by J. L. Murray
She was so hungry. And she could smell the blood.
Suddenly she knew that her mother was alive. And she was surprised how relieved she was that she would be the one to kill her.
TWENTY-THREE
The door of the building burst open and a single figure emerged. Jenny felt the rotters behind her shift as they smelled the blood of him, the Living-ness of him. They must have suffered so long. To be so hungry for so long and not to die? It seemed like torture to her.
The figure was wearing a HazMat suit, giving him the appearance of a space alien. He had, ludicrously, pulled a bulletproof Kevlar vest, which said “NYPD”, over the suit. He was carrying a tank with a tube and nozzle in the other hand. Some kind of torch, Jenny saw.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” she heard Trix say from the RV.
“Please turn around and go back the way you came,” the figure said, his voice muffled. “This is a restricted area.”
Jenny laughed. “Are you serious? What are you going to do with that? Roast marshmallows?”
“I’ll do what I have to do,” he said.
“I’m here for my mother,” she said. “Get out of my way, or my friends are going to have a nice lunch.”
The man hesitated. “Jenny?” he said.
“So you do know me,” she said. “That’s not exactly a checkmark in your favor.”
“I-I can’t let you in,” he said. He sounded terrified. He clicked something on the nozzle several times before it took, and a blue flame shot about two inches out of the end.
“Is that a fucking Bunsen burner?” Jenny said.
“This is a restricted area,” the man said again. “Please turn around and…and go…go back…”
“Step aside,” said Jenny. “Now.”
The man held up the tiny blue flame like a sword.
“Asshole,” Jenny said.
She walked up and shook at the rusty lock on the gate. It crumbled away, and she opened the gate just an inch. The RV backed up and the back door of the vehicle swung open. Benji squeezed through the gate, followed by Robin, sending another shudder through the rotters, then Trix propping up Declan. Jenny motioned for them to go inside the building. The man in the HazMat suit just stood and watched them, holding his paltry flame. When they were all inside, Jenny confronted him.
“Do you work for my mother?” she said.
“Y-yes. Since just before the Collapse,” he said. “I’ve stayed with her. Even when the Group had her.”
“What’s the Group?”
“I’ll die before I tell you anything else,” he said. “You’re just one of them. You’re a dead freak. I’ve seen your file.”
“Did you know what they were doing?” said Jenny. “To the kids?”
“We were saving them,” he said.
“You were killing them.”
“You sound just like all those thumper freaks. They would have died anyway,” he said. “We were in the middle of a plague. But when they were dying, they wished we would have tried harder. If only we’d had a bigger sample.”
“If only you’d killed more kids?”
He flared his nostrils. “If need be.”
“Do you have kids?” she said.
“No.”
“Me either, you know why?”
“No.”
“Because my family fucking ruined the entire fucking world. And you helped them.”
Jenny pulled the white fabric helmet from his head, then grabbed him by a scraggly ponytail.
“Is my sister alive?” Jenny said. He was ugly. He had growths on his face and a bulbous nose. He started to sob.
“Yes! Of course she’s alive. She’s here.”
“Here?” said Jenny. “In this building?”
“Yes! Ow!”
“Do you regret anything you’ve done?” she said.
“What?”
“Do you regret it? The things you did with my mother.”
He seemed to stiffen.
“DO YOU REGRET WHAT YOU FUCKING DID TO THOSE KIDS?”
“No!” he said finally.
“Then I won’t regret this,” said Jenny.
The man screamed as she dragged him by his hair to the gate and threw him out to the waiting rotters. It was only as the screams died away to the sound of wet ripping and tearing that she realized she still held his ponytail in her hand. She threw it on the ground and entered the building.
As she shut the door behind her, Jenny could hear the beating of several hearts. One was very fast. And she could smell the Living again. It made her unexpectedly happy until her mouth watered and she remembered what that meant. She glanced at Declan, being propped up by Trix. Jenny joined her and put Declan’s other arm around her shoulder, her arm around his hips. She could smell the reek of him, like spoiled meat. Like maggots and mold and long-dead things. She’d forgotten her objective here, overwhelmed with memories of her sister. Her twin. Jenny looked away guiltily. She had to help Declan and she had to find Zeke. But she couldn’t get Sarah out of her head. The man said she was here.
Sarah. Jenny and Sarah. They’d been inseparable. Until the day they sent Sarah away for good. Jenny’s eyes watered as she remembered. Men dressed in black uniforms. Jenny crying and screaming in unison with her sister until the van pulled away. And then, nothing. Beds with stiff white sheets. Doors with little windows where they would come and look at her. Needles, sedatives, mush being forced down her throat. Rough fabric cuffs restraining her wrists. Claw marks all over her arms and face. A nurse clipping her fingernails so short they bled. And a doctor, blurring in and out of view, her hair pulled back from her face, her glasses perfectly clean and gleaming under the fluorescent lights. Then her father, looking disappointed. Yelling at her. Yelling her name. “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny…”
“Jenny!” said a voice in her ear.
She started and looked up. Her face was wet and she was on the floor, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. She let go of her knees and looked around. Three faces were staring at her, hovering over her. Trix and Declan exchanged a look that Jenny didn’t like.
“What happened?” said Robin. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “I started to remember and…”
“Remember what?” said Declan.
“Sarah. Her name was Sarah. She was my sister. And when they took her away, I went crazy.”
“How crazy?” said Trix.
“Shut up, Trix,” said Declan.
“I was in a place,” said Jenny. “I think it was a mental institution. It was like a hospital, only real quiet. And there was this doctor.”
“Is that why you couldn’t remember?” said Robin.
“Because I went crazy?” said Jenny. She concentrated on the memory, unwilling to let it go now that she had it. “I don’t think so.”
Jenny stood up and wiped the tears off her face. She looked at her friends.
“I think they sent me there to make me forget,” she said. “I think I was there so they could mess with my mind.”
“They didn’t want you to know about your sister?” said Declan. “Why?”
“Because,” said Jenny. “If I had known, I would have run, too.” Jenny clenched her teeth together and listened for the heartbeats again. “And they weren’t finished with me yet.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Jenny remembered the Academy. Its rooms, once full of scientists and scholars, were now mostly empty, dusty. Some were stacked with supplies: Boxes, cans of food and propane tanks. She had to restrain herself from just opening up the flammable tanks and lighting a match. But Sarah could be here. She could save Declan and find her sister at the same time.
“The books,” Jenny said. “She would be close to the books. It’s this way.”
She led them up a staircase and then another. Jenny thought she saw two small figures holding hands out of the corner of her eye. But when she turned her head to look, there was no one there.
The stairca
se led to a set of double doors. Jenny blocked out Robin’s pulse, which was jumping quick as a rabbit. There were two Living heartbeats inside, one fast and one slow. Jenny turned the handle and pushed the doors open with her foot. And there she was. Anna Hawkins. Just sitting there at a table with her back to them. Just sitting there. How could she just be sitting there after everything that had happened? After all she had done?
“Hi, Mom,” she said. Like it was the most normal thing in the world.
There was a flurry of motion beside her and Jenny looked to see Trix on top of someone, a knife to his throat. Jenny could feel his heartbeat in her belly, so fast she thought it would explode.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t hurt her. She doesn’t know.”
Jenny froze at the voice. She stepped toward him, feeling how wide her eyes were but having no way of stopping it. She felt her lip quiver as she looked at him. Older now, but still the same. Balding, but still handsome in a bookish way. His gauntness was the only thing that altered his appearance. But Jenny would know him anywhere.
“Dad,” she said, the weight of the word like an anvil on her lips. Dad. Such a small, silly word. But not to her. “You’re alive.” Her voice was a whisper and her knees had turned to gelatin. She didn’t feel joy to see him. She wasn’t even really surprised. Faron had said he would kill her father, but she’d thought he was full of shit. She had hoped her father was dead because the alternative was too much to bear. That he had left them. He’d left Jenny and Casey with their mother and grandfather. Or worse, that he knew what was going to happen to them.
“Well it’s a happy fucking family reunion, isn’t it?” said Trix. “Should I kill him?”
Jenny looked at her father, felt his fear at the sight of her.
“He left us,” said Casey, suddenly there, suddenly looking at her father, their father, with disdain. Casey, who was dead, a hallucination. But Jenny nodded. He’d left them. All alone. Just left them.
“It’s all because of him,” said Casey. “Everything.”
“Jenny,” he said, smiling through his terror. “Dove, you’ve come back for us.”
“You have no idea, old man,” said Trix.
“Let him go,” said Jenny, her voice hollow.
“Seriously?” said Trix, disappointed.
“What are you doing?” said Casey.
“For now,” said Jenny. She walked over to her mother. She had a large book spread out in front of her and was muttering something under her breath. Now that Jenny was looking at her face, now that she was real, close enough to touch, Jenny could hardly breathe. Her mother’s heart was slow and steady. Her book was upside-down.
“Mom,” Jenny said. The woman didn’t move. She seemed to be in a trance. Jenny waved a hand in front of her face. The woman, once so powerful to Jenny, once so brilliant, didn’t move. Just sat there, muttering.
“She used to seem so big, didn’t she?” said Casey. “So tall and strong and gigantic in the world.”
Jenny nodded.
“Are you going to kill her?” said Casey. He grinned and Jenny looked away from him. When she looked back he was gone.
“What the fuck is wrong with her?” said Jenny. “What did you do to her?”
Her father, free from Trix, sat up and straightened his shirt. He looked apprehensively at her friends. Robin was like a coiled spring. Jenny saw her eyes darting from Grant Hawkins to Anna Hawkins and back again. Father to mother to father. Her father stood up and took a step toward Jenny. With effort, Declan grabbed his arm, straightening to his full height. It hurt him to do so, Jenny saw. But he was still trying to protect her. Jenny saw his hand tighten around her father’s bare arm, under his short sleeve. Weakened or not, Declan could kill him easily. And the look of fear on her father’s face showed that he knew that.
“Deck, let him go,” she said. Declan held on for an uncomfortable moment more than he had to, looking coldly at the smaller man who he could easily crush. There was hate in his eyes. He knew what Jenny had deduced. Her father could have saved her, but decided not to.
Jenny's father took a tentative step toward her, as though afraid of what she would do. He raised his hands in surrender.
“I didn’t do this to her,” he said. “It’s early-onset Alzheimer's. She’s been like this for years. She gets worse every month.”
“No,” said Jenny, shaking her head. “That can’t be true. I need her. I need her evil fucking brain right now.”
“You think your mother’s evil?” he said, clearly surprised.
Jenny looked at her companions. Trix laughed.
“Who the fuck do you think she is?” said Trix. “Ain’t no Mother Teresa there, asshole.”
“Why are you here?” said Jenny.
“Taking care of her, of course,” he said. “Dove, it is so good to finally see you after all these years.”
The room went dead silent.
Jenny looked at her mother.
“Where've you been, Dad?” She wanted him to explain that he had been taken. Held hostage, trapped, anything. Any little lie to calm her torrent of emotions, to convince her that he was not a man who had abandoned his children to medical experiments. Even if she knew in her heart what the truth was, she needed to hear him tell the lie.
“Come now, Dove, you don’t need to start like that.”
“Where. Have. You. Been?” Jenny said, each word feeling like it was punching its way out of her body. She couldn’t breathe again. “You’re alive, so that’s something. Everyone said you were dead. Sully said—”
“You talked to Sully?” her father said, brightening.
Jenny stared at him for a long moment. “I killed Sully.”
“Now why would you go and do a thing like that?”
“Jesus Christ,” said Jenny. “Because he killed my friends. Because he kidnapped me and tortured me for several days. Because he wouldn’t stop. Just like her.”
“Oh,” he said weakly. “Oh my.”
“Cut the shit, bitch daddy,” said Trix. “We all know you’re not the fucking father of the decade.”
“Kill him,” said Robin.
“What?” said her father, looking at Jenny. “Are you here to kill us?”
“I wanted her,” said Jenny. “I needed her to be her. If you’ve got her on some kind of drug…”
“What drug? How would I possibly fake dementia?” he said.
“The same way you erased my sister,” said Jenny, her voice a whisper. “The same way you strapped me down and made me forget. How long was I there, Dad? A week? A month?”
He was silent. He looked down at Anna, still muttering. Jenny heard her say something like, the cortex is in Sagittarius when the Medulla Oblongata is stable. Gibberish.
“HOW LONG, DAD?” Jenny said, screaming the words.
Everyone was watching her father, and not in a kind way. Declan stepped forward.
“Jenny means a lot to everyone in this room,” he said. He smiled and looked like his old self. Dangerous. “I suggest you answer.”
He looked around the room, panicked, then sighed, as if realizing it was futile to look for a way out.
“Two years,” he said, pulling out a chair out and sitting next to Anna.
“What?” Jenny said.
He flipped the book around the right way and Anna slowly looked up, her lips still muttering. When she saw his face, she blinked and then smiled brightly.
“Grant,” she said. “You've come back.”
“Yes, Anna. I’ll always come for you.”
She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “The fly is in the Vaseline.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said. “Read your book.”
He looked up at Jenny.
“Sometimes she’s lucid. Sometimes she remembers my name. She knows who she is and how to fix the world. But more and more often, she’s like this.”
“So, there's a chance she might remember?” said Jenny.
“Remember what, Dove?”
/>
“Do not fucking call me that,” said Jenny. “She might remember how to be…Anna Hawkins.”
“What is it you came for, Jenny?” he sighed.
“First things first,” said Jenny. “I need her to fix him.” She nodded to Declan.
“He’s one of them?” he said. “One of Anna’s kids?”
“Oh, you do not get to give us a cutesy fucking name,” said Trix.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No,” said Jenny. “I made him this way. He was dying from a bite and I made him. I did this to him.”
“How?” he said, suddenly interested. He stood up and approached Declan, looking him over like he was a lab rat. Declan put a large hand on her father's forehead and pushed him back.
“Please, you must let me look at you,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”
“Jen, we need to talk,” said Declan.
“In a minute,” she said. “Why did you send me away for two years?”
“We didn’t send you away, Dove,” he said, looking around at her. “You were in the hospital. You were catatonic.”
“Because you took Sarah away.” Jenny’s voice was cold iron.
“Sarah?” he said, and Jenny thought he went weak, if only for a second.
“My sister,” Jenny said. “And don’t tell me she was imaginary. I know she’s here. I can hear her heart beating.”
“What did he do to you, Jenny?” said her father. “Your grandfather. Did he do it to you like he did to the others?”
“What others?” said Jenny. “Faron?”
He looked like he tasted something bitter.
“Faron is a psychopath.”
“Aren’t we all?” said Trix, smiling serenely.
“There were others,” he said. “Not Faron, who came later. But there were others. They were unsuccessful.”
“They died.”
“No, not all,” he said. “Sarah survived. She wasn’t right, though. She was a terrible influence on you. Caused your mother no end of worry.”