Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  Not a second later, Evelyn felt her heart pound, nearly cracking her rib cage as her nanites forced her heart to pump and her blood vessels to constrict, pushing blood into her head. Her adrenaline surged. She had never felt anxiety and power like that before, and she realized she was screaming louder than she knew was possible.

  The shuttle carved a slow arc and leveled off just above the ocean, and Evelyn jittered in her seat, unsure if she was going to breathe normally ever again. Her blood pressure had soared high enough that it should have killed her, and she still felt her neck and temples throbbing.

  The shuttle slowed to several hundred miles per hour and cruised thirty feet over the surface of the water.

  Breathing deeply and running her fingers through her sweaty hairline, she looked out at the clear blue waves and laughed, and then cried as waves of relief that she had made it to the surface washed over her.

  Her hands were shaking. She struggled to clear the lump in her throat and the knot in her chest. She sat still and watched the water below. She thought about Jane and how she had blacked out on similar trips, laughing to herself, realizing Jane was probably lucky to have been unconscious.

  She fidgeted, her body unable to deal with the excess adrenaline, and without thinking, and seemingly on its own, her hand unclasped the safety harness and she tried to stand. On wobbly legs she stood and stepped toward the console a few feet away. Like a runner leaning through the finish line after a race ten miles too long, she fell forward, barely catching herself and grazing her forehead on an overhead cabinet.

  “Dammit, Evie,” she muttered to herself, putting her hand to her forehead and looking quickly for signs of blood on her fingers. Realizing she hadn’t hurt anything but her ego, she leaned against the console and winced at the pain in her abdomen. Lifting the edge of her shirt, she ran her fingers over her hip bones and felt the rawness of her skin. Obviously, the harness and the g-forces had worked her over well enough that the nylon safety belt had bit into her skin, leaving a nasty, stinging, and surprisingly sore rash.

  “Pull yourself together,” she chastised herself, straightening up and pulling her hair back into a tail. Pushing away from the console, she shook out her arms, pacing around the cockpit, trying to normalize her blood pressure.

  Her head was already beginning to ache. She knew a lot about human physiology, but she had little experience with things like this and figured the headache was from a combination of ruptured blood vessels and adrenaline—nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little time and help from her nanites—but she still wanted the ache and the stinging and throbbing and soreness to go away. She didn’t have time to deal with feeling lousy. It would only be a few hours before she was near San Antonio. Since she couldn’t just plop the shuttle down in town next to Tate, she had to work on her plan—and feeling like she had the flu wasn’t going to help.

  Evelyn walked back to the galley and grabbed a bottle of electrolytes and drained it in seconds. Grabbing a bottle of water, she walked back to the cockpit.

  There was still nothing but ocean in front of her, the pale blueness of the sky meeting the watery grayness of the ocean at a point far enough away that Evelyn couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. She was still getting a lot of feedback from being linked to the shuttle’s computer, and even though she knew she could learn a lot from the radio transmissions the shuttle was receiving, she needed to disconnect just for her own sanity.

  Evelyn turned off her link and immediately felt the sizzling hum in her brain—the one she was amazed to realize she had again grown accustomed to—die away. The quiet that replaced it was unnerving. At first, it felt like a void, but after a few minutes, Evelyn sat in her captain’s seat, drank her water, and thought about absolutely nothing for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  FORTUNATE

  The plan sounded simple enough: Fly in. See Tate. Leave. It was the details that were making things messy.

  Take flying in, for example. Not only did Evelyn need to fly in undetected—something that wasn’t all that easy with a hundred-ton shuttle—but she was going to have to land it in an unpopulated area and hide it.

  Fortunately, she had a place in mind—a canyon deep enough to hide the shuttle and remote enough that the shuttle’s sensors hadn’t detected any signs of humanity close by. Unfortunately, the canyon was also about a hundred miles from Tate. So with daytime temperatures reaching a hundred and ten degrees in the shade, she had to cover a lot of very hot terrain on foot.

  Then there was the problem of finding Tate. Without the shuttle’s scanners running, she wouldn’t know exactly where he was, and based on the scans since she had arrived, he didn’t seem to stay put for long. She just hoped he would still be close by when she got there.

  Leaving. Well, that seemed like the easy part, but everything else was making her head hurt, and as she raced toward the coast of Mexico, one word popped into her mind: improvise.

  Evelyn saw the sandy beaches ahead, and within seconds, the shuttle soared over the top, just high enough to clear the trees in the forest beyond. At nearly six hundred miles per hour, everything below the shuttle was a blur. The fact that she was sailing faster than the speed of sound normally would have been a problem, but she was sticking to unpopulated areas and keeping to the valleys, so she wasn’t worried about being detected or hurting anyone below with the shock wave.

  Even at her current speed, it was going to take nearly three hours to get to her canyon, so Evelyn sat back, watched the world race by, and tried to piece together anything she could about the gap she had in Earth’s history from six years of being away.

  Most of the radio transmissions she had received were encrypted, and without being able to plug into Vista or the old headquarters, she didn’t have the resources to hack into anything secure. Her efforts to find anything of value were mostly met with frustration. There weren’t any broadcasts worth listening to, and after all the noise, she was only able to pick up two things. First, there had been a war, which may still be going on, and it involved the United States. Second, Dale Coleson was still president, despite the fact that he had long-outlasted the tenure of any president in history, and by now had to be seventy years old. Both revelations were a mystery to Evelyn, and she couldn’t help but mull them over in her mind, wondering how such things could have happened, or how they could be true.

  As she approached the hill country, Evelyn slowed the shuttle, still flying low so as not to be detected. It was beautiful countryside, and she had never seen anything of it but pictures. She guided the shuttle over the live oak trees and sage, glimpsing the rocky sand underneath, and saw the edge of the canyon ahead.

  With the setting sun casting a reddish glow on the rocks and scrub on the walls, Evelyn piloted the shuttle into the base of the canyon, bringing it to rest in a cluster of evergreens. There wasn’t much coverage from above, however, and Evelyn hoped the shuttle might look like nothing more than a giant blackish rock, because that was all the more hidden it was going to get.

  Listening to the engines power down, Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief as everything grew quiet around her. She stood, taking time to look over the last scans of the area to make sure there were no people present, and walked back to her quarters. She figured she could cover about thirty miles if she walked at night. If she was lucky, she might make it to Tate in three days.

  Grabbing her canvas jacket and a nylon pack, she started stuffing it with supplies to carry her through—bottles of water and electrolytes, protein packs and a few extra clothes. Evelyn grunted as she heaved the heavy pack onto her shoulders. Pulling a canvas cap over her head, she headed into the cargo hold and opened the utility closet. Inside, she found the night-vision glasses and paused as she looked at the locked box containing the rifles, pistols, and ammunition. For a moment, she imagined slinging a rifle over her shoulder and strapping a pistol to her hip—there had been a war recently after all—but realized quickly that even the thought of t
he extra weight was about enough to make her knees buckle.

  She walked toward the shuttle’s ramp with one eye on the weapons, hoping she wasn’t making a terrible mistake by leaving them behind. Heading down the ramp, she breathed the dry evening air and closed the shuttle bay ramp behind her.

  “Stay safe, Buzz,” she said, powering the shuttle down and slipping the night-vision glasses over her eyes. Instantly the dark shadows of the early evening illuminated to where Evelyn saw every rock, cactus, and shrub underfoot like it was midday. Hiking the pack further onto her shoulders, she started toward the mouth of the canyon and toward a dirt road she had flown over on arrival, expecting that it would lead her somewhat safely to the outskirts of San Antonio—and to Tate.

  It didn’t take long for Evelyn to start sweating, and she stopped to take off the jacket, stuffing it into her pack. The sun had set, but the temperature really hadn’t dropped much yet, and she figured it was still at least eighty degrees. Her cap was soaked, and she took a swig from her water bottle. At this rate, I’ll stink like a farm animal by the time I get to Tate … He won’t want to have anything to do with me. Giving herself an “oh well” shrug, she picked up her pack and kept moving.

  If it hadn’t been for the glasses, Evelyn was sure she would have broken an ankle within the first few miles, as there was hardly a place for her to walk without something for her to trip over. The areas that seemed clear had such loose shale that she could hardly stand without feeling like her feet were going to slip right out from underneath her. Even with the treacherous conditions, she covered a lot of ground, and after a couple of hours of persistent sweaty effort, she found the road.

  Looking at it in the dark, calling it a road was a bit of a stretch, as she realized it wasn’t much more that a single dirt track about wide enough for a truck or large car to travel. It wasn’t paved, and it didn’t look like it ever had been, and strangely, Evelyn felt comforted by its lack of sophistication. Maybe I’ll get to San Antonio without seeing anyone, she thought hopefully.

  She didn’t want to think much about it, but as nice as it might be to hitch a ride, this road didn’t seem like it was likely to produce a vehicle. Even if there was one, she was fairly certain she would panic and hide in bush, letting it roll by without even trying to flag it down. She imagined the headline that would never be printed if she met the wrong kind of guy out here: Teenager with skinny butt found dead in hill country by hillbillies. Police wonder why her teeth were so big.

  Another hour passed. The moon overhead had completely illuminated the surroundings without a cloud to be seen. Evelyn took off her glasses and had no trouble seeing. She felt a shudder up her spine. It was quiet. Still. There didn’t seem to be even a breath of wind around her, and the lack of any other sounds only made her crunching footsteps seem that much louder.

  In the distance, she heard the howl of a coyote. She felt another shudder and realized she had quickened her pace. Trying to settle herself down, she slowed a little, realizing she was on the verge of breaking into a jog. She couldn’t afford to be foolish out here, and working herself into exhaustion and anxiety with eighty or more miles to go was definitely stupid.

  Come on … settle down. You can do this, Nanite Girl. Evelyn shook her head and breathed a laugh at herself. Nope, still sounds stupid … but what about the Evelynator? Nope, that’s even stupider.

  Evelyn kept her eyes on the road ahead and tried to enjoy the bluish halo cast by her surroundings from the moon above, which also looked big enough to reach out and touch. Apart from the occasional howl, she didn’t hear any other sounds of wildlife, but the fact that the coyotes seemed far away didn’t keep her from glancing up at the horizon. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything out there except for scrub brush and the fence line running along with the road a couple hundred yards out, which seemed to glow in the moonlight. If there was a creature out there that wanted to nibble on her, she was sure she would see it long before it got to her, but she also realized there was no place for her to hide if anyone came along.

  Another hour passed, and Evelyn figured she had covered at least twenty miles. Her legs were aching. She blamed the heavy pack, but knew she was deluding herself. Twenty miles was a long walk, and it would be enough to tire nearly anyone, but she also knew if she had done anything at all to take advantage of the fact that she had Jane’s genes, she would have been—should have been—in better shape than she was. And there Jane was again, stuck in her mind, and Evelyn felt herself getting choked up again, missing her sister and realizing she had no idea what she was going to say to Tate when she found him.

  Trying to keep her mind off her sore feet, and to get a few more miles in before finding a place to rest, Evelyn thought about everything she had lost in the past few days: Jane. Joseph. Mr. and Mrs. Philips, and Marcus. Her family. Her home. Her dignity and maybe even her humanity. Most of the people she cared about were gone, and with them any hope she had at being happy. The thought wrenched her gut, but the tears were cathartic, and as the next hour passed, Evelyn hardly thought about the blisters that were starting to form under the balls of her feet.

  The road she had been walking was mostly straight. Apart from the gentle undulations in the countryside, it hadn’t been very hilly. From time to time, she wondered if she was actually making any progress at all. The vastness of the sky above and the barrenness of the countryside gave her the impression that she was standing still. If it weren’t for the eerie white fence in the distance tracking closer to the road at times, she was sure she would die of boredom. But as she walked, coming close to the limit of her strength for one night, she was happy to see the fence was tracking closer, thinking it might intersect with the road ahead. With so few places to find shelter, she hoped that there might be a place ahead where she could rest and that might give her some shade in the coming heat.

  Evelyn picked up her pace, seeing a gentle glow on the horizon of a sun that seemed eager to grant another day of Texas heat. She glanced over at the fence, and sure enough, it was tracking closer to the road. But now with it just fifty yards away and closing in, and the early sun giving just a little more light, Evelyn realized the fence actually looked like it was made out of sticks or twigs heaped together in a mess.

  Evelyn walked faster, glaring at the fence and getting an uncomfortable sensation in her gut, though she wasn’t sure if it was from the fence or the nerves of having her shroud of darkness lifting, exposing her.

  She looked ahead and could see the point where the fence intersected with the road. From a distance, it looked like there was a gate of some sort with posts rising maybe twenty feet into the air. There didn’t seem to be any trees anywhere in any direction, however, but she had noticed that the shrubs had become slightly larger. She hoped one might be big enough that she might huddle underneath for some shade.

  As she approached the gate, Evelyn found herself slowing. Something just didn’t seem right, and while it should have taken her just a few minutes to finish her walk, she shuffled and stared, unsure if she was really seeing what she thought she was.

  She rubbed her eyes. Maybe I am exhausted. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. I must be more tired than I thought.

  Seconds later, it clicked. She knew she wasn’t imagining things.

  Horrified and terrified, but unable to keep herself from doing it, she stepped off the path and closed the gap between herself and the fence.

  Ten feet out, Evelyn stopped. Putting her hands to her mouth, she let out a gasp.

  The fence was made of bones. Millions upon millions of bones, and while there were skulls of coyote and longhorn cattle wedged in among the others, for the most part, they were human.

  Evelyn’s mind struggled to catch up. She looked down the line and realized that nearly the entire distance she had covered—thirty miles—she had been tracking along with this grisly barrier.

  She stepped a little closer. The bones had been picked clean by scavengers, were bleached white by
the sun, and were piled about four feet high. Some of the bones were loose and some were intact, with the entire skeleton buried in the mass open grave, but every size of every human bone imaginable—from infant, to child, to adult—was there.

  Evelyn looked back in the direction she had been walking. Near the intersection, the pillars she had seen from the distance were actually thick wooden poles. There were four—two on each side of the road—and each was about as big around as a telephone pole and stood about twenty feet tall. At the top, each was capped with a skull and had various bones, in no particular order, nailed into the post all the way down its length and all the way around. Just between the two posts on one side, the bone wall intersected with the road and then continued beyond it for as far as she could see. She had no idea how many miles the bones stretched—it could have been dozens or maybe even hundreds—but all of a sudden, it wasn’t such a mystery why the population had shriveled by a hundred seventy million people. Whether or not most of them were here was anybody’s guess, but there were enough to know that something ungodly had happened.

  Evelyn felt her stomach turn, and she bent over, hands on her knees, trying to breathe, knowing that if she had eaten anything in the past few hours, she probably would have vomited right there. Instantly she remembered Jane’s run-in with the mass graveyard in the Colorado mountains just before they had left Earth.

  Jane had been flying in the shuttle to DF-23, the death camp where her dad and brother had been held, and Jane had accidentally stumbled upon a dumping ground the government had been using to dispose of bodies. Evelyn had been flying the shuttle remotely from Vista, and the scanners had estimated that there were over two million people dumped in the mountain valley.