by Kelli Kimble
He picked up a chicken leg and tore into it. “You two slipped out through that secret exit that wasn’t really a secret. I knew about it, of course. Leo had it built, and it was mostly a secret, blah, blah, blah.” He waved his chicken leg around as he spoke. “So, you two escaped. And someone gave you a tablet with a program on it to look for a human heat signature. Coincidentally, all my search party’s tablets were programmed to look for a non-human signature. That was really a great touch. I have to give you that. But, it was also your downfall. Because you didn’t count on ending up with heatstroke, did you?”
My stomach felt like it had flipped over and liquefied.
“Well,” he continued. “Our tablets picked up your fever. But, we came into range just as you were cooling down, and before we reached you, we encountered Port. By the time we managed to capture him, your temperature had returned to normal. Or maybe you moved; I’m not sure. We couldn’t find you. But, we’d found him, and we took him back to the mountain and had our way with him.”
“You mean, you tortured him? For what?”
“To find out where you were, of course. You can be proud of him. He never broke. Or maybe, he just didn’t know where you were. It’s hard to say.”
“I can’t believe there are people like you. What’s wrong with you?”
“Now, that is a pretty egocentric view of the world. Maybe I’m normal, and you’re the one with a problem. It’s all a matter of perspective.”
I leaned across the table. “If it is the last thing I do, I’m going to kill you. And I am going to enjoy it.”
“I don’t think so. I have insurance, you see.”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. I didn’t care what his insurance was.
“You think it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “That no matter what, you’ll kill me. But, I know something you don’t know,” he said, sing-song.
“I’m going back to my cell now,” I said.
I stood, but he snatched my upper arm from across the table. “You’re not going anywhere,” he whispered. “Sit. Down.”
I tried to shake his hand off. The tankers near the door took notice and started moving towards us. Adam’s grip strained harder. I grabbed his hand and tried to pry his fingers away, but they were clenched tight. Someone cuffed me in the back of the head, and a second blow fell against my upper thigh. Pain radiated back and forth between the injuries, and I eased back into the seat, feeling defeated.
“Now, I know you’re going to take interest in this, Fiona,” Adam said. “Don’t try to pretend like you aren’t even curious. This is a big deal, see?”
I fixed my gaze on the doorway and concentrated on not crying.
“All right, there’s no need to beg,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Ready? This is big. So, here goes. My insurance is that I’m your son. Happy Mother’s Day!”
I snapped my eyes to him. “No,” I said. “That isn’t true.”
“It most certainly is. Didn’t you ever wonder why Leo didn’t follow you out of the mountain? Well, duh, it’s because he had what he wanted from you. A little old sample of your deoxyribonucleic acid was all he needed to grow the heir to the villages.”
“That’s ridiculous. Even Leo wouldn’t have stooped that low.”
“And yet, he did. Through the magic of science, he had a lovechild with you. Isn’t that romantic?”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “Even if you are spawned from my genetic material, you’ll never count as my son. You’re the furthest possible thing from being my son.”
“You’ll come around. I know you wanted children. Badly, if what Leo said was true. Now, why didn’t you and your good little husband ever have kids? I can’t imagine why. Could it be because your inferior body couldn’t produce something sturdy enough to survive in the world?”
I turned away. In truth, I’d had a number of miscarriages. Whatever it was that Barrow had used all those years ago to taint my choosing oil had likely done permanent damage. It was also true that Leo would have thought I desperately wanted children. I had, if only to save me from a life of servitude. But, I’d delivered myself from that all on my own. It wasn’t until Port and I had married that I’d begun to think having a family would be nice.
But, this abomination was not family.
“I’ve got news for you,” Adam continued. “The tanks are here to stay. I have a plan. Would you like to hear it?”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to acknowledge it at all.
But, he continued anyway. “I’m turning the mountain into a breeding hospital. One big tank facility, if you will. Once the tankers are habituated into life outside their tanks, we’ll transition them outside. We’ll build up a nice little city, a true civilization. Wouldn’t you like to be a part of that?”
“No,” I said.
He tapped his fingertips on the table. “That’s okay. Whether you like it or not, you’ll live on through me. You’ll be a part of it by virtue of that.”
I stood to go. This time, he didn’t stop me. The tankers around the doorway parted as I moved towards them.
“Oh, and won’t you thank your little friend for me?” Adam called out. “What’s her name? The tree girl. Oak? Maple? No. Willow. Thank Willow for her help. She really did me a favor.”
I stopped at the door. “I seriously doubt that she helped you.”
“Oh, but she did. It was her tampering with the spiro that made it so easy for me to take over. If she hadn’t done that, Leo would still be here. And the rise of the tankers would have taken so much longer.”
I sucked in a breath. Willow’s secret wasn’t a secret.
Adam’s eyes gleamed. “Her meddling really gave me a leg-up. Thank her for me.”
“Thank her yourself,” I said over my shoulder as I left the room. I couldn’t stay there with him anymore. The thought that I’d somehow assisted in his creation made me sick to my stomach. If he really was my son—genetically—then he’d knowingly murdered his own grandmother. He was nothing short of a monster.
◆◆◆
It didn’t take Adam long to set his plan in motion. The tankers began to construct tank labs in every room that was large enough to contain the necessary infrastructure. They even made Willow relocate her morgue.
I went to great pains to avoid seeing Adam, and rarely left the room I’d adopted as my own. He didn’t do anything to keep me in the mountain, but I had little motivation to escape. Willow was the only person left who I cared about, and I wanted to stay near her. I thought about telling her that Adam knew about her spiro plot. But, it didn’t seem like it would help her grief over having done it, so I stayed silent.
Eventually, I did run into Adam. Not on purpose, of course. I was leaving Willow’s apartment and heading back to my own, only a few doors away. He didn’t see me at first; his back was to me. But, I stopped to listen because he was gesturing to the apartment doors around him.
“Make sure you go through their crap. We’re not wasteful. Anything that can be recycled or reused needs to be set aside. Move out all the furniture and take it to storage. Anything else can be taken to the village for burning.”
The other tankers were listening intently and nodding. None of them seemed to notice me.
Without warning, Adam turned and continued down the hall towards me. I didn’t have time to move away. “Oh, good morning, Mother,” he said when he saw me. “What are you doing in this corridor?”
I didn’t want him to know which apartment I lived in, so I fell back on Willow. “I was visiting Willow,” I said. “And don’t call me that.”
“There are still tenants in this hallway? Tsk. Well, she’s going to have to move. This hall is going to be converted for tanks soon. I know she’ll appreciate the irony in that.” He laughed, and the other tankers laughed, too—though I’m pretty sure they didn’t know why they were laughing.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why aren’t you outside with the others? I thought
you were supervising the building of your new house.”
“The house is already done. What others?”
“The people you took out of the mountain.”
“Ah. You don’t realize, I suppose.” He leaned in close to me. I tried not to curl my lip in disgust when I felt a puff of his breath move the hair near my ear. “Only the tankers survived our external building mission,” he whispered, then pulled back and wiggled his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. Why don’t you try speaking in plain terms for once?”
“All right. They’re dead. We killed them. It’s only tankers from here on out.”
“I’m not a tanker,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Mother, I thought you were smarter than that. Why would you go and remind me of a reason to get rid of you?”
I clamped my mouth shut. Why had I said that? He obviously had no real feelings for me, so it wasn’t like our shared genetic status made a difference.
“You’re puzzling out why I’ve let you live for so long,” he said. He stepped around me to go, motioning for the tankers to follow. But, this time, it was I who stopped him.
I grabbed him by the arm but let go when he turned. I didn’t want to touch him. “Why haven’t you killed me?” I asked.
He cocked his head slightly. “You know, I’m not really sure. I’ll have to think about that.”
Then, they moved on. When they’d disappeared out of sight, I retreated to my room. I gathered up the few possessions I still had—Swen’s knife, a blanket, a pillow, and a change of clothes—and I moved them to an apartment two levels down. Then, I went to Willow’s and helped her move her things into the same apartment. There had to be some strength in being together, as two of the last remaining humans.
Chapter 11
When Adam’s tanks were all assembled, he had the tankers round up all the remaining non-tankers. There were only about a dozen of us left. I realized Adam had probably been quietly exterminating the people around us, and since we were spread around the mountain in singles and pairs, we hadn’t noticed.
He assembled us in the commissary, which now held several tanks. “All right, everyone,” he began. “We’ve all been waiting for the day when we’ll go out to our new homes in the village. I’m pleased to tell you that today is the day.”
I swallowed, and the muscles in my throat spasmed. I felt like I’d swallowed a sharp-edged rock. I glanced at Willow. Her face was smooth and placid. She didn’t yet realize what was going to happen. He was going to take us all to the village and get rid of us, just like he’d done to the others.
Adam continued. “We’re making a clean break, so no possessions will go with you. Only what you’re carrying right now. I assure you that both villages are stocked with plenty of food, water, clothing, and furnishings. Everything you could possibly want is already waiting for you there.”
Willow caught hold of my hand and tugged. I met her eyes, and she shook her head ever so slightly, so only I could see. And I tipped my head in an acknowledging nod.
“Excuse me, Adam?” she asked, raising her hand.
“What?” he said.
“I know you said everything we’d need is outside. But, they don’t have an undertaker out there. They won’t have the tools I need to perform my job. I’m going to have to go to my lab and get some things. And I’ll need someone else. It’ll be too much for me to carry by myself.”
Adam weighed her request, chewing on his lip as he did. “All right. You can take one other person to get what you need.”
She pulled me closer and started to leave the room.
“Not her,” Adam said. “She stays with me. Pick someone else.”
She squeezed my hand and dropped it. Swen was standing nearby, and she caught his eye. The two of them left. A pair of tankers followed them, and my heart sank. If the tankers were going, they could have just carried her things, rather than Swen.
They weren’t coming back.
“Everyone else, follow me to your new home. This is so exciting! Aren’t you excited?”
A smattering of claps peppered the room—mostly from the tankers.
“I asked if you were excited,” he said, as he jammed his face close to another person. “You are, right?”
The tankers began to hoot and whistle, along with their clapping. The rest of us joined in.
Only Adam would force us to applaud our own death march.
Adam drifted through the crowd, shaking everyone’s hands. He had learned some things from Leo, then; he felt the need to smooth things over—make them like him—so that they would be malleable to his desires later.
A great whoop went up from the tankers as we left the commissary. They were surrounding the rest of us like a bubble. I noticed that most of them had one or two sonic guns holstered to their hips or thighs.
There was no escape.
I felt, rather than heard, guns being fired in the distance, perhaps on another level. The level that contained Willow’s new mortuary, I was sure. I sighed. My last remaining allies and friends were gone. I was linked to the nine around me only by virtue of not being a tanker.
I pushed it from my mind and touched the outline of Swen’s knife, folded in my pocket. I would have to use it to escape. But, the moment would need to be perfect.
◆◆◆
Outside, Adam and Eve rode ahead to the village in a rover. A number of the other tankers did, too. That left our small group to be policed by only a dozen tankers. It wasn’t an even fight, but our odds were better now. I glanced around at the others. They seemed complacent—eager, even—to get to the village.
We trudged slowly through the woods. There was no trail, but I knew we weren’t taking a direct path to either of the villages. I supposed that if they took us to some spot far from the village, they wouldn’t have to dispose of our corpses properly when they were finished.
Someone asked to stop and rest, and the tankers agreed. They stood around in a circle, passing a canteen, which they did not offer to any of us. I noticed that one of them was missing. There were only 11 of them now.
I turned in a circle, pretending to stretch my legs and my back. But, there was no sign of the 12th tanker. Was he lying in wait to ambush us? My mouth went dry, and I wished I had my own canteen.
“Time to go,” one of the tankers said. They broke into two groups—six leading us, and the rest following us.
As we started moving forward, I spotted something in the undergrowth off to our left. A slight flash of color, not natural in the wooded scenery. Something blue. I kept my head directed forward but watched from the corner of my eye. If I was about to be cut down by a tanker, I didn’t want to be taken by surprise.
Minutes went by, and I saw nothing else. Maybe it had been my imagination. My pulse started to return to normal.
“Hi,” I said to the woman walking next to me. “I’m Fiona.” I held out my hand to her.
She eyeballed it for a moment, and then shook my hand in the old-fashioned mountain grasp. Her grip was efficient and minimal. “I know who you are,” she said.
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” I said with a laugh.
She didn’t appear to be amused and didn’t answer.
“Have you ever been outside before?” I asked.
“Not this far out,” she said. “I can’t say that I see what all the fuss was about. It’s dirty, and the air smells strange.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t particularly want to.”
You won’t have to, if Adam has his way, I thought. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing for a time. Behind me, I heard a slight scuffle—only audible because I’d been listening for it. I pretended to stop and tie my boot. The woman continued walking and was probably glad that I’d broken contact. I glanced behind me. The tankers were walking in a line through the foliage on the path we’d already broken through, but again, there seemed to be one fewer than before.<
br />
I straightened and jogged, moving forward in the group. There was a sense that something was following me—something that wanted to hurt me—and it urged me faster. When I reached the others, I slowed down, rather than pass any of them. I chanced another quick look—and that’s when I spotted Swen.
He was squatting at the bottom of a tree, his blue parka calling my attention. It was him that I’d seen in the woods. He didn’t make eye contact with me. Before I could signal him, he ducked behind the tree, out of sight.
I kept walking, but my mind was racing. I needed to help him, to make it easier. What could I do? I looked ahead to the other tankers. They weren’t bothering to look back at us. They were occupied in conversation and picking their way through the foliage.
I decided to enlist some help. I touched the arm of the woman I’d been talking to.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me your name,” I said.
She grunted. “Vacha.”
“Pleased to meet you, Vacha.”
She nodded.
“Look,” I said in a hushed voice. “This might be hard to believe, but I’m pretty sure we’re being led to our deaths.”
She looked at me like I had a squirrel on my head. “Oh, yeah?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No.”
“You don’t think it’s odd that the tankers all came back to the mountain, and nobody else? You don’t think it’s weird that Adam told us it was time to go and that we couldn’t go to our rooms to get any personal items, not even a cherished memento?”
Her face scrunched up in thought. “That was a little odd.”
“And what explanation do you have for that? I can tell you right now, we aren’t being led to one of the villages. In only a mile or two, we’ll be trapped in a canyon if we continue in this direction.”