The Warning

by Patterson, James

  So I ran straight at my dad, not grimacing, not gritting my teeth. I was gonna live.

  He looked surprised as I slammed into him, wrapping him up like my linebacker coach had taught me. I was tackling him and stripping him of the ball, in this case the gun, which I swatted from his grip as I took him down onto a rough pile of jutting rocks. I’d already been good at tackling before the implant in my head made me better, stronger, and faster, and now I knew exactly where to hit him to inflict the maximum damage and to punch all the wind out of his lungs.

  There was another booming gunshot, and all three of us froze.

  It was Maggie, who’d picked up the Magnum again and fired over us.

  “That was a warning shot, Mr. Conners,” she said. “The next one won’t be. I don’t have the same soft spot for you that Jordan does, because you shot my mom, you robotic piece of shit. Let Jordan up before I pop a cap in your ass and another in your eye socket for good measure.”

  “Damn, girl!” I said.

  “I, for one, am not trying real hard to be the shepherd,” she said, aiming a wink at me and the gun at my father’s rear end.

  I felt Dad’s weight slowly lift off me.

  He smiled—a mirthless, mechanical smile. “Despite what happens to me, I hope you will soon be convinced of the futility of your situation,” he said.

  “The only thing you’ve convinced me of is that I’ll never cooperate with Ishango,” I said. “I’ll throw myself off Mount Hope before I let her use me.”

  I reached my hand toward Maggie, and she handed me the gun.

  Was that uncertainty I saw flickering in his eyes? Was there a trace of my father in there after all?

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I whispered. “I love you, but Maggie’s more family to me than you are now.”

  I tightened my grip on the gun.

  I wasn’t sure I could do this. But I had to.

  With a swift movement, I pistol-whipped him in the back of the head, below the curve of the skull. It was the spot where I’d seen the implant in my own brain. My hope was that a blow this hard might dislodge his implant the way it had shifted mine—without killing him.

  With a groan, Dad fell heavily onto his knees, then pitched forward onto the ground.

  I knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. It was there. Relief washed over me. In spite of what he’d become, I could never forgive myself for killing my father. And he was my father. If there was any chance of removing the implant, I had to keep him alive. Charlie needed a dad, too.

  I ran back to Dr. Gooding, with Maggie two steps ahead of me. “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  “We need to get her to a hospital.”

  “Bud …” Maggie’s mom rasped, then grimaced in severe pain.

  “What about you?” Maggie asked me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Hardly even bleeding.” I wiped my hand over my brow and felt a smear of blood left there.

  “Right,” Maggie said.

  “Well, my hand is a bit messed up, but my rib and that whole area seem strangely okay. Wanna see?”

  I started to lift my shirt to admire the small, burning puncture wound beneath my chest, but Maggie was back with her mom.

  “I got her,” I said, and hoisted Dr. Gooding in my arms. We headed down the trail slowly, stepping over the wide fissure in the ground. Maggie carried the bag of explosives with delicate fingers. “Our best bet is the hospital at the sick camp. We’ll ram through the barricade again if we have to.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said in a small voice. Then louder: “Or we could try going through the woods. Canville’s just ten miles away.”

  Then came another voice: “You forget your—ah—movements are being tracked, Rho.”

  Fuck.

  As quickly and gently as I could, I put Dr. Gooding down and scanned the trees for that former human, whose voice had seemed to come from everywhere. My ears strained to hear a twig snapping, a leaf brushing—anything to clue me in to where he was.

  Nothing.

  “Here, kitty, kitty!” I called, picking up a thick branch and wielding it like a club. “Ready to use up another of your lives?”

  A WHUMP! from behind me left me with a cold, burning sensation on my upper right arm, and the gun flew out of my hand. I whirled around to come face-to-half-face with Alpha, whose sword arm already was stained with my blood. The bastard had been above us in the trees—like a cat, I ruefully reflected.

  He raised his arm again, and I swung the branch to block what would’ve been a fatal blow. The sword sliced right through the wood, and I tried to use the stubs to drive him back, but he knocked first one and then the other out of my hands.

  “Careful,” I said. “You don’t want Ishango to be moving into a damaged vessel.”

  “Oh—ah—we have alternatives,” Alpha said, approaching with sword raised.

  I looked over to Maggie, and she looked how I felt: terrified.

  We had no guns.

  We had no weapons at all.

  We were about to die.

  CHAPTER 54

  Maggie

  JORDAN PUT HIMSELF between Alpha and me—a rugged he-man gesture I appreciated for its stupid, stubborn bravery.

  “Leave us alone!” he shouted. “I’m not giving in to Ishango’s insane idea. Why the hell would I agree to anything she wants after what she’s done to this town? To its people? To my father?”

  “We—ah—will carry on with our plans with or without your surrender, Rho. The only question—ah—is whether you allow the Gooding family to—ah—live.”

  “No,” I called sharply. There was no way I could allow Jordan to consider turning himself into something like Alpha. “With Ishango’s plan, there’s no real living for anyone. Don’t fall for his manipulation, Jordan.”

  “Gotcha,” Jordan replied, and struck out with his leg to catch Alpha’s knee with an audible crack.

  The personlike thing staggered, then whipped out that friggin’ sword again. This time Jordan avoided it easily.

  “You’ve shown up in a few of my nightmares,” Jordan grunted. “But now I’m thinking they’re actually memories. Were you there when they were operating on me?”

  Alpha grinned hideously, his lipless mouth stretching even wider to expose his skull teeth. “Indeed, Rho. I was the one who performed your modifications. As well as on your mother years ago.”

  “Wait, what about Charlie?” Jordan asked.

  “Ah—if I had anything to do with Charlie, he’d be here as well.”

  Alpha threw a punch at Jordan’s head, but Jordan ducked under it and twisted Alpha’s weapon arm behind his back. Alpha followed with a swift blow to Jordan’s head, forcing him to let go.

  The two of them swung and parried, stabbed and dodged in a complex dance around the mountain terrain. What Jordan had been telling me finally sank in: He knew how to fight, at a level way beyond professional. I might have enjoyed marveling at his mastery of the art if not for the sinking feeling that this particular bout would end in his death—and likely mine, too.

  Alpha clearly had the upper hand with his wicked weapon. After blocking a sword thrust, Jordan had tried to punch him in the face but missed and stumbled. Alpha’s leg swept the ground, knocking Jordan to his knees.

  “Jordan!” I cried out as Alpha stepped up and touched the edge of his sword to Jordan’s neck.

  Kneeling with his head hanging, Jordan looked at me so hopelessly that my heart choked my throat. I couldn’t watch him die.

  “Wait!” I called, but Alpha didn’t bother to turn around. I had no leverage here except as a liability to Jordan.

  But I wasn’t blind. I could see where they had ended up on the mountainside, in front of the crevasse that almost split Mount Hope in two. Alpha had his back to me and was addressing Jordan.

  I had to try. As terrified as I was of him, the look on Jordan’s face was the spur I needed to act. I wasn’t a fighter, but I wasn’t going to let Jordan die—not as long as I breathed.


  “Know that you are expendable, Rho,” I heard Alpha say as I quietly approached. “It will take some time, but we have already begun the process of—ah—creating another transfer unit, Sigma, with abilities even superior to yours.”

  Alpha was gloating, his eyes locked with Jordan’s. I waited for him to resume his wheezy speech to mask the sound of my soft footsteps.

  “Perhaps Margaret would make a fine candidate for the gestation,” he concluded, a sick punch line for Jordan to hear as Alpha raised his sword arm for the killing blow. Those would not be the last words Jordan would hear in this lifetime.

  I threw myself against Alpha, barreling into him with a mighty shoulder shove I learned from watching Jordan on the football field. Coach Garner would’ve approved of my hit as Alpha toppled forward—right onto the edge of that deep, deep fissure.

  Before Alpha could get his bearings, Jordan lunged and pushed him into the crack.

  Desperately, Alpha scrabbled for purchase on the dirt-packed ground, but a sword arm isn’t made for holding on. With his legs dangling above the crevasse, Alpha’s one functional hand was losing its battle to get a grip.

  As if resigned to his end, Alpha ceased groping for a hold and fixed his stare on Jordan. “I not only performed the embryo implantation on your mother, Rho,” he said with his skull-like grin. “Happily, I was chosen to fertilize her oocyte as well. Our genetic configurations were a perfect match to produce … you.”

  He relaxed his body.

  “Whether through you or me, my legacy will live on.”

  With his skinless face and dead eyes, he gazed at Jordan as he slid down the crevasse and then fell without a sound.

  I dove for Jordan and grabbed him in a fierce hug. He sat motionless as if in shock.

  “Don’t listen to him,” I told him. “He was just trying to rattle you. You can’t let him.”

  Jordan looked down at me, his eyes wet and shoulders shaking. “It’s true. My dad confirmed as much. That disgusting nonhuman was my …”

  I grabbed his head between my palms and placed my forehead against his. “Your dad was your dad, no matter what. Please. We still have to figure out how to save my mom and the rest of Mount Hope. Ishango is still alive, Jordan!”

  He nodded slowly, then got up from the ground. With a final glance down the fissure, he asked, “So what now?”

  “Let’s take some inventory first.”

  I checked on my mom, whose bleeding appeared to have subsided, while Jordan carried his still-unconscious father over to us.

  “There’s no way we can get back to the plant to drop these explosives down the hole,” Jordan said. “Even with all of my new powers, I’d be no match for an entire armed military force and all of those workers—and animals—under Ishango’s control. We couldn’t take these guys with us”—he gestured to my mom and his dad—“and I’m not leaving you up here.”

  I looked out at the Sweetbay River, my gaze sweeping over the view of the valley where the power plant was nestled.

  Then I turned back to Jordan and said in my most chipper TV-rerun voice, “I have an idea so crazy that it just might work!”

  CHAPTER 55

  Jordan

  “WE’RE GOING TO jail for this,” Maggie’s mom said, then coughed up some blood.

  “Mom!” Maggie cried.

  “Okay, forget I said anything,” her mom said, waving off her daughter and running the back of her hand over her dripping lips. “Jails have hospitals, anyway.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “the explosion and radiation might kill us before we get arrested.”

  “And I already have cancer, remember?” Maggie chirped.

  “Well, as long as we’re all feeling upbeat,” Dr. Gooding said, “you go right ahead.”

  When Maggie told me her idea, I didn’t think the world’s most intelligent and sociopathic supercomputer would have anticipated it. That in itself seemed reason enough to proceed.

  I turned to Maggie. “Won’t this ruin all the farms beyond?” I asked. “All that irradiated water by the time the whole thing is finished?”

  “Right. That’s if it all goes well.”

  “How confident are you right now?”

  “Not at all,” Maggie said, then grinned.

  “Me neither,” I said. “Fuck it.”

  After what Alpha told me before plunging into the abyss, hope wasn’t something I ever expected to feel again. Now I had a glimmer—as well as a new infusion of energy.

  Maggie pulled out the battery and attached the first wire to the negative terminal. She looked at me.

  “Yippee-ki-yay,” I said with a nod.

  She touched the second wire to the positive terminal, and the whole mountain trembled beneath us. Whoa, Nelly! We were as far away from the danger zone as the long detonation cord would allow us to go. I hoped it was enough.

  An enormous BOOM! sounded, and small rocks jiggled from their resting places and scattered down the cliffside on the opposite end of the crevasse. That was just the beginning. Huge chunks and boulders started falling into the Sweetbay River below us. The water was churning, and trees were being flattened by the massive rocks falling from above. Finally, the entire cliffside collapsed in what felt like slow motion, peeling away from the fissure. We were irrevocably changing the landscape in which we’d lived our entire lives.

  Suddenly everything stopped, just for a moment. Maggie and I tiptoed up to the new, raw cliff edge and peered over. The massive rockfall had settled into its new home in the river and forest below. The slabs and boulders spanned the river and then some, damming it up just as we had expected.

  “Look!” Maggie said.

  We watched in nervous anticipation as the white foam frothed at what was now blocking its route—and the water followed the path of least resistance and began to bubble up and onto the shore.

  It was happening. With the Sweetbay blocked, the water needed a way around the new rock dam. It surged to the sides, and while some of it made a quick detour to the left before flowing back into the river on the other side of the dam, the bulk of the water pushed to the right and poured down, down, down into the valley.

  The valley where the power plant was.

  From that point, there was no question of what would happen. The water would race along the valley floor and eventually pour into the hole at the construction site—and flood the room containing Ishango.

  There was nothing I saw in that room to indicate that this supercomputer of all supercomputers was built to be fully submerged. There wouldn’t be enough rice in the world to dry that thing out.

  We didn’t think the flooding would drown anyone at the plant. At least we hoped not. Hell, those workers were all out protecting the plant against us anyway, right? And a lot of them didn’t seem human anymore.

  Ah, I was rationalizing. I didn’t want the blood of hundreds of innocent lives on my hands, but Ishango was endangering a lot more folks than those residing in the plant. Anyway, people can swim.

  From atop Mount Hope, we watched the river rush and gurgle through its new route, saving us and the rest of the world from the evil force that had murdered so many people and turned our town into a living disaster.

  “‘Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!’” I whooped.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Maggie asked with a laugh.

  “Howard Cosell … George Foreman … never mind,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “Smells like … victory.”

  She pressed her soft lips against mine, and although I couldn’t say that this moment made everything else that preceded it worthwhile, it was closer than you might think.

  CHAPTER 56

  Maggie

  A RESCUE HELICOPTER spotted us several hours later and lowered a basket for Mom, Mr. Conners, and Bud Winkle. It turned out that the bullet had grazed Bud’s scalp, causing enough blood spillage to make him pass out but not enough to kill him. We learned later that he’d followed
us in his car and on foot knowing that we’d likely be pursued by Ishango’s forces. Bud wasn’t tied up with them after all, and the secret files he kept at the plant would become invaluable in the investigation to come.

  “Looks like you guys had quite a hike,” said the rescuer, a rugged, husky-voiced twenty-something woman with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail beneath her baseball cap.

  “We sure did,” I said as I took a seat next to Jordan. “We—”

  Jordan’s raised eyebrows stopped me. He was right: We’d never finish the story by the time we landed, and casually fessing up to destroying the mountain and the town’s nuclear plant might not be the wisest move. We’d already had to explain Mom’s gunshot wound: something about an errant hunter’s bullet fired during the cliffside’s collapse. The rescuer, Brianna, had her hands full and didn’t bother asking more questions.

  I took Jordan’s hand, which, like mine, had Mom’s blood on it.

  “This is it,” I said, leaning in to his ear so I could be heard over the helicopter’s roar as we flew over fields and country roads that led far away from Mount Hope.

  “This is what?”

  “Well, what are the odds of us ending up in the same place?”

  He laughed. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just saying, after your dad’s implant is removed, you two will reunite with your mom and Charlie while I’ll probably go to my mom’s sister’s place in Texas.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of assumptions right there. You think my dad’s implant will be so easily removed? And why wouldn’t you keep living with your mom?”

  “Oh, I plan on living with my mom—and maybe Bud Winkle, too,” I said, and mock gagged. “But I suspect it won’t be in Mount Hope anymore. Same goes for you all. Look.”

  Those same roads along which we’d all convoyed back into town weeks earlier were full again with cars headed in the opposite direction. But this was no orderly retreat with the military and police acting as crossing guards every block; these people were gunning it, getting the hell out of Dodge, riding the shoulders, and taking their ATVs over fields when necessary. From what I could tell from the lines of fast-moving traffic, these drivers weren’t stopping at nearby camps, either, but going pedal-to-the-metal until they reached the real outside world. Civilization at last.