by David Wood
“Copy that,” a pilot replied.
“Affimatory,” said the second, in a faux, very exaggerated southern accent.
Kenyon grinned. At least some of them still have a sense of humor. His thoughts were drowned out by the whine of the helicopter’s engine, slowly spinning the rotor blades. The sound grew louder, becoming a roar, and two minutes later they were airborne and cruising over the treeline, staying low to avoid any eagle-eyed predators.
It was only a minute into the rhythmic, choppy flight that the pilot, now speaking into a headset, said, “Sir, we have smoke in the distance. Single column.”
The already-fading effects of their recreational respite dissolved. Smoke could mean many things, many of which were natural, but a single column of smoke meant a human source. Kenyon sat forward and looked through the cockpit window. It wasn’t just a single column of smoke, it was a towering, black behemoth, the kind generated by burning fuel. “Get us there. Now.”
The chopper leaned forward, the rotor blades hacking at the air, beating a drum that everything for miles around would hear. But that was always a risk. And worthwhile. I’m almost there, Ella.
As the helicopters ate up the distance, Kenyon grew more nervous. The smoke was a beacon, but an ominous one. Where there was smoke, there was death. Parties didn’t limp away from fights anymore. Life or death was the rule of the land, and sometimes everyone died.
“Here we go,” Ford said, maneuvering the chopper around in a tight circle so they could see out the side window.
Kenyon closed his eyes, seeing Ella’s body, feeling that loss. He feared the moment that everyone but him believed was inevitable. It wasn’t until Hutchins said, “Fucking hell. What a mess,” that he opened his eyes to the destruction below.
Smoke and fire billowed from what looked like a crater in the ground, identifiable as a gasoline reservoir only because the small service station and its pumps had not yet burned to the ground. Not far from the station, also on fire, was a large creature. Some kind of ExoGen predator with a slab of concrete in its side.
“Bodies to the north,” came the voice of a man from one of the other choppers, circling further away. “ExoGen, but the closest thing to still human I’ve seen.”
Kenyon squinted at the scene below. Finding a variety of dead ExoGens in one area wasn’t uncommon. They slaughtered each other regularly, but from what he could see, the creature below hadn’t been eaten. “How did they die?” he asked.
There was a pause, and then the man’s voice returned. “Uh, looks like they were shot, sir. Blast pattern suggests a shotgun. Close range. It’s a real mess.”
“I want boots on the ground. Three minutes tops. Find out what you can and get airborne.” Kenyon turned to Mackenzie. “Have two of your men rendezvous with us at the station.” Then to Ford: “Take us down, and keep the engine hot.”
This was the second time they’d be setting down on a still fresh scene, danger lurking behind the walls of corn and trees now shuddering under the chopper’s rotor wash. No one liked it, and he wouldn’t get away with taking these kinds of risks much longer. Access to ExoGen or not, once the men were sure he was going to get them killed, they’d probably decide to take their chances, maybe cordon off a town. Eke out a living like some of the other poor human souls holding out in the wilderness.
Like Ella.
Kenyon jumped from the open chopper door before the landing struts even touched down. As usual, his only weapons were a long knife sheathed on one hip, and a .50 caliber Magnum on the other. He drew neither weapon, showing confidence in his own ability to defend himself, and his men’s ability to do their job. He was tempted to draw the gun as he strode down the road, toward the fallen beast. But he resisted, and focused on his surroundings, which showed signs of a recent battle.
He pieced together the confrontation, or a rough approximation of it, and he felt confident that Ella had not only been here, but was still alive. There were no human bodies that he could see, and the road—he knelt down—told how the fight had come to an end. A trail of black tires, peeling away at speed, headed south. They’d fallen into a trap, but had managed to escape, most likely thanks to the reservoir’s explosion.
Her companions are adept at blowing things up. Perhaps I’ll recruit them.
His hand hovered over the revolver when he heard scraping footfalls on the pavement. Then two soldiers, weapons up, rounded the smoldering behemoth that looked part rhino, part something else... Was this thing a beaver?
“Just the three dead back there, sir,” one of the men said. “Big fucking mess. Two with a shotgun, but the other was cut up. A professional job.”
That caught Kenyon’s attention. “What do you mean, professional?”
“Better than any of us could do,” the man said. “Special Ops for sure.”
Great.
As Kenyon turned to leave, something about the creature caught his attention. He stepped closer, looking at the object clutched in the thing’s mouth, attached to a... Is that...? Holy shit.
Before Kenyon could voice his discovery, someone—Mackenzie he thought—shouted, “Incoming!”
He heard them before he saw them, the loud rattling sound barely audible over the helicopter. The helicopter above must have seen them moving between the trees.
“Let’s move!” Kenyon shouted, running toward the chopper. The two men followed close behind. But not close enough.
Kenyon spun at the loud warbling sound, but never stopped running. It saved his life. The two men behind him knew what the cry meant and turned around to open fire. They never got the chance. A phalanx of Rattletails, nine in total, swept out of the forest, where they had been concealed by the corn. The gray-skinned creatures’ plated backs carved through the air like shark fins in those old horror movies. They were led by the large female that they’d seen only once before, her twenty-foot length dwarfing the others. The Rattletails were annoyingly persistent, still tracking Ella after all this time.
Kenyon considered stopping. His magnum could take down a few, but he’d be sacrificing the chopper and the men inside.
And Ella. And that wasn’t acceptable.
The two soldiers opened fire, but it was too little, too late. Without breaking stride, the female leapt up, caught both men in her hind claws, landed atop them, breaking ribs, and then ran while clinging to them like they were floppy slippers, staining the ground with their blood with each step.
The helicopter rose up even as Kenyon leapt in. In seconds, they were a hundred feet up and out of reach. He took one last look down as the horde of predators descended on the men still on the ground. Then he closed the door, turned to Ford and said, “South.”
Chapter 29
After the hellish stress of the past days, the dichotomy of the endless and eventless road they had traversed during the past six hours left Jakob feeling anxious. It wasn’t that he disliked the quiet, or the rapid progress being made, it was that every passing moment built the anticipation. They were headed toward disaster. No matter what direction they headed in, it would be there to greet them, arms open wide for a sharp-toothed embrace.
With every passing mile, conversation fell away, replaced by monotonous scenery and stress. Crops walled in the road, alternating every few miles, but Jakob avoided looking at them. Part of him thought he might spot hungry eyes staring back as they passed, or the long twitching tails of Stalkers rising up, but mostly the crops just made him hungry. They still had enough to eat—MREs and protein bars made before the ExoGen crops started being used by the food industries—but the scent of apples, oranges and countless berries twisted his stomach up in a way he’d never experienced.
Worse than the crops and the constant threat of danger from ExoGenetic predators was the inexorable progress of the sun across the sky. It was behind them now, casting the truck’s shadow out ahead of them. And he knew what that meant.
Night was coming.
And with it, nocturnal hunters. They’d only made it
this far because most of the world’s horrors still preferred to stalk their prey—each other—under the cover of darkness. His mind filled with images of predators stalking each other. With no real prey animals left, acquiring a meal demanded more than simply hunting and killing, because prey could fight back now, and it wanted, just as badly, to eat the predator. The world was a nightly battleground, slowly filtering out the weak and leaving only the most adapted and horrendous monsters behind. He’d asked Ella if the predators would eventually eat through their populations, and she thought they would, but their numbers were still high enough that it wouldn’t happen for a long time. They’d probably become omnivores before fully dying out. If humanity couldn’t somehow reclaim the planet, the future belonged to an ExoGenetic species.
Staring down, he flexed and clenched his fists, watching the blood moving in and out of his hand change the color from pink to pale white. The color shift was hard to see past the layer of dirt covering his skin, blocking his natural scent and filling the truck cab with the smell of earth. Better than blood, he thought, surprised that he was still alive, still in shock at who had spared his life.
It was her, he thought. She’s alive.
But it didn’t make sense. He remembered the night his father had dragged his mother outside, her hands bound, her teeth stained with both of their blood. The gunshot had been a defining moment in Jakob’s life, the sound of it slamming the door on his childhood. He’d hated his father for doing it, but that wound had healed in time with the physical wounds inflicted upon him by his mother.
His eyes shifted from his soiled hands to his forearm, where a crescent moon of scars revealed where his mother had bitten him, just for a moment, before his father had intervened.
She tried to eat me.
But not this time.
She remembered me. Spoke my name.
He hadn’t told his father about the encounter. It was ridiculous. Insane. His dead mother, now a monster, had pinned him to the ground and spoken to him? Even he knew it wasn’t possible. It was a hallucination, he decided. Evidence of his fracturing mind. He’d been chased through the forest. He’d nearly been killed. Eaten. Again. How could he be sane after the past few days?
How was Anne?
He looked at the girl who might be his sister. She sat quietly, looking out the window, unfazed by the delicious scenery. How could she not be? She’d already walked through the endless fields of food without eating any of it. Seeing it now, as a blur, was probably easy.
Anne slowly turned toward him, somehow feeling his gaze on the back of her head. She leaned forward, cracking a slight grin. “Are we there yet?”
Jakob was surprised when both Ella and Peter, who had been silent for the past hour, burst out laughing. Anne had cut through the tension with four words, and the look she’d given him prior to speaking said she’d done it on purpose. Neither parent answered her question, but their conversation resumed, discussing what awaited them at George’s Island.
Anne sat back in her seat, looking pleased. “A sense of humor helps.”
“I have a sense of humor,” Jakob said.
“You didn’t laugh.”
She was right. He knew what she’d done was funny, but the laughter they’d shared just a day previous was no longer a part of him.
“I thought you knew that already,” she said.
“Knew what?”
“About laughing.”
“What made you think that?” he asked.
She looked out the window for a moment. “Because you made me laugh.”
“I hadn’t been out here yet. I hadn’t seen what you saw. Lived like this.”
She frowned. “But we are still alive.”
For how long? he thought, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not to a little girl who clearly needed hope. Or was she trying to give it to him?
“Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?” he asked.
She laughed.
Well, that was easy.
“Why?” she asked.
“To get to the bottom.”
She snorted and said, “That is the dumbest joke I’ve ever heard. Wait. Wait. Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill?”
Jakob squinted at her, wondering where she was going with this. “Why?”
“Because the Giant Pink Asshole wanted to use it!”
It was the kind of lame punchline that only a kid could conjure, but the image of that long-limbed, beaked pig flashed into his mind, chasing a roll of toilet paper down a hill.
“GPA strikes again,” she said, and this time got a laugh out of Jakob.
“There you go,” she said, and then shifted suddenly, growing serious. “Let’s make a deal. No matter what. If you make me laugh, I’ll make you laugh.”
He grinned. “Sounds like I’m getting a raw deal.”
“Bite me,” she said, making him laugh again.
“Good enough,” he said, and they shook hands.
After crossing two bridges, in and out of Illinois, a flash of bright blue color pulled Jakob’s eyes to the window. The brightness of it, caught in the sun, made him squint, but the words resolved and opened his eyes wider, despite the brightness. He whispered the words, ‘Welcome to Kentucky,’ and then louder as they flashed past the sign, he said, “We’re in Kentucky?”
“Told you he could read,” Peter said to Ella.
Jakob leaned forward, head over the seat. “Are we going to Alia’s? To the biodome?”
His father nodded. “It’s on the way, and we could use some supplies. Brant is a good man. He’ll help us out.”
Brant was Alia’s father. He and Peter had spoken on several occasions, sharing tips and tricks about the matching biodomes. They hadn’t met, but like Alia and Jakob, they had become friends. Alia’s mother, Misha, was still alive, too. Jakob had only spoken to her once, when calling for Alia, but she seemed nice enough. They were good people. Farmers, like his father, but also not like his father, because none of them had ever been an elite Marine CSO. They probably had some weapons, but he doubted they knew how to use them like his father. They probably didn’t have an armored truck. Or an escape tunnel. Or a basement rigged with explosives. They were getting by, but could they survive outside the dome?
“We can’t,” Jakob said. “If we bring our trouble to them...”
“We’ve been driving all day without any sign of trouble,” his father said.
“They could track us,” Jakob argued.
Peter deferred to Ella, glancing at her. She turned back and said, “We’ve been tracked over greater distances, but were on foot at the time. We’ve been driving all day, at an average speed of fifty miles per hour.”
“The Stalkers hold a grudge,” he said.
“We haven’t seen them since leaving home,” his father said.
“And we have no reason to believe there are many of them alive,” Ella added.
“What about the Riders?” he asked. The name, along with ‘Woolies’ had been endorsed by Anne and accepted by the others. “They were intelligent.”
“They were,” Ella said. “And it was a surprising adaptation. I didn’t expect it to—”
“You expected predators to become intelligent?” Peter asked.
“It’s a logical step in the evolution of most species...assuming it’s a beneficial adaptation. That the Riders had once been human makes it less of a leap forward and more of a leap back. When their predatory instincts kicked in, human intellect took a back seat. Now that time has passed, hyper evolution has found intelligence and community to be beneficial attributes. But they didn’t need to grow brains. They were already there. The Riders just needed to access them again, though they’re clearly doing so in a limited, almost Cro-Magnon kind of way.”
“Cro-Magnon men didn’t ride domesticated animals,” Peter pointed out.
“Regardless,” Ella said. “They pose no threat to us now. Only one of the hunting party we encountered survived, and for all we know, she was
the last of them.”
Jakob’s stomach soured. She.
“And while her evolution might be shaped by the encounter, she was also intelligent enough to realize a second encounter would not be in her best interest. Unlike the Stalkers, who’ve had many victories, and meals, along the way, the Riders will see no benefit to chasing after what they’ll see as a superior predator.”
Peter replied, making a joke, but Jakob tuned it out. He closed his eyes and remembered the female Rider’s face. Heard her voice, familiar yet modified. Her body was large. Muscular and hair covered. Hardly human. Unashamedly naked.
But her eyes...
Jakob shook his head. It wasn’t her. It was a monster. Ella was right. The Rider woman would have no more desire to follow him than he had to go back and face her again. It’s not my mother, he told himself, doing his best to ignore the fact that he didn’t really believe it, and to scour clean the memory of her speaking his name.
Chapter 30
“This is far enough,” Ella said, dropping the folded tarp on a bed of cushiony, densely packed soybean plants.
Anne put a backpack down and stretched. “This actually looks like it will be comfortable.”
“Comfortable?” Jakob said. “Looks like the world’s lumpiest mattress.”
Anne crossed her arms. “Have you ever slept inside a raspberry bush?”
“Touché,” Jakob said.
Anne knelt and pushed down on the nearest plant. “What I thought.”
Jakob knelt beside her, testing the bed of plants with his hands. “Are we sure it wouldn’t be better to stay in the truck? I’d feel a lot safer with metal walls around me.”
“Metal and glass,” Anne said. Jakob was smart, but sometimes she wondered how he’d survived this long. Because of his father, she decided. Jakob might have the survival instincts of a golden retriever, but his father... The man had gone to scout the area thirty minutes ago. Had presumably been tailing them, watching for signs of danger. And all the while, she hadn’t detected even the faintest trace of his presence. There wasn’t a single ExoGenetic predator she’d encountered capable of that.