Dom spoke carefully, meeting each man’s gaze in turn, sweeping the square deliberately. He was playing a dangerous game here, balancing his brutal reputation against their ignorance. Fear might stay their hand, but for how long? “We come from Tanya, with news; news for all. For Tramps, for Hummers, for Pigs, for Burners, and yes, even for Worms. Professor Red will be on the march through all of New Pacifica Wild. He has no patience left for the Wild.”
The Hummers and Tramps exchanged confused glances. Why would Tanya care about them? Why send her blood-thirsty Captain into their midst if not to kill them?
Coru sent Wren a question—why are they so afraid of Dom? What is he to these gangs? Was this a mistake, trusting him?
Wren picked up Dom’s connection with Tanya. Tanya had let it be widely known Dominic was her top enforcer, attaching many incidents, greatly enhanced in brutality, to Dominic, building fear of him throughout New Pacifica Wild. It served her purpose. She needed a champion. Some men had no respect for a woman leader, viewing her as weak. With the brutal Dominic at her side, she was never challenged.
Coru relaxed, accepting her message.
Dom stepped closer.
Many of the gang members fought the need to move back, forcing themselves to remain firm. Please, not me. Not my wife. My boy. Please, not here. Move on. I have no quarrel with you.
The POE soldier thought, it is here that I shall finally find peace in death. He was grateful. He was so tired of fighting. The cruelty. The killings. The rapes. The beatings. He could not face it anymore.
Dom told them, “Professor Red has a new plan.” Dominic’s expression of condolence frightened the gangs more than his words.
Why come to us? Where is the true message?
“It was Professor Red who unleashed the pandemic on the world. He did this to us all. He killed your loved-ones. He destroyed our world.”
Hearing this, the broken POE soldier raised his head, and with difficulty, focused on the newcomer, a huge black man with a mane of serpents rising from his head. Professor Red made the virus? The virus he claimed he was protecting them from? The virus that killed my beautiful, shy little Kathy?
The other’s minds were also firing in confusion. Professor Red did not rise from the ashes, as we did? He isn’t a survivor? The urban survivors looked around in confusion.
Nelson could not stay quiet. These fools needed to know the truth.
He barked, “Professor Red is the orchestrator of all this,” he waved his hand across the square, then behind him, encompassing all the buildings and their Park and beyond, where they’d dared not step for fear of Professor Red’s wrath. “He’s no victim! He isn’t cobbling together a society in the face of calamity, leading his flock of lambs to safety. He caused the calamity. Professor Red killed your family, your friends, our country, our world. He did this! We’ve all been dancing to his tune!”
There was no hope? The gathering milled restlessly. They’d never been loyal to Red; they’d never followed Professor Red either. They’d been outliers, trapped in Hume Park, slipping under the radar, hoping he would not cast his eye and influence their way. What was this man, this soldier of Dominic’s saying now? Why tell us this? Why now? How could it matter now?
Dom raised his hands. “Professor Red has a new virus.”
A cry rose up, configurations of people swiftly changing, as many reached out to those they cared about, tribe loyalties forgotten.
Scenes of sickness, deaths, stacked bodies, burnings, shot through Wren’s mind like bullets, echoing the memories of the young POE soldier, as much a victim as were they. He’d just fallen on the POE side of Professor Red’s contrived line of division—the useful against the useless. She shook with the avalanche of horror and grief that was buried in the psyche of these people—who were in reality walking wounded, only hollow shells of who they had been before the pandemic.
Some surged forward, their fear of Dominic forgotten, replaced by the greater fear of Professor Red and the disease he wielded. Wren’s mind was filled with the sharp smell of wood smoke and acrid, fearful sweat. “What can we do? When. How…”
“We are here to share this knowledge, to give you time to save yourselves. Get out of New Pacifica Wild. Head out into the country. Get as far away as you can, as quickly as you can. If you can make it to Freeland, you can join the Indies and make a stand.”
“But the Rats!” demanded the man named Cruise who’d seized up the POE soldier’s head and paraded it before the crowd so proudly only moments ago. “They control the bridges. We can’t leave. We’ve never been able to leave.”
“No gang colors will help you now. You should all join forces, fight and flee this place together. Talk to the Burners, the Rats; make them see. If talking fails, fight your way across. Die here or die trying. Get out. If you stay here, you will die.”
The Hummer leader’s eyes narrowed. “And what of Tanya when we leave Hume Park? Will Tanya come, take our place?” His nimble brain had jumped forward to what happened after they left. He wasn’t totally buying this. He’d been fooled before.
“Tanya has been given the same news as you. I do not speak for Tanya. But I believe Tanya is mobilizing her people, making for the Old Patullo Bridge, finding a way for her people to escape to freedom, to fight another day. Tanya is not a stupid woman. You are not stupid men. We have reason to believe the Pitt River Bridge may be breachable as well. Our people were successful two days ago.”
“What of you?”
Coru, Dom, and Nelson looked at one another. Coru saw the four Ravens escorts had melted away, most probably racing back toward their territory to make preparations. Could he blame them?
Coru hobbled forward on his crutch, his mind a tangle of sorrow, of guilt, of loss. He’d seen the agony of these survivor’s pandemic memories through Wren.
Wren was startled at the depth of blackness inside Coru’s heart, inside his soul. How did he blame himself for all the horror that had been visited upon this world?
No, Coru. No! She sent him a flash of hope, of love, a flare tossed into the night sky to brighten the darkness in which he was living.
He took no heed, shadows obscuring her message. He spoke, his tone steady, low, forced. “We know of Professor Red. We have, we believe, a way to get to him. We believe he is in possession of an antidote to the new virus. Our mission is to get it, and to bring it to you, to everyone, before it’s too late.”
Wren saw he wanted to believe in their mission but had no hope they would succeed. He was giving these survivors the only gift he could—the gift of hope, even if he believed it was false hope. Coru was forcing himself through the motions. He was a walking shell. Coru no longer believed.
“But we can’t be certain,” Dom added, picking up Coru’s defeat and railing against it. “You need to get away, far away. Save yourselves, your families. Care for one another. There are too few of us left to waste a single soul to competing gang loyalties.”
Dom’s words landed like flying sparks from a fire, flying into the night, igniting new fires inside the minds of the gang members, who now saw one another with fresh eyes, not as a competitor for the scraps left behind from the old world, but as a fellow survivor, one of the too few left. These, their brothers and sisters, had fought against true evil. How had they come to killing one another?
Wren sent Coru a message. Take the trannie. We must have that trannie.
Coru murmured to Dom. Dom stepped closer still to the leader of the new Hummer gang.
Cruise jerked back, unable to disguise his fear.
Dom advised, smooth as silk, “We’ll take the trannie for our troubles of warning you. And the POE soldier. He knows how to disarm it.”
“Disarm!” Cruise blurted.
The urban survivors gasped and fell back, scattering from the trannie and the POE soldier, as if he had suddenly grown horns. Already some were gathering their meager belongings, wrapped in sad bundles of what they had escaped the POE invasion with, so small, yet s
o precious, and were slipping through the trees, their numbers already down by half.
Dom called after them as they faded silently into the closing darkness. “Stay together. With numbers, you have a better chance. Follow the highway to Hope, then travel to the Kootenays. As you near Freeland, you will see the signs. Go quickly.”
Dom darted toward the POE soldier, so light on his feet for a large man. “How do I disarm it?”
The soldier’s eyes were haunted. “Is what you said true? Is Professor Red the man who set the Boy Scout Virus on us all?”
Dom laid his hand on the man’s shoulder in comfort. “Yes. It is true, son.”
The soldier bowed his head and sobbed. Dom produced a knife and sliced through his bonds and wrapped the soldier in his arms, letting him cry out his grief. “What’s your name, son?”
“Andy,” he answered brokenly. “Andy Clarkson.”
It was over. They could go forward. Wren picked up her bow, took Noah’s hand and led the boy up the stairwell. With the trannie, Coru could ride. With the trannie, they could make it to the tunnel. She read Nelson’s thoughts on the trannie. He was over the moon with their new vehicle. We can drive the tunnel, saving hours!
Andy withdrew from Dom’s support, pulled himself together and mopped his eyes. With sobs still hitching in his young chest, he made his way to the POE trannie, and opened the hood. Reciting the code out loud, he keyed it into the keypad on the underside of the grill before reaching inside, gripping a square box, ripping it from its moorings and throwing it as far from him as he could, bawling, “K A T H Y!!”
Wren froze on the top step, horrified at what Andy was about to do. She dropped Noah’s hand. Screaming, “No!” she ran toward the square.
Andy twisted around, seized Dom’s sheathed knife, flipped the point to the center of his own chest and fell to the ground, dead the moment he landed.
23
MIKE: YEAR NINE: WEN 2044
MIKE LOOKED up when Moses dropped into the chair before his desk and placed a clear bag containing a bottle, a mirror, and stack of gauzes between them. He took in Moses’s satisfied grin. “What?”
“Got the latest reports from Oregon and Washington.”
Here Moses waited for him to ask. It was so tiring. Naturally, Mike caved—it saved time. “And?”
“They’re both ahead of schedule. Solving all the problems with the prototype before going wide was the answer.”
“The rest?”
“Same thing. Ticking along, fully funded without committing our own finances. Smart, Mike. Smart. I thought you were crazy thinking we could bring this in under budget and on schedule. It’s looking like we’ll be up and running within the next two years.”
It was the only thing that made sense. Without outside involvement, they’d still be struggling with only a few sanctuaries—not nearly enough to bring this plan home. Moses had good ideas. What he didn’t do well was bring them into fruition. For that, he needed Mike. It was Mike who worked out the details, broke down the tasks, made it all happen. Mike leaned back in his chair, his concentration lost anyway; it was obvious Moses was in the mood to shoot the breeze. “You still good with overseeing them all? It’s a big undertaking.”
“Honestly, they’re basically running themselves. The seconds you sent in are doing the job, following your protocols to the letter. But I’ve come up with an idea to make sure it stays that way. I’m thinking we invent an overseer. Someone all powerful. Someone scary.”
Mike chuckled despite himself. Tossing down his stylus. “And who might that be?”
“You.”
“Me? Scary?”
Moses widened his eyes. “Oh yeah. You. I’m thinking you lose the make-up, show the scar, build a persona. You’ve got nice, placid management as the agreeable face to all your investment firms now. They’re money machines. I’m thinking it’s time you take the gloves off and build a strong persona. For the future.”
Mike laughed. “You do know you catch more flies with honey, right? You think scary is needed? And just how bad do you think this scar is?”
“Bad enough you plaster stage makeup over it every day. Don’t you get tired of it all?”
Mike grimaced, his good humor squelched. He was weary of slapping that soft putty into the indentation along the side of his face. He had the stuff custom tinted to his exact skin tone, and he was so skilled with it now, he believed people could barely see his disfigurement. It was a success, if you’d call it that, though his face felt stiff and unnatural with it on. He passed as normal easily enough. But now? He barely saw anyone beyond Moses, his driver, Lawrence, his top D5 guys, Dino and Boyd, and Jamal, his houseman, who took care of his condo, his meals, all that day-to-day nonsense. Of course, there was Grey Linton, the private dick he had on retainer, still searching for Cherry and Conrad—a ridiculous waste of money he couldn’t bring himself to stop spending. Not yet. Would it matter to these few, carefully chosen individuals if he stopped pretending he was an average guy with an average face?
He glanced over at Moses, who’d been watching him as he worked it out. “You know what? You’re right. I’m done hiding.”
“Then do it.”
“Now?”
“Break free.” Moses nudged the bag toward him.
Taken aback, Mike stared at him, unprepared. He shook his head at his own hesitation. Why not? What was he waiting for? He reached for the mirror and angled it in order to see his reflection. Was it time to step out, be himself, damn the torpedoes?
One-handed, Moses quickly unscrewed the bottle cap and handed it over, followed by the gauzes.
Mike took them. The makeup remover smelled of lavender, a scent not to his liking, but he soaked a gauze square with it anyway, stopped to study his normal face, his public face for a moment, maybe for the last time, and wiped near the top of his facial scar, working his way down, using more flower-scented liquid, more squares of gauze and discarding them. The remover peeled away the makeup, exposing the angry scar beneath; the thick, red scar cosmetic surgery had had little success hiding. Tossing the last of the gauzes in a pile on his desk, he looked at his face, so different here at the dawn of the twenty-first century. He was no longer the pink-cheeked, easy-blushing, chubby little brother of Coru Wisla with his head in the clouds. Today, he was a hard, cruel-faced man with cold green eyes that saw everything clearly.
Moses shifted forward with an eager expression, resting both his good and stunted arms on the desk. How ironic Moses was championing Mike’s abandonment of his public face yet would never step forward honestly himself. Mike couldn’t imagine any scenario where Moses would stop hiding his disfigurement, a gift from his trip through the Time Bore.
“What about your wig? Lose the wig as well.”
Mike frowned. “What is this, an intervention?”
“I know you hate it. You’re always pulling at it, scratching, fussing, and groaning over it.”
“I don’t groan over—.”
“Oh, but you do, my friend,” Moses laughed. “Toss it. Walk away.”
“I didn’t know you were such a fashionista,” Mike remarked wryly, hoping to end the strange encounter. Since when did Moses Zhang care what Mike Eggers looked like?
Moses shrugged, his gaze steady, daring Mike to take the plunge.
Mike looked at his reflection again, pursed his lips, then slowly pulled the wig from his head, revealing his Cloud Rez tats. His head felt instantly cooler, a pleasant feeling. In their world, he had few tattoos. He hadn’t climbed high in the Cloud Rez ranks by the time he’d left it all behind. Here, in this world, his tats would be unusual, a curiosity. They might even be seen as dangerous, coupled with his scar. He turned his head this way and that, considering this new public face. Was he ready to step out, to stop passing as a regular guy, no more slipping under the radar?
“Looking good,” Moses pronounced, obviously satisfied with what he saw.
No more hiding? The mere thought of letting down his guard at l
ong last sent an unexpected shiver through Mike. Without the wig, without the stage makeup, he saw aspects of his older, tougher brother and his severe father in his own features. A surprise. When had this transformation occurred? He wasn’t chubby Payton anymore. This man, raw and stern, was who he was now. An unexpected and powerful wave of release washed over him. It would be good to just be himself, to finally relax in the role he’d been fashioning for himself these many years spent in the past.
Moses blurted, “We have to give you a name.”
Mike burst out in laughter, both with happiness at this unexpected freedom and at the absurdity of the situation. “Oh yeah? What do you suggest.”
“Something easy to remember, a bit mysterious, but relatable.”
“You’ve thought about this.”
“I was remembering a nickname you had back home—Professor Rez. It rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?”
“No. I was a stupid kid back then. I thought I was being cool. It’s ridiculous.”
“I was thinking, ‘Professor Red’. Easy to remember, relatable. It gives you a sense of authority and the ‘Red’ gives you a sense of danger.”
“As in red like blood?’ Mike mocked.
“Exactly.”
“And where am I to be known as ‘Professor Red’? Down at the pool hall, maybe the waterfront? Moses, this is ludicrous.”
“What are you always telling me about asking questions?” Moses countered, undeterred by Mike’s dismissive tone.
“Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.”
“Right. You and I are about to ask a very big question. We’re about to ask humanity who they are willing to select as their leader. Let’s build that leader, that persona, starting now. Someone to be feared. Someone to be respected. When we’re done, there will be no question who will bring our flock home. It will be Professor Red.”
“Why me; why not you? You’re better suited.”
“No, I’m not. I like it in the shadows; I work better there. You have the gift of persuasion. I’ve seen you in action. You can stand before a crowd and play them like a maestro. It’s got to be you.”
Cursed Apprentice (Earth Survives Book 2) Page 37