by D. S. Murphy
“Well, while you’re here, you might as well be comfortable,” she said, leading me into the building. “No elevator, unfortunately. Way too much energy. And the stairs keep us in shape. I put you on the third floor, a good view, but not all the stairs.”
The room was like a penthouse suite. Clean and modern, with gray slate walls and a fluffy white bed.
“There’s no running water or electricity… not really. Pipes don’t work so you can’t use the toilet. We made our own sewer system and have public bath houses using portable water heaters, but you’ll have to go downstairs for those.”
“It’s amazing.” I said. “You own this apartment?”
“I own the building,” she smirked. “Though ownership has a looser meaning these days. Possession is like 10/10ths of the law now.”
“How did you know it would be safe here?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t know anything. Defiance was your plan. You were always so sure of yourself, so confident. I didn’t want to believe you, but you were right about everything, so I started trusting you.”
“Listen, you have to tell me what happened, you have to tell me what to do. I mean, I’m still just figuring this out. I have no idea what I’m doing. Tell me what you remember about D-day. What happened first. What happened to Dad?”
“Oh, honey,” she stroked my hair. “He didn’t make it. So few people did.”
I turned towards the large glass windows to wipe the tears from my eyes. From here I could see most of the town, and even across the river. “But why didn’t you save him? Why didn’t I?”
Tamara frowned and crossed her arms.
“Even though you knew what was coming, and when, you still couldn’t predict everything. I mean, you couldn’t be everywhere at once. Everyone only remembers what happened to them.”
No, I thought. It doesn’t have to happen that way. I can change it.
The men standing on top of the fence were holding bows and arrows. “It’s so weird, it’s like, part of it looks medieval, and part of it is modern. I mean, archers?
“Saves bullets,” Tamara said. “And it’s quieter. Guns draw the mods.”
“Swords?”
“Same thing. For close combat. Guns are a last resort, and they do far more harm than good. We have them, of course, but we’ve never needed them. Mods aren’t smart enough to organize into a real attack. Any that come close, we kill.”
“Where do you even get swords anymore?”
“Stocked up before shit hit the fan. Like solar panels, and seeds, and everything else I needed to build this place.”
“Let me guess, I gave you money? Lottery tickets?”
“Dad never knew. You had everything set up under a business account for me, around my blog. You were using that to try and warn people.”
“But…” I bit my lip. “I don’t understand. That’s what we’re planning to do now. If we did that stuff, why didn’t anybody listen? Why did this still happen? Why couldn’t we stop it?”
Tamara squeezed my shoulders.
“Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I’m supposed to tell you. But I don’t know if the time is right, or if it’s too early.”
“Tracy told me about that, about how he wasn’t sure whether saying something would affect my decisions or change history. You know Tracy, right? Jake said you did.”
She smiled but there was a funny look in her eyes. There was something there, something she wasn’t telling me.
“We all got to know each other pretty well, once you brought us in.”
“I think it’s probably better to hear everything I need to. The most important stuff. You said warning people wouldn’t work. We’ll do it anyway, it might save some people. But you’ve lived through it, you must know what went wrong. You must know how to make it right, what we have to do to stop it from happening.”
“I do. It’s what you told me to do. You made me promise to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“The only way to stop D-day is to kill Kyle Peters.”
***
“Mr. Peters is involved?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? Kyle is everything. D-day wasn’t an accident, he did it deliberately. He modified a shipment of Zamonta tomato seeds that got distributed to farmers around the world. That’s what caused all this. And he’s still up there now, kidnapping children, a mad scientist experimenting with human genetics.”
I held my hand up to cut her off. I couldn’t believe what she was asking me to do.
“I’m pretty sure murder doesn’t fit in with those save the planet morals,” I said, crossing my arms.
“I’ve grown up,” she said. “Look you tried warning people, and you failed. We’ve done pretty well for ourselves here, and the kids who grew up in Defiance are almost normal. But they can’t ever leave the city, because we are completely surrounded by tens of thousands of monsters. You don’t know what that’s like, to know that’s out there. To never get a good night’s sleep. To know that this is all we get. Kyle Peters has to die. And don’t think this is my idea, this is your realization. You convinced me it had to be this way, after we lost dad—and everyone else. You regretted it. Blamed yourself. Wished you could go back and stop him.”
“But I couldn’t travel backwards, so you had to wait… until now. What happened to me? Why aren’t I here? Where are Cody, and Brett and Crys?”
“Cody and Crys didn’t make it. Brett and you got split up on D-day. Everything happened so quickly, I was already in Defiance setting up, I’d moved here. But none of you were. You came in weeks later, stayed for a while but then said you had to leave. I never saw you again.”
I shivered. If I survived D-day, why wasn’t I here with Tamara? Why didn’t I come greet myself?
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Tamara said, giving me a hug. “Not for you. Your future is whatever you decide to make it. If you’re willing to do what has to be done.”
I wanted to talk to Tamara more, but she wasn’t interested in answering my questions.
“There’s nothing you can do here, now. Nothing that matters. So relax. Wait till you go back. That’s where you can make a difference.”
There was a BBQ cooking outside, and we helped ourselves to ribs and corn on the cob.
I saw Jake, sitting with a guitar and singing something. Annabelle was sitting next to him on the grass, and there was another girl with them. She had choppy dark hair and a black tank top. She was hot, in a dangerous-looking way. And she looked a little too comfortable with Jake.
I noticed for the first time Jake had a tattoo on his arm, going from his thumb to his elbow. It looked like a whole bunch of simple black dots. Together they looked almost like stars. Then I noticed the girl had a similar design, on her left arm. WTF, matching tattoos?
Annabelle saw us first, she ran over and took my hand, leading us back to Jake and the girl.
“Meredith, this is Alicia.” Jake introduced us.
“You been living in one of the other towns?” she asked, her eyes raking over my appearance.
“Something like that,” I said.
After dinner they rolled out a giant screen and played a movie for the whole town. Annabelle went up close with all the other kids to watch. It was something about dragons, but I couldn’t focus. Jake was sitting between Meredith and I, and it felt awkward, like I was the third wheel on a date or something. I got up halfway through the movie and took a walk.
I went back to the church. It was cool and damp inside. The moonlight shone down through the ruined structure, bathing the roses in the blue light. It smelled heavenly, the heavy fragrance of the flowers hung in the air like mist. I heard footsteps behind me. Someone followed me here.
“So are you going to tell me?” Jake said, coming down the aisle towards me.
“What?” I asked.
“Who you really are. What you’re doing here. I’ve never seen you before, but Tamara acts like you’re old friends
.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“She told me I should let it go. That there are some things she couldn’t explain, and I wouldn’t understand. But I don’t trust it. You could be a spy. An assassin. Something. All I know is, you’re not what you seem.”
“And what do I seem?”
“I’ve never met anybody like you. It’s like you’ve never gone hungry a day in your life. You’ve never had to fight to protect those you love. You have an innocence that cannot be real. Unless you’ve lived locked up somewhere. Maybe you’re a new breed of evil, something Zamonta cooked up, a temptation.”
“Do I tempt you?” I said, leaning down to smell a rose. Its soft petals caressed my cheek.
“Yes, and that scares me. Are you really even here? How long until you aren’t? And what do I do when you’re gone again?” I looked up and met his dark eyes, smoldering eyes. I wished Brett looked at me that way.
“I’m real. I’m here. But I can’t stay.” As if on cue, I saw the pink creeping into my vision. He was right. I couldn’t be with him. He needed someone real, someone like Meredith.
I put my fingertips up in the air, and he caught them in his palm. Then I was gone.
PART TWO
15
My eyes blinked open and I put my palm on my chest, feeling the flutter of my heartbeat. I could still see Jake’s eyes as he watched me disappear. I wasn’t sure what to do with the feeling creeping up inside me. It was both excitement and loss; like waking from a beautiful dream and being disappointed that it never really happened.
Fingers curled around my arm and I flinched. My eyes met with Brett’s. I focused on the gold flecks in his olive-green gaze that sparkled in the late afternoon light. He smiled reassuringly but I couldn’t bring myself to mirror his response. My crush, looking straight at me. Seeing me. But somehow it felt less real than the future I’d just returned from… a future that didn’t exist yet. A future I was trying to stop.
“Find out anything useful?” Brett asked.
My lips parted, but no words came out. My brain was a mess of too much information and no information at all. Not to mention everything Tracy told me, about knowing who to trust. Brett’s eyebrow arched slowly, anticipating my words. I glanced around, catching Crys and Cody’s hopeful eyes. What had I learned? That Chrys and Cody wouldn’t even survive the event. That future me went awol after I failed to save the world. That my future sister had told me to murder Brett’s father. And that nobody from the future really even knew what happened for certain.
“I…” My throat felt dry. “I just need a minute.”
I stood up too fast and my weight shifted suddenly, my body swaying. Brett grabbed my arm and held me up.
“Whoa,” he said softly. “You okay?” His fingers on my skin sent a tremor up my spine.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling my arm away. “Just give me a second, my brain is fried.”
I grabbed the bottle of water and took a few deep gulps. The sun was setting and the mosquitos were hungry. I slapped one against my arm and stared at the spot of blood it left. I breathed in the fresh, woodsy air as my brain tried to unscramble all the new information I’d uncovered. Apparently, our current plan of posting prophecies to get more attention and credibility didn’t work out so well. But the alternative that Tamara offered seemed far too extreme. I wasn’t ready for that yet. A smile played on my lips at the memory of zooming down the abandoned roads on the hovercraft, with Jake clutching on behind me.
“Hey,” Chrys said, interrupting my thoughts. “Not to ruin your moment or anything, but we’re kind of losing our minds back here.”
I glanced over at the boys and saw Cody pacing and Brett rubbing his neck.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rejoining the group. “It’s hard to tell what’s important and what’s not.”
“Just tell us everything,” Brett said. His eyes were so piercing and honest, I wanted to tell him the truth. But last time I suggested Zamonta was responsible for the end of the world, he’d gotten angry. This time I was going to hold my cards a little tighter.
“I found my sister,” I said finally, squaring my shoulders.
“Found her?” Chrys’s eyes widened. “Like older her?”
I nodded and Cody blew out an enthusiastic breath. “That’s great! Your sister survived at least. Did she tell you anything? About what happened?”
My sister had seemed wholly invested in a single plan: Kill Kyle Peters. But how could I be a part of that? There had to be another way.
“Nobody knows exactly what happened, but I found some old news coverage, from just before the worst of it. They said GMOs were linked to a massive genome mutation. And, they quoted Tamara. When D-Day happened, she’d already been talking about this stuff for months. But nobody listened to her until it was too late.”
“So we make them listen,” Chrys said. “Did you find some information; predictions we can publish?”
I nodded, and Cody passed me a pencil and a notebook. I jotted down a dozen of the things I’d memorized, but only the ones I was sure of. It was hard to keep track of so many different dates and events.
“What should we do with it?” Brett asked.
“Tamara gets famous for this stuff,” I said. “We set her up with a business. And we make money; they might ignore the prophecies, but they’ll pay attention once she wins the lottery a few times.”
“Yes! Finally,” Cody said.
“It’s not for us. She uses it to buy property, to start stockpiling resources. In the future, she owns the whole town of Defiance, but it’s flanked by rivers on both sides to keep out the mods. About 10,000 people live there. It’s a real town. Those people are depending on us. On me.”
“Hold on,” Brett said. “I thought we wanted to stop this from happening. Not prepare for it.”
“Expect the best, prepare for the worst,” Cody said. “Right? Getting rich and buying some security, just in case, sounds like a good plan. Plus if we do stop the apocalypse, we’ll still be rich, so… bonus.” He smirked and Chrys rolled her eyes at him.
Brett furrowed his brow and chewed on his lower lip. It was kind of adorable, except I’m pretty sure he was thinking about Tamara’s comments on GMOs. It was pretty much what I said to his dad at the Zamonta meeting. I avoided bringing it up this time, but the topic was almost conspicuously absent. I wondered if part of him still thought I was just some hippie, inventing this stuff to vilify a major food corporation. But I didn’t want to argue with him about it, not now.
“So that’s it?” Brett said finally. “We post the stuff you’ve found on your sister’s blog, and also make sure people pay attention by making her win a few lotto drawings. You think that’ll be enough?”
“It has to be,” I said, without conviction.
“What if it’s not?” he pressed, folding his arms over his chest.
“Then I go back. I get more info. We try harder.”
“You’re already planning your next trip? How many times do you have to go? I thought you said the future was dangerous.”
Was he worried about me?
“You know how important this is,” I said softly. “I’ll keep going back until we stop it from happening. I mean, I have to, right? What choice do I have?”
I had to save Chrys and Cody. I had to save my dad. But what if Tamara’s blog wasn’t enough? She’d already told me, it hadn’t been. I was willing to put myself at risk if it meant saving the world, but was I really willing to do whatever it takes? Even if it meant killing Mr. Peters?
“Did you meet anyone else?” Cody asked. “Anyone important?”
Jake’s face flashed in my mind. Mentioning him to the others wouldn’t help anybody. Tracy was the biggest lead I had—without him in his cubed fortress, his depository of knowledge and junk food, I’d be completely lost. But in the present, he still thought I was crazy. I had to win him over first, and I wasn’t ready to tell the others about him yet. I felt a twinge of guilt for sharing it w
ith Eric, and not the others. I should have invited him to join us, but for some reason I felt like that might get awkward. I was already kind of amazed that I was hanging out with two hot seniors. The four of us felt almost perfect, like if Chrys and Cody were together, then maybe Brett and I belonged together as well. Maybe we’d repopulate the world after it went to shit. Eric would be a fifth wheel.
But I no longer felt the giddy excitement of socializing with upperclassmen. And even though Brett was still gorgeous, my feelings for him were even more confused after what Tamara had told me. I felt like I was lying just by being around him.
Kill Kyle Peters. Tamara said he did it deliberately, but why would anyone do that? Mr. Peters didn’t seem like a monster, he was just a scientist. I looked up and realized they were all still waiting for me to answer the question. Waiting for any other morsel of hope. I had none.
“Did I meet anyone? No, not really.” I glanced down at my phone. It was nearly six o’clock. “Sorry, but I have to go. My dad’s expecting me to be home by now. We’ll strategize later, okay?”
I turned my back before they had a chance to respond. Their voices followed me as I made my way through the trees and exited the reservation. Even though Tracy’s house wasn’t far, I felt like time was running out—like I could feel the grains of sand slipping through an hourglass. Each second that passed could be the precise moment I’d failed. A single wrong decision could cost billions of lives. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure none of the others had followed me. Then I ran the last few blocks to Tracy’s house.
I paused by the steps to catch my breath. This was crazy on so many levels, but it was my only hope. Plus this had already happened. Future Tracy existed, which meant present Tracy had to listen to me. I knocked on the front door before I could change my mind. It opened a few seconds later.
“Hello—” Tracy froze, his eyes wide and his mouth open. Then his eyes narrowed and he started closing the door.
“Wait!” I said, slamming my hand against the door to keep it from closing.