“You must be Andrew,” she said. “My name is Sandy. I’m a good friend of Denver’s.”
Andrew caught her scent, which included a hint of men’s deodorant (the kind they all thought was unscented) and absolutely no fear. On the contrary. She oozed curiosity.
Andrew swallowed his growl. Still on all fours, he shifted until he faced her.
Denver sounded resigned. “Say hi to my girlfriend, Andy.”
Andrew cleared his throat. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She smiled without showing her teeth, which Andrew appreciated, whether it was conscious choice on her part or not. People made him nervous when they showed their teeth.
Andrew stood up.
Sandy walked right up to him and stuck out her hand.
Andrew looked at it. What was that for…?
“Put ‘er there,” Sandy looked him in the eye, but just for a moment. Not long enough to be threatening. Another nice touch.
He looked at his own hand. It was black with grime. “Sorry…”
She took it in her own, which made him jump, just a little. She gave his hand a firm pump and let go.
“Nice to meet you, Andrew,” she said. “What brings you around? Have you had lunch?”
Denver had a small smile on his face that didn’t quite reach the reservations in his eyes. “Sandy—and no offense, Andy, but you know this—he’s not so good with being indoors.”
“No,” Andrew said to Sandy. “I can come inside.” He looked at Denver. “Gonna have to start. Have to.”
Denver gave him a long look. “Well.”
“Well.” Sandy nodded once. “Three for lunch.” She smiled at Andrew. “You and I can get better acquainted.”
With that, she turned and went back up to the porch and opened the screen door. She looked at Denver.
“Make sure he rinses his feet off, first, hon, okay?”
Marc Teslowski – Eight
After breakfast and a shower, Marc found Ray in his office, behind a desk crowded with file folders stacked around an electric typewriter. He wore narrow reading glasses on the end of his nose.
“Hey, there.” Ray closed the folder he’d been reading and stood up. “Sorry this place is such a mess. A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind, right?” He laughed and put his hands on the small of his back to stretch. “I told you I run a little newsletter, right?”
“I think so.”
“This is where I put it all together. The Good Human, it’s called.” He pointed to a yellowed magazine cover, framed behind glass, hanging on the wall behind his desk. The cover depicted a figure in a white robe and hood ringing the Liberty Bell while the ghost of George Washington looked on. “Kind of a tribute.”
Marc stared at the old magazine. “Is that…” He laughed automatically. “Is that a Klu Klux Klan guy?”
Ray stepped around the desk. “A patriot. Yes, sir.” His eyes were bright and intense. “You feel like taking a little stroll?”
Marc had never seen anything like that in his life. He pulled his gaze away from the wall. “Sure.”
“Great!” Ray strode out of the office and down the hall. “I love that morning air!”
They talked while they walked across the grounds. “Sixty-six acres,” Ray declared. “It’s like living on a chunk of the Garden of Eden, dropped right in the middle of the United States of America. The house is…well, it’s way more than Patsy and I every really needed, but as you can see, these days there’s lots of company around.”
“Your family?”
“Heh. Not by blood.” He laughed. “Except in the sense that we’re all family by blood—by our genes, you know what I mean?”
Marc shrugged. “I’m not up on that stuff.”
“No? I figured you would have to be, given what they’ve put you through in the last year.”
“I leave it to the lawyers,” Marc grumbled.
“Lawyers.” Ray hawked and spat. "’Nuff said.”
Marc smiled. “Shit, yeah.”
“Anyway. Belial, Abe, Carrie, all them…they’re not related to me, but we share a common cause, and we—like you and me, and all but six thousand or so folks on the planet—share common blood. So that makes ‘em family to me.”
Marc thought about the weird racist magazine on Ray’s office wall. He was quiet as they came to the barbed-wire-fenced perimeter of the grounds.
Pine forest carpeted the slopes beyond. He felt a long way away from everything, and even though Byron was probably less than five miles away as the crow flew, he felt like they might as well be on different planets.
“Great view,” he said, to fill the air.
“Let’s be straight with each other, Marc,” Ray said. “You’re a little uncomfortable. Am I right?”
Marc kept his focus on the panorama. “I don’t think of myself as a racist. No offense.”
Ray’s laughter echoed off the distant hillsides. “A racist? Oh, hell’s bells, Marc. I’m no racist. No, sir.”
Marc looked at him. “You’ve got a cartoon of the Klu Klux Klan on your wall. You’ve got all these people living in your house, talking about all that stuff. I thought…”
“Hell, look here.” Ray’s laughter subsided, but his tone was still light. “I’ll give you this much: I used to be what some folks would call a racist. But that was way before, Marc. Before.”
“You mean before Four Eighteen Eighty-Five.”
“Pretty much. I’d heard a little bit, before then, even. I’m lucky in the sense that I know a lot of people all over this country of ours. Some of those people are senators. They knew it was coming.”
Marc found the thought offensive. “We knew? About Donner?”
“I reckon so,” Ray said. “Doesn’t Donner make the same claim, after all?”
Marc scowled. “I don’t listen to anything that asshole says.”
Ray nodded. “You’re angry. I get it.” He started walking, and Marc kept pace. “Me, I have to listen. I have to know what’s going on, best as I can, so I can report it to my readers and keep the rogues’ gallery around here in the loop. And seriously, Marc, you’d do well to pay attention, too.”
He grunted. “Makes me sick to give them any more thought than I have to.”
“But they have your son,” Ray said gently. “And the lies they tell…”
“It’ll come out.” Marc squinted at Ray. “So what’s with the Klansman picture, if you don’t believe that stuff anymore?”
“That’s the cover of The Good Citizen, from the twenties,” Ray said. “I keep that—and I named my newsletter after it—because the publisher was a woman of principle and strength. You know she was the first female bishop in the United States? A real trailblazer, full of the strength of her convictions.” He took a breath and looked at Marc. “Not too different from my Patsy, God rest her soul. Hell of a woman. Hell of a woman.”
“I bet she was,” Marc said. “Your wife, I mean.”
Ray nodded, his eyes far away for a moment. He looked down at his feet as they walked and said, “When Donner came on the scene and all the abominations crawled out of the shadows where they’d been hiding, I guess you could say I came out of the shadows myself. Figured out pretty damn quick that having different-colored skin or slanty eyes or kinky hair, what have you…those things didn’t make a damn bit of difference compared to how different Donner’s tribe is from us.”
Ray grimaced. “I woke up fast. The way I figure it, the Sovereigns are the biggest threat to the purity of the human race since the time of the Nephilim.”
“Purity? You’re worried about the Sovereigns having kids with regular humans?” Marc had no idea what the Nephilim was, but he figured there wasn’t much point mentioning that.
“Shit, I’m worried about the Sovereigns having kids with each other. How much time we got before a new generation of abominations are born?” Ray shook his head. “Fact is, it’s probably already happened. Scares the crap out of me.”
“I never thought about that.”
“I think about it all the time,” Ray said. He stopped and turned toward Marc. “Look at it this way, Marc. You see any Neanderthals walking around?”
“Nope.”
“Damn right. We’re tough, and we’re mean, and we are God’s blessed chosen. The Sovereigns’re going to find out. Mess with us, you get war. And we have God on our side.”
Marc wasn’t religious, but he didn’t comment on that. He was a guest, after all.
“I just want my kid back,” he said.
“You’ll get him,” Ray said. “I’ll help however I can.”
They walked along the paved driveway that linked various outbuildings with the main house. Ahead of them to the right was what looked to Marc like an old barn. The big doors were closed. A whole lot of big noisy crows perched along the peaked roof in a thick black line.
A tall, young guy, bare-chested but wearing blue jeans and work boots, hoed stray weeds from the cleared dirt in front of the barn. A Walkman cassette player was clipped to his belt. He was intent on his work and lost in whatever was playing in his earphones.
Marc noticed the kid had the Stars and Stripes tattooed on the back of his hand. Where’d he seen that before?
Ray stopped and called out. “Drake! Hey, Drake!”
The kid straightened up from his work and pulled his earphones out. “Morning, Mister Greene.”
“Drake.” Ray was smiling, but Marc recognized his tone. He’d used the same tone on Byron more than once. “You know better, boy. Wear some gloves when you’re doing yard work, all right?”
Marc saw the kid’s face fall. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry sir.” He covered the splash of blue and red with his other hand. “I’ll go get ‘em.” He glanced over his shoulder at the barn. “Gotta go inside…”
“All right, then.” Ray raised his own hand in a casual wave. “See you for dinner. I’m going on a drive with my friend here; we probably won’t be around for lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Marc remembered.
This kid with the flag tattoo was one of the rednecks he’d seen hassling the Sovereign from the airplane. Schmidt, or whatever the freak’s name was.
What the hell was he supposed to make of that? Who the fuck were these people, anyway?
Ray was shaking his head. “I tell you what, if that well-meaning dumbass was my blood kid, he’d know to wear his gloves. But one boy’s been enough of a challenge to raise.” He laughed. “Hell, you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” Marc said slowly.
“Come on,” Ray said. “You up for round two at the devil’s nest? I’m driving!”
Andrew Charters – Four
Andrew had never been in Denver Colorado’s house. Not in all these years.
He stood just inside the threshold of the back door. Denver, who had wheeled himself in first, and Sandy watched him from a little farther in, at the edge of the kitchen.
It was difficult to figure out if Denver carried the scent of the house on him or if the house represented a kind of superset of Denver’s scent. Andrew shook his head and let out a shaky breath. The distinction was unimportant. Except for a little hint of new-fence smell that must have blown in, the place was so…Denver…Andrew felt like he was immersed in the essence of his friend.
It was a lot to take in. Andrew turned back to face the screen door. The yard was there, just past the deck, and the woods were there, just beyond the yard. He could be back in the cool shadows in three leaps. He could be miles away from any houses in hours.
Behind him, in the kitchen, Denver said softly, “How’s it going, there, Andy?”
Andrew saw that his hand was moving, apparently on its own, to grasp the screen-door latch. He grabbed his wrist with his other hand, breathed in and out through his mouth, and turned his back on escape.
“Nice…place,” Andrew said. He laughed once, a harsh bark. “You. Lots of you.”
Sandy slapped Denver lightly on the shoulder. “See that? That’s why I’m always after you to straighten up around here a little.” She smiled.
“Yes, dear.” Denver grinned at her. Andrew had a sense that Denver and Sandy were doing something funny, but he didn’t quite understand. It was hard to remember how people acted together.
He had been a person, once. He would have to learn how to be one again.
He laughed again, to see how it felt. Denver and Sandy flinched at the sound. Andrew felt a degree of mortification. Even to his own ears, his laughter sounded like there was something dead slapping in his throat.
Denver said, “Anyway…you want to come into the kitchen? You ready?” He maneuvered his chair farther into the house. Sandy stepped aside, leaving a clear path for Andrew to walk to the table just past the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Andrew said. He slinked forward, sniffing and listening.
Wet putridity in the metal bowl—the sink, it was called a sink. He knew this. He knew most of it. He wasn’t an amnesiac. It had only been a decade and a half since the augmentation regimen made him into this; that didn’t have to represent his whole life. He had a long way to go, a long time to be better than he was.
“There’s old food in there.” He pointed at the sink.
“Ah.” Denver nodded. “I might not have run the disposal last night.”
“Or the night before,” Sandy said.
“Easy, you,” Denver said to her.
Andrew watched them. The way they leaned toward each other, the flood of pheromones flowing from their bodies to their mouths and noses…
It made him feel something.
It felt nice.
Denver frowned at him, but the corners of his lips were up, too. “What are you looking at, mister?”
“Heh.”
These two, just by being there, helped Andrew pull his old self up from the thorny tiger trap of his more animal nature. They were so human. That was a really good thing.
“Denver.”
Andrew wasn’t really addressing his friend. Just declaring his existence. Denver nodded. “Andrew.”
Andrew’s lips felt stiff as they stretched into a grin. “Heh. So…I should sit down, right?” He pointed to the chairs around the table past the kitchen. “On one of those?”
Denver smiled. “Yep.”
Andrew did so, though it took a little effort to ignore the whirring noise of the refrigerator when he passed it. It was damn unnatural, but that, he reminded himself, was part of normal. Deal with it.
“Well, look at you,” Denver said. “Sitting at my dinner table. How about that.”
Andrew nodded, then looked at his legs. “It’s strange. Sitting. Feels weird.”
“You get used to it.” Denver spread his arms and looked down at himself, in his wheelchair. His eyes twinkled and the hint of a smile teased behind his beard.
Sandy slapped him again. Strange. But…funny. That’s what it was. Funny. But not funny in the way Andrew was used to. There was violence, of a sort, but no animals or people were in pain.
Denver pulled his chair up to the table, and Sandy started making a few sandwiches.
“You like Braunschweiger, Andrew?” Sandy asked.
“Not sure,” Andrew said. He looked at Denver.
“You used to.”
“Oh. Okay, yeah.”
“Good,” said Sandy. “Just be a minute. You hungry, Denver, or did you fill up on that sweet stuff?”
“I’m good for now,” he said.
“So Andrew,” Sandy said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, of course. I’m glad you came by.”
“Had to,” said Andrew. “Important.” He looked at Denver, who frowned.
Sandy glanced over at them from the kitchen. “Important?”
Denver said, “Andy’s decided to finally get some help with his…condition.”
She studied Andrew. It made him feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to being the prey.
“I see,” she said. “But…how?”
Andrew strug
gled against an automatic threat response. He tightened his lips against his teeth to keep the grimace off his face. While he fought with this, Denver answered for him.
“The Sovereigns. They offered, years ago, I gather, but Andrew was a little crazier back then.” He looked at Andrew. “No offense.”
Andrew swallowed, finally defeating his instincts, and shrugged. “It’s…how it was.”
“What’s different now, Andrew?” Sandy was more focused on preparing the food than she was on him now, which made things easier.
“Need to help Nathan,” he said. “That’s my son. Nathan.”
Denver said, “That’s something I don’t get, Andrew. Why now? It’s been almost a year since you saw him, right? What’s happened that you’re all worked up about this now?”
Andrew’s nostrils flared. “Not just now. Been all year.” He sighed. “Took a long time. Still had to…be, right?”
Sandy put a plate with a Braunschweiger sandwich on wheat bread and a side of potato chips on the table in front of Andrew. She sat down next to him with a similar dish for herself.
Andrew watched her wrinkle her nose, cough, and pinch her nostrils quickly. She looked at Denver, who looked apologetic for some reason Andrew didn’t understand.
Sandy dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Go ahead, Andrew.” To Denver, she said, “So polite!”
Andrew shoved most of the sandwich in his mouth and chewed.
Denver chuckled. “A real gentleman.”
Andrew preferred live prey, and while this was a step below that, it was several steps above human dumpster trash, which he’d had to resort to more than a few times over the years. He swallowed and wiped his beard with the back of his hand.
“Thanks. Good.”
“You’re very welcome,” Sandy said. “Okay, so…how will the Sovereigns be able to help? Will they—can they undo what was done?”
Andrew shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Denver said, “I think the idea is to be a little more Dr. Jekyll and a little less Mr. Hyde.”
Andrew grunted around the second mouthful of sandwich.
“I see. And then…you want to talk to your boy, is that right, Andrew?”
The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage Page 14
