“I’d be happy to drive you and give you support,” Josh said.
“I just don’t think I can . . . ,” the young woman said.
“I know you don’t intend to be selfish,” Josh said. “But that’s exactly what it is. The Earth can’t sustain more. She’s past her limits.”
Lyndon shifted and noticed the woman’s protruding stomach. She had to be at least seven months pregnant. Heat rose up through his chest, a kind of anger he’d never felt before. His body tightened. It took everything in him to remain under control. He looked at Kadance, and she gave him the slightest shake of her head.
“We didn’t mean to,” the woman said. “I was on birth control. But Tom and I have talked about it and decided to keep her.”
Josh sighed and then pressed his lips together. “Do you know what the biggest lie is we’ve been fed our whole lives?”
She shook her head.
“That all human life is innately valuable.”
Lyndon shifted, but stopped when Kadance met his gaze. The only reason he stopped was because he trusted she would take care of this.
The woman’s eyes glistened with tears.
“All you see is this little thing that vaguely resembles a baby. But it’s really just a, well, kind of a parasite. You’re seeing what it might maybe be someday, not what it really is right now, just a cluster of cells feeding off you.”
Kadance glanced around at the emptying room. Lyndon nodded goodbye to the two men with whom he’d been talking. Only a few people plus the blonde, who was now cleaning up, remained.
The woman rested her hands on her stomach protectively. “She’s my baby.” Tears fell down her cheeks. “I just . . . can’t . . .”
Josh shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Elizabeth. You’re being selfish. It’s disgusting, one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Kadance shoved Josh against the wall and held her knife to his throat. “Why don’t you try torturing me for a while instead.”
twenty-four
FROZEN AGAINST THE WALL, Josh looked down with just his eyes to where the knife was starting to draw blood.
“Hey!” One of the two men left in the room barreled toward Kadance.
Lyndon stepped into his path and drove his fist into the man’s nose. The man’s back thumped against the floor, and he held his hands to his nose. Blood seeped out from between his fingers. “Back off,” Lyndon growled.
The other man took a step toward him. Lyndon made eye contact, and the man stopped.
Lyndon stood in the way, protecting Kadance so she could focus on educating Josh.
“If you contact Elizabeth, if you even look at her again, I will come after you,” Kadance said in a voice that was calm and level and yet laced with a threat more intense than the knife on Josh’s throat.
Kadance’s tone changed to become more businesslike. “Elizabeth, please leave and don’t associate with this person again.”
Lyndon heard Elizabeth’s footsteps, and then she walked by him toward the door. She paused, looked back at Kadance, and whispered, “Thank you.”
“Take good care of your daughter,” Lyndon said.
Elizabeth set her hands on her stomach. “I will.” She opened the door and bolted out. He heard her hurried footsteps down the hall.
“Now,” Kadance said, “I’m not going to kill you. I’ve had enough of that in my life.”
The one man still standing shifted toward the door and slid out.
“But I want you to remember this little lesson,” Kadance continued. “Convincing mothers to kill their babies gives you some psychopathic high, a sense of power. Now, every time you think about that sense of power, I want you to remember this moment. Right now. This blade on your skin, mere seconds from severing major arteries and killing you. It’s a pretty distinct feeling, right?”
Quiet.
“Right?”
Josh whimpered, “Yes.”
“Good. Now take a moment to replace that sense of power with this feeling of powerlessness and terror. This is what you need to remember, this right here.”
There was a sound of fabric shifting against the wall. Lyndon didn’t turn to look but guessed Kadance had pushed the knife harder against his neck or perhaps shifted it up, making Josh stand on his toes.
“Are you feeling the terror adequately?”
Josh whined. “Yes, yes.”
“Good.” Kadance lowered her voice, a dangerous sound Lyndon hadn’t imagined even her capable of. “If you do something like that again, I will find out.” She paused. “And I will come back and kill you.”
Quiet.
Kadance’s voice resumed its calm tone. “Do you believe me?”
Josh barely got any sound out. “Yes.”
“Excellent. Now that we’ve taken care of that bit of business, back to the reason we’re here.”
That same sound of fabric shifting against the wall. Lyndon guessed she’d taken the knife away from his neck, and he slid back down from his toes.
“Let’s hear that origin story of VPE,” Kadance said.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Josh stammered. “I read a blog, and it spoke to me, so I started teaching it.”
“What blog?”
“I don’t know. It was taken down.”
There was a tinging sound, probably Kadance tapping the tip of the blade against the table. “I realize you don’t know me very well,” Kadance said. “But I think we’ve had a moment today, don’t you think? I think you understand exactly what will happen if you lie to me.”
“She’ll kill me.”
“Think about this for a moment.” The tinging sound again. “Who do you think is the most immediate threat?”
A pause.
She continued tapping the blade.
“It’s VPE.extinction.com.”
The man on the floor in front of Lyndon crawled toward the door. Once he was out, Lyndon locked the door. The only people in the room now were Kadance, Josh, the blonde, and him. He stood in front of the door and crossed his arms.
“What else can you tell me?” Kadance asked.
“She gives us direction on what to teach. It’s in the mail. I don’t know who she is.”
“Let’s see some of this mail.”
“We have to burn it.” Blood dripped down Josh’s neck onto the collar of his T-shirt.
“You say ‘we.’ How many teachers are there?”
“I don’t know. We get directions. That’s it.”
“How did she choose you?”
“There was a test on the website. An aptitude thing. She said I’m a perfect leader.”
“How did you recognize the name James?”
“He came through here once. Said he was checking up on all the teachers. He didn’t say anything else. He came to one meeting—that’s all.”
“How do you know she’s female?”
Josh glanced at the blonde on the other side of the room. “Stacey figured it out. She said it was a couple of things she said. It’s in her phrasing.”
Kadance smiled at the blonde. “Very good. What exact phrases?”
The blonde’s voice shook. “I don’t remember all of them. There were only a couple.”
“What do you remember?”
“In the last letter, she said something about her ‘dear son.’ That’s a way a woman would phrase it.”
Son?
“When was this, and what did she say about her ‘dear son’?”
“A few days ago. She said he would be a leader.”
“Be a leader of what?”
The blonde shook her head. “She didn’t say. She’s always really cryptic. I don’t understand half of what she writes.”
What Lyndon wouldn’t do to get a copy of one of those letters.
“How does she sign the letters?”
“VPE.”
“Thank you very much.” Kadance tapped the knife against the table once more, and Josh flinched.
&nbs
p; Kadance turned and sheathed her knife while walking toward Lyndon. Lyndon carefully watched the two, made sure they stayed put.
“Do you have any questions?” Kadance asked Lyndon.
“I think you covered it.” Though he had some questions to ask her. He opened the door for her.
She started to step through but then paused and looked back at the blonde. She nodded toward Lyndon. “This is the kind of man you should be looking for. Someone who’s strong enough not to have to be in control all the time.”
The blonde looked at Lyndon. He didn’t understand her expression, though he’d seen expressions like that on women’s faces before. Kadance walked out, and he followed her.
They got in the car, and she started the engine.
“We should avoid libraries,” Lyndon said. “Too many cameras.”
“I have an idea.” She reached back and grabbed a towel from the back seat and then opened the bottle of water in the console and dampened the towel. “But first, give me your hand.”
He glanced down at his right knuckles, at the blood from the man he’d punched. He hesitated to let her touch him, but he didn’t want to let on how difficult her touch was becoming for him. He set his hand on the armrest between them.
She held his hand and gently started wiping the dried blood off his skin. Though her skin wasn’t as soft as some women’s, her hands were still slender and lovely, graceful. Knowing how dangerous her hands could be made her gentleness feel all that much more special.
“You punched him just once, right?” she asked.
He just nodded.
“It was some punch. There’s a lot of blood. All I heard was the smack of flesh and then his back hitting the floor.” She smiled at him, an actual smile. “I’m impressed.”
He didn’t let himself respond.
She turned her gaze back down to his hand. “Thank you for having my back.”
“I always will.”
Her voice quieted. “I know.”
They were quiet while she finished cleaning all the blood off his hand. It’d gotten into all the crevices of his battered knuckles. His grandfather had trained him on a canvas punching bag since he was little, and he’d kept up with it throughout his life.
Once she finished, she folded the towel and set it in the back seat next to Mac. She put the car in drive.
A short while later, she parked at a big box electronics store and took some cash out of her bag. “You should stay here. We need to keep your face off cameras as much as possible.”
“She might be watching for you too.”
“It’s a lot less likely.” She walked toward the store.
Lyndon waited. He didn’t like her being alone with such an unpredictable opponent out there. But she came back only about ten minutes later with a bag in hand.
She got in, handed him the bag, and started driving. “I figured you’d know how to make it work.”
He took a phone with a good-sized screen out of the bag. They had agreed to be as frugal as possible in case cash was needed at some point, but he agreed they had to have some kind of connection to the internet, and libraries were not safe.
“I bought prepaid talk and internet. No one should be able to trace it.” She glanced over as he opened the box. “You can figure out how to set it up, right?”
He smirked and quickly began configuring the device.
“We should’ve gotten a second phone, something simple, so we can communicate if we separate,” he said.
“I don’t plan on leaving you alone.”
He held back his frustration. He kept trying to think of ways to keep her safe, but she seemed bent on being the front line. He’d just have to find ways to protect her, even when she worked against it.
She kept driving north. Once he had the phone set up, he typed in the website address they’d gotten from Josh.
“What’s it say?” She glanced over.
“There’s basically a mission statement, a bunch of rules, and a test.”
“Too much to ask for a bio of the leader?”
“If only people were so helpful. The letter V has come up a couple of times, though. I wonder if that is actually part of her name. Could be why she specifically said Dr. Pearce had never known her real name. He had actually known it, and she wanted to throw us off.”
“What’s the mission statement?”
“It’s several thousand words. It basically comes down to we owe Mother Earth our lives, we’re selfish creatures taking her life from her, all human life it not innately valuable, only sociopaths kill their mothers. Basically all of Josh’s talking points but expounded upon ad nauseum.”
“Does she explain her logic behind all human life not being innately valuable?”
“She touches on several points—the existence of sociopaths, murderers, sexual predators, child abusers, human traffickers. Then she makes a point that life doesn’t really start until one chooses to do right, which I think is the most dangerous idea in this whole thing.”
“When she says ‘do right,’ she really means live like she says and agree with her ideals?”
“Yes. So, she’s basically saying anyone who disagrees with her is not human.”
“And therefore not worthy of mercy. Not worthy of life at all.”
“She then takes that point and moves on to say preborn children aren’t sentient beings and therefore aren’t valuable life.”
“They’re parasites like Josh said.”
“Yes.”
She gripped the steering wheel until her hands shook.
Lyndon wanted to touch her hand or her arm and try to soothe her, but he didn’t trust himself to touch her. Being close to her was becoming more and more difficult. He was quiet while she controlled her anger.
“What about this son she talked about in her last letter?” Kadance asked.
“He’s not mentioned. In fact, from this, I get the impression she doesn’t have children.”
“That would seem to fit her ideals better. Do you think it could be someone else, someone she’s kind of adopted and molded?”
“I think that’s a good possibility.” He paused. “Who’s James?”
Silence.
She gave zero reaction, kept her focus on the road, as if he hadn’t said anything. But he knew her well enough to know that inscrutable expression was nothing more than a mask. He continued to look at her but didn’t push her other than that.
Twenty-five
KADANCE NEVER THOUGHT she’d have to discuss James with another living person. It was hard enough living with the memories inside her own head, let alone verbalizing them. But she had to.
“You don’t have to tell me anything personal,” Lyndon said.
“It’s all personal with James.”
Lyndon quietly waited.
“He’s how I heard about VPE,” she finally said. “Though I didn’t know the extent of the movement. He explained it as simply choosing not to have children to help reduce the population. I’d assumed that people who followed the movement and wanted families could simply adopt, which sounded honorable to me.”
“But somewhere along the way you realized perhaps it wasn’t as honorable as he’d described because you discovered he wasn’t honorable either?”
If there was one thing she could count on Lyndon to do, it was read between the lines. “Yes.”
He again quietly waited.
She sat straighter in her seat and tried to figure out how to start her explanation.
“Why don’t we stop for a little while,” he said.
“We need to get to DC.”
“It’ll take, what, five to six hours from here? It’ll be too late to do anything or talk to anyone.”
They were passing through a small town on a rural highway. There wasn’t much—just a couple of abandoned buildings, a Dollar General, and a Subway. She pulled off into the empty parking lot of a building with boarded windows and crumbling brick facade. Gravel crunched under the tires as the car
came to a stop.
“I need a walk.” Kadance opened her door and stepped out. Then she opened the back door and let Mac jump down. She squatted in front of him and petted his soft fur. “Want to run around a little bit?” she asked him. “There’s some grass over there.”
He meowed.
“I swear he understands you,” Lyndon said.
“He does.” She locked the car, then picked Mac up and carried him to an overgrown grassy lot next to the gravel area. She set him down in the grass, and he sprinted off after a bird.
Lyndon followed her. “Looks like this used to be an orchard.” He looked around at the trees, some dead, some overgrown.
“I bet it’s still pretty in the spring.”
There was a smile in his eyes before he looked away, toward Mac running around like a nut. She’d caught expressions like that in Lyndon’s eyes before, but she wasn’t entirely sure what they meant. Which was frustrating.
She ambled slowly around the lot, and Lyndon stayed by her side.
She took a deep breath. “I was in a relationship with James, but he wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“Your only relationship.”
She glanced over at him and wanted to ask why he thought that, but then she admonished herself for caring. “We met not long after I left my family. He kept trying to strike up conversations with me.”
“So, you weren’t living like you are now—moving around, not following any patterns.”
“Not yet. I thought using a fake ID and going someplace random that I didn’t have any connection to would be enough. I liked this little farmer’s market. I’d go once or twice a week. He was there sometimes and would try striking up a conversation. At first, I didn’t even acknowledge him, but after a while . . . I was so lonely.”
“You were alone in your service and then alone again back home.” Then he added, “Is this before you found Mac?”
She nodded. “Finally, I gave in and started talking to him a little. He was considerate and sweet. He drew me in faster than I could imagine.”
“But how did he do that? You’re like a human lie detector.”
“He didn’t lie. Everything he told me about his family, his past, even his business was the truth.”
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