by Mark Alpert
The blast wave battered them. It whooshed over their prone bodies and pounded their skulls. But the mausoleum’s doors had started to close behind them, and the thick iron slabs absorbed most of the blast. Bits of shrapnel rocketed through the gap between the doors—Jenna heard them whiz though the air—but they passed over the back of her head and struck the grass farther away. They would’ve killed her if she’d been standing up.
Ears ringing, Jenna lifted her face from the grass. The fall had knocked the wind out of her, and the air was hot and sulfurous. She struggled to breathe, hacking and wheezing.
Hector also lay facedown in the grass, four feet to her right. He raised his head and shook it, cursing in Spanish. Jenna didn’t see Derek, though. He’d shoved her and Hector out of the mausoleum and saved their lives, probably acting on pure instinct, his enhanced nerves and muscles springing into action. It was automatic, a genetically programmed reflex, which explained why he’d saved Hector even though he hated the gangbanger. But where the hell was Derek now? He wasn’t anywhere nearby. He’d vanished.
Then Jenna lifted her head a little more and looked over her shoulder. Derek stood by the corner of the mausoleum, leaning against its granite façade, half-hidden by one of the fluted columns. He held his pistol with both hands, in ambush mode, waiting to shoot someone. And a moment later, his target came sprinting around the corner, a big white FSU officer with a blond buzz cut and an assault rifle.
It was the Angel of Death. Now Jenna saw him up close, in body armor and a black uniform.
Derek stepped forward and pointed his gun at the man, but he didn’t fire. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, his bloody eyes narrowing. He recognized his target. Shock and disgust contorted his face.
An instant later, he curled his lip and pulled the trigger. But the hesitation was enough to save the FSU officer. He skidded on the grass and dodged out of the bullet’s path. Then he spun around and ran for cover.
Derek took another step forward, arms outstretched, adjusting his aim. He yelled “FRAZIER!” in a harsh commanding voice, like an army drill sergeant yelling at one of his soldiers. Then he fired his gun three more times.
All three shots missed. The cop named Frazier jinked wildly across the grass, leaping and swerving like an acrobat, moving faster than Jenna’s eyes could follow. He zigzagged away from the mausoleum and dove behind the massive pedestal of a stone obelisk. Within a second, though, he reappeared at the edge of the pedestal and started firing his rifle. Derek ducked for cover behind the bronze statue of the Roman goddess.
Hector crawled a few feet away and retrieved the shotgun he’d dropped in the grass. Then he crept back to Jenna. “Follow me, chica! Stay low!”
That was all the encouragement she needed. She scrambled as fast as she could on her hands and knees, trying to get away from the battle. Derek and the Federal Service cowboy weren’t the only gunmen in the cemetery; there were another twenty FSU officers running past the Higgins mausoleum, charging into a firefight with Hector’s Latin Kings. The cops looped to the north of the mausoleum, maneuvering around the gangbangers to shoot them from behind. So Hector led Jenna in the opposite direction.
Bending low, they scuttled along the mausoleum’s southern wall. The gunshots echoed everywhere, bouncing against the cemetery’s hills and all the stone pillars and obelisks and monuments. The noises crackled in Jenna’s ears, loud and terrifying, but she kept her head down and followed Hector. They passed the mausoleum and sprinted downhill past rows and rows of gravestones. Then Hector turned around and pulled her behind a monument that was big enough to shield both of them.
Jenna crouched beside the stone block, panting, desperately trying to catch her breath. But Hector was in better shape. He calmly opened his shotgun, checked the shells inside, then snapped it closed.
“You’re on your own now, chica.” He pointed farther downhill at an asphalt path that ran between the cemetery lots. “Keep running that way until you get to Hillside. You can’t miss it, it’s the biggest mausoleum in the cemetery. Then turn left and climb over the fence and get the fuck out of here.”
“Wait, what about you? Where are you going?”
“I gotta go back there and help my muchachos.” He looked over his shoulder. “The cops are chasing them and shooting them down. But I’m gonna sneak up behind them. Maybe I can even get a shot at the cowboy.”
Jenna frowned. Hector didn’t have a prayer. But she kept her doubts to herself. She owed the man. “Thanks for taking me this far.”
“Hey, it’s like I told you. I’m polite.” He grinned at her again. Then he reached for his black-and-gold bead necklace, pulled it over his head, and offered it to her. “Take this, okay? If you show it to any Latin King, he’ll know it’s from me. And he’ll do anything you ask him to.”
She took the necklace and put it on, tucking it under her nightshirt. “I’ll do that. Good luck, Hector.”
He raised his right hand and did his gang sign again, but this time he brought his hand close to his face and kissed his outstretched thumb. “Amor De Rey!” Then he spun away from her and dashed uphill, heading back to the gun battle.
Jenna stayed crouched behind the monument for a few seconds, waiting to see if anyone fired at Hector. But no one did, so she guessed the coast was clear. She took a deep breath and continued running downhill.
In half a minute she reached the asphalt path and raced across another field of gravestones. This was the plainer, poorer section of the cemetery, the lots for people who couldn’t afford mausoleums or obelisks. The grass was knee-high here, and the headstones were low and worn-down. Jenna had to keep her eyes on the ground, or else she’d trip over one of the grave markers and break her neck. She could still hear the battle, but the gunshots were dulled and muffled, like distant thunder.
After another minute, she stopped and dared to take a look behind her. There weren’t many trees in this section, so she had a clear view of the cemetery grounds for hundreds of yards in every direction. To her relief, no one was following her. The graveyard she’d just crossed was empty and still. The tall grass gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.
Jenna laughed. Her relief turned into a stronger emotion, a euphoria that swelled inside her chest and spread all the way down to her toes. She was free! She wasn’t anyone’s prisoner now. She could make her own plans instead of following Derek’s, and as she gazed across the empty graveyard she began to map out her strategy. Her first goal, of course, was to find her father and brother. And once they were safe, she would figure out a way to stop the Palindrome Project.
But then she saw a cloud of black smoke erupt at the far edge of the grassy field, a quarter mile away. A second later, she heard the explosion, which was just as powerful as the blast inside the Higgins mausoleum.
Then she spotted Derek. He raced past the black cloud, a giant figure in a gray T-shirt, like a football player on a high-intensity training run, doing wind sprints to get ready for the next big game. Another smoke cloud erupted several yards to his left, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t stumble. The Angel of Death was firing grenades at him, showering the field with explosions, but Derek didn’t change course or slow down. He saw Jenna at the other end of the graveyard and headed straight for her.
She turned around and ran.
* * *
Hector was right about the Hillside Mausoleum. It was huge.
Jenna saw the back of the building as she came barreling down the hill, running faster than she’d ever run in her life. The mausoleum had been built into the steepest part of the slope; the front of the building rose five stories above the base of the hill, but only the top floor stood above the ground behind it. The building was long too, with newer sections extending the structure hundreds of feet to Jenna’s left and right. It curved slightly to match the contour of the hill, like a bumper curving around the front of a car.
She looked to the left, trying to figure out the shortest route to the cemetery’s fence, but she knew righ
t away it wasn’t short enough. Derek was only a hundred yards behind her. He had no gun in his hand—he must’ve run out of bullets—but he would definitely run her down before she could reach the fence. Or the cop named Frazier would blast her to smithereens. He was still firing his grenades at Derek, and the explosions were cratering the cemetery grounds.
Jenna’s stomach clenched, but she kept running. Her only chance of escaping Derek was to go inside the Hillside Mausoleum and try to lose him. So she sped toward the back of the building, heading for its newest section. It was a modern structure, newer than almost everything else in the cemetery, and it was sheathed in glass like a greenhouse. She quickly surveyed the whole thing, wondering how she could break inside. Should she hurl a rock at one of the big glass panes? Or maybe throw herself at the glass? It might slice her to pieces, but at this point she was willing to risk it. She’d rather die than go back to being Derek’s prisoner.
But she didn’t have to break inside. There was a glass door at the back of the mausoleum, and to Jenna’s surprise it wasn’t locked. She swung it open and dashed into the building and started looking for a place to hide.
She found herself on the highest floor of an airy, empty atrium. There were glass panes overhead and at the front of the building too, giving her a panoramic view of the southern half of the cemetery. Gray tiles covered each floor of the atrium, and at its center was a free-standing stairway that went down to the building’s lower levels. To Jenna’s left and right were walls of polished gray marble, each divided into a grid of three-foot-wide squares. And each marble square was marked with a chiseled name and a pair of dates.
She was already nauseous from running so hard, but now she felt dizzy. Each square was a crypt, a sealed chamber for a casket. She was surrounded by hundreds of them. But she gritted her teeth and suppressed her queasiness. There was no time for it.
She craned her neck, looking for a way out of the atrium. There were too many windows here. She could see Derek through the glass behind her, charging toward the back of the mausoleum, less than fifty yards away.
Then she turned left and spotted a passageway leading to another part of the mausoleum. She rushed past more crypts and a planter full of silk flowers and a pair of empty armchairs intended for mourners. In a couple of seconds she entered an older section of the building that had fewer windows, thank God. This section had its own atrium and stairway, and Jenna hurtled down the steps, racing toward the lower floors. If she could find a good place to hide, she might be able to slip away from Derek. He didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to look for her, because Officer Frazier was chasing him.
But before she could make it down to the fourth floor, she heard rapid footsteps echoing across the mausoleum. Derek was inside. He’d entered the building through the same door Jenna had used. He was just seconds behind her. Her plan was falling apart.
Then an enormous blast shook the building. The stairway vibrated under Jenna’s feet, and she heard a cacophony of breaking glass, dozens of windows shattering at once and thousands of shards smashing against the marble. She crouched on the steps and covered her head, bracing herself for the lethal cascade.
But none of the shards rained down on her. She looked up and saw that the older section of the mausoleum was undamaged. Officer Frazier must’ve fired one of his grenades at the building, and luckily for her, it had struck the newer section, which she had just left and Derek had just entered.
Jenna raised her head and listened carefully. She waited to hear Derek’s footsteps again, or maybe a groan of pain. But she heard nothing.
Is he hurt? Dead?
She told herself it didn’t matter. Derek was a monster. He’d killed Keith the homeless guy and Keating the Times reporter, and he’d come very close to killing Hector too. He’d kidnapped Jenna and threatened to shoot her and stopped her from looking for her father and brother. He’d made it very clear that all he cared about was himself and that he would annihilate anyone who got in his way.
And yet Jenna couldn’t help but think that she owed him something. Derek had rescued her from the FSU. And he’d saved her life three times over the past twenty-four hours. Although he had selfish reasons for keeping her alive, she still felt grateful. And now that he was hurt—and maybe dying—it seemed contemptible to desert him. She couldn’t just run away and let him die.
Warily, she climbed back up to the top floor. This was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but she couldn’t stop herself. She approached the passageway and poked her head around the corner and peered at the section of the mausoleum where the grenade had exploded.
The blast had shattered all the windows at the back of the building and most of the overhead panes too. There were big piles of glass shards all over the tiled floor and the stairway. The biggest pile was at the other end of the passageway, next to the planter brimming with silk flowers. The shards in this pile were still sliding and settling, because Derek lay underneath them.
His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. His lungs still made their awful rattle, now magnified by the emptiness of the mausoleum. But he didn’t try to sit up or sweep the glass shards off his body. That was a bad sign.
Jenna took a step forward, just one. Maybe he was faking it. “Derek? Can you hear me?”
No response. A couple of shards slid off his chest and clinked against each other. Jenna took another step forward, then another, tiptoeing down the passageway. When she looked at Derek again, she saw a dark puddle spreading underneath him, creeping across the floor. He was bleeding to death.
“Derek!”
She ran the rest of the way toward him, the glass crunching under the sneakers he’d given her. A jagged shard the size of a notebook stuck out of his left side, just above the waistband of his pants. Blood gushed in pulses from the wound, in time with his heartbeat.
Jenna kicked some of the glass away from his body and knelt beside him. She knew she shouldn’t try to pull the shard out of his waist, because that might make the bleeding worse, but should she apply pressure to the wound? Or would that joggle the piece of glass and cause more damage? She was confused, desperate. Although she’d studied genetics and brain physiology for years, she’d never had any training in first aid.
“Derek!” She yelled right into his face. “What should I do?”
He opened his bloody eyes. Smaller bits of glass were embedded in his scalp. His lips trembled, trying to form a word. It came out as a whisper.
“Go.”
“You had first-aid training in the army, right? You gotta tell me what—”
“Go!” The word boomed out of him now. Fresh trails of blood leaked from his eyes. “Get out of here!”
Jenna shook her head. “Are you crazy? You’re gonna bleed to death unless—”
“Don’t worry about me! I’ll be all right!”
That was ridiculous. Derek was far from all right. The pool of blood underneath him was six feet wide. It soaked the knees of Jenna’s sweatpants. She stopped arguing with him and tried to think, but it was like trying to grip the air. She clenched her hands in frustration and smacked them against her thighs.
Then she heard something behind her. The sound of glass crunching under someone’s boots.
She jumped to her feet and spun around. Officer Frazier had snuck up behind them. He pointed his assault rifle at Derek, holding it with one hand, but his eyes were on her. He stretched his mouth into a broad, shit-eating grin.
“You little bitch.”
He seemed amused. His eyes were bright blue and glittering. His face was sweaty and flushed, and his body armor was spotted with dirt and blood, but he wasn’t breathing hard. He was enjoying himself.
Frazier leapt toward her, grabbed the collar of her nightshirt, and yanked her away from Derek. He did it all in one blindingly fast motion, so sudden that it felt like God Himself had hauled her across the floor. Now they stood by the wall, next to the marble crypts. He pulled her close, bunching her nightshirt i
n his fist. “You thought you were smarter than me, didn’t you? You thought I was a stupid goddamn redneck and you were the smartest little bitch in the world.”
He looked down at her, openmouthed, breathing on her. Jenna squirmed, trying to back away, but he yanked her even closer, forcing her to look at him. And that was the worst part, that’s what made her tremble and panic. At first glance, Frazier’s face looked normal, even handsome—strong chin, straight nose—but up close she saw that his skin was unnaturally smooth, like the skin of a balloon. It was unnerving, alien. Like Derek, he wasn’t homo sapiens anymore. He belonged to a different species, a new kind of predator, designed to kill humans.
He tugged so hard on her nightshirt that it started to rip at the back. She had to do something fast, say something that would stop him. “Look, I know what happened to you. You were in the Palindrome test. They gave you injections, right?”
Frazier tilted his head and looked askance at her. “So you’re still playing games? You still think I’m stupid?”
“They injected you with CRISPR to modify your genes.” Jenna kept going, racing to make her point. “But the procedure was flawed. CRISPR made more changes to your DNA than anyone intended. Random changes that are messing up your metabolism and breaking down your body. So far, you haven’t suffered as much damage as Derek has, but eventually those genetic changes will kill you.”
His smile ebbed. Anger flared in his eyes. “You’re lying. Just like you lied before.” He lowered his inhuman face, bringing it within inches of Jenna’s. “Remember how you lied to me? At the emergency room in Springfield?”
“Springfield? What—”
“You lied right through your teeth, you and all the other nurses at the hospital. You said it wasn’t a medical emergency.” Spittle flew from his mouth and pasted her cheeks. “And because it wasn’t an emergency, you said we needed to pay up front. But you knew we couldn’t pay. So we had to go back to the public hospital in Cassville instead.”