Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  “We’re going to talk. This can be the last time, if you want, but we’re going to talk.”

  “Fine. We can talk inside.”

  “No,” she said. “This time we’re going to talk outside.”

  When she got him over to the stairs, he stopped fighting. He must have realized that she was too strong for him. To resist her any more would just mean that he would hurt himself.

  Up the stairs and out through the heavy door, there was a bench mounted near the side of the building. Corinna led Liam over to it and sat him down on the far side, so she could position herself between him and the door.

  He was even more pale than she had thought. He almost looked like he might burst into flames, being out in the sun.

  “You should see the new puppies we found,” she said.

  “No.”

  “You know, there is more than one way to recover from a broken heart. It has been decades, and you haven’t tried at all.”

  “Is that what this is? You’re going to lecture me about Prince again? I don’t want another dog, Corinna. I’ve already had the best. It would be unfair to get another and hold it to that impossible standard.”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding. “Forgive me. I actually didn’t come here to lecture you. Old habit, I guess.”

  She waited for him to acknowledge her apology.

  “I actually came here to tell you about some strange things that have been happening lately. You know about the fact that electricity doesn’t work down past the Outpost. Now, there are other things.”

  Corinna gave him a brief recap.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” he asked when she was finished.

  “Nothing. I guess I should have led with that so you wouldn’t get so hostile. I don’t expect you to do a thing about it. People are working on these things and they hope to figure out the cause. They don’t want the general public to know about everything yet—no need to cause a panic—but I know you won’t tell anyone.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, then, why? Why tell me if I can’t do anything.”

  She sighed. “Well, if I had to guess, I would say it’s not going to be solved. Nobody has even the beginning of a theory as to what’s happening. This could be the end of safe water to drink. If the electricity problem creeps up here, it will be the end of how we get food. This could be the last few years of life as we know it. In a decade, there might be nothing but foraging in loincloths, you know? Or, if the water ends up poisonous, we might all be dead in a month.”

  Liam shrugged.

  “I know—you don’t care. But some part of you does care. If you had really given up, you would have found a more permanent solution, and I know that you would never do that.”

  He glanced at her when he took her meaning. For a second, she regretted her choice of words. She hated to think that she might have accidentally endorsed a thought that was germinating in his head.

  “Look,” she said. She reached over and took his hand. It was a gesture that he used to hate. Now, he gave his hand freely. “This could be it. That’s all I’m saying. This isn’t like when we hid from the skies. This isn’t the same as when we fought against the Origin. There’s no enemy this time. The world is just changing, and it might mean that we no longer have a place in it. I wanted you to know.”

  “You’re not responsible for me anymore,” he said, naming her precise fear. There was some responsibility for him left in her though. There always would be. She acknowledged that.

  Corinna sighed.

  “Go see the puppies. They’re at Jackson’s house. He could probably use some help with them.”

  Liam nodded.

  She stood up and left him there. If nothing else, she had coaxed him out under the open sky. That alone was an accomplishment.

  Chapter 37: Brad

  “Call it giving up, or giving in, or giving out, or giving down,” Brad said. He fought to control the anger that was catching fire in his voice. “Call it whatever you like. Some weird science shit starts to happen and you throw up your hands and walk away? That’s bullshit. This could threaten our survival. You can’t just turn your back on it, Robby. Think of your kids.”

  Robby looked through the window. For a moment, Brad thought that he was going to ignore him. Then, hope fluttered in Brad’s chest as he thought that maybe Robby was disappearing into one of his trances. It hadn’t happened in a while, but they hadn’t faced such a perplexing problem in a while. When Robby woke up, he always supplied the right answer. If that was the…

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Robby said, interrupting Brad’s hope.

  “Then, what?”

  “He’s saying that science isn’t the answer,” Sariah said. “You can’t use logic to solve an illogical problem. You can’t even frame it as a problem.”

  Robby shook his head. “No, I’m not saying that either.”

  The room fell silent.

  Mike pulled up one of his legs atop the other. Everyone looked at Robby, waiting for him to formulate into words whatever thoughts were tumbling in his head.

  Robby looked up to the ceiling before he spoke.

  “The jungle doesn’t support electricity, but people cross into the jungle and they’re fine. The plants live next to water that doesn’t behave like water, and they thrive.”

  “So, none of this matters?” Brad asked.

  “Perhaps,” Robby said, “we should be prepared to go back to living in a preindustrial society. That may be our only recourse.”

  “Not just preindustrial,” Brad said. “Back farther than that. If water won’t boil, what if food won’t cook? We could be back to eating only raw food.”

  “No,” Mike said. “We can’t live like that. People don’t have the digestive system to process raw meat. We’ll only have plants, and many of those aren’t really digestible without cooking. Potatoes and corn are pretty much useless, right? The things we can store to make it through the winter pretty much have to be cooked.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Robby said. “We need to get ready. We need to prepare ourselves for the worst.”

  “Before winter,” Brad said.

  Robby nodded. “Yes.”

  “How?” Brad asked.

  “We take every precaution and treat this like a storm. A good first step would be to find somewhere safe underground where we can hide.”

  After dismantling the experiment, they had all gone to Carrie’s house for an informal meeting. Carrie paced while they explained what they had found.

  “I don’t understand,” Carrie said. “So far, the strange things that we’ve seen have been isolated to one area or another. Why wouldn’t we just move away from the problem areas? We can pull people back from the Outpost. We can stop ranging up north. There is nothing but space.”

  “We have to be prepared,” Brad said. It was Robby’s argument, but Brad was beginning to believe it. “If those things can happen at the fringe of our settled areas, then what’s to say they can’t happen here?”

  Carrie folded her arms and stopped. She looked like she was about to say something and then she stopped herself. “No, I guess you’re right. Besides, if we pull people back from the Outpost, then we’re violating one of our core ideals.”

  “Right,” Robby said. “And, to whatever extent we can, I would recommend that we maintain our different settlements. Consolidating everyone in one spot increases risk.”

  “What do you mean, to whatever extent we can? If we’re not going to try to move away from these strange areas, then what would stop us from maintaining the different spots where we live?”

  “Food,” Mike said, “for example. If it gets to the point where we can’t truck around supplies, then we have to live near the biggest sources of food.”

  “We have farms everywhere,” Carrie said.

  “Our farms here rely heavily on combustion engines,” Mike said.

  Carrie’s eyes seemed to focus
on something in the far distance—something well beyond the walls of her living room.

  “And you’re thinking that engines won’t work here, the same way they don’t work in the jungle.”

  “Maybe,” Robby said. “The point is that we don’t know for sure.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “We nudge people in the direction of producing food that can be eaten raw and stored for long periods of time without power,” Brad said.

  “And we start pumping as much potable water as we can into storage,” Mike said.

  “Get me a list,” Carrie said. “You folks put together a list and I’ll call a meeting to take place at three this afternoon. We should conference in the other settlements as well.”

  “I’ll set up the link,” Brad said.

  “And we scout for shelter,” Robby said.

  Carrie looked at him for a moment. “Someone needs to find Merle.”

  Chapter 38: Liam

  Liam made it about halfway to Jackson’s house before he threw down his bicycle and ran to the doorway of a house. He stood under the front porch and tried to catch his breath. Over the pounding of his own heart, he could barely hear a thing.

  Leaning out, he peeked up at the sky.

  It was a blue dome, dotted with fluffy clouds. There was nothing wrong at all, as far as he could tell. He didn’t trust it. Anything at all could be up there.

  Liam pressed himself against the wall of the house and closed his eyes.

  Corinna’s advice echoed in his ears.

  “The disease is inside of you,” she had said one time. “You keep looking for it in the world, but it’s here, in your head.”

  In a way, that was even worse. Knowing that the monsters traveled around with him, only made things worse. Somehow, he always forgot the next part of what she had said.

  “And there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  She was wrong about that. At one point in the past, plenty of people had walked around without a care in the world and they had been snatched away. They had left behind friends and family and they had never been seen again. That was something to be afraid of.

  Liam’s eyes snapped open with a new realization.

  “So have I,” he whispered to himself. “I left behind all my friends and family already.”

  The idea started an argument in his head. They had all left him. Some were snatched and some had died, but all the people he cared about in the world had left him behind. It wasn’t true. Corinna had been just like a mother, or at the very least an older sister, and she had never given up visiting.

  “Fuck it,” Liam said. He pushed away from the house and didn’t glance up as he crossed out under the open sky. His eyes stayed locked on the bike as he swished through the brush, back to the street.

  His heart was pounding, but he ignored it as he picked up his bike and climbed back aboard.

  Jackson’s house looked like an oasis when Liam finally saw it in the distance. It was painted and clean compared the neighboring houses. The yard was filled with colorful flowers. Parking his bike next to the fence, Liam straightened his shirt and took a deep breath before he knocked.

  “Second!” a voice called from deep in the house. A moment later, Liam heard a dog bark. It was a high-pitched bark. Liam remembered the resounding boom that had been Prince’s voice. He almost had time to turn away from the door before it opened.

  “Hey, man, come on in,” Jackson said.

  He practically pulled Liam through the door. Before he could even respond, Jackson was racing through the kitchen to disappear through the door on the far wall.

  “Come on, quick,” Jackson said. “I don’t want them to get out. The kitchen is not puppy proof.”

  Liam had no choice but to rush after. Pushing through the doorway, Liam forgot to be worried. Jackson was crouched next to what must have been the mother of the pups. He was holding her even though she didn’t seem worried at all. The way that Corinna had described the situation, the mother was half wild and was only getting used to the idea of human interaction. It hardly seemed accurate. She looked perfectly comfortable in Jackson’s arms even though her brood was advancing on Liam fast with tiny wagging tails.

  They were a curious bunch and every one of them seemed to be smiling with their open, panting mouths as they bounded toward him.

  “Be careful,” Jackson said, laughing. “They’re fierce.”

  Liam dropped to his knees as they got to him. The puppies climbed over each other to sniff at him. Jackson let go of the mother and she trotted over to finish the inspection by sniffing his face and neck. Liam’s hands poured over the puppies. Some licked and others nibbled at his fingers as he touched their silky fur.

  “She likes the treats on the shelf behind you,” Jackson said.

  Her ears perked up when Liam reached up and opened the plastic tub. She sniffed around the lid as he pulled out a piece of jerky. When he handed it to her, the mom took the treat to the corner of the room to chew it in peace. One of the puppies chased after her and then changed his mind and came back to the others.

  “She’s not wild. Corinna said she was wild,” Liam said.

  “I don’t know. She bit me last night, but she did come around awful fast. You remember Stephanie’s dog?”

  Liam shook his head and then smiled down at the puppies again. They were trying to climb up his folded legs.

  “She looks quite a bit like Stephanie’s old dog, Champ. I’m wondering if she was one of the lost ones. If so, I don’t know how she got all the way down to Albany.”

  Liam looked up as Jackson moved toward the door.

  “Watch them for a minute? I haven’t been able to leave them alone since they got up. They get into everything.”

  Jackson was pushing through the door when one of the puppies jumped up and crashed into Liam’s chin.

  “Ooof! You’re a jumper,” Liam said, catching the puppy. Jackson muttered something in the other room, but Liam didn’t catch it.

  The puppies couldn’t contain themselves and their energy was infectious. Within a few seconds, they were jumping over each other and launching themselves at Liam’s face. He laughed and cried out as he fell backwards from their adorable attack. Soon, he was covered in pups. When one stuck a cold nose into his armpit, his arm moved by reflex, slamming against his side. The puppy squealed in pain and all the puppies scattered.

  Liam sat up, opening his eyes. They were all gone.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered to himself.

  Liam glanced over at the mother dog. She was still in the corner, avidly chewing on her piece of jerky. Liam pushed himself up to his knees.

  Across the room, he saw a pair of paws poke up over the edge of the whelping box. A little nose followed.

  Liam stood up and crossed the room slowly, tilting his head.

  They were all in there. In an instant, all the puppies had panicked and retreated back to their box. Liam approached slowly and lowered himself to the floor next to the box. He glanced back at the mother. She was still unconcerned with anything except the jerky that was between her paws. The dog had apparently decided that Liam was trustworthy.

  He reached out and found the dog that he had inadvertently squished. The puppy was shy for a moment and allowed itself to be picked up. Liam apologized as he hugged the puppy to his chest and stroked its back. He sat on the floor and while his attention was on the sweet puppy in his arms, the others regained their confidence and began to tumble out from the box again. It was funny the way that they jumped and then flipped over the edge. They were uncoordinated but they all seemed to land very softly on the ground.

  Liam closed his eyes and whispered to the puppy as he stroked it. If he was somehow able to take one of them home, it would have been that one. She was mostly brown, but had a pretty white streak that started on her chest and ran down to her belly. The tips of her ears and the ends of her toes were also white.

  She licked his chin.

  Chapter 39:
Ashley

  They fought their way back up the bank, toward the tents. The slope turned to mud with the rain and it was slippery as hell. Tim could barely keep his feet under him. Lisa was the first to realize where the fish were coming from.

  “They’re buried, Ashley,” Lisa yelled over the thundering rain. “The water is bringing them up.”

  She was right. The muddy ground, as it became saturated with falling water, was wriggling with fish. When they came up from below, they bit anything they could get their teeth around. The first time that Tim slipped, he barely jerked back his hand in time to avoid losing a finger.

  Penny barked at the fish. Tim yelled for her to climb up.

  There seemed to be fewer fish higher from the river’s edge.

  Ashley led the way, climbing and pulling at Tim’s arm to help him up the slope. Lisa brought up the rear, pushing as she climbed. Penny bounded ahead with a giant fish in her mouth. The smashed back of the fish looked familiar. It was the one that Ashley had hit with her stick.

  “A little farther,” Ashley yelled when Tim started to slip again.

  At the top of the hill, on the flat spot at the edge of the woods, their purple rain fly was strung up in the trees above their campfire. The fire was smoking, but still lit. Lisa was supporting Tim as he limped toward the tents, so Ashley ran ahead. She moved their pile of wood closer to the center of the tarp, so it wouldn’t get wet from the driving rain.

  Lisa deposited Tim next to the fire and then disappeared into the tent.

  “How’s your foot?” Ashley asked.

  Tim gave her a worried shrug. Ashley and Penny hovered over him as he untied his muddy shoe and slipped it off. The shoe had taken the worst of the bite. There was a bunch of blood, but only a few small punctures in his foot. Lisa returned with ointment and bandages. Ashley stoked the fire for more heat and light.

  “Catfish do that, right?” Ashley asked. “They bury themselves in mud and then come up when it rains?”

  “Yes, but in this case there was plenty of water just a few feet away,” Tim said. “This was more like an ambush.”