Cursed Apprentice (Earth Survives Book 2)

by R. R. Roberts

Coru shrugged his shoulders and made a point of looking around. “And all your friends?”

  Again, Payton snorted. “Friends are over-rated. Don’t you know that by now?” His eyes shifted to Dom and away.

  Coru gazed at him for a beat of silence, then continued. “Mattea and I found Wren—.”

  Payton’s eyes flickered at Wren. He sneered, “Yeah. We’ve met.”

  “And did nothing!” Coru shot back.

  “It was too late by then—far too late. She was useless to me.”

  “Big mistake.”

  “A matter of opinion. And you? You’re claiming to have had more success, Brother?”

  Coru ignored Payton’s thick sarcasm. “Together we found Charles’s work. We found an autistic boy who is a mathematics genius, and who could interpret Charles formulas. We thought we’d delivered that work into a safe place…”

  Payton smirked. “Ah—so that was you…”

  Coru nodded thoughtfully. “And that was you. ‘Mr. Courlisaw’.”

  Payton giggled. “You figured out my little joke, did you?”

  “Yeah. We laughed and laughed.”

  Payton’s expression pinched. He leapt to his feet. “You think you’d do a better job than me? If you do, you’re sorely mistaken. This place is a disaster. There is no saving it. It’s already too late; the corruption and destruction systemic.” He waved at the small screen by his desk, the one still streaming images of world-wide ecological disasters. “I arrived alone, and this is what I found! Look how they destroy everything that was given to them.”

  “And your solution was to murder everyone?”

  Payton bared his teeth and advanced toward Coru.

  Dom was between them in a heartbeat, with Nelson right behind, waving Thurman’s captured weapon menacingly at Payton.

  Payton snarled at Dom. “Oh, so now you’re championing the good cause? How quickly you’ve forgotten I saved you. I raised you out of the gutter; I gave you a life!” He leaned back and viewed the poncho. “And what’s with the tent, man? You put on a few pounds you’re ashamed of? I’ll let you in on a little secret: The tent ain’t helping—not even a little bit.” He turned to face Nelson. “And you—do you even know how that thing works, farmer? Hint: flip that switch. You’ve got the safety on.”

  With a mirthless grin Nelson whispered, “I know enough to wipe your carcass off this planet with it. Wanna give it a go?”

  Payton fought his surprise, covering it with a sideways smirk that he didn’t quite pull off. Coru knew this; Coru knew his brother was still in there, somewhere.

  While Nelson and Payton squared off, Dom met Coru’s, then Wren’s eyes. With silent agreement, Wren and Dom withdrew to a corner, moving a few chairs to encircle it. With his back to Coru, Dom lifted the poncho, hooked it first to a lamp, then to a coat hook on the wall effectively creating a protected curtained off area. He and Wren disappeared behind it. When he re-emerged, he was alone—no Noah and no Wren.

  Coru pointed to Payton’s ever-present screen. “This does not represent the world into which I fell.”

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than you look.”

  “There is much good in this world.”

  Payton laughed out loud at this, his confidence restored at what he believed to be his brother’s ignorance.

  Coru was undeterred. He opened his uniform jacket and brought out his art book, the art book he and Noah had shared at the tunnel entrance a lifetime ago, the book that had reminded him of all that he loved in this world, of all that was still beautiful and redeemable and possible. Payton needed to see this book. “This is what I found here, brother.” He opened the book and extended it to Payton.

  After a moment, Payton snatched the book with a bark of impatience. Shaking his head, he flipped through the pages, then rolled his eyes and tossed it aside on his desk. It missed and fell to the floor open, its pages bent. “So what? Given enough time, this would all be gone as well. You know this; you worked on Surface. They eventually destroy it all. The difference is I stopped them this time. I’m changing, improving history. You can’t deny it.”

  Coru bent to retrieve the book, straightening and restoring the pages before rifling through them, studying his drawings of nature, animals, forests, farms, fields, people helping people, living together, helping one another. This was the life he was living with Wren up north. With his family here in this time. The life he’d come to love and cherish. The life he was now willing to die to preserve.

  He glanced at Payton’s noxious screen then back at his art book. “You found ugliness and have surrounded yourself with it. You’ve poisoned yourself with it; your heart, your soul. This is what I found.” He offered the book again. “Look how they care for one another, for the earth.”

  Payton waved the book away. “Only because I forced them to work together, because I forced them to respect the earth.” He roamed restlessly around the room, still eyeing Nelson and that sleek weapon. Whatever it was, Payton had a healthy respect for it.

  Coru said, “You do know what you look for in life you’ll find? You look for ugly, you find ugly.”

  Payton moaned, “Oh, please, not this crap again. Here we go, Coru waxing philosophic. God save us all.”

  Undeterred, Coru pressed, “You have to stop this, before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late.”

  “This isn’t who you are, Payton. This isn’t the brother I know.”

  Payton’s eyes flashed at this. He spat, “The fat, stupid, platitude-spouting brother you told Zhang about back in school?”

  Coru stared, shocked. “I’ve never said that about you. I’ve never thought that about you!”

  Payton’s scarred face took on an exaggerated expression of horrified disbelief. “Good one, Coru. Tell me another one while you’re at it. It should be good for a laugh. There’s nothing you can say or do to stop what I have put into motion here. It’s too late—you and your ‘friends’ are too late.”

  “Am I? Are we?” Coru turned and called, “Dom?”

  Dom strode to the corner of the room, then appeared from behind the jury-rigged curtain with Noah in his arms. The boy’s green eyes were big, framed by a wedge of glossy black hair, as he looked around himself, his gaze drawn to the screen of destruction, chaos, and death. Coru reached out and slapped it onto its face, away from the child’s vision. No one needed to see it.

  No words were spoken, the silence in the room deafening.

  Dom said quietly, “This is Noah.”

  Coru watched his brother’s face, watched recognition dawn across his ruined features, followed by realization, which was then stamped out by horror. Payton’s face crumpled. He dropped his head and turned away.

  Coru murmured, “Will you not save this boy?”

  After a long silence, Payton choked out, “Cherry?”

  Dom answered him. “Cherry died of the Boy Scout Virus.”

  “I…I killed my child’s mother,” Payton said brokenly, falling back into his chair, his back still toward them.

  Coru moved closer to his brother, reached out and gripped Payton’s shoulder. Payton cried out at his touch, pulled away, dropped his face into his hands.

  Coru repeated softly, “Will you save this child?”

  Payton bent almost double in his chair and moaned, “Cherry. Cherry… I… never… meant it.”

  “Daddy?’ Noah asked, his voice frightened.

  Payton’s head snapped up, turned back at hearing his son speak. The naked hope on his face broke Coru’s heart—hope that disappeared the instant he saw Noah was speaking not to him, but to Dom. His eyes darkened, his face hardened into a mask of hatred.

  Dom anticipated his next move and said, “Lily, little Noah’s mommy went to heaven, but God let his Daddy live to take care of him.”

  Coru leaned close to his brother and murmured into his ear. “Are you so far gone, you feel we should tell Noah who his biological father is?”

  “Ah!” Payton twisted away
again, gasping in pain. He sagged against the arm of his chair, his eyes closed, his face in agony. “God help me.”

  Wren came forward and took Noah from Dom, telling everyone pointedly, “I’m taking Noah to the bathroom to wash up now. We should be on our way very soon. It’s getting late. Very late.”

  Payton opened his eyes at hearing this and turned to watch her leave the room, his gaze tracking his son’s exit like a starving man.

  The door closed behind Wren and Noah. Payton lifted haunted eyes to Coru. “What do you want?”

  “I want the antidote, Payton.”

  “It won’t be enough. It’s too late; the orders are out.”

  “Give me a chance, Payton, any chance and I’ll run with it.”

  Payton considered his brother’s face, his own a myriad of warring expressions. Coru needed Wren to see inside his brother’s head, to hear what he was thinking. They’d risked everything to get to him. Would he help them, or would he betray them?

  Payton straightened in his chair, scrubbed wearily at his face before he dropped his hands into his lap. “I have a panic room.”

  Coru blinked in confusion.

  “A panic room,” Payton repeated, looking to Dom to explain.

  Dom told Coru, “It’s a secret room inside your house, in case of invasion. It’s fireproof, bomb proof, bullet proof. It’s typically stocked with water, food, oxygen—everything to survive an invasion.”

  Coru raised his eyebrows in question and turned back to Payton.

  Payton reached under the neck of his shirt and pulled out a chain. He gave it a hard tug, breaking it and handed it to Coru. “Here’s the key. It’s behind that bookshelf. Insert the key between A Wrinkle in Time and The Stand. Turn it to the right. You’ll hear a click. Just push the shelf in; it’ll move easily. No one here knows of its existence.”

  Nelson sneered, “And we care about this because?”

  “I have fifteen thousand single doses of antidote in my panic room.”

  The three Indies started, their eyes locking. This was huge. And not nearly enough.

  “It barely touches…,” Coru muttered, his gaze burning into Nelson’s and Dom’s glowing eyes.

  Wren messaged him, It’s why we’re here, Coru, for the antidote.

  He answered, But we’ve fallen so short. How can we choose who lives and who dies?

  Nelson’s eyes bore back into Coru’s and Dom’s. He said, “Anyone we meet, we treat. No favoritism. It’s the only way.”

  Payton laughed. “Have fun with that.”

  Ignoring him, Coru and Dom nodded curtly, decision made. Dom pronounced, “First to the post is immunized. No playing God.”

  Payton frowned. “You won’t save your own families?”

  Nelson rubbed at his eyes, wagging his head back and forth. “I want to. With all my heart, I want to. But to pass someone by, knowingly sentencing them to death? It would kill me…”

  Payton’s eyes widened. He truly was surprised by Nelson’s, by all of their stands on this matter. It was here that Coru knew that Payton had had no Nelsons in his life here. Payton had had only Zhangs in his time. This knowledge pained Coru, knowing his brother had truly been ruined by Zhang in this WEN.

  If only they had landed together…

  If only they had landed in the same place and time…

  If only.

  Payton expelled a sigh, rolled up his sleeve, said, “It’s a start,” then pulled opened the top drawer of his desk.

  Nelson slapped Payton’s hand aside. Yes, Nelson was regretful at the unfolding of their rescue plan, but he was not unprepared. Nelson was still a man with a mission and fifteen thousand lives saved was fifteen thousand lives that would not be saved otherwise. Coru didn’t need Wren’s telepathy to know this about his friend.

  Dom took the position on the other side of Payton.

  Payton raised up his palms with a show of surrender to the three men standing over him. “The panic room has single doses of the antidote. Single. They are not replicable.”

  Nelson demanded, “I know you’ve got more stocked somewhere.”

  “No. That’s all there are. I need something from this drawer.”

  Dom warned, “Move slowly and carefully, Payton. I’m not your brother.”

  Payton’s expression was pained. “You… you were once.”

  “A long time ago. I lived your solutions up close and personal, Payton.” Dom thumped his chest with his closed fist and said, his voice thick with emotion, “I was there, Payton, I saw it all go down. I listened to Lily cry every night for months over what you had done to her. I was there when she gave birth in an apartment without medical help, afraid you would find her, take her son, raise her son to follow in your chosen path. I held Lily as she fought to stay alive for your son. I was there when she lost that battle. I felt her last breath leave her little body. There is no forgiveness in this heart for the likes of you.”

  Payton took in a jagged breath, but it seemed he had no tears, not for himself, for Cherry, for anything or anyone. A deep silence crept around the room, so much grief, so much hate, so much regret, so much desperation. And now they were all standing on the edge of a chasm, one step away from everything ending. How was it to be reconciled? How was it to be worked on?

  Payton looked at his brother. “Did Dom tell you that Cherry and I were happy once? Did he happen to mention these people, these ‘innocent’ people you want to save, beat our son from my wife’s body? My first son, Tigg, arriving dead at the hands of your caring citizens? All in the name of the ‘good cause’ it was.”

  “N-no.”

  “And now you want me to turn the other cheek and save them, solely on your word?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Payton’s eyes grew dim and he smiled faintly. “You know something? There was only one place I truly felt safe here.” His expression was almost bewildered. “And I experienced only one, single act of true generosity here in this time, and it was from a man who had nothing of his own to give. It was from a homeless man. He saved his supper for me, hiding a sandwich for me inside what passed for clothes. Why? Because he knew I was hungry. He went hungry himself, so I could eat, and he wanted nothing in return.” He looked up at Dom, his focus snapping back, his eyes accusing. “Weazer. The only unselfish person I’ve met here in this God-forsaken time.”

  “Weazer was a pure soul who was swallowed up in a system he had no part in creating. A system you fell into and embraced, Payton. A system you’ve only poisoned further.”

  “Not how I saw it.” Payton’s expression shifted back to hopeless.

  Grasping at straws, Coru asked, “Would you save a sandwich for your son? Would you go hungry for Noah? Protect Noah?”

  Payton closed his eyes and rolled his head in despair. “It’s already too late, my brother. It is done.”

  “What if it isn’t? What if I can protect Noah?”

  Payton opened his eyes and gazed back a Coru, despair and yearning warring in his green eyes.

  Coru knelt beside his brother, face to face and pleaded, “Help me save your son, Payton. Give me the power to save Noah. There has to be a way. I know you. You will have built in a way to save the innocent.”

  “The brother you’re remembering is gone, he no longer exists. That brother’s faith shriveled and died.”

  “No! I refuse to accept that.” Coru shook his head vehemently. “I know you, Payton, I grew up with you. You have a good heart.”

  Payton laughed sadly. “Nice sentiment, but no, that, my idealistic brother, is an illusion. My heart is not good. My heart is…” He faded off, his eyes staring sightlessly, lost in an image perhaps, or a memory, somewhere Coru could not follow.

  Coru pressed, “If I promise to protect your son? If I promise to give my life for the boy?”

  Payton’s vision cleared and focused on Coru. Fleeting traces of wanting to believe and knowing it could not happen crossed his scarred face.

  “You know I can. You know I
will. Give me the tools to save Noah. I beg you.”

  Payton was silent, shaking his head, but then he stopped shaking his head. “There is a way you can save them all. An outside chance, if you had luck on your side.”

  “How?” Coru demanded. “Anything. We’ll do anything.”

  Payton sat up, shifted forward, made a show of opening a desk drawer, carefully removing a knife from a tray.

  “Yeah, right!” Nelson hit the knife away from Payton’s hand. “Nice try.”

  Payton leveled a weary gaze at Nelson and extended his left arm to him. “You want to do the honors?”

  Nelson shook his head, confused.

  “What are you talking about?” Coru asked, but through Wren’s shocked vision, he already knew the answer. He couldn’t voice it, didn’t want to believe it to be true, but there it was, in front of him—the only viable solution.

  Coru’s mind raced, trying to find an alternative, to convince Payton that there had to be another way. But as he glanced down at Payton, he saw the brother he once knew no longer existed. There was no denying the toll Payton’s ten years in this century had taken. It was plain on his face. And there was no desire inside him to go on living.

  “Payton…”

  “I have what you need to make an antidote inside me. And lots of it.”

  Coru shook his head, but in his heart, he’d already capitulated.

  “With this, you can run antidote all over the damned place. It’s what you came for, is it not?” Payton’s tone was reasonable, inquiring.

  There was no answer to this question beyond, “Yes”.

  Payton glanced at the panic room. “Inoculate yourselves now. Protect yourselves. And carry this inside a sealed glass container until you get to Freeland. It’s not safe.”

  Coru asked aloud for the others to hear. “Is he telling us the truth, Wren? Are the needles safe? Will they protect us?”

  Yes.

  He nodded for Nelson and Dom’s sake.

  Nelson unlocked and darted into the panic room, which lit up automatically once the door was opened. After a moment, he brought out a sleeve of single dose needles and a small glass tube-shaped container. He placed the container on the desk, then shared the needles around to Coru and Dom before sticking himself and hurrying into the bathroom to inoculate Wren and Noah.