by Ike Hamill
The men didn’t say a word to each other as they worked offscreen. When they were done, their shapes moved by the display once more and Jacob heard the squeaking sound of the door closing.
“What’s the next thing you heard or saw?” Harper asked.
The next video didn’t have much to look at. Again, it was night. They saw a couple of shadows move, but most of the activity was audio. Some panting, limping person made their way through the other room. After a second, they heard a high-pitched buzz that competed with the low hum which still hung in the air. Near the end of the action, it sounded like an elephant collapsed to the floor.
The video ended.
“And after that?” Harper asked.
The video might as well have been the reverse of the first one. The men passed by, the sound of their work echoed in the room, and then they exited with the device again. Jacob and Harper saw the same confusing array of images in the glow. This time, they didn’t bother to ask Malty to slow it down.
“What were they doing?” Harper asked.
Malty had no answer. She showed them another video where all the action was sounds. They heard people enter, mumble instructions, and then move things around.
The next on-screen action came during a daytime shot. It took Jacob a second, but then he recognized the legs that entered the room. After all that video from one position, Jacob felt disoriented when the point of view shifted so quickly. The camera was flung across the room and landed at Madelyn’s feet.
“That’s enough,” Jacob said. He was thinking about his conversation with Harper. He didn’t want to eavesdrop on his own aunt.
“Wait, was that the apartment where one of the people on the containment team died?”
Jacob nodded. “I think you might be right.”
“So those men must have been setting up equipment for that process, right?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how it worked. I heard that they sent the groups out into uninhabited areas alone because those areas were too dangerous to send more than one person at a time.”
“Clearly not,” Harper said. “The guys who set up that weird insect-thing didn’t appear nervous.”
“I wish we could see faces,” Jacob said. “Then we could go talk to someone. Do you know anyone on that team you could ask?”
Harper shrugged. “Patton’s little brother, I guess. I mean, he builds things for the engineers, but I don’t think he’s in a position to know anything. I guess he might be able to tell us who built that contraption they were setting up.”
“Malty, can you snap a shot of that contraption in your full spectrum?” Jacob asked.
“Don’t hook her into the ether, Jacob,” Harper said.
“I won’t,” he said. “She can hook up to one-way media, right? We can get the image on that.”
Harper nodded.
It took several tries, but eventually they found a way to tell Malty what they needed her to do.
Chapter 15
{Bivouac}
“WE SHOULD STOP HERE,” Madelyn said. “It’s getting tough to see.”
Logan looked back at her defiantly.
“It’s getting tough for me to see. I’m going to stop. Do what you will,” she said
Logan nodded with a frown.
“Do me a favor,” Madelyn said. “Turn those crazy dog ears of yours to the north. You hear anything?”
Logan paused and angled his head. She could barely see him in the fading light, but he seemed to be concentrating with everything he had. Madelyn tried to made herself breathe more quietly. She didn’t want to throw off his unusual abilities.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just had the feeling that maybe we were being followed. Probably nothing.”
They had stopped in what Madelyn’s grandmother would have called a ’tween forest. Most of the trees were trashy and had already grown to their maximum potential, even though their trunks were only a dozen centimeters in diameter. The big breeds were coming up. In the following years, they would crown overtop the trash and shade them out, but right now the place was a tangle of everything. It was a good place to be if they didn’t want to be spotted. Not so good to hike through in the dark.
Madelyn found a place where she could lean against a tree without so many rocks poking up into her legs. She wiggled until she found some amount of comfort. She closed her eyes—the night was so dark that they were almost useless anyway.
“I just realized something,” Logan said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re that woman that everyone was talking about a while back,” he said. “You were trapped in a mine or something?”
“Cellar,” she said. “It was the cellar under my cabin. The shaft got flooded with sand and I was stuck in there for a long time.”
“But you put out all kinds of video streams on the ether.”
Madelyn nodded and then realized he couldn’t see the gesture. “Yeah,” she mumbled.
“I heard about that. I thought that the woman they were talking about was much older. That’s why I just now figured out that it was you.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“I mean, they said that you were like a skeleton or something.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you lose your heart?”
“What do you mean?”
Logan was quiet for a minute while he figured a way to rephrase the question.
“That’s what they used to say about people who wandered away from town. They lost their heart.”
“Oh,” Madelyn said. “No. Not me.”
“That’s what happened to my mother,” Logan said.
Madelyn tried to think of something to say. “I’m sorry,” was the only thing she could come up with.
“My dad was killed in an accident, so it was just my mom and me from when I was pretty young. Then, when I was still a kid, she lost her heart and walked off.”
Madelyn didn’t say anything. Logan had summoned up a big slug of memory and she imagined that it was hanging in the air above him. She didn’t have anything to say that might help him swallow it back down. She stayed quiet.
“I tried to stop her. They say you can’t stop someone when they lose their heart. It’s like trying to stop the sun from coming up. You have to realize that by the time they’re trying to walk off, they’ve really already gone. It’s nobody’s fault if you can’t stop them.”
“That’s true,” Madelyn said. She had no idea if it was true or not. She had already divorced herself from society before the concept of “losing your heart” came along. She struggled for a second to remember what Jacob called it, and then remembered in a flash—desperation. Apparently, it was happening even on opposite sides of the globe.
“You know what’s weird though?” Logan asked. Madelyn waited to find out. “I was almost glad in a way. I had so many friends who didn’t have parents. Having a mother almost made me the outsider. I was the one who had to come home at certain times. My mother made me study things that I didn’t care about. I envied my friends who would come stay with us for a few days and then go sleep in the riverbed the next night, you know? She would have never let me do that. After she lost her heart, I was glad for a little while. Then I realized how much I missed her.”
“It’s natural,” Madelyn said. She didn’t believe it, but it seemed to be something he might need to hear.
“Scarlett and Wyatt had it worse. They had to shoot their dad.”
Madelyn’s eyes went wide in the dark. She hadn’t even known that the two were siblings, but it made sense as soon as she heard it. They were a lot alike.
“He was a terrible person,” Logan said.
“You don’t have to tell me about other people’s business,” Madelyn said. “They might not appreciate…”
He cut her off. “Oh, it’s okay. Everyone knew about it. They had a special assembly afterwards and Cleo told eve
ryone what happened and why Scarlett and Wyatt shot him. Nobody holds it against them after everything that happened.”
Madelyn swallowed and hoped that Logan wouldn’t tell her the story. It was something she probably didn’t need to hear out in the dark, away from her adopted home.
“You grew up in Fairbanks?” Madelyn asked.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t born there. We migrated to Fairbanks when I was two. Before that, my parents drifted around. Where are you from?”
“South,” she said.
“Everyone’s from the south. What place?”
“Detroit,” she said.
“So you saw it happen?”
“No,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie, but it was lie-adjacent. “I moved to my grandmother’s cabin after the cull. I wasn’t there.”
“Oh,” Logan said. He sounded disappointed.
“My brother had friends there,” she said. “When we get back, talk to my nephew, Jacob, about it. I bet he knows what his father heard.”
“I will,” Logan said.
Logan was quiet for a long stretch. Madelyn figured that he was either asleep, or deep in thought. When he spoke again, she realized that she was wrong on both guesses.
“Probably just a couple of deer,” he said, referring to something she hadn’t even heard. “If we had weapons, I could have probably found them in the morning.”
“We should get back as quick as possible. We don’t want anyone else to come out after us and put themselves at risk.”
“They don’t come after harvesters,” Logan said. “People figure that we own the risk of not coming back.”
Madelyn turned her head north in the darkness. She realized with warm relief that she had a pretty good sense of which direction north was. It was good to know that she had recovered from Dave’s stupid device.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Madelyn said.
Chapter 16
{Hunter}
ELIJAH STAYED IN HIS tree until the sun was over the top of the hill. Its orange light pierced the foliage. He pushed away from his branch and dropped into a low crouch. Elijah took time to brush the bark from his clothes—it wouldn’t fit his narrative.
He closed the distance carefully. Whenever possible, he kept a hill or ridge between himself and his prey. He let himself sweat until he smelled like he’d been hiking all night.
He drew within a couple hundred meters of them and slowed to a walk.
The wind shifted and he caught her scent—she wasn’t too fatigued, and she wasn’t panicked. She was, as always, self-reliant and not overconfident. He loved that about her. Madelyn could handle anything, but she never let herself be arrogant. Elijah heard them stop. With the wind in his direction, they couldn’t have heard him.
Elijah thought fast.
“Mac!” he called. His eyes darted around the forest. He had been following their scent and sounds, but that wasn’t a good explanation. He only had a minute before they would find him. Elijah closed his eyes and imagined the terrain around himself. He made a guess and started moving. He could hear them closing the distance to his position.
Elijah searched. Now that they were healthier, they wouldn’t leave much of a trail, but he had to find it somehow.
A bent branch caught his eye. He waded towards it, letting his feet scuff through the leaves like an exhausted person might. He saw them through the trees and then spotted half of a footprint. Elijah went to the print and exhaled with relief. He had his story. After a thought, he added one more touch—he pulled his headlamp from his pack and strapped it on.
They were close enough that he could legitimately tell that it was them.
He smiled.
“Mac!” he said, beaming at her. He rushed to them and he and Madelyn caught each other by the arms. It was the warmest greeting he could expect in front of her co-worker.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
He pointed down at the sign of their tracks. “I’ve been following you all night.”
“We have to keep moving,” she said. “Logan says that there’s something running through the woods. We don’t know exactly what it is—could be a big cat.”
Elijah nodded and looked at Logan. The young man looked confused and a little skeptical.
“I heard it too,” Elijah said. “I think it might have been following me. I’ve got food and water.” He removed his pack. They took his supplies with naked greed. “I saw your note and then Jacob came by and told me that you guys didn’t come back with the others.”
“You shouldn’t have come after us,” Madelyn said.
“You know I had to,” Elijah said.
Logan watched their exchange. He finished the first water bottle that Elijah handed him, but refused the second.
“We should keep moving,” Logan said.
“Do you hear something?” Madelyn asked.
“No, but we should keep moving.”
# # # # #
Elijah really was starting to feel tired by the time they found the road. He couldn’t imagine how exhausted Madelyn and Logan were. Of course, Logan was half Madelyn’s age, but she had untapped potential.
The three of them continued together until they got to the neighborhood just west of the old golf course.
“I’m going to head home,” Logan said, pointing.
“We need to get together later,” Madelyn said. “We should brief Cleo on what we saw.”
Logan exhaled and then nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He went on his way.
“What did you see?” Elijah asked.
“We saw a cloud yesterday. Haven’t seen it since. It should have been just to the northeast of Kappa Three.”
“A cloud?”
Madelyn shrugged. “Maybe it was nothing, but it sure looked like something.”
“We need to get home,” Elijah said. “I asked Jacob to wait there for twenty-four hours. I want to get back before he gets worried.”
Madelyn nodded.
They walked for a bit. She put her hand out and touched his arm.
“Listen,” she said, “I appreciate that you were worried about me, but you shouldn’t have come looking. It was a needless risk. If I was dead, I was dead. If I was hurt, there was very little chance that you were going to be able to reach me in time to help. You’re a decent tracker, but you’re only human. It’s just pure luck that you weren’t killed or injured.”
“Madelyn, there’s something I haven’t told you,” he said.
She looked at him carefully.
Elijah tried to order the words properly in his head so they would come out correctly before she had a chance to react.
“If you were dead or injured, I would just as soon be dead myself. If there was any chance that I could help, I had to come after you.”
“And what happens if I came back fine but you got killed trying to find me? How am I supposed to live with that on my head? What you did was pretty selfish in a way.”
“Mac, everything turned out fine,” Elijah said. “Let’s not dwell on what could have gone wrong.”
“I just want to make sure that we don’t have any misunderstanding about what you’re going to do next time.”
“You plan on getting stranded out in the woods again? Haven’t you had your fill?” His smile took the accusation out of the question.
She smiled back.
“Yeah. I guess I’m good for now.”
“Good,” he said. “I told everyone that you were going to become a gardener.”
“Bet you looked pretty stupid when I didn’t show up.”
Elijah nodded. “No more than usual.”
# # # # #
“Hello?” Elijah called down the stairs.
“Close the door!” Jacob yelled.
Madelyn pulled the door shut behind herself and pressed her back to it. She didn’t like the sound in Jacob’s voice.
Elijah ran down the stairs fast. Madelyn followed.
“What’s wrong?” Elijah asked.
“Who? Harper?” Elijah asked.
“No,” Jacob said. “Your doll.”
“My what?” Elijah asked.
“You know that doll thing you brought home the other day? We were bored so we decided to fix it up. We got her to agree to stay in the bedroom last night and we balanced a pan on the doorknob so we would know if she tried to get away. Then, this morning after Harper left, she just disappeared. I was looking right at her and then I turned around… She has to be here somewhere. I would have seen her if she tried to get up the stairs.”
“Jacob, who cares?” Madelyn asked.
“She knows things,” Jacob said. “Maybe important things.”
Elijah and Madelyn exchanged a glance.
“I’m tired,” Madelyn said. “I want to get something decent in my stomach and then sleep the clock around in a real bed. You two can play with dolls if you want.”
“Jacob, please don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”
“Trust me,” Jacob said. “It might be a big deal.”
Elijah took a deep breath and blinked. He looked to Madelyn and then back to her nephew.
“Get something to eat, Mac, and then get some rest. I’ll help Jacob look.”
“Suits me,” Madelyn said. “Start with the bedroom, because after I eat, you two are not allowed to play dolls in there.” She slipped behind Elijah and headed for the kitchen. With luck, she hoped to find the leftover duck still in the refrigerator. She had taken the bird with a slingshot, and Elijah had roasted it with herbs he brought home from the garden. She could imagine how the fat would taste as she licked it off her fingers. Her stomach rumbled as soon as she saw that it was still there. She took it to the counter and picked the bones while her nephew and her boyfriend ransacked the basement apartment, looking for the doll.
It was a little creepy, she could admit. She pictured the thing hiding under the sofa, looking out at the world with beady eyes. The dolls had been recalled because they turned out to be unpredictable. More than one dead child had been found with a suicide note that didn’t quite match the kid’s handwriting. It was a chilling thought, but she wasn’t a child. She had little to fear from a doll.