Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series)

by Peter R Stone

  “Sorry, I should have gotten word to you, it’s just–”

  “How did you get out of jail?” Mother demanded, eyeing with something that went far beyond suspicion. Hatred? Loathing?

  I had no idea how to answer her. What should I say? Oh, they took me into the Genetics Laboratory because I was genetically altered when I was in your womb, Mother. Alternatively, I’m working undercover for the chancellor, spying on the town’s innocent civilians, as well as being a human guineapig on which he experiments. Or even better, I’ve been conscripted into the chancellor’s service to root out malcontents and rebels, but I’m actually a double agent, working for a resistance group intent on bringing down the entire government.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  My father still held my hands, but he looked troubled now instead of delighted. “Please tell me you didn’t make a deal to get out of prison in return for being a Custodian informer.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve got the gall to even show your face here!” Mother said, coming closer. “Your brother and sister are dead because of you!”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “If you’d done what I asked and gone to get your sister from the debt collectors in the morning, Brandon would be alive today! And so would Karen because she wouldn’t have gone out in that stupid breakout!” she said, shouting in my face.

  I suddenly recalled watching my sister and Sofia running out the town gates into the deceptively welcoming darkness, accompanied by Gerry, an extremely experienced forager.

  “That the escapees were captured or killed by the Skel is just a rumour,” I said, clutching at straws, trying to convince myself as much as her.

  “It’s not a rumour. The Custodians are the ones who said that that’s what happened to them.”

  “They spread that rumour as a deterrent to stop anyone else attempting the same thing.”

  “You really think that’s possible?” Father said, hope filling his eyes. “You think Younger Daughter may still be alive?”

  “I’m looking into it at the moment,” I replied, focusing on what Bhagya told me rather than the photos Ryan found.

  “You’re looking into it? What does that even mean, you foolish girl!” Mother said.

  “I can’t say, but when I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  “Really? What about your brother, then? How can you even live with yourself, you despicable girl, knowing his blood is on your hands?”

  Angry myself now, I snapped. “Brandon would have died even if he didn’t come to rescue Younger Sister and myself from the debt collectors.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mother shouted.

  “He would have received the death sentence for his crimes.”

  “What crimes? Smuggling in junk from outside and taking drugs? That doesn’t earn a death sentence!”

  “He wasn’t just using drugs. His forager group made and sold the drugs.”

  “You lie!”

  “Not only that...” My voice trailed off. I was about to tell Mother that he and his three forager buddies murdered, Dan Smith, their workmate, but the look in her eyes brought me up short. She idolised Brandon, viewing him from distorted lenses that saw him as the perfect, model son. If I told her that her precious son was a murderer, I’d not only shatter her perception of him, but her entire world, what little of was left of it.

  “Not only what?”

  “Never mind.”

  There was an extremely unpleasant pause after that, until Mother finally pointed at the door. “Get out. And don’t come back. Ever. You’re no daughter of mine, not anymore.”

  “Wife–” Father began.

  Mother cut him off with a wave of her hand and stormed from the room.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” I said to Father.

  “No, don’t blame yourself. Your Mother, she’s...let’s just say she’s not coping well at the moment. It’s been a tough two years for her. For both of us.”

  I nodded and squeezed his hand affectionately. I had come here to tell him about my life in the lab and the pregnancy, but decided this was neither the time nor the place. “I’ll go.”

  He saw me to the door. “If there’s a way you can find out if your sister’s alive, you pursue it, okay? We need to know. She needs to know.”

  “I won’t stop looking until I’ve turned over every stone,” I said, and then slipped out the door, berating myself for being so stupid as to come here. My mother infuriated me, and always had, ever since I was little, but she was still my mother and I cared for her. Seeing her so disheartened was heart breaking.

  I didn’t sleep that night, the visit to my parents and need to find the truth about what happened to the escapees played over and over in my mind until dawn.

  And as if the bouts of nausea and sleepless night weren’t enough, I was experiencing mild abdominal cramping when I got to school the next morning. I was halfway to homeroom when I realised I had zero interest in being subjected to probing questions and accusing looks from Ryan, so turned and headed for the stairs instead. I decided to skip homeroom and spend the time on the roof getting some fresh air, and would come back down in time for my next class.

  “Homeroom’s that way,” Mehmet said, bumping into me.

  “You gotta stop following me,” I said, one hand on the stairwell railing.

  “Why? It’s fun.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  “Hey, you don’t look so good. Want me to take you to sickbay again?”

  “No thanks, I’ll grab some fresh air up top and come down when I’m feeling better.”

  “Fair enough. Hey, what’d you say to Ryan yesterday? He moped about like a sick cow last night.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Glad to hear it.” The bell went. “You’d better get to homeroom.”

  “Sure you’re okay?”

  “Go!”

  “Going.”

  Mehmet rushed off to homeroom while I made my way up to the roof, contemplating the news that Mr. Insensitive was acting like a sick cow. Probably just acting sorry for himself, too.

  I sat on a wooden bench in the rooftop garden, but suddenly gasped and collapsed when an extremely powerful cramp tore through my abdomen. This was nothing like the morning sickness – this was different.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  All feelings of frustration toward Ryan vanished, replaced by overwhelming concern for the baby. I tried to stand, but another round of stomach cramps sent me to my knees beside the bench. Moaning in pain, I crawled across the concrete, heading for the stairs. I had to get to the lab, as they would know what to do if something was wrong with the pregnancy. I couldn’t lose this baby.

  Hearing footsteps in the stairwell, I and looked up and saw Ryan appear. As soon as he spotted me, he sprinted over to my side.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s wrong. With the pregnancy, I mean.”

  “Right, I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No, take me to the lab.”

  “Chelsea–”

  “Just once in your life, do what I ask without arguing, Ryan! The lab’s third floor is the best equipped hospital in Newhome.”

  “Fine. The lab then. Now wait here, I’ll ring the ambulance and then come back and help you down.”

  “Can’t you take me? My cover will be blown if you do that.”

  “I don’t care about your cover, Chelsea. Your health – the baby’s health – is more important than your stupid job!”

  I looked at him, flabbergasted. He was angry with me for being pregnant, assuming I was cheating on him, but still cared for the baby? Would I ever understand this guy?

  “Look, everyone thinks I’ve got gastro or something, right? Play that card.”

  “But you can’t even walk, right?”

  “Carry me downstairs and I’ll walk until we get outside the school. Then
you can give me a piggyback or something, right?”

  Ryan wasn’t happy, but he did what I asked, carrying me down the stairs as though I weighed no more than a feather. With my arms around his neck and his arms around my shoulders and under my knees, my anger towards him faded to grey, replaced by feelings and emotions I didn’t want to face right now.

  At the bottom of the stairwell, he put me down and with my arm on his shoulder, walked me slowly through the corridors toward the front entrance. Classes were still in session, so we only saw a couple of kids wandering the corridors. They shot us curious glances, but hurried on their way when Ryan scowled at them. We had to stop a few times when the cramping got too strong, but we eventually reached the front door.

  Once there, he told me to wait a moment and ran into the office. He was back a moment later, and helped me through the schoolyard and into the street. I climbed on his back when we were no longer visible from school.

  “Sorry for being such a heel, before,” he said as we went.

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to apologise here.”

  “Then please, continue.”

  “I also want you to know that my feelings for you haven’t changed, not even with this pregnancy. Still, I want you to be honest with me. Do you care about this other guy – the one who got you pregnant?”

  Anger spiked through me. “You can be so annoying, Ryan!”

  “What did I say wrong now?”

  “There is no other guy! Well, unless you want to call an anonymous sperm donor a guy.”

  “What?”

  “The geneticists in the lab are conducting an experiment. They want to see if we can pass our genetically engineered traits onto our offspring,” I said.

  “Sorry, not following you.”

  “They took four of us girls to the lab’s gynaecology unit and impregnated us with IVF.”

  Ryan stumbled to a stop and turned to look at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “That’s right. I’m making this up for the fun of it.”

  “Those unconscionable mongrels, how dare they treat you like this? You’re people, not animals to experiment on!” Although he was so angry that he was shaking, he suddenly became quiet. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because I was embarrassed, and afraid of how you’d react. And let’s face it, you don’t do too well in the reaction department, do you?” Another cramp cut through me. I bit my cheeks to keep from crying out.

  “Hey, I’m a work in progress,” he said, resuming his walk down the street. “But all the same, I’m sorry for accusing you of sleeping around.”

  “Try asking me what happened next time, huh?”

  He didn’t get a chance to reply, because at that moment a Custodian G-Wagon roared around the corner, screeching to a stop beside us.

  “Thank you for coming promptly, private,” Ryan said to the driver as he opened the rear door and helped me inside. “The Geneticists Laboratory, private.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  We didn’t talk on the trip to the lab, since we were no longer alone. When we got there, Liz, who happened to be in the foyer, quickly opened the door and helped me inside. Ryan’s request to accompany me was denied, so he said he’d catch up with me later.

  I didn’t even need to tell Liz what was wrong, she just took me straight to the third floor, explaining that Bhagya had come in an hour ago after having a miscarriage, even falling unconscious from blood loss.

  “You think that’s what’s happening to me? I suspected it, of course, but I’m hoping there’s another explanation,” I said as I hobbled out of the elevator.

  “You’ll know soon enough, I guess. Good luck, eh?” she said as she handed me over to the nurse who hurried over with a trolley and helped me lie down.

  * * *

  As I feared, it was a miscarriage. When it was all over, and they put me up in a hospital room next to Bhagya, I was left feeling strangely empty. True, the pregnancy had been forced on me and I resented the liberties the chancellor and geneticists had taken, but it felt like a strange dream, knowing that the little life that had grown within me for six weeks was gone. My dreams of escaping town and raising the child as my own, free from this prison, were no more.

  When the nurse wasn’t looking, I slipped out of bed and popped into the adjacent room to see Bhagya.

  She was propped up on several pillows, staring into space, her dark skin looking paler than usual, even though she had an IV drip giving her blood.

  “Hey.”

  She just looked at me.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked quietly, below the nurse’s hearing range.

  “Better now that thing is out of me.”

  That thing was a baby, and I almost told her so, but bit back the comment when I recalled she had planned to trigger a miscarriage if it didn’t occur naturally.

  “Right.”

  “It’s sending them into a right spin, it is,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “That you and I had miscarriages, and on the same day. Suyin and Madison are both in the ICU, now. They brought them in when you were asleep. Their pregnancies are holding up so far, but the fact they’re in there means the geneticists are worried they’ll have miscarriages too.”

  “What does it mean if we all have miscarriages?” I asked.

  “From what I overheard Dr. Jeong saying to his colleagues when they thought I was out, they’re terrified our genetically engineered attributes can’t be passed on. Worse, that our modifications have rendered us infertile.”

  “Why are they so worried about that?”

  “Because for the past twelve years, they have given our genetic modifications to all the Korean children – children who live in the chancellery and have yet to step foot outside it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I stared at Bhagya in shock. “You can’t be serious.”

  “They were discussing it right in front of me. The things people say when they think you’re unconscious.”

  “But it’s against the Founders’ teachings! A Better Way teaches that the human genome must be kept pure at all costs,” I said.

  “All lies. The Founders – the Koreans – just wanted to control who received Dr. Zhao’s genetically engineered modifications. That’s why they dissected all those boys. They were reverse engineering his work so they could give it to the Korean children exclusively. That’s one reason they’ve been so thorough in hunting down everyone else with the modifications.”

  “And now they’re afraid the new generation of Korean children are infertile,” I said.

  “Precisely. Which is ironic, because if it’s true, they’ve gone and shot themselves in the foot. They’re trying to make themselves into a new race of super humans, but it will all blow up in their faces if they can’t procreate.”

  “Serves the mongrels right.”

  “There may be more to it than that, though. Dr. Jeong suggested that the modified girls here at the lab could be genetically incompatible with normal humans. He said they’ll continue to experiment on the rest of us, but if we all have miscarriages, they’ll have to wait until their own children are old enough to see if modified males and females can procreate.”

  “And if they can, what does that mean for the rest of the town? Will they go on creating generations of Korean super humans while keeping everyone else normal?”

  Bhagya looked at me, and for the first time, she looked troubled. “I overheard them discussing the Plan as well. That the modified Korean children can procreate with each other when they are adults is apparently an integral part of it. If it turns out they can’t, the Plan cannot be implemented, even though, and I quote him, ‘the virus is near completion.’ One geneticist mentioned that trials being run to determine if the Korean population was immune were also complete, with a 100% favourable outcome.”

  “So what you’re saying is that within the next few year
s, when the Korean children reach adulthood, they will run tests to see if they can procreate. And if they can, they will release some form of virus to which only the Koreans are immune?”

  “I believe so.”

  “So what’s this virus, then? What will it do?” I realised my hands were shaking.

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” she said.

  We fell silent after that, minds beset with a myriad of possibilities and fears, as we tried to guess the purpose of this mysterious virus. I had a terrible feeling that it was going to be something horrifically bad.

  * * *

  I was discharged from hospital late that evening. Bhagya wasn’t so lucky – she would have to stay overnight, if not longer.

  Exciting the elevator on the first floor, I headed to the dormitory, hoping to avoid the other girls and get some sleep. Turned out I’d misjudged the time – they were already in the dorm, getting ready for bed.

  Jess spotted me first and rushed over to take my hand. “How are you feeling Chelsea? We heard the bad news.”

  I rewarded her with a weak smile. “I’m okay.”

  “You poor thing, come and sit down,” Liz said, leading me to the closest bunk bed. She sat next to me and patted the back of my hand. The girls all crowded around, even Romy, who stood at the back, watching me with an unreadable expression on her face. I wished they would all leave me alone. Company was the one thing I didn’t want right now. Losing the baby was a horrid experience, one I didn’t need to be reminded of.

  “What about Bhagya, is she still upstairs?” Jess asked.

  “They’re keeping her in overnight.”

  “And Suyin and Madison?”

  “I didn’t see them. They’re in the ICU.”

  “So there’s something wrong with their pregnancies too?” she asked.

  “It’s just a precaution, from what I understand.”

  “But something went wrong, right? I mean, that can’t be a coincidence, both you and Bhagya, on the same day.”

  “Jess! It’s not the time for questions like that,” Liz said, still patting my hand.