by Kailin Gow
I took his hand in mine. “You are so positive.”
“That’s why I was able to grow such healthy happy plants and raise happy livestock,” Will said.
“That’s not all, isn’t it?” I asked.
“No, it is because of my faith, too, Evie,” Will said. “The Monsters couldn’t get to my parents because of it too.”
“So, Will, we are heading into Monster territory in there. What should I know when we get in?”
“If it’s a Raider, take cover, duck, hide, and shoot. If it is a Monster…you know the feeling, tell it with as much authority as you can to go away. Shield your mind from any bad thoughts. Start singing happy music, dance music, hymns, to keep you focus on happy things,” Will said. “Especially on the thought that I love you so much, Evie.”
We stepped into the landing bridge from the ground to the front entrance and entered the gates. I felt like I was entering an amusement park or one of those large complex they called a shopping mall back on Old Earth as we crossed the threshold.
Despite all the furniture, shops, cafeteria, and facilities; it felt like a ghost town. No one was around. We walked gingerly down the hallway, heading to the Officer’s quarters. Finally we came to a row of doors.
“This was where your mother’s room was,” Will said.
We opened the door, and it was still kept as though someone would have returned to the room. There were photos of Mom. Then there were one with Mom and Thomas, smiling. Thomas had his arm around Mom, and she had her hands around her stomach, which looked round and full. She was probably a few months pregnant with me when that photo was taken. I took it down and look at it gingerly. I wanted to memorize this photo and remember it for the rest of my life. Mom, Dad, and me.
At Mom’s desk, there were books, makeup, even a teddy bear. From Thomas.
From the look of everything, Mom and Dad were so in love.
“Are there anything here that would give us a clue where she could have gone?” Will asked.
I looked over to the desk. If Mom was here, she would have left a clue for me. Somehow, I was drawn to her drawer. I opened it, and there was an ornate box with a key lock on it.
It looked like something Mom would have given me. Not something my mother would keep herself.
I tried opening the lock, but it opened to another lock…a combo lock.
I tried the number to my birthdate and Mom’s. It opened.
And I knew it was a message Mom had planted for me.
“Will,” I said. “Mom was here, and she knew I would find this…”
I took out the object that was in the box. It was Mom’s necklace… the one she wore on her neck which always held a flash drive-like charm fill with information.
I placed the last charm into my tablet device I brought with me. A video started playing.
I smiled. Typical of Mom. She recorded everything, including this message.
“Hi my darling daughter,” Mom said to the camera. She was sitting where I was sitting now. At her desk in the Landing.
“I knew you would find this, Evie. I knew you would be able to make your way here. Know that when you find this, I would already be gone. I hate to leave you back at the Shelter. I also hate to leave you when you find this. But there was no other way. You are a very special girl, Evie. I became pregnant with you on our way to New Earth. No one expected it.
Thomas and I fell in love, then I got pregnant with you unplanned, but much loved and much wanted. And then well…I ended up raising you myself at the Shelter. It was the best and most loving experience I’ve ever had raising you and being your mother.
You, Evie. You’ve always been special. I had to raise you differently, too, because I wanted to nurture that…make sure you can rise to your potential.
Because of the special circumstances…you would be able to adjust to and grow up more special than other humans, Evie. You see, the ship you are on is the Red Genesis Project ship…the first ship to go to Mars to fully colonize the planet for Earth. It would be called New Earth. Because of the difference in atmosphere from Old Earth, people would have to breathe using oxygen masks. We estimate in order to acclimate to the new atmosphere on Mars…humans would need to develop a special breathing function in our lungs. You were born human, Evie from human parents, but you were kept in a contained environment on Mars, with a special filtration that allowed you to gradually adjust to breathing on Mars. In the Shelter. Now you’re 18 years old, you had time to come into a dual lung system…to be able to breathe fully on Mars and Old Earth.”
“Now comes the hard part,” Mom said. “I must take off as soon as I could, back to Old Earth. I found out something about the Monsters that could save Earth. With this information, I could not wait. And If not, I was given orders from the Heads of Red Genesis, to bring a second ship to Mars. I may be back before you get this message or on my way back. It takes years to travel from Earth to Mars…but no matter what, my baby little girl, Mommy will be back to see you. Promise. Now that you know what and who you are…do not fear anything. And know that I will always love you forever and ever.”
I turned to Will and said, “Mom left to go back to Old Earth.”
Will patted my shoulders. “I know. I watched the video with you.”
“Did you know we were on Mars?” I asked. “New Earth is Mars?”
Will nodded. I heard my parents tell me once, but it didn’t sink in much. I was too excited to go on a space trip. I didn’t think of which planet. But why did your mother have to leave immediately?”
“Mom found out about the Monsters and how to stop them on Old Earth. Knowing how Mom is, if she can help save Old Earth from the Monsters or anything, she wouldn’t hesitate. Even if it meant leaving me behind.”
“She couldn’t tell you,” Will said. “She had to keep you being both an Earthling and a Martian a secret this entire time until you could understand that.”
“I know,” I said. “So…now what do we do here?” I asked.
“Check out the supplies and grab what we need for the Farm and your place. But mainly for you to move to be with me at the Farm…And…”
I was hearing voices from a panel on Mom’s wall. Faintly at first and then louder. Will went over to open the panel, and a screen was shown. People were in a conference room talking. People who were clearly humans. “Commander Jana had aborted the trip back to Mars,” a man said. “Why?”
Somehow we had tuned into a feed from an important meeting on Old Earth. Knowing Mom had a secret mission from Red Genesis, perhaps once they found out she was pregnant with me as a hybrid Earthling and Martian, they gave her a special assignment.
My Mom, dressed in a smart uniform that included a hat, came onscreen. She looked well, healthy, and in control. A real Commander. She said, “The ship is not ready. The people selected for colonization were found to have criminal records. And the equipment you wanted us to bring will not fit into Mar’s climate. The Monsters…they appeared at Mars too. Not because they are Aliens. But because they have a certain appetite for certain humans…not all humans…just certain kinds. And the ones you’re bringing to Mars…they are the kinds they want and will follow…the ones they want to bring with them to hell. Do we want to colonize Mars with people and the Monsters they will bring?”
“I see,” a man sitting in the middle of the room said. “Only the pure-hearted could go to Mars, Commander Jana…?”
“I’m not saying that, President. You are putting words into my mouth. I am saying, the Monsters…they are part of us. They are the worse of humanity…manifested into a supernatural-type of entity. They are the physical and psychological form of humankind’s cruelness toward each other. If you bring the worse of the worse with us to Mars… you will definitely have the Monsters there with us on Mars.”
“There are a few people I want on that next ship to Mars,” the man said. “If you can’t take them with you, then we will replace you with a Commander who will take convicts to Mars, while you rem
ain on Old Earth to be on the front lines to fight the Monsters you know so well about…”
The feed cut off, and I looked at Will. “Mom’s not coming back, is she? She’s a woman of principle. She won’t let convicts come to Mars. But they just dismissed her, and she’s stuck on Earth…which means, I won’t be able to see her again, will I…”
“Not if we can help it,” Will said. “Want to see what Old Earth look like in person? Me too.”
“How are we going to get to Earth?” I asked.
“How soon can we fix up this ship and fly it back?” Will said. “Looks to me, it’s still in good shape. Only needs some cleaning up to do.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“They said I don’t think like other people,” Will said. “And that’s true. But so what. I don’t live for other people. And if my girl want to see her mother again, she’s going to see her mother again.”
“I happen to know all about flying ships,” I said. “I spent years just studying everything about it. Mechanical engineering too.”
“Good,” Will said. “Between us two…Survivors…New Earth pioneers…we could do anything. We’ll get this ship ready soon, and we’ll take the trip of a lifetime…back to Old Earth.”
I walked with Will all over the ship, working on each part, renovating rooms, and bringing the ship back in order again. We even brought Will’s plants and animals from the Farm to the ship.
Then we managed to bring most of Will’s house into the Landing before we finally launched the Landing. It took a little over a month, but we had a purpose. We had a new mission. To find Mom and to save Old Earth from the Monsters.
We would finally spend some time with each other. It would be couple of years before we land on Earth. We had all our favorite collections of films, videos, games, and books to keep us busy…along with each other. We were also mapping out where we wanted to visit on Old Earth.
Hopefully, there will still be an Old Earth. Despite having fought off the Monsters, I was still worried. The way they manipulated the Raider’s dead body and taken over Mary, who was a robot and shouldn’t have been affected by them, I was worried that the Monsters had found another way to destroy humans. Since there weren’t any humans on New Earth now that Will and I had left. The Monsters will be all over Old Earth. This time with more knowledge to destroy humankind, and more resistance.
God help us when we get to Old Earth.
*****
Evie, Will, Mom’s, and Mary’s Story Continues in Red Genesis Book 2: Earthling
Summer 2019
And
Red Genesis Book 3: Dark Matter
Winter 2019
*****
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EXCERPT FROM
PULSE
By Kailin Gow
*****************************
prologue
She ran like an animal. Her clothes were wet, sopping, clinging to her thighs and to her chest, hollow and transparent around the curve of her shoulders. Her hair shook out droplets of rain; her cheeks were flushed and she was breathless. He could see her heartbeat throbbing at the side of her throat, see it in the rhythmic panting, hear it from across the street, pounding in his ears, intermingled with the thunder bolting from the sky. He could feel it – it felt like an earthquake to him, shaking his ribs, his shoulders, his legs. It had been so long since he had seen a heartbeat like hers – since he had felt a heartbeat at all.
The skies had opened up – as they so often did in North California – without any warning, without any hesitation. It was as if the smooth blue glass ceiling of the world had shattered all at once, letting the primordial oceans pound down upon the pavement. He could see her consternation, her irritation – she wanted nothing but to get out of the rain, to dry herself off, to curl up into
something warm and dry.
But Jaegar loved the rain. He loved the energy – the pulse of life beating down upon the earth. He could hear the scattered raindrops in their rhythmic approach to earth and pretend that each fall of rain was a beat of his dead heart. And she was alive with the energy, too – alive as he had never seen a woman alive, tossing her hair back, running into Shelter, and her lips were pink and her cheeks were red. He remembered that his lips would never again be pink, that his cheeks would never again be red.
She was so young.
Humans so often surprised him in that way. They looked no different from him – he could have been seventeen; he had been seventeen for so long – but their youth never failed to surprise him. The way the world was so new to them – that rain could still take them by surprise, when he had seen so many rainfalls.
He could smell her. The wind carried her scent to him like an animal's scent, and it was all he could do to keep his fangs in check. He leaned heavily upon the branch and parted the leaves to get a better look at her. He could feel the blood – stagnant in his veins – begin something like a torpid, sluggish, shift towards life – the closest thing he would ever get to a heartbeat. She was the sort of girl who made young boys' hearts pound, he thought – and they never knew how lucky they were to experience that sensation.
For it was the physical aspect of it, he thought, that humans understood least of all. They romanticized vampires, of course – how terrible it would be to live at night! To drink blood! To prey upon humans! These were things they could intellectualize, understand. Humans had been forced to commit murder. Humans had been forced to bite back their most natural, primal desires – and so they could almost understand, when they imagined vampires, what it was like to feel that insatiable hunger for a woman's throat, her breast, her wrist. But not a human in the world had ever been alive without living, without a heartbeat – and so they took it for granted – what it meant, that constant linear throbbing, clock-like, towards inevitable death. For Jaegar was a vampire, and he was not alive, and the dull ache in his chest where a heartbeat should have been was for him one of the most agonizing things in the world.
They don't know, he thought. They'll never understand.
He had been told that she was the one. He had waited for her until sunset – the sun agonizing upon him, even with the ring around his finger. Vampires were not meant for light, and even the strongest magic could not take away the pain, searing, burning, aching, in his flesh. He was unnatural in sunlight, and only now that dusk was beginning to settle over him could he find relief. He sat perched in the tree, obscured by the leaves, staring at her as she ran down the street.
He leaned in too closely – the birds noticed at last that something was wrong in their midst and took flight; a flurry of wings beat up around him and the branch snapped from the tree and plummeted to the earth below.
It was enough time to make a distraction.
He concentrated, and in half a second he was behind her, so close he could feel the wind blow her hair upon his lips, and then he opened the umbrella above her.
“Miss,” he said.
She startled.
“What the...” She rounded on him.
“You looked wet,” he said. She did not seem amused.
“I'm warning you,” she said. “I know kung fu.”
He had learned kung fu once, many centuries ago. He thought it better not to mention it.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to help.”
She softened.
“Thanks,” she said, lamely. “I'm sorry – I didn't mean to snap at you. But you need to learn not to sneak up on people like that. You scared me.”
Her eyes remained fixed upon the tree from which he had come. A suspicious glare clouded her gaze. Had she seen – was she wondering? He knew she knew something was wrong. He tried to maintain whatever pleasant normalcy he could. The sequoias were tall, after all. No human could survive a jump from them – he knew she knew this. He knew she thought he was human.
From Top Author for Young Adults
; Kailin Gow
PULSE
17 year-old Kalina didn’t know her boyfriend was a vampire until the night he died of a freak accident. She didn’t know he came from a long line of vampires until the night she was visited by his half-brothers Jaegar and Stuart Graystone. There were a lot of secrets her boyfriend didn’t tell her. Now she must discover them in order to keep alive. But having two half-brothers vampires around had just gotten interesting…
EXCERPT FROM
BITTER FROST
*****************************
Prologue
The dream had come again, like the sun after a storm. It was the same dream that had come many times before, battering down the doors of my mind night after night since I was a child. It was the sort of dreams all girls dream, I suppose – a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of leaves that breathe and make music when they are rustled in the wind, and rivers that bubble and froth with secrets. Dreams, my mother always told me, represent part of our unconsciousness – the place where we store the true parts of our soul, away from the rest of the world. My mother was an artist; she always thought this way. If it was true, then my true soul was a denizen of this strange and fantastical world. I often felt, in waking hours, that I was in exile, somehow – somehow less myself, less true, than I had been in my enchanted slumber. The real world was only a dream, only an echo, and in silent moments throughout the day it would hit me: I am not at home here.