Detour: Book Two of the Humanity's Edge Trilogy

by Paul B. Kohler

  Lane’s eyes popped open. She blinked several times at Alayna, as if she were seeing her for the first time. After a long pause, a smile stretched her cheeks.

  “Hi,” she breathed.

  “Hi,” Alayna said, giggling slightly, girlishly.

  “Where did Clay go?” Lane asked, glancing around the clearing.

  “Who knows?”.

  “You’re saying we don’t need him?” Lane asked, her eyes bright, playful. “Because I seem to sense something between the two of you.”

  “No. That was just a small mistake. Something I don’t regret, mind you,” Alayna said, rising up on her elbow and bringing her hand to Lane’s upper arm. She felt at the firmness of Lane’s arm through her shirt.

  Lane’s left eyebrow nearly leapt from her forehead. “I see,” she said.

  “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need men. For anything,” Alayna said.

  “No procreation?”

  “Can’t we just freeze their sperm for all future generations?”

  “Down with men, then?” Lane laughed. “Should we abandon Clay in the wilderness?”

  “Could he handle it out here alone?” Alayna asked, laughing.

  “You’re evil,” Lane whispered, leaning toward her. Her lips were mere inches from Alayna’s. After craving attention from Clay the night before, Alayna felt her lips tingle with desire. If she just nudged forward, only slightly; if she bridged this distance . . .

  Clay pushed in through the brush, finding the girls staring at one another, inches apart, their stunning profiles looking almost as if they could fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. He swallowed, then cleared his throat, alerting them that he was there.

  Alayna spun toward him, giving him a semi-evil laugh. Was she trying to get back at him for not sleeping with her? Was this one of those games women play, during which they push and pull you, never allowing you to know exactly what they’re thinking? He remembered Valerie doing that during her pregnancy, when her hormones had been all out of whack, sending her sobbing into the bedroom some days, breaking plates on others, and then cuddling him till she demanded sex on the good days. The good days never seemed to come often enough.

  “Oh. You’re here,” Lane said, her voice blasé.

  “We’d already made peace with the fact that you probably weren’t coming back,” Alayna said, chuckling. “We’d plotted a future without men.”

  “It was oddly gorgeous, actually. We’d just freeze a bunch of sperm, recreate civilization without war, without greed—without all that shit you men cause for us. Doesn’t it sound like a paradise?” Lane asked, lifting her face away from Alayna’s with a swift motion.

  Clay laughed nervously, his eyes dancing from Alayna to Lane, then back again. What the hell was going on?

  “Well . . . that’s nice,” he muttered, scratching at the back of his head. Confusion clouded his brain.

  “Not just nice,” Alayna said. “Life-altering.” She winked at Lane, almost cartoonish in her motions. She and Lane burst into laughter, rolling back on the grass and clutching their stomachs. Clay hadn’t seen such an uproar since before the crazed had begun their attacks. A smile crept across his face.

  “Ha,” he blurted. “All right. All right. You’ve had your fun.”

  “Oh, we have,” Alayna agreed, swiping a tear from her eye. “If only you knew just how much.”

  Sensing this was a jab, Clay ducked it. “I scouted down the road,” he said, trying to steer them back on track. “It’s clear as far as the eye can see. I think we’re about eight or nine hours away from Dearing. The sooner we get on the road, the better we’ll be.”

  “The better we’ll be. You hear that, Alayna? The man has a plan,” Lane joked, rising from the grass. “Guess we better listen to him.”

  Alayna snickered, helping Lane gather their things. They both looked thinner, diminished.

  “I refilled the water,” Clay said, thrusting the canteen forward. “But still no food.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Alayna teased him. She wrapped her hands around the canteen and took a long pull, like an alcoholic getting his drink on. She passed it to Lane, who did the same. They drank a quarter of the canteen, leaving the rest for the journey.

  Together, they set off down the trail they’d crawled up the night before, traversing the overgrowth cautiously, and eyeing the welcoming pavement down below.

  “I hope you’re being careful, Alayna,” Lane continued the game. “Otherwise this big, strong man will have to carry you down the mountain. And I don’t think you want that. Do you?”

  “Oh, he can take me in his arms whenever he pleases,” Alayna said.

  Clay knew this was truthful, yet it was edged with sarcasm. He rolled his eyes, trying to come up with his own jokes.

  “You girls better watch it. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”

  “Ha. We already are,” Alayna said.

  Clay swallowed, realizing his joke rang true. “Fair point.”

  “What do you think will happen with all the crazed when we destroy them with the device?” Alayna asked Lane, stepping over a bush. A few twigs peppered the ground.

  “I’m really not sure,” Lane said. “I imagine them falling all over each other, all at once. Making little hills of humanity’s mistake.”

  “I hate that they were all once people. Like us. We’ve done our best to show mercy to the people who were going to transition, the ones that we knew,” Alayna said. “But everyone else. I mean, imagine. Some of our neighbors. Some of our friends.”

  “We don’t know who’s crazed and who isn’t, yet,” Clay said, his voice stern.

  He hated that he showed his irritation, his fear, so readily. Thoughts of Maia and Valerie once again floated to the surface. Silence hung between them as they trotted onto the road, all three minds hunting for a different topic. The truth was, the apocalypse was never far from their minds.

  “Damn, Clay. I think you have even more muscles than you did last night,” Lane commented.

  Clay had already pulled ahead of them, hardly able to slow his feet. Taking a deep breath, he pulled up.

  “These nanites. Wish I had them when I was training for that sprint marathon last year.”

  “You didn’t even train!” Alayna said, laughing.

  “I ran five miles. Once,” Clay admitted.

  “And then you ate like three donuts that morning.”

  “So did you,” Clay said, giving her a pointed look.

  “We didn’t have a whole lot to care about back then, besides pastries. We were like the cops from the Simpsons. All we ever did was put people in jail for unnecessary kissing. How foolish does that sound now?”

  They continued down the road, chatting amicably, the girls trying to keep their minds away from hunger. Clay hadn’t felt a single pang, although he did have a persistent daydream about eating a hamburger with extra cheese. He imagined the juices dripping down his face, then Maia laughing at him, at his commitment to gobbling the patty in just a few bites. He envisioned Valerie telling Maia she would never get away with eating like such a slob.

  “I would destroy one of those burritos from the midtown diner,” Alayna said, clearly having her own food thoughts. “They weren’t authentic Mexican, no. But they could slather cheese on a tortilla over there, and that’s all I really want right now. Megan wouldn’t let me eat them very often. Said they would make me fat. I wouldn’t mind being fat right now,” she chortled.

  “Ha. I think I’d eat onion rings, if I could,” Lane said. “Deep-fried, with dipping sauce. Oh, god. Just thinking about it is making my mouth water.”

  “Of course, Clay doesn’t need food,” Alayna said. “Not with the nanites in his blood.”

  “He’s so lucky. I feel like I might die in five minutes.”

  “Yeah, well. I may very well die in just a few days from these parasites,” Clay said, shuddering. He halted, turning toward the girls, his eyes panicked. “We’ll get you your food.
Your water. It’s going to be all right for you. But it won’t necessarily be all right for me. Do you get that?”

  The women glanced at one another, seemingly speaking a language they’d cultivated together in the mere minutes Clay had left them alone that morning. Alayna shrugged slightly, as if to say, “There’s no good way to handle this.”

  “I think we should take a break,” Lane said, breaking the tension. “All this talk about burritos is making me crazy. Plus, we’ve been walking for . . . what? Three hours? That’s more than my normal workouts before the apocalypse.”

  “Isn’t it funny that we ever tried to keep those gym memberships?” Alayna asked, laughing and sinking to her knees on the pavement. “I mean, of all the things you could do in your life, why would you spend so many hours at the gym? It seems pathetic, now. If only someone had told me.”

  “It’s okay, Alayna. I don’t think you spent too much time there.” Clay humored them. “I seem to remember quite a few nights where you and I snuck out for a beer or three before heading home. You didn’t head to the gym. You lived.”

  “Or at least, I tried to,” Alayna said.

  “That’s all we can really ask for,” Lane agreed.

  After a short break, during which they gulped as much water down as they could, they started again, guided by the confident movements of Clay—their leader, whether they liked it or not. And perhaps, since the morning’s conversation—and since Clay had rebuffed Alayna again sexually—they were leaning toward the “not.” Especially Alayna.

  Clay could sense it. Alayna’s resentment was nearly palpable, alongside the hunger and the fatigue. He was growing stronger than ever, leaving them further and further behind—sometimes literally. Once, infuriated, Alayna threw a stone at him. It bounced, stinging his skin. He turned around, his eyes violent and bright, making him appear almost machine-like.

  “What the hell?” he asked, his voice low. “What was that for?”

  “You’re like twenty feet in front of us,” Alayna said, her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what kind of fucking leader you think you are. But this isn’t what it means in my book.”

  Clay waited for them. The girls caught up, then pushed ahead of him, stride by stride. Clay followed, not wanting to make any more waves. He wanted to say something tart to Alayna, but held his tongue.

  There was too much at stake. The world was spinning far too quickly. “Feelings” were irrelevant. And that’s what he should have told Alayna the night before, when she’d pressed herself so insistently against him and asked him to be with her.

  Chapter 30

  After more breaks and countless rounds of half-bickering later, the three survivors crested a hill and viewed something miraculous, something that now seemed outside of time. It was Dearing, the first signs of it anyway: scraggly houses on the outskirts, water tower, and its grid lines of the inner city—probably named for all the trees in the forest, much as it was in the towns they had grown up in, in the towns they were from.

  “God, it looks dead,” Alayna gasped, scrutinizing the town below. It was as if they were on the deck of a ship, looking out over the water. But no fish skimmed the surface; nothing made a dramatic leap.

  “I’m terrified,” Lane said, looking at the road sign identifying the town and its population. “I never thought I’d be so scared of a silly little town. But look at me now. My fingers are trembling.”

  They were. When Lane extended them, her entire hand shook, like a drunk’s. Her eyes were laced with tears, showing her fear, like a child. As her lip quivered, Clay seemed to grow taller, more confident, almost oblivious to their fear. He gazed down at them from his ivory tower of strength, certain they could feel it pumping within him.

  “It’s all going to be fine,” Clay stated. “We have to think positive.”

  “Yeah. You’ve got those nanites cranking away,” Alayna said sarcastically. “Just try to imagine how we feel, won’t you? For once?”

  Clay raised his hands, feeling like the villain. “All I know is, we spent the better part of today walking all this way. Do you want to just turn back now?”

  Lane reached for the canteen. She began to gulp at the water, as if she thought it might be the last she’d ever get. Her hands still shook. Alayna accepted the canteen next, drinking with similar zeal.

  “Listen, if we don’t go down there, then we’ll never know. We’ll never figure out what happened to our friends and family. We’ll always wonder. Alayna—what about Megan?”

  Alayna didn’t stop drinking.

  “And if we don’t go on, then we may never find food. I could go on without it. I don’t need it. I don’t even want it,” Clay lied, even as memory of that burger—a symbol for real life—hounded him. “But this is literally our only plan. Our only choice. And we’ve come all this way.”

  Lane and Alayna turned angry eyes on him. The canteen hung at Alayna’s side, empty. Nobody spoke for several seconds, as they came to the realization that Dearing was in fact their only hope.

  “We should have the neutralizer out at all times,” Alayna said. “Like you said. If there are crazed in there, I don’t want them to hear our gunfire.”

  “Agreed,” Lane said. “But which one of us should . . .”

  “She should take it,” Alayna said, tipping her head toward Lane. “We’ll have our guns drawn, just in case the first line of defense fails us.”

  Lane asked, “So, what’s the general plan after that, then?”

  “We look for signs of life,” Clay said firmly. “This can’t be rocket science anymore, Lane. It can’t be exact.”

  Lane’s face was angry, but she remained silent.

  Clay turned toward the city, unperturbed. He couldn’t worry whether they were irritated with him, now. Not any longer.

  “Shall we?” he asked. He sounded like he had after Maia had had temper tantrums as a child. He’d be taller, firmer, stoic. Showing her that no matter how loud she screamed, how hard she kicked, he still had the upper hand.

  “Fine,” Alayna said, taking a first step forward. With a fluid motion, she drew her gun, pointing it in front of her, making her look demonic, strong. “Those fuckers better stay away from me. I’m too irritated not to blow each and every one of their heads off.”

  Chapter 31

  As they strode into Dearing, Clay knew it was going to be just as abandoned as Helen and Carterville before that. His heart sank further when against the wall of a small gas station, he saw a line of graffiti, “FML.”

  Clay remembered when he’d had to chase off graffiti artists back in Carterville. They’d just been kids who’d brought spray paint to the high school and put their distorted opinions over the whitewash. At the time, he barely made an effort to track them down—it would have been pointless and the paperwork was a hassle.

  And, now, Clay felt it was fair to assume that whoever had written “FUCK MY LIFE” on that gas station wall was dead. No longer dissatisfied with their existence. He or she was completely absent. They had nothing.

  “Any idea where anything is around here?” Alayna asked in a small voice.

  “No clue,” Clay said. “In all our years in Carterville, Val and I rarely stepped foot out of town. Let alone traveled this far south.”

  “Shit,” Lane grumbled from the other side. “Do you want to check in the gas station for food?”

  “I don’t want to waste any more time,” Clay replied, still tracing the vacant city streets ahead.

  But the girls were already advancing toward it and away from Clay, their weapons still drawn. The shadows were long on the buildings, turning them a ghoulish shade of blue. Lane barged into the half-destroyed convenience store, using her shoulder to push the door free of the debris blocking it. The place was lined with rubble from a raid, but the far back wall still had a few bags of snacks and some stale crackers. Alayna tore open a bag of almonds and shoved a large handful into her mouth. She chewed loudly, looking like an animal. Clay guarded the girls’ plunderin
g from near the front door and his heart twinged at Alayna’s desperation—the way she ripped into the food, dropping crumbs on her shirt. She was no longer just a woman. She was a monster.

  And so was he.

  Lane took a bag of peanuts and chewed hungrily before shoving two little packs into her pocket. They drank two bottles of water each, tossing one to Clay and telling him to drink up.

  “I’m good for now,” Clay said, tossing the bottle back to the girls. “You two need this more than I do.”

  “The nanites won’t make up for everything, Clay,” Lane said flatly. “You still have to take care of your human needs.”

  Begrudgingly, Clay ate a pack of animal crackers and sipped the water, hating that they were losing time. Checking his watch, he realized they’d only been at the station for five minutes—maybe less than that. Time was moving strangely, with minutes like hours and days like years. It was like being a kid again.

  After Alayna and Lane had had their fill, they turned to Clay, knowing it was time to move on. Energized, at least briefly, they backtracked onto the road, flanking Clay down the middle of the street.

  The town revealed its personality gradually, with fast food joints becoming sit-down diners—chain clothing stores turning into boutiques. The sun dropped closer to the horizon, increasing the town’s eerie appearance. The businesses were completely deserted; the restaurants seemed to have been abandoned midway through a meal. Pressing their faces against the windows, they saw molding plates scattered across the tables.

  “To have your life ruined during breakfast!” Lane said, trying to make a joke. “What kind of cruel world is this?”

  “A world where scientists tried to play God,” Clay said sarcastically. Lane didn’t offer a reply.