by David Wood
Jakob shook his head. Images of his mother that he’d wanted to forget were coming to the forefront of his mind, not just of his mother launching herself at him, giving in to the hunger, trying to tear out his throat, but also of the woman-thing who had straddled him in the gas station parking lot. The woman he believed was his mother, but also wasn’t. His mother was dead. What he saw had been something...stronger. Confident. And savage. Perfectly adapted to the new world. But he also knew that wasn’t possible. His mother was dead. Shot. He looked up at the back of his father’s shaved head. Wasn’t she?
The skeletons in the road crunched beneath the truck’s tires. Jakob winced at the sound.
“Sorry,” his father said. “Couldn’t avoid them.”
“Crunch,” Anne said. “They weren’t people anymore anyway.”
Jakob’s brow furrowed. “They used to be. Isn’t that enough?”
“They were monsters,” Anne said. “Same kind we’d kill now without thinking about it.”
“It’s not that easy,” Jakob said. “Is it, Dad?”
Peter kept his eyes locked forward, steering around an overturned 18-wheeler. Finally, with a quiet voice, he said, “No. It’s not that easy.” He glanced back. “I’ll try to avoid them next time.”
Anne shrank down in her seat. “Going to have to be tougher than that to survive out here.”
Jakob could hear Ella in Anne’s voice, and he thought the girl was overcompensating for her mother’s silence. “She’s going to be okay.”
“Shut-up,” Anne snapped. “You don’t know that. Don’t tell me something you don’t know.” She spun around and climbed to her knees. “You can’t do that.”
“Do what?” Jakob said, leaning back from Anne’s angry eyes. “Geez.”
“It’s false hope,” she said. “Just because your mom is—”
“Shut-up, you little jerk,” Jakob said, working hard not to show surprise at what he said.
“Asshole!” Anne said, lunging back, her fingers hooked. The look on her face was ferocious, and for a moment, Jakob thought she must have eaten some ExoGenetic food along the way. Then the anger shifted to surprise, as she was stopped in midair and yanked back.
“Hey,” Peter shouted, the bark was so loud that Jakob and Anne were both stunned into silence. “Knock it off! Both of you!” He let go of Anne’s belt, where he’d pulled her back into the front seat. He pointed at the seat and waited for her to sit. She complied with a huff, crossing her arms.
“Your mother is going to be fine,” Peter said. “What she went through, it was hard on her body. She’s unconscious, but her breathing is regular and her pulse is strong. Her body and mind just need time to heal. She’s a strong woman. You know that better than anyone. Just give her time, okay?”
Anne’s arms tightened as her frown deepened. But then she offered a begrudging, “Fine.”
Jakob was certain Peter would then make her apologize for her behavior. It’s what his father would have made him do, but the man just continued staring ahead, stoic, a statue behind the wheel. Jakob watched him, seeing the concentration in his eyes. He glanced at the speedometer. They were going 40 mph, which wasn’t fast by old-world standards, but it could be dangerous on a road as congested as this one. There were cars everywhere. Fallen trees. Predators hiding in wait, ready to pounce. At least, Jakob imagined there were. Since the previous night, they hadn’t seen another living thing. But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there.
And his father was thinking the same thing. He could see it in the man’s eyes. And then, in the way his vision flicked back and forth to the rearview mirror. Jakob’s eyes widened with the idea that something might be chasing them already, that his father was driving fast, with no regard for the dead, because they were being pursued.
He swiveled his body and cut a sidelong glance out the back window. He watched the road streak past, framed by trees and pocked with the remnants of civilization. They crested a hill, and his vision turned upward. The sky above was bright blue, lacking even a trace of clouds, which seemed impossible given the humidity outside. The clouds will come this afternoon, he thought, along with a storm. Western Kentucky was on the fringes of the infamous Tornado Alley, where storms could roll in without warning, tearing entire cities to shreds. The sky above might be blue, but storm clouds could be rolling in behind them, or waiting to greet them over the horizon.
As they reached the bottom of the long hill and started up the far side, Jakob caught a glimpse of movement at the top of the hill. He strained to see what it was, but his view shifted to the pavement as they rose up a second hill.
“Jakob, buddy,” his father said, sounding calm, but strained.
Jakob looked forward, meeting his father’s eyes. He understood the look, which could be translated to something like, “Not a word.” He was trying to spare Anne the stress of knowing they were being pursued. Jakob played along. “Yeah, Dad?”
“You have the map back there?”
Jakob looked for their thick map book. Found it tucked into the back of the driver’s side seat. Leaned over Ella to pluck it out. “Got it.”
“We’re about ten miles out—”
Jakob’s heart hammered from the news. “From Alia?”
Peter gave a nod. “But I don’t think the direct route is going to work out for us. We need to find an alternative. Something more...”
“Winding,” Jakob said, understanding the request.
“Probably a good idea,” Anne said. “Since we’re being followed.”
Peter slowly turned toward the girl. Busted.
“But you knew that,” she added, glancing up at the man who might be her father, too. “Two words. Situational awareness.”
“How long have you known?” Peter asked.
“About five seconds after you saw them in the rearview,” she said. “And a whole thirty minutes before Super Genius in the backseat knew.” She motioned to Jakob with her head.
“Hey,” Jakob said, but his offense lasted only a moment, mostly because she was right, and once again she had proved he had a lot to learn before he could survive on his own. He wasn’t too proud to accept that. “So who’s back there?”
“What’s back there,” Anne corrected. “And the answer is always, ‘nothing good.’ So find us a good route or hand me the map.”
Geez, Jakob thought, wanting nothing more than to argue and put the girl in her place. But he remained silent, partly because he thought she’d win the argument, but also because they were just ten miles from Alia’s biodome. They’d be safe there. And with company. He’d never seen Alia, but his mind’s eye had painted a pretty picture based on how she had described herself. He assumed she might have embellished a little. He certainly had. But as the only other teenage girl...maybe anywhere, she’d be pretty much perfect, no matter what she looked like. He knew these were stupid thoughts to have, given the circumstances, but he was still a guy, and a teenager. As a non-ExoGenetic person, his teenage hormones were firing exactly as nature had created them to do. So he turned to the map, found a circuitous, confusing route to the biodome, which had already been marked, and said, “Next exit. Turn right.”
As they turned off the highway, Jakob looked back, watching the horizon. He saw nothing as they moved past the trees, invisible to whatever was chasing them. The side road was half the size of the highway, and curved like a snake, but it was mostly free of vehicles. Peter pushed the gas pedal down, bringing them to fifty-five, explaining, “We need to put some distance between us, so they can’t hear the engine.”
“If it’s a bat-thing,” Anne said, “that might not be possible.”
“The trees will help,” Jakob said.
Peter nodded, pushing five more miles per hour out of the engine and taking a sharp turn. The weight of the truck kept them on the road, but the tires chewed through gravel on the side.
“Next left,” Jakob said, as they rapidly approached the turn.
Peter braked hard without
screeching the tires, and accelerated again. The rollercoaster continued this way for miles, leaving Jakob as car sick as he was desperate to reach their destination.
And then they did, parking at the edge of a treeline mixed with wheat. The field before them was covered in endless, almost luminous, carrot greens, poking out of the soil, flickering in the breeze. Jakob felt ill as he looked out across the field. All of his hopes shriveled up and died as he saw compelling evidence that while the world had changed, Tornado Alley had still lived up to its name.
Chapter 34
The farmhouse was in shambles. Branches had collected around the first floor, piled haphazardly by whatever great wind had swept through. Leaves shook in the breeze, rattling against the side of the house and the windows. The white home with green shutters had sustained the most damage to the second floor, which was caved in at the front. A soiled white sheet, clinging to the debris, rolled like a flag, signifying defeat. The biodome was equally covered in debris, but Peter couldn’t see any breaks in the glass. But that didn’t matter. If the house had been breached by the wind, predators could have easily followed. And there was no denying that the place looked...dead.
“We should keep going,” Anne said. “It’s still morning, and this place doesn’t look safe.”
Peter was inclined to agree. They had a lot of daylight left to burn, and they could cover a few hundred miles if nothing happened on the way. The girl’s instincts were honed for survival. Like her mother’s. Like his had once been. Before he had had a son, who he knew was about to insist they check.
“Dad,” was all the boy said.
It was enough.
“We have to check,” Peter said.
“It’s a mistake.” Anne turned back to Jakob. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“Since when did you become such a—”
“Jakob,” Peter said, silencing his son. He understood the boy’s frustration. Anne had become antagonistic. But he also understood why, and he hoped Jakob would, too. With her mother unconscious, Anne had slipped into a kind of hyper-aggressive survival mode. She might trust Peter and Jakob in the simplest sense, but she didn’t fully trust their ability to keep her alive. And safe. That deep trust was reserved for the woman sprawled across the back seat. Anne might be acting combative, but she was really just terrified.
“They’re good people,” Peter said to Anne. “Friends. We don’t leave friends behind, just like we didn’t leave your mother behind.” He watched the girl’s expression slowly shift. Her mother had taught her survival at all costs, but he still lived by a different code. No man left behind. And if the previous night’s events had revealed anything, it was that Anne preferred the credo ‘No man left behind,’ over, ‘Every man for himself.’ He leaned toward the girl. “Right?”
“Ugh.” Anne doubled her effort at crossing her arms so tightly she couldn’t breathe. “Fine. But if there’s a predator waiting in that house, I’m out of here.”
Jakob leaned forward between the seats. “If there is anything not nice in that house, we’ll face it together.”
Atta’boy, Peter thought. Jakob had seen past the girl’s walls and figured out what was really bothering her.
“As long as we’re alive, you won’t be alone,” Jakob added, and the words acted like the sun on an ice cream cone, melting away Anne’s anger.
She deflated, but recovered quickly, saying, “Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”
“Had to make sure you’d understand,” Jakob said. “You are a little slow.”
Anne shook her head, but was smiling now. “Going to kick you in the nuts when we get out of this truck.”
Peter laughed despite what he feared they were about to find inside the house. “Okay now, let’s get this over with. No nut-kicking.” He put the truck in gear, and idled forward. The mood shifted back to tense as they rolled over the carrot-shrouded pavement. Their view of the house was clear, but nothing had changed. The place was deserted and lifeless.
Or was it?
As he pulled closer, he noticed that there wasn’t much debris on the ground around the home, just up against it. He also couldn’t find any sign of destruction in the distant woods around the house. Either the tornado had touched down to smite the home, leaving everything else unscathed, or, “It’s all fake.”
“Is that like an existential comment?” Anne asked, leaning forward to look up at the house, as they stopped in the paved drive, fifty feet from the front of the building.
“Do you even know what that means?” Jakob asked.
“Do you?”
“Quiet,” Peter said, and both listened.
The truck windows broke the silence, whirring as they lowered, letting in the wind and the hot, humid air. The vehicle’s interior quickly became stifling, though not nearly as bad as the previous night, beneath the tarp. With the windows down, Peter turned the truck off. They listened for a full minute and heard nothing louder than the ticking of the cooling engine.
Peter picked up the reloaded shotgun from between the seats and opened his door.
“What are you doing?” Anne blurted.
“Can’t take a look inside the house from inside the truck,” he said, and then added, “can I?” so the kids would know he wanted them to stay put. He normally would have wanted them as close to him as possible. But he wasn’t about to leave Ella alone and unconscious in the back seat.
Peter leaned back in and tossed the keys to Jakob. “Anything happens to me—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jakob said, climbing from the back seat to the front and sliding behind the wheel. “I get it.”
“I can probably drive better than him, you know,” Anne said.
“Probably.” Peter smiled, hoping to put the pair at ease. They didn’t like being left behind, especially unarmed. An hour after the sun had risen, he’d thought to look for the Beretta, but the weapon had been lost. He’d realized that Ella had been carrying it the night before. Since she hadn’t used it, and it wasn’t on her person, he’d assumed the weapon dropped. With the machine gun drained, they were down to just the shotgun and a collection of knives. “But I have to make him feel important somehow, right?”
Anne just rolled her eyes and sat back.
“You see something, you honk.” Peter said, and when Jakob nodded, he closed the door and turned toward the house. He was hoping to spot movement, perhaps someone ducking back as he turned, but the place was just as motionless. Even if the destruction was a façade, that didn’t mean the inhabitants hadn’t met with a dire fate.
He walked toward the house, shotgun held casually at his side, but ready to aim and fire. His eyes flicked back and forth, searching for signs of life, finding only the subtle shift of things caught in the wind, which rolled freely over the short carrot stalks. He took a moment to turn 360 degrees, searching the field and woods beyond for signs of life. But the world around the house was as dead as the inside.
He slowed as he got within ten feet of the front porch, sensing danger within the shadowy interior. Anne was right. Anything could be lurking in the dark. Going inside might be a mistake, but before he could turn around and explain that to Jakob, a voice, sudden and loud, startled him.
“That’s close enough,” a man’s gravelly voice said.
He raised the shotgun toward the sound, but held his fire. He recognized the voice, though it was deeper than he remembered. He lowered the weapon. “That any way to talk to a man whose best bowling score is ten points higher than yours?”
There was a moment of silence, followed by a confused, “Peter? Peter Crane? That you?”
During their radio conversations, they had discussed bowling more times than Peter cared to remember. Brant Rossi, Alia’s father and the owner of this farm, had been something of a bowling enthusiast. Peter had only bowled a handful of times, but like most things of a physical nature, he’d taken to it easily. When he’d told Brant his top score, the man sounded like he’d had a heart attack. When
he’d recovered, he’d revealed that Peter’s near perfect score was in fact ten points higher than his personal best, after twenty years hurling balls. Since no one bowled anymore, they’d gotten a good laugh out of it, but Peter had heard the competitive tone in Brant’s voice, hoping they’d one day get a chance to go one-on-one.
“It’s me, Brant.” Peter looked over the destruction. It looked just as real up close, especially that caved-in second floor. “Everything okay here?”
Brant stood from behind a tipped over table on the second floor. A metal table. Peter could have put all nine shotgun rounds into the table, and not one would have gotten through. The man was older, maybe late fifties with a full head of gray hair. On his own, he wouldn’t be very intimidating, but the M16A1 assault rifle in his hands more than made up for his lack of physical prowess. “Don’t mind the look of the place. Keeps out the curious. We did it a month ago, after some trouble with a hungry fellow.” He motioned to the side of the house, and Peter saw the crumpled remains of something large.
“Oh, my God,” came a younger female voice from inside the house. “Did you say Crane? Is that Mr. Crane out there?”
Brant chuckled, but remained in place. “You think living with just your son is rough, try living with two women.”
“We can hear you,” said the younger voice, whom Peter assumed belonged to Alia, hidden somewhere back inside, probably being held back by her mother until Brant gave the all clear, which he had yet to do.
“So...what brings you this way? We haven’t heard from you in a long time. You haven’t been out there—” He motioned toward the horizon. “—this whole time?”
Peter understood the man’s apprehension. If they’d been out in the wild all this time, there was a good chance they’d eaten ExoGen food. “Ran out of fuel for the generator. Was waiting for winter to risk finding more. We’ve only been off the farm for a few days.”