by G. C. Julien
The screen switches back to John. He shakes his overly combed head. “Nothing yet. Police are still investigating, and we have a team of specialized forces coming in to sweep the area. There were threats of two, possibly three other bombs positioned throughout the city.”
“We need to go to her,” Mila starts. We need—”
“Mila!” I say, but she won’t listen. She’s walking to the foyer to slip on her sneakers.
I rush to her side to reason with her, but she won’t have it. She reaches for the door handle, but I push all of my weight into the door.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say, making the same face my mom does when she tells us to clean our dishes—when she’s around to tell us, that is.
“Mom’s out there!” she says. “She needs our help!”
“And what if she isn’t, Mila?” I snap. I don’t mean to be cold, but I’m scared, terrified beyond belief and on the verge of passing out. “What if she’s dead? Huh? What if she died in the attack? I can’t lose you, too!”
CHAPTER 14 – GABRIEL
Gabriel – Present Day
I’m not sure how much more of this bullshit I can take.
What’s the point in a life like this, anyway? Why do I even bother? All I do is follow a prick of a leader and his herd of sheep around a nation that doesn’t exist anymore. I couldn’t even tell you what state I’m in.
The last sign I saw was some big blue sign with a giant sunflower that read Welcome to Kansas. God knows where we are. We could have traveled across two or three states by now.
There’s nothing left. Nothing but abandoned houses, commercial stores, and beat-up cars sitting in the middle of highways. I don’t understand how things got this bad. How things got so out of control.
I watch Adam as he kicks over a table in the teachers’ lounge. The sound echoes across the walls and a few of the men step back.
“Fuck!” Adam shouts.
He’s pissed off because he can’t find enough food. And probably because he hasn’t had sex in over five years. What did he think was going to happen? Did he honestly think that we’d march our way to a school that was abandoned over a year ago, only to find a ton of nonperishable food?
That’s ridiculous. We aren’t the only survivors left. Others have probably scavenged through this school many times over. I’m suddenly reminded of the knife I found—the one tucked away in my pocket—and I’m thankful it was left behind.
“What about you twats? Did you find anything good in the lockers?” Adam asks.
Everything he’s pulled out of the fridge so far has layers and layers of green and brown muck around it, or it’s turned into soup or is now rock hard. There’s nothing left that hasn’t spoiled.
Steven, one of Adam’s sheep, drops a pile of chocolate-coated granola bars on the kitchenette’s counter. Adam jumps on it like a dog on a piece of raw meat. He picks it up, examines it by squeezing it in between the tips of his fingers and sliding his nose back and forth over the wrapper, then whips it straight at Steven’s face.
“It’s as hard as a fucking rock!”
Steven picks up his pile of bars, including the one that hit him in the face, and slips them back into this bag. It’s still food, so I’m sure he’ll eat it later, even if he has to break his teeth doing it.
“Why don’t we grab a truck outside? Get out of here? We’ll cover more ground,” McGaver says. If anyone else were to be in charge, it would be him. He looks like Adam, only he’s even bigger, has way more facial hair, and has more tattoos—one of them a poorly drawn skull on the back of his neck.
Adam glares at him and stretches his neck until two loud cracks bounce off the walls. “You think one truck will carry twelve grown men?”
McGaver shrugs. “Why not? One driver, four passengers, and the rest can sit in the cargo.”
“And you think someone left the keys in the truck?” Adam sneers. “That it’ll start up? God knows how long that thing’s been sitting there.”
“Lionell here’s a mechanic,” McGaver says, throwing his chin out at the bearded man beside him. He’s been with us for about four months and he’s barely said one word to anyone.
Lionell nods but doesn’t say anything, as usual. Adam sniffles, the way a guy does when he tries to look tough, then turns his head away. He’s always been against driving. I don’t know what his problem is. I think it’s his need to have control all the time and to do that, he’d have to drive. To drive, he’d have to put his gun down.
The bastard even sleeps with his gun. What kind of leader does that make him? If he can’t trust his crew, how does he expect us to trust him? I’m looking forward to the day he runs out of ammo. It’s not every day you find bullets for an AK-47 in a postapocalyptic world.
If he keeps firing the way he does—like at kids, for example—he’ll run out. It’s only a matter of time.
Adam looks at me, and I stare back. It’s like he reads my mind sometimes. Could be I’m the one he doesn’t trust and with good reason.
His eyes shift over to McGaver, who’s waiting expectantly with big brown eyes like a kid who just asked his mom to stay an extra hour at the park. It doesn’t suit him at all. I can tell he’s not a fan of being a follower—of taking orders.
“Doesn’t mean it’s even gonna start,” Adam says, and that’s enough for McGaver to throw an excited fist in the air.
“We can try,” McGaver says, and his attention turns to Lionell. “You think you can fix her if she doesn’t start?”
Lionell’s one of the younger ones here. A French guy in his late twenties, early thirties. He’s wearing a green baseball cap and has a pointed chin with about an inch of golden beard grown out. He looks like a nice guy—the type who’d open a car door for a lady—but he doesn’t talk much, and he follows every command given to him. I can’t read him, so I assume he’s an asshole deep down like the rest of them.
He shrugs at McGaver. “I’ll do my best. Depends on what’s wrong wid it. If dere’s a part missing—”
“If there’s a part missing, we walk,” Adam says, storming past everyone and out of the teacher’s lounge.
It’s obvious he doesn’t want to take the truck. He knows if we don’t start covering land at a faster rate, our chances of survival go down. We can’t keep walking around pointlessly, hoping to find food. We’re burning too many calories. Besides, I think he’s hoping we’ll come across a military base or some drug dealer’s abandoned house so he can scavenge for more weapons.
The guys follow him, and I stay at the back of the crew like I always do. I prefer to have a clear view of everything and to be honest, I don’t trust any single one of these pricks in front of me.
I’m about to walk out of the lounge when I hear a faint click sound behind me. I turn around and notice that one of the kitchenette’s cabinet doors is cracked open. They were all closed when we got in here. I pay attention to these things—to every detail of my surroundings.
I glance back toward Adam and the crew. They’re marching their way down the school corridor, their heavy boots thudding and squeaking. So I move toward the cabinet and pull it open.
The kid lets out a sharp gasp, but quickly covers the mouth of a little girl in front of him. His little sister, I’m assuming. She’s sitting in between his legs, and he has his scrawny arms wrapped around her so they can fit under the sink together. The molded sink pipe is hanging in front of their faces, creating a shadow across the little girl’s forehead.
The boy must be eleven or twelve, and the little girl, around seven. How is a seven-year-old living in this school? She would have been two years old when everything went to shit in this country. He must have carried her all the way here from wherever he came from.
He’s staring at me and looks like a cartoon character, his eyebrows up high on his face and his red lips forming a dark hole. He’s terrified. I quickly glance back at the lounge entrance to make sure no one came back looking for me, then back at the kid, who’s comple
tely frozen. The little girl’s eyes look like her brother’s over his white-knuckled hand—huge and glass-like.
“You guys okay?” I whisper.
The boy nods but doesn’t say anything.
“Got enough food?”
He doesn’t say anything. Smart boy.
“I’m one of the good guys,” I say. “Just want to make sure you’ll survive.”
He nods again.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the pocket knife I found in one of the kids’ lockers.
The boy still has his hand tight over his sister’s mouth, like they’ve been through this countless times before.
I slowly hand him the pocket knife. “Here.”
It may be stupid of me to give up my only weapon, but I’m a grown man. I can handle myself. These two are kids. They can use it for hunting, gutting, or even to defend themselves if it ever comes to that.
“The men I’m with are leaving now,” I say. “If there’s more of you, keep hiding for a little while longer, okay?”
For a moment, I tell myself that I’ll come back for them; I’ll come back, and I’ll take care of them. But deep down, I know I’m lying to myself. God knows where I’ll be tomorrow. Once I get on that truck, I’ll be miles away from here. All I can do is hope they survive.
I close the cabinet door just on time because Castor’s half-toothed face pops out into the lounge.
“Gabe! What’re you doing? Lionell is fixing the truck right now. We have to move.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Thought I’d check one last time for some food.”
He shrugs like he always does, and I follow him out of the lounge.
God, I hope they survive.
Gabriel – Flashback
I lie in my bed—the bottom bunk in a room that looks like a science lab—and read my new curriculum. Everything in this room is white. Everything. Even the bedroom door, which is electronic and lets out a high-pitched beeping noise when it’s opened.
There’s even a holographic screen facing down from the top corner of the room. In front of a diamond-shaped hologram, there’s a 3-D man with no hair and weird gray eyes. At first, I thought it was a projection of a real man. But if you look close enough, you can see some pixelation along the edges of his face.
His name, apparently, is Olix, and he’s here to serve our needs. He reminds me of a live version of Siri. My mom showed it to me once with one of her old iPhones. She thinks one day it’ll be worth a lot of money because it’s in mint condition. We’ll see. And same as Siri, you can ask Olix anything and he answers you. Only he’s more intelligent. Way more intelligent. The only creepy thing is that he makes eye contact with you. How’s that even possible unless they’re watching us? And why are they watching us?
Right now, his eyes are closed and his face is set to the lowest dimness possible. The bedroom window is sealed with a black panel, which means there’s barely any light in here whatsoever. It’s electronic, too, so I don’t have any way of opening it.
Welcome to Area 82, I think to myself.
I know I should be excited… thrilled that I’m standing inside Area 82. Only a small fraction of military men ever step foot in here. So why do I feel like there’s a dark cloud around me? Like this place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
I sigh and look back down at my curriculum. It’s a small sheet of metal, or aluminum, the size of a typical tablet. Only, the blue-green text is floating up a few millimeters. If I swipe my finger through the letters for fun, they jumble up before bouncing back into place.
It might seem menial, but it makes me smile. I do this a few times, before reading what’s been written out for us.
5:00 a.m. – Room verification
5:30 a.m. – Shower
5:45 a.m. – Breakfast
6:00 a.m. – Aerobic exercise
7:00 a.m. – Shower
7:15 a.m. – Information session
11: 00 a.m. – Lunch
I stop and my finger hovers over the information session line, its letters dancing slightly. Information session? For what? For over three hours? And this is supposed to be a daily routine? What sort of information session takes nearly four hours? I feel like I’m in training all over again, only this time, there is zero room for error.
The room suddenly lights up in a blue hue, and Olix’s soothing voice jumps out at me.
“I sense you are experiencing difficulties sleeping, Gabriel. Do you require assistance?”
I drop my curriculum flat against my chest and shut my eyes.
There’s movement above me, followed by deep sleep grunting. The last thing I want to do is wake up my new roommate, Alex. I wish I’d been bunked with James instead, but I had no say in the decision. They split us all up into teams of two. Alex is now my new partner, and I’ll be working with him in the field, too. So I don’t want to get on his bad side.
He’s hard to read, and I don’t even know how well we’ll get along. But I’m a pretty easy-going guy, so there shouldn’t be any issues on my end. My mom always taught me that conflict never resolves anything. She’s also put me in my place more times than I can count, so I’ve learned that mouthing off gets me nowhere.
I peek through my closed eyelid.
Olix is still staring at me with those creepy pixilated eyes of his. Hopefully, if I don’t respond to him and stop moving, he’ll go back to sleep. It takes a minute or two, but he does eventually dim in color until all I can see is blackness.
I let out a soft sigh. Did I make the right decision when I joined the Black Marines? It seems like I’m about to get involved in something terribly messed up. I was okay fighting in North Korea—I managed to keep myself together because I knew that in the end, it was to protect the citizens of my country. But this… This is something else entirely, and I have a nasty feeling in my stomach. I close my eyes, hoping that if I lie here long enough, I’ll fall asleep.
Tomorrow’s the first big day of training for Project GENESIS, whatever that is.
CHAPTER 15 – LUCY
Lucy – Present Day
Perula’s sitting at the back corner of the shack with a sweet smile on her wrinkled face. She keeps looking up at me from behind a pair of green metallic glasses that sit on a cherry-shaped nose. Her pepper hair is tied up into a loose bun behind her head, and a few strands of scraggly hair dangle over the rims of her glasses.
When she isn’t looking at me, she looks down and plucks dead leaves from a plant that’s sitting on her lap. She’s wearing a pair of jean overalls over a gray undershirt, which is something she seems to like wearing all the time. A lot of women in Eden wear the same clothes over and over again—whether it be a valuable outfit they’ve held onto for years, or one of Eden’s standard hemp dresses.
I wonder if those green-rimmed glasses are her original glasses, or if she had to take them out of our supply room. Apparently, there’s so much stuff down there it’s hard to cross the room. I’d love to see what’s in there one day, but for now, only a few select people are allowed to go.
Then, I look at Mavis, her twin sister. It’s hard to believe they’re twins. They look nothing alike until you look at their faces. On top of it, their personalities are completely different, so sometimes, I forget they’re twins.
Mavis has more of a round shape than Perula, and she tends to wear dresses instead of pants. Most of her dresses look like something you’d find in a Halloween store, too. They’re usually orange, yellow, and red and have a lot of black lace on them. She also likes to wear her hair down a lot. That’s the fastest way I can tell them apart, aside from Mavis’s funky dresses.
Mavis, the total opposite of her sister, keeps grunting while she rummages through cabinets and buckets around the room like she’s looking for something. Every so often, she stands up and stretches her slender body, wipes the sweat off her face, and throws her long pepper-colored locks behind her back. Now that I think of it, her hair looks like an accumulation of dust and animal hair you’d find in
a vacuum canister. If I knew what she was looking for, I’d offer to help, but I can already tell that Mavis doesn’t want me to be here. She was happy working as a Healer alongside her twin sister and nobody else.
“I have to ask,” Perula says, breaking the awkward silence, “why Healer?” She crinkles her eyes in an affectionate way.
I shrug. “I’m not sure,” I say. “A feeling.” I wish I could offer more of an explanation.
She smirks and nods her head like she knows something I don’t.
“You have energy surrounding you,” she says. Her voice is so soothing, that for a second, I’m able to block out Mavis’s grunting and banging.
What’s that supposed to mean, anyway? What energy?
“Someone you care deeply for,” she says. “They’re with you.”
My throat swells. Is she talking about my mom?
“Oh, frog on a stick!” Mavis slaps the table in front of her. “Stop feedin’ the poor lass your ghost stories!” She rolls her eyes up at the ceiling and shakes her thick head. Then, her eyes meet mine, and she glares at me. “Don’t you be listenin’ to my sister’s nonsense.”
But Perula is sitting there, her lips still curved upward. She doesn’t seem annoyed or degraded in any way. How does she remain so calm all the time?
“Just because you aren’t connected to the spirit realm, Mavis—”
Mavis lets out a loud cackle. “Perula tends to overindulge in the poppy tea.”
“Poppy tea?” I ask.
Mavis bends down, then pops back up again, her face now level with the wooden island in the middle of the room. I can only see her greasy forehead, her wirelike hair, and her eyes.
But she doesn’t say anything. Have I already questioned too much? Am I not allowed to ask questions? Or is she the one who’s said too much?
“Papaver somniferum,” Perula says, looking sideways at her sister. “It’s a natural pain reliever.”