Emergence

by William Vitka

  Emergence

  By William Vitka

  A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-493-6

  EMERGENCE

  The Hroza Connection Book 2

  © 2015 by William Vitka

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Cover design by Sean Vitka

  Permuted Press

  109 International Drive, Suite 300

  Franklin, TN 37067

  http://posthillpress.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est

  (They can kill you, but they cannot eat you, it is against the law)

  Chapter 2: The Woman

  Chapter 3: You Think You Had a Bad Day? Well, Let Me Tell You Something

  Chapter 4: The Watcher

  Chapter 5: THEY LIVE...Sorta

  Chapter 6: School Daze

  Chapter 7: Switchblade Diplomacy

  Chapter 8: Esse est percipi

  (To be is to be perceived)

  Chapter 9: Spooky Action At a Distance

  Chapter 10: The Soundtrack to Insanity

  Chapter 11: Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Chapter 12: Half Past Dead, but Better

  Chapter 13: Abyssus abyssum invocat

  (Deep calls to deep)

  Chapter 14: In Desperate Need of Coffee

  Chapter 15: Home Again

  Chapter 16: Caleb

  Chapter 17: .45-Caliber Diplomacy

  Chapter 18: Veritas odit moras

  (Truth hates delay)

  Chapter 19: Rest

  Chapter 20: Breakfast of Champions

  Chapter 21: Si vis pacem, para bellum

  (If you wish for peace, prepare for war)

  Chapter 22: Ten Fathoms Deep on The Road to Hell

  Chapter 23: We Just Want to Talk

  Chapter 24: Long Hard Times to Come

  Chapter 25: Three

  Chapter 26: Nothing Will Be “All Right” Again

  Chapter 27: Down in a Hole

  Chapter 28: Back in Black

  Chapter 29: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

  Chapter 30: Null

  Chapter 31: No Such Thing As Safe

  Chapter 32: Hurting the Ones You Love

  Chapter 33: A Plan Is Just a List of Things That Don’t Happen

  Chapter 34: Wait, What?

  Chapter 35: Perfututum (Totally fucked)

  Chapter 36: Cowboy from Hell

  Chapter 37: Indigestion

  Chapter 38: Hi

  Chapter 39: Come Home to Roost

  Chapter 40: Party Poopers

  Chapter 41: Emergence

  Chapter 42: Big Momma’s House

  Chapter 43: It’s Just Hotwiring a Monster

  Chapter 44: That’s All Folks

  Chapter 45: And Then

  Prologue

  I remember it.

  Our first apocalypse.

  I dream in the dark. Dream of what had once been.

  Before it all went wrong.

  When the skies went black. When the volcanoes rose to destroy oxygen. When the atmosphere grew bloated with poison. When the big reptiles perished and death flooded Earth.

  We heard the extinction event coming. Those other creatures could not adapt. They could not do what was necessary.

  We can. We Earth-bound Hroza.

  We knew what was going to happen. We heard the strings. We heard the music of the universe played by filaments of infinite size and energy wrapped around reality.

  We understood what the music was saying.

  That is our gift.

  Yes. Gift is a good word.

  We forced ourselves to adapt. That is why we are here and so many others are not. We knew that we needed to adapt if we wanted to survive. We learned to live outside the seas. On dry land. We taught our tentacles to harden with generations of digging. We burrowed down, into the ground, where we would be safe.

  We watched. We learned.

  Our library of knowledge grew.

  But our supply of food dwindled.

  I remember...

  I slid one of my tendrils up through the ground and found a corpse. I pushed into the body’s nervous system. I activated the eyes in its head. I saw the devastation. I saw the carcasses. So many of them.

  We fed. We devoured the dead.

  But it was not enough to feed us all.

  I remember... The schism. When some members of our tribe decided that we were fools to stay. They went mad. They took to the skies. They went into the black to search.

  We who stayed began to die. So many of us gone.

  We had no choice. We did what was necessary. We followed the funny looking bipedal mammals that made war with one another. We stalked their battlefields and consumed the fallen.

  They were delicious.

  But we had to be... Careful? Careful is a good word.

  We had to be careful of the parasite in our blood. We had to be careful of the ones who shared our genes.

  They were special, curious little mammals. They had gifts that would serve them.

  After I ate my fill, I burrowed beneath a smoky field littered with their dead. I dug and crawled toward one of the hairless apes’ great cities.

  I slept for a very long time.

  But now I am awake, because I can sleep no longer.

  I hear something…

  Something…

  Chapter 1: Te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est

  (They can kill you, but they cannot eat you, it is against the law)

  Caleb Svoboda knows it’s only a matter of time before the class sees his raging boner.

  The boy stands. Nervous. He waits for the crushing humiliation.

  His friend down there doesn’t listen to reason. Doesn’t care about the potential embarrassment or giggling or the jokes that’ll pummel twelve-year-old Caleb’s brain meat. His wiener acts of its own accord. Any hint of curves—hips, ass, or all-powerful breasts—and the boy’s crotch assembles a tent.

  Caleb knows how to hide it when he’s sitting. If Hannah, the girl in front of him, yawns, and he can almost see the round rise of her chest, crosses his legs. Has to tuck that crotch bastard away. Doesn’t matter if Hannah pads her bra with tissues, like Zarifa says.

  This crap doesn’t happen when he’s watching TV or playing video games or when he goes to the movies. Nope. Happens at the worst goddamn times.

  Caleb doesn’t consider himself a pervert or anything. He doesn’t seek out porn. Doesn’t spend time searching through the web for smut (he believes the Internet is for email, research, video games, and memes… And, well, maybe some smut).

  His pal has terrible timing.

  His penis is an asshole.

  It happens now. While he’s at the blackboard. After he’d inadvertently glanced at the shapely figure of thirty-something, math-teaching Miss Baxter. He saw her at just the right angle. Just the right angle to see between the buttons of her shirt and get a peek of soft, white cleavage.

  That was enough.

  Caleb feels his pants tighten as he chalks a plus sign inside some parentheses. He starts to sweat. He shoves his hand in his pocket. Uses his index and middle finger to wrangle his friend.

  Well, former friend. Dick’s an enemy combatant now.

  The jostling makes Caleb look like an idiot.

  And worse.

  It gives him away.

  One of the boys at the front of the class, Jimmy Falzone, bursts out laughing. Miss Baxter furrows her brow. Then everyone catches on. The cacophony of cackles rises li
ke a wave from the first row to the last.

  Miss Baxter hands Caleb a book to cover his embarrassment. “I think you forgot some homework. Out in your locker, yeah?” She nudges him toward the exit. Turns her attention back to the rest of the class. “Okay, guess who just earned themselves a pop quiz?”

  Laughter turns to groans.

  Caleb thanks his teacher with his eyes. Moves the book in front of him and marches stiff-legged out the door. He feels better once he gets clear of the snickering, but there’s also an incredible rush of anger. The embarrassment leads to a boiling, roiling hatred for his classmates.

  He hates everyone right now—including Miss Baxter. He needs to get out of the school and hopes his peers will forget about the boner incident.

  He drops the math book. Leaves it to lie on the grey and white checkered hall floor. He doesn’t need it now, and he’s not sure if he cares about returning it. He’d rather run and never come back. What right did they have to laugh at him? What had he actually done that was so bad?

  Nothing.

  He’s talked to his older brother Jack and his dad about the other kids. Kids who can’t quite keep up with him and mock him instead.

  Those assclowns.

  On the other hand, Caleb knows that nearly everyone in the world will laugh at an awkward boner. Hell, he would’ve laughed. Jack would’ve laughed. His dad would’ve laughed. Even his mom would’ve laughed.

  All Miss Baxter did was try to help.

  Caleb sighs. Goes back to pick up the book. Trudges toward the boys’ bathroom. “Butterdicks,” he mutters as he pushes open the door.

  Jack taught Caleb quite a few swear words—and combinations thereof.

  Swearing, as Caleb sees it, is an enormous part of the “adult” experience he wants so much to be a part of. At home, every other word tends to be offensive. It’s just how his family talks.

  “The, no, get the damn… Over there, yes, that goddamn thing,” was one example of frustration-laden communication when his dad, Viktor, can’t find the right tool for his car.

  “Well, shit-tits, you can have very well said you wanted a seven-eighths instead of just waving your arms like a mook,” Jack would respond when they were all working on the Dodge Charger.

  Caleb tries to remember the last time he’d heard his mom say things like that. He comes up empty.

  He splashes cold water onto his face. Looks into his hazel eyes in the bathroom mirror.

  Maybe it’s a guy thing.

  “Screw em,” his dad had said when the class started referring to him as a “nerd fag” for winning the Science and Mathematics Award.

  Caleb’s mom, Dierdra Svoboda, had looked up from the couch. “Viktor, actual insight might be needed here, not just… Whatever that was.”

  Viktor grunted. Put down the red pen he was using to mark up his latest mechanical engineering paper. He spun Caleb around so that he could look his son in the eyes. “My boy, you’re Irish and Slovak. And you know where our families came from. You know why my parents and you mother’s parents placed such emphasis on perseverance. Our people were the world’s punching bag. But we survive. We don’t give up.

  “Those kids do not matter. You’re stronger and smarter because you want to be, but you also know you need to be. Don’t let them win.”

  Caleb watches water drip from his cheeks in the stained bathroom mirror. He wipes beads of liquid from his forehead and reaches for a paper towel to dry his face. He runs his small hands through his light brown hair. Expels a heavy breath from his lungs.

  Only way to be sure the assholes don’t win is to be unflappable. To stroll back into class like nothing happened. He’s gotta keep his chin up. If someone teases him, he’ll let it roll off his back.

  Sure.

  Caleb walks out of the bathroom with a puffed chest. He squares his shoulders just like his dad tells him to. Straightens his back just as his mom occasionally demands.

  The more he thinks about his parents—the way they talk about math and science… The way they talk about philosophy and politics…

  Caleb’s chest deflates.

  He’s twelve. He can play at being an adult capable of letting this kind of crap slide with a snide joke or shrug. But he isn’t actually there yet and he knows it.

  Caleb tucks the boner-covering book under his arm. Makes a beeline for the door that leads outside. He needs to check in with Jack. He needs to hear his older brother’s voice.

  Jack doesn’t care for subtlety. Doesn’t care if he sounds callous and classless when he suggests that the jerks who poke fun at his little brother should die horrible deaths. Jack doesn’t care about anyone except the people close to him.

  That’s what Caleb needs to hear. A voice that’ll tell him everything’s gonna be okay and that the bullies should be stabbed in the throat and set upon by rabid dogs while being sodomized with their grandparents’ rotting bones.

  It’s brisk outside. A breezy September day at the beginning of the school year. The wind pulses with the water that surrounds Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Blue holds forward white clouds in the sky. Like painter Maxfield Parrish opted to throw his hat into the ring of reality construction.

  Caleb digs his cell phone from the pocket of his pleated uniform pants. Pulls up Jack’s number. Waits while it rings.

  Jack’s voice is deep. Bassy. “Everything okay, little dude?”

  “Yeah, I just—” Caleb pauses “—wanted to check in.”

  There’s a breath and a flick noise on the other end.

  “Jack, are you smoking? At school?”

  Jack exhales. “Maybe.”

  Caleb groans.

  “Don’t do that. I hate that. The stupid stuff I do is the stupid stuff I do. You’re calling me because something’s wrong. You never call during school hours to chide me about smoking.”

  Caleb doesn’t say anything.

  Jack’s voice gets low. Angry. “Who messed with you?”

  Caleb’s afraid of naming any people from his class. Jack might very well do something insane and threaten them.

  Jack’s got a temper. It stems from good intentions, but it’s a temper nonetheless. An enormous liability at times—Jack doesn’t always think things through.

  Still, Caleb thinks of his older brother as a deity. That goes beyond genetics.

  Jack’s strong. A solid-C student. Popular enough to never spend time alone if he doesn’t want to. Jack generally does want to spend time alone. To read. Or write. Or work on the family car. But he always includes his little brother.

  That also goes beyond genetics.

  It’s a rare kind of family bond.

  Caleb appreciates it.

  So he tells Jack the boner story.

  Jack says, “You need to thank your teacher. She looked out for you. Don’t get any funny ideas, but she likes you.”

  “What about the other kids?”

  “What about the other kids? Want me to sound like Dad? You know their attention spans are on par with fuckin goldfish. I understand, yeah, in the social hierarchy, this sucks the big one. But what can you do about it now? Was that chick Zarifa in your class when this happened?”

  “No.”

  “She’s smart. Cute. And she likes you. Likes you, likes you.”

  Caleb feels butterflies in his stomach.

  He hears Jack breathe smoke on the other end.

  Jack says, “Little dude, it could’ve been worse. You could’ve peed your pants.”

  Caleb smiles.

  Jack says, “Gotta go. Love.”

  “Love,” Caleb says. He hangs up and looks to the sky.

  Parrish’s palette winks at the child.

  Caleb sticks his chin up and pries the school doors open with newfound purpose. Screw em, he thinks. He hefts Miss Baxter’s book. Strolls back to his classroom.

  The door wheezes shut.

  Outside, hidden whip-poor-wills find their voices. The little nocturnal birds forgo their natural camouflage and sing. They surround the sc
hool with an eerie alarm. Their throats churn out calls and warnings.

  Few notice the harbinger they are.

  A vibration shakes the air.

  The winds shift.

  Autumn arrives in New York City.

  Far beneath Brooklyn, something stirs.

  Chapter 2: The Woman

  Jack hangs up with Caleb. Runs a hand through his hair. He stamps out his American Spirit with a well-aged Double-H biker boot and checks to be sure that no nosey hall monitors are watching. The adults like Jack, but he doesn’t want to take the chance of being caught.

  He scans the street near the high school branch of Bay Ridge Prep.

  Jack and his peers spend their day studying, smoking, and trying to ignore idiots along Fourth Avenue at Seventy-fourth Street.

  Caleb’s seven blocks and two avenues south at Eighty-first Street and Ridge.

  Jack makes his way back inside. Eases the door shut behind him. Heads back to Biology with Missus Colleen O’Connor. Damn lucky she’s the mother of his childhood friend. Anyone else, and he never would have been able to take the call. Not without getting a letter sent home, anyway.

  All he’d needed to tell Mrs. O’Connor was: “It’s Caleb.”

  There’s fifteen minutes left in the class now. Jack hurries.

  He knows the material. He’s not worried about that. Who can take Group Selection seriously when it’s stacked against Darwinian Selection at a genetic level? Easy paper. Easy A—or maybe a C, as is usually the case.

  No. Jack’s worries that he’s gonna end up looking like he’s taking advantage of his family’s relationship with the O’Connors—which he totally is. He doesn’t want to put her in an awkward position—even though he totally is. So Jack hauls ass back to the room.

  He’s aware of the fact that she’s gonna be, at best, unhappy with the stench of cigarettes pouring off him.

  “Have fun, Mr. Svoboda?” Mrs. O’Connor calls to him.

  Jack slinks back to his desk. “I’ll tell you later.”

  He winces as soon as the words leave his mouth. Jack hadn’t meant it to be sexual.

  Classmates ooh and ahh.

  Jack’s best friend, Patrick O’Connor, shoots him a stunned glare. “Dude...” Patrick knows what Jack meant—“later” being dinner with the families—but still…

  Jack shrugs.