“What the fuck is going on?” asked Joshua. He was dressed in boxer shorts with no shirt or shoes.
“Did you just wake up?”
“It’s five in the goddamn morning.”
“I’ve already been out for a swim.” Berta swung the truck onto the highway and drove for a few miles before rolling behind a dilapidated gas station. She turned off the engine, afraid that it was beginning to overheat.
“What are we doing here?” asked Joshua.
Within seconds, the sound of a lone motorcycle rang out. It flew past them, headed back to the compound. She waited until it was a few miles ahead, then pulled the truck out from behind the building and followed at a distance. When they reached the top of a bluff, she stopped the truck and they watched the loud speck fall in line behind the trucks that were rumbling down the driveway from the compound. “I bet they’re headed into the hills. I’ve heard there’s some transfer stations hidden up there.”
“No way,” said Joshua, his eyes wide. “Who did they get?”
“They came early so they got everyone but me…and you.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Follow them. I’m sure they’re headed up Kanan Dume.”
Joshua leaned back in his seat. “I’ve been waiting for you to come visit me.”
“Well, here I am.”
She’d meant it as a joke but he looked pleased, as if she’d shown up for a date. Berta looked off toward the castle. “I feel like we should get Vaughn, but that would take too much time—we’d lose them.”
Joshua spat out the open window. “I’m surprised you didn’t go pick him up first.”
“That’s what I should have done. I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She glared at Joshua as if it was his fault that he now sat beside her instead of Vaughn.
“What are we going to do once we get there?” he asked.
“I have no idea. Why don’t you make yourself useful and think of something.” She’d made a huge mistake. Everyone was going to die because she’d decided to bring the useless outcast instead of the super-strength vampire. What the hell was she thinking?
They turned up Kanan-Dume, passing a graveyard of empty housing developments and boarded up restaurants.
“Max is dead,” she said.
Joshua’s cheek twitched. “Not surprising.”
“I thought you’d be happier about it.”
He looked away from her. “I wanted my father dead because he knew I liked you and beat the shit out of me in front of you every damn chance he got. Once I realized I didn’t have a chance in hell with you, it didn’t matter anymore.”
Berta stared at the side of Joshua’s face. What he said was true. Every time Joshua got the crap kicked out of him by Max, she was there, front and center. The two rode in silence until they noticed a trail of dust bending off to the left. “Looks like they turned up that dead-end road ahead. I’m going to park and we can hike in and take a look.”
“You don’t have an extra skirt I could wear?” Joshua looked behind the seat where he spotted a crumpled pair of old jeans. “Who do those belong to?”
“Vaughn,” said Berta, surprised when she felt embarrassed, as if she’d been caught cheating. “I’m sure they’re too big for you.”
Joshua looked disgusted. “You two did it in here?”
“None of your business.” She parked the truck behind an old convenience store with smashed windows, the inside full of tumbleweeds and trash. They climbed out and Berta surveyed the hill behind them. “I didn’t bring any weapons.”
“Me neither,” said Joshua, scratching his bare knee.
Berta climbed, stopping to look back when Joshua didn’t follow. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t have any shoes on.”
“That’s your fault.”
“That I don’t sleep in my shoes?”
“Vaughn never wears shoes.”
Joshua threw out his arms. “Even the fact that I don’t have thick calluses on my feet like the goddamn vampire counts against me.”
Berta continued up the hill and after a while, she could hear Joshua following, cursing every time he stepped on a sharp rock. Once she reached the top, she lay down on her belly and peered into the canyon below. Several portable buildings sat at odd angles across a huge area as if they’d been set down by a tornado. In between these smaller buildings were two large, corrugated metal warehouses with boarded-up windows. The trucks were parked before the warehouse at the base of the hill. Soldiers were already herding clan members down the ramp and through the doors, their hands raised high above their heads. Berta searched for Iris in the line but everyone blended together at that distance. She turned to see Joshua was only halfway up the hill and when he finally arrived, his feet were bleeding.
He threw himself down beside her with a sour face. “Is that them?” he asked.
“Who else would it be?”
They watched until the last prisoner disappeared into the warehouse and the doors slammed shut.
“I can’t just sit here,” said Berta. She moved to stand up, but Joshua held her back. Three soldiers walked out of the warehouse and strolled over to their trucks. The sound of rumbling engines filled the canyon like low thunder. Berta cursed but Joshua hushed her, his eyes fixed on the convoy. It snaked its way through the camp, along a deeply rutted gravel road to an area fenced off with tall barbed wire and a gate. One man jumped out, unlocked the gate, and then swung it wide for the others to pass. The trucks rolled into the yard and the men parked them in a line along the fence. Joshua watched as the men opened up the backs of the trucks and pulled out bodies that thumped to the ground like sacks of grain. The men dragged the bodies over to a large mound in the center of the yard covered with a green tarp. One of them kicked the tarp back and a swarm of flies rose up like dark rain. The men swatted the air as they heaped on the fresh bodies, then stood beside the trucks smoking and talking.
“No way to get inside that gate,” mumbled Joshua.
“Shut up. I'm trying to listen.” Berta strained to hear their words, but the distance was too great and the wind seemed to rob the canyon of all sound. When they were done smoking, the men disappeared into a nearby portable, the sorrowful din of an acoustic guitar filling the air, for a moment, before the door banged shut.
“Were any of those bodies Ramon?” asked Berta, her tears catching in her throat. “They were all men but I couldn’t tell. They were so far away.”
“They were all white guys. One had blond hair and the other three light brown. I’m sure one was Brian. The son-of-a-bitch probably mouthed off and got himself shot.”
Before Joshua could stop her, Berta climbed down the hill toward the warehouse and accidentally dislodged a rock. She held her breath until it crashed into the cement foundation of a propane tank that sat before the warehouse entrance, just where the dirt gave way to wild brush.
Joshua reached out and grabbed Berta by the wrist and hauled her back up next to him. She resisted at first, but his grip was surprisingly strong so she finally gave up.
“You’re not going down there,” he said.
“I’m sure as hell not going to sit here with you and your bleeding feet, doing nothing.”
“I’ll go alone.”
Berta rolled her eyes. “And do what? Fight them?”
“I’ll think of something.”
She looked over her shoulder at her truck still parked behind the abandoned convenience store. “We should drive back and get Vaughn.”
Joshua spat on the ground. “You want to go get your hero boyfriend? Send him down there to beat the shit out of everyone and save the day?”
“He’s no longer my boyfriend and yes, I think he could do a hell of a lot more than you.”
“I have a plan.”
“You do? Then I guess we’re all saved.” Berta scrambled to her feet. “You’re the most useless man in the clan, Joshua. My family is down there and I need to do something besides send in your worth
less ass.” She stumbled down the hill to her truck, her long hair lifting in the wind that was blowing in off the ocean.
“Berta, please,” said Joshua. She stopped to listen but didn’t turn around. “By the time you go back and find Vaughn, everyone could be gone or dead. I know I’m a fuckup—always have been—but I think this one time I can help. Give me a chance.”
Berta gazed at the slice of gray ocean in the far distance that was barely visible beneath a heavy blanket of mist. “I’m sorry, Joshua.” She continued down the hill to her truck. When she reached it she turned back, but Joshua was already gone.
Chapter 27
Kora sat in Mud's dim apartment while Vaughn made more tea. He'd told her he loved her, but which her? The ugly monster who cared for the dying, or the cute, blue-headed nymph who gunned down synthetics who didn't measure up to her impossible standards? There was only one thing Kora knew about herself, whatever the version, and that was that she didn't deserve Vaughn. He was too handsome and too good. She watched him in the kitchen, whistling as he poured hot water into her cup. She didn't belong with beautiful creatures like Vaughn. She belonged with Mud. She felt a wave of sadness as she imagined Mud's ragged form, alone back here in the dark, with beautiful hands grasping the same kettle that Vaughn now held.
“Maybe we’ve been going about this search in the wrong way,” said Vaughn, interrupting her thoughts. “We need to investigate things from every angle to get the full picture.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Gus.”
“That’s not a bad thing. We should both start thinking more like Gus.” Vaughn scratched his chin in a Guslike manner that drew a smile to Kora's lips. “What would he be doing right now if he’d managed to drag that hump through the pipe?”
Kora sipped her tea and set it down on the table. “He’d probably be rattling on about how we need to think more like Caleb.”
“You’re right. That’s exactly what he’d be doing.” Vaughn paced the small room with his hands behind his back. “Was tonight the first time Caleb visited you alone?”
“No, he came to my room once before and signed that he was sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
Kora didn't want to talk about it, but if it had to do with finding Mud, she'd have to say something. “Caleb used to be a big, abusive jerk to me. I know you won't believe me because he's such a great guy, but it's true.”
“I believe you,” said Vaughn. “None of us really know what he was like years ago except you, Ruby, and Humphrey.”
She smiled at him. If Gus were in the room right now, he'd be trumpeting in Caleb's defense so she appreciated Vaughn's open mind. And his abs that showed through his damp shirt.
“What if in addition to apologizing to you,” continued Vaughn, “he’s been trying to convey a message to you from Mud.”
A cold sweat prickled her skin. Gus had proposed the same idea. “But why didn’t Caleb just write this all down and hide the note before he lost his mind?”
“Maybe he was afraid Ruby would find it. He needed to hide his secret in a way that ensured Ruby would never find it and if she did, she wouldn't understand what it meant.”
“Gus said that Ruby never pays attention to toys and kids stuff.”
Vaughn pushed his hair out of his face. “The tea party. Ruby never goes into the kitchen and Caleb has been tending that thing for as long as I can remember.”
“Gus thinks it’s a historical reenactment.”
Vaughn’s eyes lit up. “Man, that kid had it all figured out. Maybe all these years, Caleb has performed Mud’s last moments over and over again, right on the kitchen table, and I never paid any attention.”
“He used stuffed animals, Vaughn. It would have been weirder if you had paid attention.”
Vaughn stared right through her as if she was a ghost. “Caleb is the key to this whole thing. We need to crawl inside of his head.”
“That would definitely give us a better view.”
“Of course it would!” Vaughn grabbed the flashlight and sprinted for the door.
“Wait!” Kora bolted after him but it took her a while to catch up.
“If you want to hide something,” said Vaughn without slowing down, “you put it out of reach. For Caleb, that’s about thirteen feet up.”
“But these caves are all low and I don’t remember any with ceilings high enough for storage.”
“Except the first one. You were still unconscious so you don’t remember, but there was a slight echo to my footsteps when I entered the first room.”
“Even if I had been conscious, I wouldn’t have noticed.” Kora hurried to keep up as Vaughn ran back through the labyrinth of tunnels. “Do you even remember how to get back to the entrance?”
“Years of navigating secret tunnels gives you an uncanny sense of direction.”
Kora could tell when they were close to the canal because she could smell the ocean. And garbage. Vaughn pointed the flashlight up at the ceiling. It was several feet higher and more squarely dug than the other rooms, as if Humphrey had lowered his ambition after tackling this first cave. Vaughn circled the flashlight beam around the walls until it stopped on a dark mass hovering directly above the main door. “I see something.”
“So do I, but how do we get it down?”
“Let me take a look.” Vaughn sprung straight up into the air where he seemed to levitate for a moment as if suspended by strings, then returned to the ground in an elegant crouch. “There’s definitely a body up there.” He handed the flashlight to Kora, who directed the beam at the body, then took another leap. This time, he landed on the edge of the shelf where he balanced with unnatural grace as he reached down and scooped the stiff shape into his arms.
Kora felt overwhelmed when Vaughn held the strange object out for her to see. “That’s Mud. I recognize him.”
“Let’s take him back to his apartment where we have more light.”
They backtracked to the steel door that still stood ajar, and Kora held it open as Vaughn carried the body over to the bed beside the heater. Mud was dressed in a ragged, gray smock and delicate scarf stained with mold. Like everyone else in the house, his hair was jet black and he wore it closely cropped against his scalp. His leathery skin was a deep red like the bark of a tree. A deep pit gouged the space where his eyes should have been and the rest of his face melted away from this depression like ash off a volcano. The hint of a mouth stretched above his chin like a flesh wound made with a knife. When Kora pried it open, she saw his tongue was gone. But by far, Mud’s most striking features were his hands: perfectly molded as if acid had devoured a beautiful man up to his elbows before evaporating into thin air.
“Where are his ears and nose?” asked Vaughn, who looked more horrified by this corpse than all the others combined.
“He doesn’t have any. He never did.” Kora ran a hand over the cascading flesh, leaving finger trails in the dust. “About two months after I awoke down here, Caleb brought about ten bodies down from Ruby’s lab. One of them was still alive and I could barely tell that it was a man. At first, I thought he’d been burned but that’s just how Ruby made him.”
“You saved him?”
“He was the first, and for a long time it was just the two of us down here. He was a close friend.”
A tumble of thoughts poured through Kora's head as her eyes traveled from Mud’s hideous deformity up to Vaughn’s perfectly sculpted face. “A week ago, I would have killed him rather than save him. What have I become?”
“A better person.” Vaughn wrapped his arms around her. Her knees weakened, it felt so delicious, but she pulled away and peered into Mud's cavernous eye socket. “There’s something down there the size of a pen tip.”
He picked up the flashlight and shined it into the hole. “Do you have a pair of tweezers?” Kora ran into the kitchen where she found a sharp knife. “You’re the surgeon, I should let you do this part.”
Kora shook her head. She wanted him to do it for s
ome reason. “What do you see down there?”
Vaughn wrenched out a tiny object and held it up in the light. “Looks like a little camera.”
“Caleb rigged up a cybernetic camera so Mud could see.” Kora paused with the words still on her tongue: “Mud saw.”
“Caleb could do something like that?”
“According to Humphrey, Caleb was brilliant with electronics and I seem to remember something similar.”
“I believe it. Some of the toys he built, years ago, are amazing.”
She unbuttoned Mud’s smock and ran her finger over a deep gash that ran all the way down his sunken chest at the level of his heart. “Here's his knife wound. I wonder…”
“What is it?”
“Gus and I found a crayon drawing in the chest of the toy Mud that sits at the tea party table.”
“So you think maybe the real Mud has something in his stuffing as well?”
“Give me that knife.”
Vaughn looked away as Kora sliced the wound that gaped open like an old wallet. “This incision was made after he was already dead.” Kora inserted the knife and spread the wound so she could peer inside the crusty hole.
“Can you see anything?”
“I think so.” She pushed her hand deep inside Mud’s chest cavity. “It’s hard to grab onto, but I think I’ve got it.” Kora pulled out a small turquoise box with Tiffany & Co. written on the lid.
“What the hell?” said Vaughn.
Kora laughed. “I certainly know who this is from. Mud couldn't remember his real name, but he could remember two things about his life before he was monsterized by Ruby: he gave his wife jewelry from Tiffany's, and he wanted revenge on Randall. He also claimed that he sky dived from the edge of space, but no one believed that one.” She unwrapped the ribbon and lifted the lid to find an object the size of a quarter. She held it up. “This is what we’re after. Hopefully it’s worth all the trouble.”
Synthetic: Dark Beginning Page 22