“He’ll die in the desert. You know that.” Katie set her trembling jaw.
“You three,” Cecily commanded. “Get in the tent. Nobody goes in until I question him. I need to know everything he knows and believe he’s telling the truth. Katie?”
Katie gestured to Emily and Steven. “See that over there?” They squinted in the distance and shook their heads. Katie smiled. “Of course you don’t. It’s covered in fiber screen and looks like everything else, but I know where it is. Come on, Emily, you can get to know Jenny. It should fit all four of us.” She glanced at Jamie, her eyes telling him to be good. “So follow me. I’ll show you where to get inside.”
Steven let out a sigh as Cecily let go of Emily’s hand. Emily frowned, but followed Uncle Steven, walking off with Katie and the burro. Jamie forgot everything as he watched them disappear into seemingly nothing ten feet away.
Cecily slapped his face hard. He was stunned, and without thinking, grabbed her wrist as her hand left his cheek. Her face instantly flushed red, and she tried to jerk away.
“Let me go,” she commanded. “Don’t make me force you to die in front of my daughter.”
He dropped his hand, took a step back, and held his hands up. “What’s your problem?”
She crushed her eyebrows together, her eyes angry, her body tense. “Come with me,” she said and walked off behind Jamie. He followed her down a small slope next to the road where the drainage ditch used to keep downpours away from gasoline cars. She sat down in the gravel and sand at the bottom, crossing her muscular legs and arms. She stared off into the western sky, her face blank as Jamie crouched next to her. Her loose brown tunic and pants settled around her and sweat showed through the fabric.
“Steven’s an idiot, but Emily knows better,” she muttered.
He looked around them. G-Floats didn’t make sound, but he could see one if it was coming. He felt nervous, from the threats in the air and the one sitting beside him.
“I don’t know anything,” he said in a hush. “I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to stay out here to be picked up…by whoever it is. I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be hiding from, but I have enough common sense to know that if I get picked up and don’t have an implant, there’ll be consequences.”
He paused, waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t, he knew he had to confide. If not to get her on his side, then to get it off his chest again, maybe get an answer, any little nugget. “My wife was murdered in front of me. I killed the men who did it. Somebody wiped my memory and did something that made me sick when I even thought about Tempe.”
He waited, but she was a stone wall. “How can I make you trust me? I’ll tell you anything.”
She squinted up at him, sunlight sparkling in one dark eye. “Sit down. Quit hovering.”
He put his butt on the hot ground. The back of his head was killing him again. “Please tell me what you want to know. I can’t read your mind.”
She kept her focus on him. Quietly, after a moment, she said, “Stevie and I? We grew up in Virginia, but I took off.” She looked away. “When we were kids, we were the sneaking kind. Were you?”
“What do you mean?”
“We used to go through people’s stuff. In their houses. Especially our house, and we’d dig through all the stuff our parents had. But still, it was our family’s houses, too. I loved my Grandma’s attic. Used to find old gold and silver jewelry. She was always saving. You don’t know about that. You didn’t grow up like me. You didn’t have to save silver and gold. You had Xchange Credits.”
“Are you saying you’ve never had an implant? That your entire family didn’t have them? Because I saw Steven’s scar. He had one.”
She grinned at the horizon. He thought she looked pretty just then, with the shadows cast across her dark features and the sun kissing the red highlights in her hair. “I didn’t say that.” She fell quiet. He eyed the back of her neck. No scar. What was she talking about?
He waited, scanning around them again, instinctively hunching his shoulders to feel smaller, more hidden.
“It’s weird how genetics are. Emily’s so much like me. And Stevie. I used to catch her going through my stuff all the time, even from when she was a little girl.” The Southern accent she’d tried to bury at some point came through, but evaporated when she continued. “I came to Arizona when I was eighteen. Stevie didn’t want to come. Had Emily when I was twenty. We…had to travel a lot, started around when she turned five.”
“Why?” His curiosity burned. He had a million questions. For one, who was Emily’s father and what happened to him? He felt the need to show patience.
She sighed and looked at the ground, kicking some sand with a sandaled toe. “Tell me, do you know your name?”
What an odd question, he thought. “Of course.”
“When you got your memory back,” she continued, but then paused and blew out a breath. “Well, I want you to tell me everything. Everything you recall.”
“Can’t we go in that fiber screen tent?”
“No. We stay out here. It’s fine.” She relaxed her shoulders. “It’s nice to be outside.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you kidding? It’s gotta be 110 degrees outside.”
“In the compound, the dome on the inside is gray fiber. We have electricity from generators we fuel with salt water. We take the salt out of the earth, mix it with water ourselves by hand, and put it in the generators. All of us do it. We do have lights, but it’s not the same, and we don’t know anyone who can fix the dome. I come out here a lot by myself. Nothing’s going to happen. So, tell me. What do you remember?”
He looked at her bare toenails. “Amanda was my wife. She had her nails painted red the night she died.” He looked deep into his mind. “It’s all hazy, but the violence is clearer than any I’ve known in martial arts. I’ve studied it all my life, but nothing prepared me for what I saw that night.”
He told her everything, even about the twins, his voice cracking at that last part. “I remember a black-haired doctor, pale as a ghost, with glasses. He told me my memory would be erased. I tried to escape. I remember that. But I fell unconscious when I tried to fight my way out. The implants, I learned, knock you out when you commit violence. Can you tell me why the men who killed Amanda got away with it without being knocked out, like I did just after killing them? Were their implants removed?”
Suddenly, a horrible thought came to him. “Cecily, did your people have anything to do with my wife’s death?”
“No,” she said quickly, turning to him. “We’re peaceful. And they’re not my people.”
“You know what I mean.” It came out in a mumble.
“Hey, I’m being really nice here. Don’t get smart.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying my best—”
“To charm me? It’s not working. I do believe you though. It’s just…” She scooted around to face him, gravel grinding under her. Sunlight glared into her serious black eyes, and she squinted in full-force against it. “I know who you are.”
He was stunned and all he could mutter was, “What?”
“You heard me. I also know who your wife was. Thing is, I don’t think you did.”
He was stunned. He didn’t know how to react. He finally mustered up enough voice to ask, “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” He couldn’t keep desperation out of his voice. “What do you know about Amanda? Why would you know anything? How?”
She looked down and a strand of hair fell out of her ponytail and caressed her high cheekbone. “I can’t tell you all of that right now. What I do want to tell you is that they lied to you. The man in the glasses? When he told you about the twins not being saved…” She looked up at him again as rare June clouds cast a shadow from overhead.
He held his breath.
“They’re alive. I know where they are.” Sympathy came alive across her features.
He let out his breath in a soft sob, p
utting his head in his hands. She gave him a moment, for which he was grateful. He didn’t want this strong woman, who just told him the best news of his life, to think he was weak. God, he thought as he wiped his eyes dry, what pride I have. He looked up at her. “Tell me more. Tell me where they are. I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again. You’ll never hear from me again. I won’t ask another question. Just tell me.”
Her lips parted, but she hesitated, and then she stiffened, eyes wide like lamps. Thunder cracked overhead. She grabbed her neck, saying, “Oh, oh no.” She jumped to her feet.
He did the same. “What is it? Cecily?”
She looked all around. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no.”
He looked for a G-Float. Nothing. “Do you have an implant? You have no scar. Are they coming for you for telling me that?”
“Dammit!” she screamed at the darkening sky. “We have to move. Now! Come on, follow me.” She sprinted to where the fabric screen tent must’ve been, but for the life of him, Jamie couldn’t see it. He simply followed her, barely catching up to her as she disappeared into thin air.
“Where are you?” he called out. He heard voices. Cecily told the people in the tent to, “Hurry up, we have to go. They’re coming. Come on! Out!”
Cecily and Emily appeared again, with Katie, Steven and Jenny in tow. Jamie shook, the hair rising up on his arms with the electricity in the air as another crash of thunder hit his ears. They all looked terrified, even Cecily. More lightning streaked the sky.
Katie said, “Cecily, wait. What about the others?”
“There’s no time. We have to get to the tunnels. That’s the safest way.”
“Cec, what the hell—”
She spun on her brother. “There’s no time to explain. You have to trust me like you always have.”
Steven looked angry, but nodded, looking at Emily. “You’re scaring her.”
Cecily picked Emily up and propped her on her hip, tucking her red head in the crook of her neck. Emily buried her face there and was quiet. “Stevie, shut the—”
The next loud boom wasn’t thunder and all of them hit the ground as the earth shook beneath them. The air filled with dust, and they coughed and gagged.
Jamie raised his head, trying to see through the cloud of desert that had jumped up and tried to get them. At least that’s what it seemed like to Jamie.
He heard Katie’s voice. “That wasn’t the UNE!”
Jamie’s ears felt like he had cotton in them. He hadn’t had that feeling since he went to concerts when he was younger, but this was much worse.
Just then, a hard, hot rain fell, washing the air of dust. Jamie looked south, where he’d assumed the compound was. What he saw was devastation.
Where there had been scrubby bushes and dunes, there was now an exposed, gaping hole in what had probably been the dome. He heard faint, muffled screams through his throttled ears. “What just happened?”
“Bomb!” Katie squealed. “Who are they, Cecily?” She looked at Cecily with desperation.
“Who has bombs?” Jamie said, more to himself than the others.
Nobody answered him.
He was the first to stand up, rain water cooling his sweat and slipping into his eyes and mouth. Even though it was now a downpour, the broken compound flamed. The last of the dome’s cloak flickered, and then turned gray instantly. Jamie could see the apartment buildings inside on fire, and heard many voices inside crying out. Bombs? Nobody had bombs. But then again, it was only yesterday that he thought guns were obsolete.
And until moments ago, the twins were dead.
The thought flashed through his mind that Cecily could have made it up, but she was so sincere when she told him…
No time to think. If there was even a chance they were alive, he had to follow the lead.
Now they were all standing and Cecily slapped Jenny’s shank. She galloped, dragging Katie. “Lead her, Katie, we need her. Come on, people!” Still cradling Emily, she took off into the storm, heading east. Jamie looked up and saw what could have been G-Floats, but they were tan, not white, disguised for the desert. There were three of them flying over the smoldering compound. Unmanned from what he could tell.
No time to think. He followed the others as they ran.
Another blast hit. Jamie fell down, scraping his knees and elbows. Blood trickled down his forearms as he struggled to sit up, dazed. He looked at the compound again, wondering if his eardrums had burst. He couldn’t hear a thing.
Now it was in shambles, buildings jutting out from the fallen dome. He realized that, although the bomb’s explosion had been loud, the silence was because he couldn’t hear the people in the Gold Canyon hideaway screaming anymore.
“Oh, Cecily! They’re all dead!” cried Katie as she scrambled to her feet. Cecily was already up.
They were all drenched.
Cecily stared through the rain and smoke and dust at the fallen secret place Jamie assumed she’d called home…for how long? Her face was hard. “Run!” The rest of them got up and followed her, Katie pulling on a hysterical Jenny’s reins to follow.
Steven screamed, “Where we goin’? Cec?”
“Follow! We don’t have much time,” she yelled over her shoulder. “The tunnel entrance is just over here. You know the drill!”
They followed her, running. Jamie felt time running out. He wasn’t going to make it out of this. He wasn’t going to find his answers, or the mystery of the great truth.
He ran anyway.
He ran with the others, hoping against hope that these new companions were just that: true companions.
Truth was, he had no clue who to trust.
He had no choice. He had to trust his gut.
And he had to run like never before…bleeding, soaked and truly terrified.
End of Book One
Book Two Available in June 2015
About the Author
Chris B. Porter is an author who only writes because becoming a cult leader is too difficult. When he isn't writing, you can usually find him in his volcano lair, stroking a feline creature while sitting in an oversized chair.
You can reach him at his website ChrisBPorter.com
Or send an email to [email protected]. He’ll be glad to hear from you.
Disconnected (Implanted Book 1) Page 6