Sapience

by bret Wellman

  I was up early, I had awoken nearly an hour before normal and couldn’t fall back asleep. Lillie was the only one up, she took one look at me and said she was going to make me eggs and bacon. The smell of the bacon being cooked made my mouth water as I stared out the front window.

  “That storm this weekend brought with it a cold front.” She said as she handed me a plate of food.

  I sat down and started poking at it with a fork. “I was hoping the warm weather would last a lot longer.”

  “I told you we should have picked a warmer state to hide in.” She said. “But you insisted we find the others.”

  “Really?” I asked. “I can’t remember. This can be so frustrating sometimes.”

  “Yes, well that and you wanted to be close to the border.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Adrian and I have been discussing a theory.”

  A mental users theory, I half expected her to say that she had figured out a way to predict the weather.

  “Adrian and I have been dealing with an anomaly ever since the day you were shot. I thought it best to tell you right away but Adrian, well he thought you knowing would only make it harder for us to study you.”

  Study me? I didn’t like where this was going.

  “You have become unpredictable William. As you probably remember, we can predict the choices a person is going to make, this works with every person we have ever met, but not with you. We think you will turn left and you go right, it is very unnerving.”

  “You can’t predict my movements at all?” I asked, leaning in.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples as if she had a head ache. When she opened them she almost looked angry. “It comes and goes, there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it. Your interactions with people can change it too. We predict people to go down one path and then they interact with you, sending them down another. From our perspective it can feel like chaos. It makes our hideout significantly less secure.”

  At first I felt worried, but the more it sank in the better I felt. I know we were all on the same side and that my little “anomaly” was probably a bad thing, but I felt relieved to know Adrian had no control over me. “Have you figured out why this is happening?”

  “We believe that part of your old self is still in there. Fragments of it must be breaking through causing you to make unconscious decisions that you otherwise might never make.”

  She grabbed my empty breakfast plate and went to the kitchen to wash it. Even after everybody else was up and we were on our way to school I was still caught up thinking about what she had told me.

  I still had my ability, well parts of it at least. The idea made me feel more secure than I had in a long time.

  “Time to go receive some praise for throwing the best party ever.” Spencer said as I parked the car. He hopped out and ran to go meet up with his friends while Brianna and I lagged behind.

  “You have been awfully quiet this morning.” Brianna said when we were a little closer to the school.

  “Lillie thinks fragments of my old mind are slipping through. She says that she and Adrian are having trouble predicting my movements.”

  “Really?” She asked. “Does that mean your body is healing itself?”

  “No. She says it has been like this from the beginning.” I stopped dead in my tracks, my mouth going dry.

  Blake was standing in between two of the Kingdom's soldiers up close to the school. He lifted his arm to point in our direction.

  It felt like my heart had jumped into my throat. I tried to reason with the panic that was instantly cascading inside. Blake knew nothing of who I really was, whatever he had told the soldiers, it probably wasn’t as bad as any conclusion I was jumping to. What could he have possibly told them? He might have created a lie.

  I locked eyes with one of the soldiers for only a second before grabbing Brianna by the arm and turning back the way we had come. My first instinct was to walk slowly, but that was soon out of the question as three more soldiers came bursting out from the school.

  From where I was standing it looked like we only had three option, we could cooperate, we could fight, or we could flee. I couldn’t risk cooperating, if these soldiers knew something I didn’t, it could mean the end for us. If we fought, it would only be a matter of time before the bullets started flying.

  “What’s going on?” Brianna asked.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  We both turned and started sprinting through the parking lot. It seemed like the other students were all a million miles away, watching in horror. The world seemed to be collapsing in from all around, yet we were the only two getting crushed. I glanced over my shoulder, a whole platoon of soldiers were after us now. Most had come from inside the school, some jumped out from behind cars. This was no normal round up party, there would only be these many men sent if they thought we had done something serious. Running had been the right choice.

  Two more soldiers appeared between us and my car, they looked angry, baring scowls that were missing half their teeth. They began to pull out their guns.

  I jumped feet first into one of the guy’s knees. As he fell I slammed his head into the pavement. My point was to be quick and efficient, I couldn’t afford to let the other soldiers catch up.

  I looked over at Brianna, she already had the other soldier unconscious. Her hand was covered in a solid chunk of ice. She must have used it to knock the guy out.

  We barely got to my car as soldiers came pouring out from nearly every direction. My only choice was to hit one in order to get out of our parking spot. I cringed as the goliath of a man came crashing down and dented my hood. He cracked the windshield and went tumbling out of sight.

  Once I had pulled out of the parking spot I could see that there were way more soldiers than I had originally thought. They blocked our path and I was forced to ask myself how far I could go before the sheer number of men forced my car to stall. The answer I soon found out was all the way. The soldiers dove out of the way as I came speeding at them. I could hear bullets peppering against the side of the car, we ducked low to avoid being the victims of a head shot.

  By the time we hit the end of the parking lot I was already in fifth gear. None of my windows had been shot out. A few men tried to chase us on foot, It appeared that the others were all scrambling to get a vehicle to chase us in.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Brianna asked, she was pale white and yet wrapped in a zen-like calmness.

  I took a deep breath to calm my own nerves so I could focus on driving. “I can’t be sure but I think Blake did something.”

  “What are we going to do now? We can’t go home.”

  I looked in the mirror and spotted a black suburban with flashing lights coming up on our tail. “Not with that thing chasing us we can’t.”

  She looked back and her eyes narrowed. “Damn, what the hell are we going to do now?!”

  I skidded sideways onto the street that goes by our house and punched it. The cell phone that I keep connected to my dash started going off. I pressed a button and Lillie’s voice started coming through the stereo speakers.

  “William, are you there?”

  “Yea I’m here. Something has happened.”

  “We know. Blake filed a report saying you attacked some of the Kingdom's soldiers and stole Brianna last fall when they were collecting on their perks.”

  My mind immediately went back to that day in the field house. I knew a lot of people had seen me sneak out the back door. Blake must have been one of them.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. I knew the kid was an idiot, but this was taking things to a whole new level. The Kingdom would put us to death if they ever caught us. In a way, Blake was committing murder in exchange for popularity.

  “Is anybody following you?” Lillie sounded calm, as if this were just business as usual.

  I glanced back at the suburban “Yea but its only one car. I don’t think they expected us to get away back at the school.” I didn’t s
ay that it wouldn’t be long before they corrected their mistake and brought their entire mobile force down on us like a hornet's nest.

  “Good, do everything in your power to lose them before any more can come. After that, find a place to hide until Adrian and I can figure out what to do.”

  The phone line went dead leaving Brianna and I to listen to my car's roaring engine. I flinched as a bullet ricocheted off of my trunk.

  “Got any ideas on how to lose the suburban?” Brianna asked.

  “One, open the glove compartment.”

  I watched her eyes go wide as she pulled out one of the Kingdom's custom built, semi-automatic hand guns, complete with silver trim. It was a Beretta 92 I had pulled from the shed out back of the mansion. After what had happened last fall I thought it wouldn’t hurt to keep one around.

  “Is your marksmanship still as good as when you left the government buildings?” I asked.

  “We are about to find out.” She said, rolling down her window.

  I swerved and almost went into the ditch as our back windshield was shot out.

  “It’s now or never.” I said as another round of bullets took out my driver side mirror.

  Brianna only shot two bullets, the first went through the driver’s side of the front windshield, the second hit the left, front tire. The tire blew and the suburban flew off into the trees.

  “I still got it.” Brianna said, leaning back inside my car.

  “Now we disappear.” I said.

  I kept waiting for another suburban to pop out at the next intersection or a helicopter to come swooping in over our heads. I didn’t slow down to wonder why none had, I simply pressed the gas pedal to the floor and did my best to get us the hell out of there. I didn’t even know where we were going. North sounded just as good as anything I supposed.

  Brianna reached inside my glove compartment and pulled out a map. I wished we had a GPS system but Lillie had made sure we didn’t have any. The Kingdom had a very strict GPS policy which allowed them to be the only ones allowed to use it. Any unauthorized GPS systems tapping into the network would raise suspicion. Rather than take the risk, Lillie had thrown them all out.

  Brianna examined the map, she ran her fingers down the crisscrossing lines as she thought.

  “I have an idea.” She said after a while. “We are going to hit the edge of the Kingdom in a few hours. We should keep going, right into the dead lands.”

  “What?” I said in alarm.

  The dead lands were a place that now stood where the former country of Canada used to be. Decades before, when the Meads had first come into power, they declared war on the neighboring country. They wanted the territory for their own, the Canadians refused to give in. It started with an aggressive bombing campaign and ended with chemically engineered diseases. The war went on for years with countless people dying while the president sat back and watched as if he were playing a game of chess. In the end the President Mead at that time forced the Canadian people with an ultimatum. Serve him, as his people, in his land, or die.

  The country was split down the middle, half the people fled to the Kingdom, the other half were killed off. Now the dead lands were a place unfit to live. There was no food and any water was bound to be polluted, the president took painstaking measures in the following decades to salt every piece of land in the entire country. He claimed that after the war he was simply too angry with the Canadians to occupy the territory, and if he wasn’t going to have it, no one would.

  “How do you plan on doing that?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine the dead lands being a very good place to live, but I had to wonder how she planned on doing it.

  “Well.” She said “Anything we need we could steal and take with us across the border. When we run out of provisions we can come back for more.”

  I guess that could be a good way to hide out, for a little while at least. I didn’t like the idea of stealing, people under the Kingdom had it hard enough without us coming along and taking what wasn’t ours. Fortunately I had a credit card that pulled money straight from the Kingdom itself. I did not mind using it one bit.

  “We won’t need to steal.” I said. “My credit cards are untraceable.”

  “Credit cards are always traceable…”

  “Yea but this one traces back to a high ranking Kingdom official who doesn’t actually exist.” I said, pulling the card from my pocket. “Lillie set the whole thing up herself, if the Kingdom ever went after this card, they would end up chasing their own tail.”

  I glanced in what was left of my mirrors, nobody was behind us, we were alone on the snow kissed road, just us and the forest on either side. Where was everybody, we hadn’t seen anyone trying to chase us since Brianna had shot the suburban into the trees. They didn’t know who we were, I was sure of that, but they still knew I had assaulted some soldiers and that was more than enough incentive to make them send all their might, for them it would be a reason to simply set an example. So why hadn’t they?

  “Ok so we are set on food, what next, where in the dead lands should we go?” She asked.

  I thought about it for a moment, it would do us no good to over distance ourselves. “We should probably stay within an hour or two of the border. That way we won’t have to go too far for supplies.”

  We were just entering another town so I slowed down to avoid attracting attention.

  Brianna stared out at the snowy buildings. “It looks so peaceful. Our lives have been flipped upside down and yet theirs go on as if nothing had ever happened.”

  “We should be at school right now. How did things get so out of control?” I said.

  The town stretched on outside my windows. There were only three buildings resting at the main intersection, the rest of the town was pretty much made of old houses, most of which had been boarded up, a few had burned down a long time ago never to be cleaned up or rebuilt. It felt like we were all alone and the Kingdom was going to spring its attack at any moment. I turned the heat up to keep the cold from flooding in through the hole where my back windshield once was.

  My phone rang making me jump practically out of my seat.

  “You’re all clear.” Adrian’s voice said over the speaker. “We sent the Kingdom on a wild goose chase. I sent out a dispatched saying you turned down a different road and began heading in the opposite direction.”

  “What should we do now?” I asked.

  “If I am correct, and I always am, you are thinking about going to the dead lands. Do it. That will be a good place to hide out until things cool down.” He paused “They captured Spencer and took him in, we have to concentrate on getting him out so sit tight for a while.” The line went dead before I could respond.

  I could see the worry in my own face staring back at me from Brianna. I had been concentrating on getting away so hard that I had forgotten about Spencer. He had nothing to do with me assaulting those soldiers, yet he was guilty by association. I could only pray that they would have mercy on him. He himself had done nothing wrong, maybe that would be enough to let him off easy, I doubted it.

  For a second I thought about the government coming to our house and going after the others. But then I remembered Lillie saying that they had kept the trailer in the trailer park and set it up to look like that was where we lived. If the Kingdom tried to find us at home they would only find an abandoned trailer. Hopefully that would bring them to the conclusion that we all had skipped town. But that still left Spencer alone in enemy territory. I really hope Adrian had something good up his sleeve to get him out.

  An hour or so later we stopped at a large retail store. There we bought a thick sleeping bag and proceeded to pack my car with more groceries than should have been able to fit. People stared at us funny as we flew around the store with shopping carts filled to the brim.

  The store was very large with a high ceiling, the aisles were tall too. There were a few times when Brianna and I turned down different aisles out of site from each other. Every time we did this
I soon found myself imagining the Kingdom swooping in to attack while we were separated. I would eventually give in to my nerves and turn to check on her only to find she was doing the same thing. After the third time it happened we just agreed not to separate anymore.

  We were rushing the whole time we were shopping, constantly looking over our shoulders. Brianna bought a wig for herself and a big trucker’s hat for me. They weren’t the best disguises ever, at least we wouldn’t need to use them very much. They would basically be stuffed in my trunk once we pulled out of the parking lot.

  As we checked out and I swiped my card I checked the receipt. We had a normal supply of food for the next couple of days, fruit for the next few weeks, and food that wouldn’t spoil for anything beyond that. It wouldn’t be very long before we would be roughing it. We had four full carts, one was entirely dedicated to holding all the water we were taking. The body could live a lot longer without food than it could without water.

  It was a relief when we had the car packed and heading down the road again. Looking through my rear view mirrors felt safer than over my shoulder.

  I stuck to the speed limits after that. The further we drove, the less populated the countryside became. I stopped worrying about being caught after a while, the towns we passed simply weren’t populated enough to have soldiers patrolling. Soon there were no more towns at all and the roads were covered with thicker and thicker over growth. We were now driving through a world from the past, some prehistoric hybrid that cascaded over the pavement. Roots sprang through the road, I had to slow my car down to a crawl for risk of losing control. There were a couple of places that I thought we might get stuck, I was thankful as the car kept bouncing on.

  When we were almost to the border my phone went off again. Unfortunately, this time we had a weak signal and couldn’t understand what the person on the other end was saying. We could only make out one word “Car.”

  That’s how it was as we rolled up to the border with no cell phone signal and no way of knowing what was going on in the outside world.