by J. W. Elliot
He stumbled and rolled. He came up with his rifle to his shoulder, saw the movement behind a boulder, and squeezed off two rounds. Dust kicked up, and the slap of a bullet against flesh sounded. Kaiden scrambled to his feet and tried to limp toward the airship. Jade leaped from the gunship and pelted toward him. The team members laid down a covering fire all around the cavern as Jade dragged him aboard the airship.
It lifted from the ground, and Kaiden saw, through the still-open door, Rio stand up from behind the rock, a rifle dangling loosely in his hand.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Long Live the Clones
“Where are the other ships?” Kaiden asked as Willow cut through his pant leg to expose the wound in his thigh. He stretched his leg on the table in the T-60’s medical ward. So many had died. Hollow fury boiled in his gut. It was so senseless. He was trying to save lives, and so far, he had been forced to do little more than kill.
“They ran,” Willow said. “Flint says he knows where a couple are hiding, but TAP took out nine of our ships. Everyone on board those ships was killed.”
“So much for our army,” Kaiden said. The bitterness of it galled him. They had come to him seeking safety.
“We’re just going to have to do this alone,” Jade said.
“I suppose it was always going to be that way,” Kaiden said.
He didn’t want to think of all the bodies he left behind in the gully and on the rocky hillsides. It was becoming more difficult to see himself as a freak when the other clones were all so human. So alive. He was just one of them. How had his brain become so warped? Still, he had killed them. Colt, the little girl, his men. They were all dead. He glanced at Jade as the bitter sorrow expanded inside him.
“I’m sorry about Colt,” he said. “He was a good man.”
Jade worked her jaw and blinked rapidly. “I can’t believe he died that way,” she said. “I’ll miss him.”
They brooded in silence for a long time as the airship hurtled through the skies.
“Flint says Noah is still in Florida,” Jade said. “I don’t know how he knows, but…” She shrugged.
“I need to tell you all something,” Kaiden said. He hesitated. Would they think he had betrayed them? “Noah contacted me again.”
“What?” Jade said.
“She said there are three Noah clones,” Kaiden explained, “and they each possess all of Noah’s memories. That must have been what was happening when I killed my mother. I saw two other images of her on the screen. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but Willow says they were syncing their memories.”
This is what Willow had explained to him the night before.
“Ouch!” Kaiden clenched his teeth as Willow used a syringe to squirt antiseptic into the bullet hole. Fortunately, Rio had been using steel-jacketed rounds that allowed the bullet to pass clean through the flesh of his thigh without causing serious damage.
Jade sniffed as he winced. “Time to toughen up.”
“Thanks,” Kaiden said.
“Anyway,” Willow continued. “Noah is following the old flood stories. There were only three sons of Noah that represent the three branches of humanity as early people saw it.”
“That’s what she told me,” Kaiden said.
“Did she say anything about the tree?” Jade asked.
Kaiden shook his head.
“That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you,” Willow said. She finished wrapping the bandage and pulled the cut pant leg over the wrapping. “I’ve been researching the Tree of Life and trying to read through the garbled files we took from Noah’s computer. Did you notice that the tree in both pictures is deciduous? It’s not an evergreen.”
“So?” Kaiden said.
“So,” Jade interjected, “in the ancient world, the deciduous Tree of Life represented renewal and regeneration. In Egypt, it was the mother goddess that sheltered and protected, and it represented the beginning and ending of cycles of renewal.”
“That’s right,” Willow said.
Kaiden waited for them to explain. This was all very interesting, but he didn’t see the point.
“So, The Flood is about renewing humanity, and the tree is their symbol,” Jade said.
“What about the little black tubes?” Kaiden asked.
Willow dried her hands. “Maybe you should ask your mother.”
Flint and Birch came in. Birch punched Kaiden in the shoulder and scowled at him.
“What did you think you were doing?” she demanded.
Kaiden grimaced. “In case you didn’t notice, the T-60 I was going to fly had its engine explode. There weren’t any ships left on the ground, so I did the only thing I could.”
“Forget it,” Flint said. “We’re on our way to Florida. We only have a few hours to plan.”
“Who’s got the ship?” Kaiden asked.
“Blaze is at the controls.”
“Blaze, who?”
“He’s a flyer,” Flint said. “We have five others still with us.”
“How are they? Any injured?”
“They’ll live,” Birch said. “With those five, plus us, that gives us ten battled-hardened veterans to storm TAP.”
Flint dropped a tiny device in Kaiden’s lap. “That’s how I’ve been tracking Noah. It’s connected to the software on the ship she took to escape Ararat. I can’t guarantee she hasn’t taken another ship, but that’s the best we’re going to get.”
“Speaking of Noah,” Willow said, “Kaiden was just going to try to contact her again.”
Birch scowled. “Care to fill us in?”
Willow quickly summarized their conversation.
“But do we trust what she says?” Flint asked. “I mean, this is Noah.”
“No, we don’t,” Willow said. “But she might give us clues that will help.”
“Do it,” Jade said. “I want to make them pay for killing Colt and that little girl.”
Kaiden glanced at her. He had never seen Jade cry, but the tears hovered in her eyes. She blinked rapidly. He clicked on his wrist terminal and typed a quick message.
“Mother, we need your help.”
Almost instantly, a reply came. “You must act quickly.”
“Why?”
“My sisters want to begin The Flood. I can’t stall them much longer.”
“What is The Flood?”
“Trees of Life have been planted across the earth in a vast network. They bear the black fruit that will destroy humanity.”
“You mean there are actual trees?” Birch asked.
“The black fruit must be the tiny glass tubes,” Jade said.
Kaiden typed in another message.
“What is the fruit?”
“A nano-virus created to destroy humanity.”
“And the clones?”
“They are genetically modified to survive the virus.”
“How do we stop it?”
“You must kill us. If no Noah clones possess the codes, The Flood cannot be activated.”
“How do we find you?”
“My sisters will come when I call.”
“Why would you help us?”
“We’re not all the same. Not even clones are perfect replicas.” There was a pause. “I love my children,” the message said. “I don’t want their mother to be a mass murder. Nor will I consent to this mad plan to murder billions of innocent people.”
“Is she schizophrenic?” Birch asked.
“We already went over this,” Jade said. “They’re three different people. That’s not schizophrenia.”
“Ask her how we make sure another Noah clone doesn’t reappear,” Willow said.
Kaiden keyed in the message.
“I will destroy the files before you arrive. Once you kill us all, Noah will ce
ase to exist.”
Kaiden’s stomach tightened. That meant his mother would cease to exist. How could she ask him to do this?
“But what about the replacement clones?” Jade asked.
Kaiden keyed in the question.
“I have already seen to that,” Noah answered.
“What about Rose?” Kaiden asked.
There was a long pause.
“There are three. I have terminated the other clones in production of that model. You will need to care for these three once we are gone.”
“Dang,” Birch said, “she is cold.”
Coordinates flashed onto the holographic screen. “Come find us. We will be waiting, but beware. I cannot know what the others have planned. They will stop at nothing. Now, I must go. I may have jeopardized everything already.”
“Holy jumping toadstools!” Flint said. “She’s insane.”
“Definitely a split personality,” Birch said.
Jade clicked her tongue.
Kaiden scowled. How could the clones have such different personalities? So far, he had met the loving mother and the scientist. What was the other personality like?
“It’s a trap,” Birch said. “It has to be.”
“Probably,” Kaiden said. “But do you have any better ideas?”
The pounding of running boots brought them all to their feet. Blaze thrust his head into the doorway, panting like he’d sprinted a mile. His eyes widened at the sight of four guns leveled at his chest. He raised his hands.
“You need to see the newsfeed,” Blaze said.
“I thought you were flying the ship,” Birch said.
“It’s on autopilot. You really need to see this.”
Flint fiddled with his computer, and soon a holographic image of the newsfeed filled the center of the room.
A tall man wearing a TAP security uniform straddled the body of a man in a blue suit. He was waving his gun over his head and screaming. “Long live the clones.”
While that image played in the upper right-hand screen, a camera panned across a city where the people were rioting. Dead bodies littered the street. Some dangled from lampposts, rotating in slow pirouettes. Mobs swept through the streets, attacking people apparently at random, screaming, “Down with clones.”
The news lines across the bottom said, “Breaking News: A self-proclaimed clone has assassinated the chief minister of the International League of Unified Nations. People are rioting in every major megacity in North America. Thousands of people are being slaughtered on suspicion of being clones. The Sons of God are leading the rioting in several cities.”
The group stared in stunned silence as the newsfeed repeated itself.
“This must have been part of Oakley’s plan,” Kaiden said.
Willow gave him a pained look and nodded. “He used us to destabilize TAP and sent that clone to assassinate the chief minister. Now, the only way TAP can survive is to initiate The Flood.”
“I can’t believe this,” Kaiden said.
“It’s worse,” Willow said.
“How can it be worse?” Birch asked.
Willow let out a long sigh. “He told me that he had been secretly working with Noah to destabilize everything.” She glanced at Kaiden. “His men killed Quill and tried to kill you. It wasn’t Iris.”
“I should have known,” Kaiden said.
Birch shifted. “Why would Noah do that?”
“Because,” Jade said, “it would give her cover and an excuse for what she was really planning.”
“Nice,” Birch said.
“Are we going to save them,” Jade asked, “just to have them kill us for it?”
Kaiden buried his head in his hands. What a mess. Natural humans had become so depraved. But he also knew he could have been in that mob. He probably would have been in that mob. And what about the clone murdering the chief minister? Clones weren’t any better. They were all just humans. His agonizing over whether he was human or not seemed so silly now. Then, he thought of Rose. He had to save Rose from being murdered for being a clone. The rest could go to Hades for all he cared.
A memory came to him in a flash. He was lying on a couch with a blanket draped over him and a hot pack nestled against his neck. He swallowed, igniting the horrible burning in his throat. He moaned, and his mother glanced up from where she worked at her desk.
“It’s going to hurt for a while,” she said. “But those tonsils had to come out.”
Old books were piled so high on the desk, he could only see her head. Her lips were bright red, and her stiff black hair had been straightened. Nobody used books anymore, and he couldn’t figure out why she wanted them.
Maps and pictures of boats and trees spilled over the edge of her desk. Behind her, a massive screen flashed images of floods. Brown waters raged through city streets, rolling cars over, collapsing buildings, and carrying houses away.
She noted the direction of his gaze, glanced at the screen, and smiled at him, showing white teeth against her black skin.
“Inspiration,” she said.
Kaiden wanted to ask her what it was an inspiration for, but his throat hurt so badly, he didn’t want to talk. On the wall above his head was a huge painting of a flood. Naked people clung to a rocky crag and a fallen tree, while others were swept away in the blue torrent. Rain fell from a ragged sky in great, black sheets, and a red sun dropped behind the horizon. A funny-shaped boat bobbed on the waters of a huge sea illuminated by a ray of light, secure in an otherwise drowning world. The caption below the painting read, “Francis Darby, The Deluge, circa 1840.”
Kaiden wasn’t old enough to know what a deluge was, but the painting and the photos of floods cycling across the screen behind his mother left him with a penetrating sense of despair.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Deluge
Forrest Green crouched over the holographic feed from his wrist terminal as his band of refugees huddled around him. The images tied his stomach into a knot and brought tears to his eyes. The earth groaned and coughed. It heaved and rolled. The slow roar of a shock wave rumbled up the valley toward them, and they grabbed each other for stability. It was here—the earthquake he had predicted finally hit.
In the holograph, the skyscrapers of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento swayed, caught in a hypnotic dance, before they buckled and fell into each other like drunken partners stumbling across a dance floor. Aerial drones buzzed about, broadcasting the devastation to the whole world. California was finally ripping itself apart.
A gasp from Forrest’s wife dragged his gaze away from the horrible scenes. She covered her mouth with her hand, and her face was pale as plaster. She balanced their four-year-old boy, Cedar, on her hip, tears trickling down her cheeks.
This is what he had feared. As a seismographer, he had warned this day was coming—the big one—the earthquake that would topple California’s megacities to the ground. No one had prepared for it, despite his warnings. When the government dismissed his final plea, he packed up his family and, with a few friends, headed for Denver. Their airship had mechanical problems and dropped them in the barren foothills of the Sierra Madre.
So now, they followed the tiny sliver of green that clung to the stream that had once been a great river. They had enough supplies to last a few months. If the water held, they might be able to reach Denver or, if necessary, make a home far from the chaos and death of the cities—far from the sunken symbols of human arrogance now crumbling into a pile of useless rubble.
“Let’s keep going,” Forrest said.
There was no point sitting around blubbering about the devastation. The sun beat down on them with unrelenting fury. Skeletons of dead trees and brush littered the landscape. Forrest struggled to keep his despair at bay. So much had been lost. What real chance did they have at surviving? After several hours more
clambering up the rocky river bed, he called his little band to a halt to rest while he and several men scouted the trail ahead.
They hadn’t gone far when they came across a great oak tree that soared sixty feet into the air. It was a strange thing to see a real tree, especially out here all alone. Its leaves seemed unnaturally bright in the barren wasteland, but he led the men to it, anxious for a respite from the torturing heat. They scrambled up the broken hillside and collapsed in the shade.
Forrest gulped down the warm water from his canteen and peered up at the towering branches overhead. The trunk was at least three-men wide, and branches as wide as a man’s torso forked off in perfect symmetry. Clusters of black acorns filled the tree. Limbs bent under their weight. He peered at the bark, which had a waxy appearance to it—too regular to be natural. What kind of tree was this?
Forrest glanced at the ground and kicked at the dirt. Several acorn clusters had fallen and broken open, spilling tiny glass tubes in the dirt. He bent and lifted one of the tubes. He shook it. Something rattled inside.
“What’s that?” his friend, Tony, asked.
“Don’t know,” he answered.
The men stooped to pick up the tubes.
“What kind of tree is this?” one of them said.
An aftershock growled up the valley, causing the big oak to waver and tremble. A shiver ran up the big trunk, and the branches shook. Dozens of acorns cascaded onto their heads to shatter on the ground causing a black cloud to erupt from the smashed tubes. The men jumped back. The tree shuddered again. The branches swayed, shaking the strange acorns to the ground by the thousands.
“Get back!” Forrest shouted. They scrambled away from the tree as an explosion of shattering glass burst through the air. A dense, black cloud lifted from the tree, hovered, and spread out like a cancer, staining the sky.
One of the men stumbled and fell, clutching at his throat.
