Exodus

by Toasha Jiordano

  EXODUS

  BOOK TWO OF THE EPOCH SERIES

  By Toasha Jiordano

  Copyright © 2019 Toasha Jiordano

  PageTurner Press

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13:

  This book is dedicated to my children, husband, and my mom… not always in that order.

  Other titles by author

  Epoch Series

  Glitch

  Exodus

  Revolt

  Homeward

  Saga of Valonde

  Hatchling

  Reign

  Jade Empire

  Obsidian Empire

  Azure Empire

  Crimson Empire

  Coming Soon

  Of Blood

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  “Very funny,” Guard One leans back, sucking in his gut self-consciously. He tilts his head toward Guard Two; a silent order.

  Guard Two fumbles for the radio at his hip. “Sarge, we may have two unauthorized onboard. Copy?”

  No answer.

  Synta smiles at the floor.

  “Sarge, do you copy?”

  Guard One nods his head slowly, a smile forming on his lips as well. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”

  Synta doesn’t speak. She just stares at her untied shoelaces and listens to the now familiar hum of the ISS Unity’s engine. Her fingers tap out a slow soothing melody on her pants leg. It doesn’t reach her ears, but her soul knows it by heart. She lets the intense warmth of the room radiate through her.

  “Sarge? Anyone? Anyone!” Panic rises in Guard Two’s voice.

  They’ve been left for dead with everyone else.

  Synta’s surprised that she isn’t happy about it. They’re the reason she’s not on that ship with Brooks.

  And Howie.

  “Sarge?” Guard Two doesn’t even hold down the radio’s buttons when he cries out to them anymore.

  Guard One rises to his feet. With great pomp and pageantry, he removes his shiny metal badge. Then his ZapStick. He sets them on the table. He doesn’t seem to care that they’re within Synta’s reach.

  Neither does she.

  She raises her head, her smile now one of peace. Brooks is safe and that’s all that matters. Howie will take good care of him.

  She stands, slowly at first, testing her boundaries.

  Guard One watches her, but just shrugs. He walks over to Guard Two and puts a fatherly hand over the man’s shoulders. Guard Two mutters something under his breath that Synta doesn’t hear. He’s falling apart and she doesn’t want to bear witness to it. She’s seen enough of that in her lifetime.

  Synta slinks toward the door as the countdown begins.

  “Launch in T minus 10…”

  Guard One whispers in Guard Two’s ear and they both nod their heads.

  For an instant, Synta is struck by an urge to go to him. To comfort him in his grief. But her feet keep moving toward the door.

  “…8…”

  Her chains catch on the table leg and startle the guards. They snap back to their responsibilities and lunge for her.

  “I just want to see him off.” She doesn’t know she’s speaking until the words have already left her. “Please,” she begs. Her hands are clasped together as if she’s praying to them. These two men who are in just as much shit as she is.

  Guard One sighs and takes Synta by the arm. He unlocks the door and leads her to a window.

  “…6…”

  The engine’s growls are muffled now. The walls vibrate and what framed pictures are left rattle and fall to the tile floor.

  “…3…”

  Synta feels her chains tug and jostle, but doesn’t take her eyes off the ship. It’s majestic. Tall and proud. A harbinger of the future.

  “1… Lift Off”

  The chains fall to the floor with a loud clang and Synta straightens from the lightened load.

  Guard One puts an arm around her, not as a captor but as a fellow human. Together they watch the ISS Unity roar to life and rise above the dimly lit mid-day sky.

  The familiar blue and white light illuminates all the dejected faces of those still left on the ground. So close.

  A tear falls down Synta’s cheek and she doesn’t bother to wipe it away. It doesn’t burn like every tear she’s shed before. It trickles calmly down her cheek — her good one — and rests on her trembling jawline.

  “You did it,” Guard One says softly and squeezes her shoulder.

  Synta swells with pride and takes his hand.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Her voice shakes, but the words come out.

  “Marshall,” he says and Synta turns to him.

  “Bravery,” she says.

  Marshall nods. “That’s what my mother always told me.”

  As the Unity passes high above them, the afterburners cool and blink out.

  Marshall flinches.

  A massive ball of fire erupts in the sky.

  A shockwave knocks Synta to the floor and she scrambles to regain her footing.

  Marshall pulls her up and away from the window as it explodes into the space she had just occupied.

  “Run!” Marshall screams over the roar of another explosion. Another shockwave tears through the Space Center. Solid stone walls crumble around them. Debris flies through the air.

  Marshall drags Synta down the hallway and out a sliding door frame. The door’s glass crunches beneath their feet.

  They stand there, staring up into the orange sky.

  //Howie!// Synta chips. Over and over. //Howie!//

  She throws the headphones to the ground and tries again.

  //Howie!// //Please answer me!//

  A handful of pods float aimlessly in the void left by the ISS Unity.

  An orange haze of realization washes over Synta’s face as she counts them. Less than a hundred. Not enough by half.

  She falls to her knees.

  //Howie…//

  CHAPTER ONE

  How mournful seems, in broken dreams,

  The memory of the day,

  When icy Death has sealed the breath

  Of some dear form of clay.

  -Caroline Elizabeth Norton; 19th century English poet

  //Howie//

  The concrete scorches my cheek, branding a new design over the old. I try not to know that it’s unnatural. There should be no warmth in January. This comforting glow is only transfer from take-off. From the explosion.

  //Howie…//

  They’re gone. Gone. All I have left of them is this fading heat that soaked into the pavement beneath my knees, my face, every part of my body that I can stretch out onto the ground.

  //Howie?//

  I know that once I move, once I’m forced to get up from this launch pad, they’ll be gone forever. So I don’t. I lay sprawled on my stomach across the blacktop, running my fingers gently along the fissures, allowing the electricity to radiate into me. If I can just melt into the cracks, everything will be alright.

  //Howie, please. Howie Howie Howie.//

  Sizzling gray snowflakes flutter between my lashes. They coat my face and hair, melting with me into the nothingness. I let them fall onto my tongue, into my wide-open mouth. I don’t know which ones are Brooks, or Howie, or any one of the thousands of strangers who boarded the Unity with them. It no longer matters.

  Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, I snicker at the absurdity of it all. Thousands of tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, all boarding the Unity and dying as one. Now united in a thickening blanket of ash around me, instead of the promised land, Gliese.

  //Howie,// I cry into the ether, knowing he won’t answer.

  All around me, other people, the also left-behind,
are kneeling and crying. Hands raise to the sky with such fury. Some even throw themselves to the ground as I have. I should hear them, their agonized faces contorted in muted wailing. Yet, I’m struck deaf. Whether by the explosion or grief, stripping me of my senses. Not that it matters. I don’t want them.

  Maybe if I’m still enough, quiet enough, the world will forget me. It will let me stay here forever, surrounded by my dead. Become one of them, my people. But even as I wish for it, large rough hands wrap around me and the ground is snatched away. I’m in the air, in his arms.

  “Sshh, child. I need you to be quiet now. It will be alright.” Guard One - Marshall whispers. His words break through the wall of silent nothingness, dragging me from the warm blanket of ash. Even in my mourning haze, I recognize the urgency and fear in his voice, hiding behind the tenderness. I stifle the screams that had escaped without my knowledge and shredded my throat.

  Over his shoulder I see Guard Two, whose name I still don’t know. He’s on his knees in the shattered doorway, weeping openly. Human like the rest of us. I close my eyes to let darkness and Marshall take me away.

  Marshall.

  //Howie Howie Howie Howie Howie!//

  “Bit.” The name is no more than a breath against Marshall’s neck. His embrace tightens around me.

  “You’ll see him again, Ratnik… I promise. One day. Your baby brother will come back to you, one day.”

  I lift my head, but Marshall pats it and shushes me back down. “One day,” he chants and begins rocking me slowly as we walk away. His voice is thick, wet, and I wonder if his tears are for me or himself.

  “Where I come from, long ago, people believed that we have many lives. Not just this one. Each man, woman, and child lives their first life to learn who they want to be for their next life. And when we’re born again, in that next life, we seek out those we’ve loved before. Not just husband and wife love, all love. We find those we need to help us through our next journey. My mother taught me the history of my lands before she passed. It brought her comfort, and it can bring us great comfort in times like these, if we think to the future.”

  Marshall’s soothing words and gentle swaying lull me into a deep slumber, to where I can’t even argue that it wasn’t the ‘one day’ I took issue with. I can’t muster the strength to remind him that my name’s Synta, and I’m not a rat.

  Or am I? Brooks and Howie are dead because of me. I sent them to their fiery black graves and now I’m here, alone, doomed to live.

  ###

  The next few hours or days pass in a blur. Sometimes I see Marshall’s face, softened by pity and lined by his own grief, hovering over me. Other times a short fat woman who smells like bleach shoves a spoon of foul liquid in my mouth and demands that I keep it down this time. Every now and then I hear my own voice, coarse and heavy with grief. I don’t know what I’m saying; words mean nothing to me, but the mere act of vocalizing my rage stifles it enough to go on.

  Mostly though, I sleep. Sleep and dream of dead trees, a withering little boy with the brightest smile, and angry orange explosions spreading fast across a black starless sky… creating new ones. Yellow stars blink above me, and one pale blue spark amongst the fireflies.

  I dream of my mother. I don’t know where Dad is, so disgusted with me that he can’t show his face to me even in my own subconscious. A face I can barely recall when I’m awake, now. Mom’s expression says enough for the both of them. Gone are her sallow sunken cheeks and black-ringed eyes. She’s full again, her one true self that got lost in The Wasting. I should be overjoyed that she’s been restored, if not for that ice behind her dark brown eyes, mirrors of my own.

  I run to her, shaking and crying, “Mom, Mom it was so —” but she pushes me away. Wordlessly, with newfound strength, my own mother shoves me toward the void. The one that I sent Brooks to. She’s squeezing my arms with glacial fingers; the cold seeps through my skin, to my bones, freezing my heart until it stops. A blue-tinged smile inches across her face as she releases me and I disappear into nothing.

  Thick warm hands jerk me awake. “It’s not real. It’s not real.” Marshall’s gruff voice grows louder, trying to break through my self-imposed fog. “You’re safe.”

  I shrink away from his grasp and roll over, away from his sad brown eyes. Safe. That’s the problem. I’m safe and they’re gone. No… dead. Brooks and Howie are, “Dead,” I growl. “I should be with them.”

  //Howie//

  I wail and shudder, but no tears spill onto the paper-thin pillow beneath me. I’m empty.

  “It’s time you work. Get your strength up.” Marshall yanks the covers out of my hand as I’m struggling to pull them over my head. “You smell like wet dog. Put these on.”

  A stiff, starchy material falls across my face, but I don’t bother to open my eyes. “Go away.”

  Marshall grunts and kicks my cot, fire gravels his words. “We need the bed. There are actual sick people here.” He turns and walks off.

  I quickly grab the pants and coat, throwing them on over my own. He was right. I stink.

  The hazy afternoon sky is too bright, too alive. I shield my eyes as I chase Marshall out the door. Tanks line either side of us and I look back at the building I just came out of, then down at my new clothes.

  “What the hell?” I stop, then run to catch up to him when he doesn’t. His long powerful strides beat out a cadence I can’t match. I’m panting by the time I reach him, in time to hear him barking orders I hope weren’t meant for me.

  Men swarm around us, filing into a line only they know the order of. Dozens of hands raise to dozens of caps, waiting. All eyes are on Marshall as he turns to me with the most severe expression.

  Then, calm relaxes his features, smoothing the edges around his thick black brows, and drawing up the ones at his mouth. He nods almost imperceptibly, then raises me up with those fatherly hands that once shackled me.

  “Soldiers,” Marshall returns the men’s salutes and all arms rest at their sides. “This here is our newest arrival.” He shakes me a bit by the shoulder. “Scrawny but stubborn as all get out. Ratnik, join your ranks.” With that, he shoves me toward the line of me, and I stumble into formation.

  All heads remain forward, intent on Marshall’s face, so mine does as well. Although, I sneak a peek at the soldier beside me out of the corner of my eye, and catch him doing the same. He’s not much older than I am, but stands at least a foot taller. His face is flushed, accentuating the acne lining his angular jaw. My own marred cheek flares with guilt at my audacity to judge anyone right now. I blink away the thought and turn my eyes back to Marshall.

  “…no doubt a troubling time for all of us. But we have work to do. I expect nothing from you that I’m not willing to give of myself.” Marshall paces a four-foot square in front of us, making eye contact with each soldier as he passes, including me.

  “There are only five ships left across the country. One of which is launching off the coast of South Carolina in a week. And we will all be catching a ride.” Marshall pauses for a moment to let the nervous energy crackling through the line die down. “Now, after the events of yesterday –”

  Yesterday? Was it only yesterday?

  //Howie//

  “…our help will be more vital than ever. President Theoda expects that we’ll get a lot of backlash at the gates. We’re to be prepared for anything, including the use of force. I want everyone on their toes. Full hazard gear.” His eyes fall on me. Then, to someone I can’t see at the other end of the line, “Vallon, I’m placing Ratnik under your direct command. Please see that he’s brought up to speed and ready to roll. We leave at 1900 hours. Everyone be on mark.”

  He? I straighten in my stance, realizing that Marshall doesn’t think I’d be safe among these men if they knew I was a girl. I’m too petrified to look around, catch a menacing gaze from a potential attacker.

  Brooks’s too-tight shirt squeezes the air out of me. My heart races at the memory of why I, too, felt it necessar
y to hide my gender. I try not to think about why I shaved my head and bound my chest months ago. What happened to me the last time I met men in uniforms. The same uniform that now hangs limp from my shoulders. Their paws all over me, ripping and punching.

  Marshall raises his hand to his cap again, and so do the men around me. I quickly follow suit. As we salute, he bellows and we repeat, “This is what we’ve trained for. This is what we do. Peace begins with me. Peace begins with you.”

  Formation breaks and everyone scatters but me. I don’t know where to go.

  “You comin’ or not, kid?” I don’t see the face the words are coming from, but I don’t have to. Disgust drips from each syllable, especially the last. I look up to see one enormous soldier standing before me. He’s easily the size of Marshall, if not more, but without the shaved head. His is cropped close, about the same length as my own, which I resist the urge to touch.

  The darkness behind his black eyes reminds me of the side of Marshall I never want to see again. I suppose he’d be considered classically handsome, if you’re into that sort of thing. I am not. He’s no Howie.

  And the stench of him. It assaults my senses as he marches toward me, then past. It’s definitely him, fading with each step he takes in the right direction — away. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, so… male. I lived with a non-bathing Brooks for years. This is something wholly different. I can’t think with him in my breathing space.

  “Are you –” I can’t finish asking. Not that it wold matter, as he continues to storm off toward a two-story drab gray building. Against the pleas of my nose and lungs, I run to keep up. I’ve only been a soldier for an hour and I’m already tired of all the running.

  The soldier, who I assume is Vallon, digs through a large bin in front of the building and tosses items over his head in my direction, without looking. I catch most of them. “Look, kid, we leave tonight. I don’t have time to train you and I certainly don’t have time to babysit another one of Sarge’s strays. Put those on and don’t take them off.”