“Sorry,” I said, and the girls echoed me. Gunny lifted the edge of the sheet, the lid, exposed the keys, touched a chord. The room filled with sound, deep and drawn out.
“Wow,” Tia said as I circled the room nervously, peering down at the surrounding grounds. How far could that kind of sound travel? But no one was around to hear it.
“Requests?” Gunny said. “I play a little piano.”
I remembered a piece of a story Dad told me once, and then at my request, several times after that — music on the radio long ago, intruding into the mountain air then, into his memory forever. “‘Brahms’s Lullaby,’” I said.
Gunny nodded. He sat. He played. Nursery-room notes spilled out, swirled around us, hung in the warmth.
The piano sounds died. “Anyone else?” he said, and I figured he meant does anyone else have a request, but Sunday thought differently.
“I’m a cellist,” she said.
“Violinist,” Tia said.
“I’ve had affairs with both,” Gunny said, and I assumed he meant instruments and not players. “Can we do something together?”
He didn’t have to ask twice. Cases opened. Instruments and bows emerged. Even the sounds of tuning and warming up were unlike anything I’d ever produced on my best day. I was glad there wasn’t another string instrument around. I had a feeling in this company I’d stand out like a pig dancing ballet.
But I could listen.
Gunny lifted his eyebrows and looked from girl to girl, questioning silently, as the room quieted.
“Samuel Barber?” Tia said. “His Adagio for Strings?”
I knew the piece — not well enough to play it, but I knew it.
Gunny smiled. “Wonderful choice, uh…”
“Tia,” Tia said. “And this is Sunday.” She glanced at me. “And Kellen.” I was sure Gunny knew who I was by now, but I was glad Tia included me in the introductions. The sound of her saying my name gave me the warm tingles.
“Good to officially meet all of you,” Gunny said, looking like he meant it.
We nodded, returned his smile, told him we were glad to meet him, too, and I really was glad.
Sunday sat on the piano bench. Gunny and Tia stood on either side of her. I hung out near the window, one eye on them, one on the marina and beyond. Ears wide open.
Sunday began, low and mellow. Tia and Gunny took their cue and joined in seamlessly. Whispered notes slipped sadly out of all three instruments, melted together, climbed high and wide and dangled in the air while other notes built and joined them. Somehow, without sheet music or rehearsal, Gunny, Tia, and Sunday were more than doing justice to this beautiful lament to the human condition.
How much didn’t I still know about these girls?
I’d never been to Nebraska, but as the music continued to flow and ebb around me, I pictured myself a couple of years down the road, after the trials and the driver’s license and the loosening of the leash, driving through the vast flat cornfields of that state with the windows down and heat pouring in and all of my car’s sound effects off, and I round a slow bend in the highway, and on both sides of me now, instead of tall stands of corn, are clusters of beautiful brown-skinned white-gowned barefoot Nebraska girls, violins and violas and cellos in hand. Heavenly music permeates the heavy air; I can hear it, smell it, feel it seeping in through my soul.
I didn’t want this moment to end. But it had to.
I had a mission.
Pelleur and Milne were still waiting at the dock when we left the lantern deck forty-five minutes later. We made our way down the stairs and warily out into the sunlight. Gunny’s pickup was parked on the road; he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to the lighthouse.
Cautiously, we skirted the wide expanse of grass, sticking close to the tall evergreens on our left, scuttling through their shadows.
We reached the road, lingering for a moment by the last of the trees to make sure no cars were coming. Then we hustled across the cracked pavement and dove into the bed of Gunny’s trailer-less pickup. He threw a tarp over us and slammed the tailgate closed and suddenly everything was dark and stifling.
We were safe for a moment. For some reason — stress, fatigue, whatever — I started to laugh. It must have been contagious. Tia followed me. Sunday joined in.
It felt good. We kept it up until exhaustion took over. Sunday dropped off to sleep, then it was Tia. I tried to stay awake, curious about the twists and turns of the road and what lay ahead. But I didn’t last long.
I woke to sunlight in my eyes. The tarp was lumped in the corner of the pickup’s bed. Tia was pressed into me, and I thought about how cool it would be if we could just stay like this. But Gunny was here, too, pulling down the tailgate, and the screech of metal on metal got Sunday and Tia stirring and me sitting up.
We were parked away from the road in a thin grove of cedars. Through them I could see water, and in the distance a familiar boat: green hull, white cabin, teak trim, outriggers angling skyward.
I peered through the borrowed binoculars. The name of the boat leaped into focus: Mr. Lucky.
By the time we got to the beach, Mr. Lucky was nearing the center of the bay, moving closer. I could see Dad’s silhouette behind the glare of the cabin windshield. He was at the helm, working the controls and wheel.
I waved, the girls waved. Dad waved back. Gunny, standing at our side, saluted. A long stone’s toss from shore, Mr. Lucky cruised to a stop.
The engine cut off. Dad appeared on the stern deck. He lowered Mr. Lucky’s wooden dinghy into the water from its spot on the boarding step. In a moment, he had the oars un-stowed and he was rowing expertly right at us.
After Gunny and I pulled the dinghy’s bow high and dry, Dad jumped out, carrying a big dirty pack. Thrusting out of a gap in its top flap was the butt of a rifle stock. He smelled like fish; he hadn’t shaved; his dark hair poked out of his knit cap in different directions like strands of seaweed.
He hugged me, lifting me off the ground like a baby. I hugged him back, trying to outdo him. It felt good.
“You’re getting so big, Kellen,” he said in my ear. “I can’t believe you’re thirteen already.”
“Fourteen,” I said. But he was right about my getting big. I was approaching six feet, only two or three inches behind him now.
“Fourteen,” he echoed, reddening. He shook his head. “Where have I been?”
I could hear the husky embarrassment in his voice. I didn’t want to make it worse. I let his question search for its own answer.
I introduced him to Sunday and Tia. He gave me this knowing look — raised eyebrow, little grin — that said he suspected some kind of romantic thing was going on.
“You shouldn’t have come here just for my sake, Kellen,” he said. “You’ve done a good job of tracking me down, but now what? Now we’re both standing too close to the fire, and PAC’s about to throw gas on it.” He gave Tia and Sunday a worried look. “You shouldn’t have brought your friends.”
We started for the truck. “I didn’t have a choice,” I said. “About you or my friends. They insisted on coming.”
“We made him bring us,” Tia said.
“He needed Minders anyway,” Sunday said. “And we ain’t in any danger here.”
“Not from Elisha’s Bear,” Dad said. “There are other risks, though.” He turned to Gunny. “How was the road?”
“Two PAC cars and a state cop just between here and the marina. Luckily, they didn’t hassle me. Maybe because I already talked to some of ’em this morning.”
“So you think we can get to the access spur?”
“We put all four of you in back, they see just me in the cab, I think we’ll be okay,” Gunny said.
Dad frowned. “They’re not going to let us through the roadblocks now,” he said to the girls. “And getting around them would be tougher than it was this morning. Impossible, maybe. So if PAC really does bring Elisha here, the only way for Kellen, Gunny, and me to avoid the bug is to go into th
e hills and hide out for two weeks or more. If you go with us, you’ll be there that long, too. Your mothers and the authorities will be going crazy. And I don’t know about our supply of food. Gunny has some; I have some.” He patted his pack. “But five people can eat a lot in two weeks or more.”
“We have more food,” Tia said, and I did a mental inventory of what was left in our packs. Enough for a day, maybe.
“We don’t eat much,” Sunday said. A lie, based on what I’d seen so far.
“There’s another option,” Gunny said. He glanced toward the cab of his pickup. All I saw there was his rifle hanging in the back window.
“I’ve thought about it,” Dad said, making me suddenly curious about what “it” was. “We need to tell them what’s happening anyway,” he continued, making me even more curious about who “them” was. “But I don’t know if they’d let us all in, especially for that long. Another reason, maybe, for not taking the girls with us.”
“You can’t just abandon us here,” Tia argued. “You said there are risks.”
“She’s right, Charlie,” Gunny said. “There’s some fellas over here I wouldn’t trust around two young girls on their own. What we should probably do is get on our way — all of us — and check in with the boss first thing. Maybe just seeing us anxious characters will chip away some of that crusty surface of his and he’ll invite us to stay. If he says no, we can keep on going into the boonies.”
Dad looked at me. He looked at the girls. I could have tried to convince them to remain behind. There was a reasonable chance that after Dad, Gunny, and I got far enough away, Tia and Sunday would be able to just walk out to the highway, flag down a PAC car, and be back in Seattle in a few hours. At least we had some idea of what it was like here. I, for one, had no idea what we were heading into. Who was “the boss”?
But I couldn’t just pretend Dad hadn’t mentioned risks, and Gunny hadn’t gotten more specific about what they were. The girls might not be in danger from Elisha, but this was throwback country. Besides, it really didn’t seem fair to just ditch them. Not after all they’d done for me.
And then there was the way Tia made me feel when she was near. And how I knew I’d feel if she wasn’t. “I don’t think it’s safe to just leave them by themselves, Dad,” I said.
“It won’t be easy,” he said.
“We don’t care,” Tia said.
“We won’t be a burden,” Sunday said. “You might need us.”
From somewhere Dad produced a feeble grin. He hoisted his pack into the truck. “Let’s go, then.”
She chose to tag along,
Dad’s lifeless hand in one of hers,
his eager pistol in her other.
She never trusted him on his own.
— EPITAPH FOR MOLLY VERNON
(DECEMBER 22, 2019–AUGUST 14, 2067),
BY TAMI AND SARA VERNON, HER DAUGHTERS,
DECEMBER 11, 2068
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We got into the back of the pickup, and Gunny covered us with the tarp.
Tia was on my side of the truck bed again, but it was so crowded now, I had an excuse to stay close to her; she had an excuse not to move away.
“Where are we going?” I asked, loud enough for everyone to hear over the squeaking and clattering and engine noise as we moved off.
Dad didn’t answer for a moment. “There’s a place up in the hills, back in the woods, at the end of an abandoned logging road,” he said finally. He hesitated again. “It’s a lab. Foothills, it’s called. Gunny and I both do security work for the people who run it.”
“Security work?” I said. “You’re a fisherman.”
“Mostly.” He was almost yelling above the motor and road racket. “But I need money to work on Mr. Lucky. Gunny’s been working security for the lab for a while, and he told me they were looking for more help. So I joined up. For now, I fish around my work schedule.”
“What kind of security work?” I said, recalling Mom and Aunt Paige’s conversation about Dad’s involvement in that mysterious something.
“Outside. I watch the perimeter of the grounds, patrol the woods and trails, make sure no one comes close who’s not authorized.”
“You carry that rifle?” I said.
“I haven’t had to use it.”
“Does PAC know about the lab?” Tia said.
“I didn’t think so before today,” Dad said. “Now I do. If the Bear’s coming, I think the lab is the reason.”
“What kind of stuff are they doing?” Sunday asked.
“Huge. Covert. Strictly outlawed.” He paused again. “If PAC knows about it, it’s an automatic and immediate target.”
“They’ll kill every male on the peninsula just to shut down a lab?” I said.
“I’m sure they would,” Dad said. “But that’s the ironic part. Several people working on the project are women. So even Elisha might not halt the operation. PAC is going to have to come in with old-fashioned methods — guns and bombs and bulldozers and whatever else they have at their disposal — if they want to stop what’s going on.”
Guns and bombs and bulldozers. To me, a place that might attract that kind of attention didn’t sound like the best choice for refuge-seekers. “So tell us why we’re going there,” I said.
“It’s a lab, but it’s also a well-designed fortress,” Dad said. “And there’s food, water, places to sleep.”
“What is going on there?” I said. Sunday never got a real answer to her question. It was everyone’s question now.
We turned right, almost stopping as we moved from pavement to what must have been shoulder, then rough, rutted surface. Gunny accelerated, and we started uphill. Even with the almost-opaque cloth of the tarp over my head, I could tell that we’d moved from sunlight to shade. Instantly, the temperature dropped.
Finally, Dad answered me. “I guess it’s not a secret now,” he said. “I’ve never been officially told, but Gunny’s done some inside security. He’s seen a few things and snooped for others.”
The truck bounced through a washboard curve, and Dad raised his voice. “He told me the lab is developing a vaccine for Elisha’s Bear. If it works, and Gunny says it’s a whisker’s breadth away from completion, they can vaccinate every male on earth. Women will still have the upper hand, but they won’t be able to stage these accidental outbreaks anymore.”
“A vaccine,” Tia said. “They wouldn’t allow it.”
“They couldn’t use Elisha as a weapon,” Sunday said.
“How did they find women who would do the research?” I asked, wondering how long Dad had known about, or at least suspected, the original conspiracy.
“They had to look for brilliant women who were sympathetic to the idea,” Dad said. “They searched for those few who were qualified to do the work and who didn’t believe in what PAC was doing. Had done. The Fratheists were helpful in singling out scientists who could be approached safely. Gunny says it took a long time to recruit all of them.”
“How did they develop the vaccine?” Tia said.
“I’m not a scientist, Tia,” Dad said. “But I know they got their start by exhuming bones and tissue from some of the mass grave sites.”
“With more help from the Fratheists?” I said. “At Epitaph Road?”
I felt him shrug. “Maybe.”
“Can they immunize you and Kellen?” Tia said. “And Gunny?”
“That’s crossed my mind,” Dad said. “But I don’t know if they’ve reached the point where they can try it on humans.”
The truck continued to bounce along, twisting and turning, mostly uphill.
Finally, it stopped. I heard Gunny’s door open, and an instant later he was dragging the tarp off of us. “I think you’re okay without this now,” he said. “Ride up front, Charlie?”
In answer, Dad jumped over the tailgate and landed softly on the stripe of greenery that marked the center of the road. “I think I’ve bored these guys enough,” he said. “And my bones are rea
dy for a rest.”
Dad and Gunny climbed into the cab and we started off again. It was good to breathe fresh air, but now that there was no excuse for being hip to hip with Tia, staying close felt awkward. She must not have seen it that way, though. She stayed put. Our hips continued to enjoy each other’s company. Mostly.
Just when I thought this road couldn’t get any skinnier, we left it, taking another turn onto what was not much more than a path, an almost-accidental serpentine channel through tree trunks and underbrush. The stubborn growth pressed in, twanging past the mirrors, scraping against the sides of the old pickup. Sunday, Tia, and I stuck to the middle of the bed, where low limbs and whiplike twigs wouldn’t take a toll on our skin.
After another ten minutes of wooded twists and turns and bumps, we moved out into a clearing. The truck stopped, but Gunny and Dad stayed put. So we did, too. Gunny honked his horn three times.
A moment later, from an opening in the face of a giant pumpkin-shaped outcropping fifty yards in front of us, a man emerged. He was dressed in camouflage — browns and greens and tans — head to toe. He carried a rifle, angled across his chest. At least it wasn’t pointed at us. Yet.
Eighty-four years old, but he still had life by the jewels.
— EPITAPH FOR GLENN SORENSON (APRIL 21, 1983–AUGUST 9, 2067),
BY CHANDLER FOX, AURORA BLAIR, MISSY CONNORS, AND KELLI
SPALDING, HIS DAUGHTERS AND GRANDDAUGHTERS,
DECEMBER 12, 2068
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Camo-guy marched over to the truck, eyeing us the whole time. A step away from Gunny’s window, which was rolled down, he stopped. He was short but built like a block. “Gunny,” he said. “Charlie.”
“Miller,” they chorused.
“What brings you up here on your own dime?” Miller gave us — especially the girls — a long and suspicious look, as if we were spies. “And what about the kids?”
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