:30. The sun was officially up and would continue its daylong arc across the sky, with or without Peter. Ella’s words.
She had already organized and inventoried the supplies, packed the truck and reloaded weapons. All that was left for their journey to continue was for Jakob to rouse his father...after just two and half hours of sleep.
Sorry, Dad, he thought, and then he placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Dad...”
Without flinching or opening his eyes, Peter said. “Three feet back.”
“W-what?”
Peter opened his eyes. “Next time you wake me up, do it from three feet back. And don’t touch me.”
The tone in his father’s voice disturbed him. Deep, gravelly and tired, the man lying on the linoleum floor didn’t sound much like his father. Covered in dirt, he didn’t really look like him either.
“Why?”
Peter rolled from his side to his back, revealing a knife in his hand. Then he pushed himself up. The handgun was under his arm. He lifted the knife and slowly traced a line through the air, stopping short of Jakob’s neck. The message was clear: I couldn’t slit your throat if you were three feet back.
“You think you might become one of them? An ExoGen?”
Peter shook his head. “Old reflexes are coming back. If you spend enough time in enemy territory, you’ll develop them, too. It’s just a precaution. Had I been in the middle of nightmare...”
“I get it,” Jakob said, and he did. He’d woken from enough nightmares about his mother, kicking and punching, to know anyone around him might have received a fat lip. “But what about the gun?”
Peter sat up and slid the weapon into its holster. “Takes more than a knee-jerk reaction to lift a gun, aim and pull the trigger. Not much more. And I’ve been trained to never fire a weapon without confirming my target first.”
“So I shouldn’t sleep with a gun?”
Peter grinned. “You’d probably shoot yourself in your sleep.” Jakob took his father’s hand and helped him off the floor. He knew his father didn’t really need help, but the contact reaffirmed their relationship. Despite the horrors of the past two days, and the horrible lesson his father just gave him, they were still a team.
“Same rule applies to Ella and Anne,” Peter said. “They’ve both been out here for some time. Give them a wide berth when they’re sleeping.”
Jakob’s mind drifted to the previous night. After Peter had returned to the kitchen and fallen asleep, Anne had snuggled up beside Jakob, looped her arm in his and fallen back asleep. There was nothing weird about it. Nothing romantic. The contact provided comfort, for them both, but apparently even comfort could be deadly now. “Good to know.”
Peter looked around the empty kitchen. “Where are they?”
“Ella sent me to get you. She’s packed the truck. Organized it, too.”
Peter chuckled as he sheathed his knife. “Sounds like Ella.”
Jakob’s stomach twisted.
He’d been waiting to ask his father about her, and he might not get another chance for a while. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the truth about her. The subject shook the foundations of his reality, which was already on shaky ground. Want or not, he needed to know. So, he said, “Tell me about Ella. Who is she to you? Why do you trust her?”
The discomfort washing over his father’s face looked more intense than when they were fleeing from the Stalkers. He walked in a tight circle, rubbing his hands over his head, and then his face.
Before Peter could reply, Jakob added, “And don’t sugar-coat it. You’ve probably been trained to lie, and I probably wouldn’t see through it, but I’m old enough to handle the truth, and I think you owe it to me.”
Peter stopped walking in circles, leaned against the dusty counter and said, “Ella is my oldest friend.”
“No lies,” Jakob said.
Peter held up his hands, a placating gesture. “That’s the truth. I’ve known her for most of my life. Since I was nine. Until High School, we were inseparable.”
His father paused, so Jakob filled the gap, determined to keep the narrative moving. It wouldn’t be long before Ella or Anne came down to find out what was taking so long. “And during high school?”
“Puberty,” Peter said. “You remember that. What happened next was probably inevitable. She...was my life. And then, we drifted. College took us apart. But we came back together, somehow ending up in the same place, again and again.”
“Including after you were married.”
Peter’s eyes locked on the floor. The nod was nearly impossible to see, but the shame his father felt was palpable.
“That’s why Mom hated her.”
“Yes.” Peter blinked his eyes and turned away from Jakob. “I think she knew that even though I loved her, and chose her—and you—that I could never really stop loving Ella. Even if I loved your mom. Even if Ella loved someone else. She’s...a part of me. A part of my soul, I guess, if you want total honesty.”
“Sounds a little fruity for a Marine, if you ask me,” Jakob said.
Peter laughed and wiped his eyes before turning back around. “We still good?”
“I already figured most of this,” Jakob said. “But I wanted to hear it from you. Wanted to really understand who they were to you.”
Jakob was surprised to see his father sag, as though air had just been let out of a balloon man. “There’s more.”
Unable to imagine what more there could be, Jakob just waited.
“Anne,” his father said. “She might be your sister. Half-sister.”
The swirling caldron of emo
tions that struck Jakob stumbled him back. He leaned against the wall, beside the door, then slid down to his butt. Sister... A sister! Holy shit. As confusion gave way to understanding and excitement about the idea, Peter’s wording struck him. “What do you mean, ‘might?’”
“Right now, all we have is Ella’s word that she’s mine.”
“Does the timing fit?” Jakob asked. “Were you...with her twelve years ago? Is that when it happened?”
Peter nodded and said, “That doesn’t make it real.”
“But you trust her, right?”
“I want to,” Peter said.
“But...?”
“It’s not easy to trust someone after they helped kill the planet, intentionally or not.”
“Right,” Jakob said. “That.”
“That.”
“Does Anne know?”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said. “And it’s probably her mother’s place to tell her, not ours.”
“She looks a little like you,” Jakob said. He realized he’d already gone from skeptical to accepting and hopeful. A sister meant his family had grown, and he’d given up believing things like that were possible.
“I saw that, too,” Peter said, “but in case you haven’t noticed, Ella and I look a lot alike, too. Dark hair. Dark eyes. When we were kids, people thought we were siblings. Some thought we were twins. Anne looks more like Ella than anything. Like how I remember Ella as a kid.”
Jakob hadn’t realized how alike Ella and his father looked. But now that he mentioned it... “I guess I see it. So how will you decide? It’s not like you can take a DNA test.”
“When I decide I can trust Ella again. Fully trust her, I mean.” Peter helped Jakob to his feet, once again reestablishing the bond of father and son. “Until then, there’s no reason to not accept them. Life outside the house is hard. Dangerous. But I think their presence in our lives is a blessing. A possible future.”
“A family,” Jakob said.
“We’ll see,” Peter said, and stepped into the doorway. “But best to not get your hopes up. This is a harsh world. You told me not to lie to you, so I’m not going to. Not ever. The odds of all four of us reaching Boston alive are... Well, they’re not good.”
Hunger (The Hunger Series Book 1) Page 13
