Planet Urth Boxed Set

by Jennifer Martucci

  “I had a good time today,” Melissa continued. “I mean, except for that whole Kevin thing and the fact that everyone at school hates me now.”

  “No one at school hates you,” he reassured her and felt his smile droop.

  “I don’t know about that. I’m pretty sure Kevin and his friends would disagree with you on that one,” she teased and the fact that she was attempting to joke about it reinforced his belief that grace was her finest attribute.

  “I guess you got me on that one,” he laughed softly. “But seriously, don’t worry about those guys. I won’t let them give you a hard time. I promise. And as far as the rest of them are concerned,” he continued, “anyone who is dumb enough to go along with that ridiculous story Kevin is spinning, doesn’t deserve a second thought. They’ll forget about this as soon as the next drama unfolds.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just can’t help but feel nervous about tomorrow,” she began. Hearing that she was worried made his heart clench. “I mean, I appreciate that you want to stick up for me, and I’ve seen you in action. But I have to deal with this on my own. You’re not in all my classes. You know?”

  He understood and respected that she wanted to be able to get a handle on the situation with Kevin and the vicious rumors he was circulating, but he felt an inherent need to protect her. He could not explain it; just felt that she needed protection. He struggled to suppress the anger that mounted within him at the actuality of what had happened, the brutality that Kevin had perpetrated against her, and the cruelty he continued to perpetrate.

  Swallowing the bitter rise of rage, he said, “I know. But I am always a call away. If you need me at any point during the day, just hit the send button on your phone and I’m there, no matter what. I won’t let him hurt you again.”

  She seemed to understand the gravity of what he was saying. She responded with a solemn, “I believe you, and thank you.”

  “Listen why don’t we do something this weekend?” he said and shifted their conversation. “We should go out, you know, on a date.” Gabriel heard the words come out of his mouth without thinking them through. He hoped he wasn’t being presumptuous.

  “I’d love to, but I thought you were grounded. I mean, didn’t your dad freak out about the Kevin thing?”

  Gabriel breathed a silent sigh of relief after hearing her say she wanted to spend more time with him.

  “He did, but there’s always a way around things,” he said. “We have a few days. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out a way for us to do this. The only problem is my car. He always knows when I’ve used it.”

  “Maybe we can enlist some help from Alexandra or Daniella,” she suggested.

  “They would do something like that for you?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. I mean, they’re like sisters to me. We would do anything for each other. So, it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Infused with hope and inspired by courage born of optimism and deep emotions, he felt compelled to share his true feelings with Melissa.

  “Listen, I need to tell you something,” he began and ignored the doubt trying to edge its way into his mind. “I feel something for you, something that I’ve never felt before,” he began before suddenly, he lost his words and much of his courage. He no longer felt brave enough to tell her what he needed to say, at least not on the phone.

  Fearing rejection, he completed his sentence with “I just miss you, a lot. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

  “I can’t wait to see you,” she said then paused. “Gabriel, are you sure you’re okay? You sound like you’ve got something on your mind. Anything I can help with?”

  Melissa’s voice, so pleasant and full of compassion, affected him deeply. He wanted to tell her; tell her everything, tell her he wasn’t supposed to have any feelings whatsoever yet he felt everything for her. He wanted to explain his existence and that despite the ugliness of it, he felt sure he was falling in love with her. But the words were lost on his lips.

  Instead, he answered her question with a simple, “I’m fine, really.”

  “Okay. I mean, if you say so,” she said but sounded unconvinced.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he replied and knew he’d be counting the hours until sunrise.

  “Yep, looking forward to it,” she said simply.

  After saying good-bye, Gabriel turned off his phone. He replaced the cell phone to its charging cradle, and lay in his bed only to return to his troublesome thoughts.

  Chapter 6

  After killing Titov’s men and pitching their bodies overboard, Eugene voyaged from the Russian Far East, enduring the notoriously erratic weather conditions of the Aleutian Islands, to the Alaskan island, Kodiak. He’d crossed the Alaskan Gulf before arriving in Port Angeles. As Terzini had promised, a Hummer waited there, hidden at an abandoned shipyard. He’d rested briefly then began his journey from Port Angeles, Washington, through Idaho and picked up Interstate 80, the second longest Interstate Highway in the United States. He drove along this thoroughfare across Wyoming into Nebraska.

  As he passed through state after state, Eugene’s grip on the leather laced steering wheel tightened. Held by an overwhelming fury that seized him with the urgency of a laboring woman, compelled to push her offspring into the world, he needed to birth his rage.

  Each time his thoughts reverted to his destination, a small cottage in rural New York, wrath clutched him and surged with intensity. But he knew his anger must be tempered. His seclusion was ordered by his creator. Though he realized his distance was a necessary step in his maker’s process, the thought of wasting countless days in exile spawned resentment. He would be forced to wait, banished and isolated until he was called upon by Dr. Terzini. It would be an utter waste of his time. After all, he was designed to hunt; to battle; to kill. Woven into the very fabric of his DNA was the inherent need to pursue and conquer prey. Ostracism in a vacant cabin was an utter abuse of his fundamental talents.

  Bitterness flooded Eugene as he contemplated Dr. Terzini’s master plan, a plan that did not include him integrally. His maker had created Gabriel to be the future of the human species, a prototype of sorts. Gabriel was the geneticist’s proposed gift to the world–his intelligence, his refined DNA, his physical perfection. Eugene grasped Terzini’s vision of an transformed species. He simply regretted that it would be Gabriel’s superior DNA, not his, initialing it.

  He boiled at the notion of Gabriel changing humanity through procreation as his maker intended. Such an idea was a source of great indignation and contempt. It aroused questions, questions of loyalty and allegiance to his maker. He believed himself to be superior to Gabriel in every way. He viewed himself as the ultimate specimen, the specimen that others should be modeled after. He contended his creator’s theory, though only in his mind, and believed that more like him ought to be created. He was the perfect fusion of human and animal genes, the best of both kingdoms. If a legion of men were all manufactured like him, they could start the systematic annihilation of the weak and the feeble.

  He, and others like him, would eradicate the human species. The extermination process would proceed swiftly as opposed to gradually as Terzini intended. Eugene’s plan offered circumstances that would give him the freedom to kill as he pleased, at his discretion, liberated at last from preordained orders. Each time he entertained such considerations, a new feeling began to stir within him. The revamped design of a new race with himself as the model filled him with an odd sensation that he struggled to name. It could best be described as hope.

  He had read of hope before and dismissed it as ridiculous, impractical and evident of disordered thinking–typical human behavior. Yet now, hope manifested itself in a more logical form. It suited his needs and served the original purpose of his maker.

  But hope was a dangerous and futile notion for Eugene to accommodate for he was created without the ability to disobey his orders.

  Nevertheless,
Eugene still questioned how he could pledge his allegiance to a man incapable of seeing the obvious flaw in his strategy, that he had selected the wrong archetype. He caught himself wondering whether Dr. Terzini was nothing more than a self-righteous windbag too arrogant to acknowledge his oversight.

  As he brooded over a revolution, Eugene looked down at the gas gauge and saw that the needle was fast approaching empty. Thoughts of mutiny and mutilation had blinded him to his basic maintenance duties. Seconds earlier, he had passed a blue sign indicating that food, gas, and lodging were located at the next exit. He reached for his dark sunglasses and baseball cap before turning off the interstate to a gas station.

  He pulled the behemoth Hummer around to a pump at the farthest corner of the location to avoid drawing any unnecessary attention. After swiping a debit card linked to an account Terzini set up in his name, Eugene began pumping fuel into his vehicle.

  While he did so, a large tractor-trailer pulled up to the pump parallel to him. A burly trucker climbed down from the cab. Wearing a worn denim jacket and equally tattered jeans, the barrel-chested hauler lumbered around the front of the cab to the fueling chamber, his long, bushy beard and bedraggled, shoulder-length hair stirred in the breeze created by passing cars on the expressway. A large, mesh and foam hat perched atop his uncombed hair read ‘Born to Haul’ and threatened to blow away at any moment.

  As the truck driver passed, Eugene noticed how the slovenly human glanced at him but immediately looked away. Then, doing a double-take, he snapped his head back in Eugene’s direction, with eyes wide and mouth agape. The act of stealing a second look incensed Eugene. He felt the familiar rush of anger, felt it flashing just below the surface of his skin. Attempting to calm himself, he breathed deeply to contain the blaze that burned. While he inhaled and exhaled deeply, the hauler turned his head to look over his shoulder and gawk at Eugene again. He studied him from head to toe, examining him with such unapologetic intensity that he nearly walked into a concrete support column. His unrelenting scrutiny fueled the growing firestorm.

  Eugene’s breathing became shallow. Taking short quick breaths, the inferno propelled him. He advanced a single step, burning instinct urging him to descend on the gaping driver. He paused to consider the disastrous consequences of such a rash act. He chose to repress his urge. Instead, he glared at the man from behind his dark lenses, willed him to look away.

  He watched and waited as the trucker, sensing the hatred Eugene radiated, turned his attentions toward the convenience mart. Eugene continued fueling the Hummer, fighting to calm himself.

  The hauler returned from the store quickly, too quickly Eugene had not fully recovered. He watched as the man passed clutching a large wooden block with a key attached to it in his dirty hands.

  The grotesque human plodded past him toward the men’s restroom. Eugene was briefly relieved, the burning in him quelled. Though he longed to murder the trucker, such an act was not sanctioned by Terzini; there would be consequences.

  His relief ended abruptly, however, when the trucker turned to look back over his shoulder at Eugene.

  Blinded by all-encompassing fire, Eugene stalked off after the rumpled truck driver leaving the nozzle in his car. He trailed him the entire distance between the pumps and the restroom. Driven, he opened the door and entered the restroom.

  The trucker stood at the sink washing his hands as he stepped behind him. Eugene’s body trembled with anticipation as he bore into the back of the man’s head from behind his sunglasses. Though trembling, he was poised, ready to strike. The man looked up in the mirror and saw him looming in the reflective glass.

  “Can I help you with something pal?” the trucker asked as he continued cleaning his hands.

  Eugene smirked, observing how careful the wretch was to avert his eyes. He saw how desperate the unfortunate creature was to not seem confrontational, allowing himself just a fleeting glance at Eugene.

  Eugene said nothing but continued to stare from behind his dark glasses. The only sound he emitted was his ragged breathing. Supreme frustration flooded, threatened to extinguish the glorious hell raging within, as the established rubrics set forth by Terzini came to mind. He was all too aware of the many restrictions enacted by his maker. In particular, he was not permitted to act without Terzini’s permission. He was not to interact with anyone without the expressed consent of his maker. Moreover, he was forbidden to kill or harm anyone unless ordered by Terzini.

  As he remained, towering over the doughy trucker, the need to attack overwhelmed every muscle in his body. He grappled to suppress the urge to maul him. Yet deprived of instruction, he could not act. The trembling became violent. Resisting the attack was nearly impossible.

  “Are you hearing me pal?” the man asked. “What are you some kind of fag? ‘Cause I don’t swing that way my friend,” he continued, his fear masked thinly by a pathetic attempt to diffuse the tense situation with disparaging humor.

  Eugene did not laugh. Instead, his body produced one last powerful tremor before he went still.

  The trucker looked confused, terrified.

  Without warning, Eugene’s motionlessness ended abruptly. Madness overpowered Eugene and he seized the man by the back of his head and thrust it forward smashing his face into a mirror mounted flush against the concrete wall. With a thunderous thud created by skull striking glass, the mirror exploded on impact, cascading bloodstained shards in every direction.

  With his shoes crunching on splintered glass, he spun the truck driver around hoping that the force of the blow had not killed him.

  To his delight, the trucker clung to life.

  Eugene swiftly grabbed him by the neck and hoisted him off the glass-littered floor. Raising the dying man to eye level, he listened to meek pleas for life.

  Eugene could not grant such a request.

  He looked upon the imploring slob with contempt, felt no sympathy whatsoever for the simple creature. What he did feel, was a need for release. The darkness in him demanded death. His mouth twisted into a malevolent smile as his body issued a final shudder. Then, applying pressure unparalleled by the strongest hands in world, he compressed the trucker’s throat, mindful to keep the dying man elevated high enough to stare directly into his eyes.

  He watched closely as the trucker resisted death at first, flailing and kicking, before succumbing to his fate with bulging eyes and tongue thrust between clenched teeth.

  Still holding the dead man with one powerful hand, Eugene hauled him by his broken neck, then kicked open a stall door and tossed the lifeless body inside. He closed the door then stepped up to a urinal to relieve his bladder before leaving. He took precaution to not trounce the foam and mesh hat that sat, wilted, in front of the restroom entrance.

  Eugene finished fueling his Hummer A1 Alpha before climbing in and reentering Interstate 80.

  He struggled to recall what had unfolded at the rest stop. It remained a blur to him. In his mind, indistinct images swirled and eddied without taking form. They existed as phantom representations, elusive, indefinable.

  From the dark recesses of his mind, an innate sense warned that he had succumbed to an urge, that he had broken protocol. The gravity of his departure from how his creator, Dr. Franklin Terzini, expected him to behave sent him spiraling into despair. Eugene realized his actions threatened to jeopardize everything.

  Chapter 7

  Nerves had awakened Melissa from a fitful night of sleep. Each hour was interrupted by an incessant need to check the alarm clock on the nightstand by her bed. Her restlessness was not entirely unpleasant, though. It was generated by excitement, pure and simple. She was genuinely eager to see Gabriel. Waking multiple times was a small price to pay to know that she would be able to see him for even a short while before school.

  She stayed in bed until six, daydreaming and fretting over her less than glamorous wardrobe before deciding to primp.

  For forty minutes, Melissa passed her time preparing for Gabriel. She showered, brush
ed her teeth, dried her hair, dressed and applied a small amount of makeup. Then she turned to her closet only to be disappointed by a hodgepodge of sweatshirts, T-shirts and jeans.

  Her wardrobe was pathetic by teenage girl standards, but fashion had not been that important to her before meeting Gabriel. Now, however, she wished she had been more judicious when spending the money her father allotted her for clothing. She searched though the sea of frumpy, lackluster garments before settling on a fitted, long-sleeved, button-down shirt and her favorite go-to pair of jeans. She took a quick look at herself in the mirror then gathered her books and backpack and dashed downstairs.

  She checked the clock on the microwave on the counter between the stove and the refrigerator. It read 6:40 a.m., about five minutes before Gabriel’s anticipated arrival. She took a deep breath to steady her anxiety then set about rummaging through the cabinets, food pantry, refrigerator and freezer in search of something for breakfast. She intended to piece together a meal to be packed into a cooler and shared with Gabriel. But after examining the sad contents of the cupboard and the fridge, Melissa came up empty. She desperately wanted to do something for Gabriel, to express her affections for him and convey a fraction of the gratitude she had for his presence in her life.

  Instead, the best she could offer him were two overripe bananas, one frozen chocolate chip waffle and a box of granola bars with an expiration date of more than six months ago. Abandoning her breakfast idea, Melissa chose, instead, to open the front door and wait for Gabriel.

  At precisely 6:45 a.m. Gabriel’s hunter-green Ford explorer pulled into her driveway. He was smiling at her from behind the safety glass of the windshield. Leaving the engine running, he stepped out of his SUV and made his way up the footpath to Melissa’s front door.

  Facing due east, Melissa’s house on Blackstone Drive boasted spectacular sunrises. This morning was no exception. The eager sun surged from the horizon in a dazzling spectacle. Pure gold illuminated the skyline melding into shades of orange and intensifying as it swelled, blending hues of rich pink and purple then deepening to violet as it shepherded night to day.