by Alan Janney
She climbs back onto her bike and sends a text message before continuing.
Kayla. Don’t call me. I need a day off. Back later. Be nice to Dalton.
>> okay!!! have fun!!! xoxoxo love you! xoxoxo
Carmine smiles to herself, envisioning Kayla and PuckDaddy messaging all night and into the morning. She powers the phone off because otherwise Puck would track her.
The drive south along Highway 1 and Interstate 5 is still one of the prettiest journeys on earth. She decelerates through Sunset, Newport, and Laguna beaches so she can enjoy the views of the Pacific. Here not everyone recognizes her and she feels unencumbered enough to wave at smiling children playing in sand. The last interstate guard station is at Dana Point, but the sentry doesn’t bother looking up. After San Clemente, she punches the throttle and passes the next thirty miles in twenty minutes, arriving in Oceanside breathless and windburned.
This part of California is mostly abandoned. Without central power or law, it’s a realm that belongs to brave survivalists. Further south near San Diego, a criminal warlord has taken up residence and declared sovereignty. He will be dealt with soon enough. But for now, she turns inland at Lawrence Canyon and motors up vacant Route 76.
Nestled into the scrubby hills, and bordered by nearby Camp Pendleton, is a monastery. The Prince of Peace Abbey is well-tended and modern in appearance, sitting on a long campus that backs up to Camp Pendleton’s unoccupied military housing. She and Nuts came here in July and oversaw the drilling of two water wells and the tilling of four acres of farmland. Nuts also personally connected the monastery to a neighboring photovoltaic solar panel farm, providing the monks with unlimited electricity, even though they rarely use it. Camp Pendleton, now vacant, didn’t notice the reduction in power.
The girl once known as Katie Lopez hasn’t visited since October and she’s pleased to see a busy community bustling with work. The number of monks swelled during the evacuations, which means more mouths to feed but more workers to tend crops.
Two guards at the entrance wave her down, but then quickly motion her through after glimpsing her face. She parks her bike and surprises Father Frost in his sparsely decorated office.
“Miss Carmine. What a pleasant surprise.” He stands, claps his hands, and politely inclines his head. Father Frost is approaching seventy-five but still has a full head of silver hair. His beard is trim and his eyes are bright.
“It’s been too long, Father. I apologize for being away.”
“Not at all. Our lives are simple and busy and we have everything we need. What cause is there for apologies?”
Carmine and Father Frost sit and discuss the world for twenty minutes, after which time he presents Carmine with a short handwritten list of supplies that would benefit the monastery. Father Frost seems embarrassed by some of the items, which he calls lavish and unnecessary. Items such as sugar and an air pump.
“I’m surprised the surrounding neighborhoods don’t have a surplus of these items,” Carmine notes.
“I’m sure they do but we prefer not to take them, in case the owners wish to return home in the near future. Thou shalt not steal, you understand. I’m loathe to set a precedent of easily satisfying our wants with local spoils.”
Carmine understands his sentiment. She’s read that looting is addictive. “This is not a difficult grocery list. I will personally drive down a truck soon.”
“We are grateful.”
“Unless there’s anything else, I thought I might spy on your charges.”
“Of course. They’ve taken a field trip. To Del Mar Beach. Do you require accompaniment?”
“No. Thank you. Once again, Father Frost, you are a lifesaver. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Carmine quickly tours the monastery and adds additional items to the ‘lavish and unnecessary’ list. Light-duty work gloves, for example. She returns to her bike and motors five miles to Del Mar Beach, which is an eclectic mixture of paradise and Camp Pendleton’s abandoned amphibious assault school. She parks near the eight yellow school buses, climbs on top of one, and peers down at the world’s worst kept secret.
The Inheritors.
Five hundred women are on the beach and in the water. To quote the nursery rhyme, they are red and yellow, black and white. And tall and short, thick and thin, each of them a young mother. The five hundred young mothers are each caring for a toddler. Some toddlers sleep. Some splash in the water. Some dodder around sand castles. Others eat. Many are crying. Each toddler was chosen by the Father in 2018, directly after their birth, and injected with the Hyper Virus. Originally there’d been a thousand Inheritors, but the disease has already claimed half.
He selected only young, poor, unwed mothers. No strings. And no freedom.
Carmine stares at the toddlers, the Inheritors, and chews on her thumbnail. She still doesn’t know what to do with them. She tricked the world into believing the babies had been murdered, but her enemies aren’t sure they buy the story.
More of the children will die when puberty starts. And then even more when they turn eighteen and the aneurysms begin. The virus is brutal and unforgiving. How many will survive? Nuts did the math on his notepad once and predicted a hundred and fifty would live past their twentieth birthday.
A hundred and fifty as powerful as the Infected, of which there are only thirteen. A hundred and fifty like the Outlaw, and Shooter, and Walter, and Blue-Eyes. Will even a scrap of society survive such mayhem?
The children must be kept as safe as possible. She and Nuts have been musing on possible islands to which the Inheritors could be relocated. Far away from Walter. Far from Blue-Eyes, and far from the Resistance. Who knows how long they’ll be kept secret and safe at the monastery.
Not long, most likely. They’ll be found here eventually. And then?
Most days Carmine is comforted by a sense of destiny, a feeling that perhaps she and the Kingdom were selected to weather the storm. Her cosmic and holy purpose.
But on days like today, when she watches the toddlers laugh and play and she admits to herself that they’re fated for madness and world breaking, she puts her hand over her mouth and tries not to cry.
The adventure continues!
Book Two of the Carmine series available in 2017
From the Author
I hope you enjoyed Carmine. Your Amazon feedback is coveted, good or bad.
If you’d like to read Book One of the Outlaw series, I’ll send you a copy for free. Click here —> http://eepurl.com/b95Bgj
Many thanks to everyone involved —
my beautiful bride Sarah for her patience
my two boys, Jackson and Chase.
beta readers (especially Therin, Sarah, Kelley, and Jana)
editors (Debbie, in particular)
Damonza for the cover
Anne for the Carmine illustration
Polgarus Studio for the formatting
Text me and let me know what you think of Carmine.
(260) 673-5450 I’ll be in a coffee shop, head down, working on the next book, and I enjoy the texts. I respond to as many as possible.
Colossians 2:2-3
