The Gatherer Series, Book 1

by Colleen Winter

  “There’s been talk online and articles in the media. But nothing official yet.”

  Storm finally looked up to meet Maria’s eyes, the clarity in them one Maria hadn’t seen since finding her. Yet pain underlay the clear blue, deeper than any physical pain Maria had seen her endure.

  “And I destroyed the Gatherer in Three Rocks.”

  Maria nodded, the tightness in her shoulders easing as Storm put the pieces together.

  “On camera.”

  The glass thudded dully as Storm set it on the counter. A log shifted in the wood stove and the fire hummed louder, drawing the oxygen from the room. Maria waited, her nerves agitated. She could feel the awareness of Storm’s attack on the Gatherer propagating out into the world. There would be phone calls, people organizing to come for her.

  There was a slow lift of Storm’s head to look out the window, back lit by the gleaming metal of the lab, her focus following something. Maria thought the Constable must have arrived until the dog burst through the flap in the door, eyes bright and tail high. The dog went straight to Storm, who crouched down in front of him, her fingers buried in the fur around his neck, her forehead lowered to his. It was a gesture of such sad tenderness that Maria had a sudden longing for Havernal.

  Storm spoke quietly to the dog, her voice too low to hear, the dog’s ears flicking forward and back until it let out a long plaintive whine. Storm pulled her head back, looking into the animal’s eyes, and it stopped whining.

  “Come.”

  Walking stiffly, Storm led the dog to Curtis’s side and commanded him to sit.

  Maria moved to the window. The shimmer of the sun off the water reflected throughout the clearing, its vibrations cracking the calmness of the morning.

  Storm pointed to Curtis and the dog’s shoulders slumped, his whine a desperate plea. She repeated the gesture. The burly man looked down at his new companion and raised his shoulders in a companionable shrug. The dog’s tail wagged briefly, and Storm’s shoulders sagged.

  “You’ll look after him?”

  The tremor in Storm’s voice was more desperate than the dog’s.

  Curtis bent to ruffle the dog’s fur and the dog braced his paws against the man’s easy strength.

  “He’ll be good with the team.”

  Storm moved with measured determination as she put on her parka and slipped on her boots. She stopped briefly at the enclosure where Mac slept, flattened a piece of metal that had risen out of the protective mesh, and held on to the wood frame with both hands before letting go.

  “What do I do for him?”

  Curtis had moved beside Storm, his bulk increasing her frailty.

  “Keep him here. It’ll help with the symptoms.”

  “Will it cure him?”

  A twig that had escaped from Mac’s hair lay on the floor outside the enclosure, most of the others still hopelessly entangled in the long black strands.

  “I don’t know.”

  Maria put on her coat and boots, her need to move rising as she slipped her arms into the backpack. Storm handed her the silver suit, the case for the syringes, and a collection of small bottles out of the fridge that Curtis had passed over.

  She was about to ask for another bag when Storm opened the door. Whether it was to get something from the lab or to test the temperature Maria wouldn’t know, for with a warning yelp, the dog bolted through the door towards two white Suburbans entering the clearing. Storm closed the door and put her back against it as the dog’s barking reached the vehicle.

  Storm looked towards the lab, seemingly unable to move.

  Maria pulled her away from the door. Storm moved slowly, looking around the room as if she had only just understood that she would have to leave.

  The engine grew louder, its determined, steady grind already halfway across the clearing.

  Maria pulled on Storm, towards the small bathroom at the back of the cabin.

  The vehicle was in front of the cabin, the dog’s barking frantic.

  Curtis moved towards Storm, a cast-iron frying pan in his hand. Maria stepped between them, her arms raised, a coil of energy ready to spring. He was three times her weight and as slow moving as a bear.

  “It’s not for you.”

  He flipped the pan casually in his hand.

  “It has to look like you overpowered me.”

  Maria relaxed, the spike of adrenaline flowing into relief.

  “We don’t need that.”

  She reached for his neck as a door slammed. Blue was snarling as a man, not the Constable, swore.

  “Wait!”

  Storm held out her hand, finally coming alive.

  “You’ll need to get Jacob. He’s been hiding his symptoms.”

  The shock and understanding was immediate, Curtis’s genial expression melting into renewed fear. He nodded.

  With a quick step, Maria laid her hand against the warmth of Curtis’s neck.

  “Ready?”

  Curtis lifted his gaze briefly to Storm.

  “I’m with her.” He tilted his chin ever so slightly towards Maria. “If you can fix this. You have no choice.”

  A quick, hard pressure behind his ear and Curtis and the pan dropped to the floor. The impact shook the cabin. A fist pounded the door as Maria and Storm crowded into the bathroom. They levered open the window. It wasn’t a huge space but it would be enough for two thin women to squeeze through.

  As soon as her feet touched the ground, Maria started running, crouched low, towards the spindly poplars that backed the clearing. Storm followed in a weak run, and Maria slowed, grabbing her elbow to help propel her forwards. The dog’s crazed barking echoed behind them, answered by a man yelling for them to open up.

  Maria kept her head down, looking forward as they entered the sparse woods. Storm stumbled beside her, her face pale and grim. They had entered a thicker stand of trees when the unmistakable whine of an electric jet filled the air. Maria tackled Storm to the ground as a sleek, white plane entered the clearing from the north. It was private, its insignia unreadable from this distance. Maria kept a tight hold on Storm as it deftly lowered down between the cabin and the lab, a whirlwind rising up around it.

  The smooth slackness of dawning comprehension spread across Storm’s drawn features before it abruptly tightened into angry understanding.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Two men in black combat gear jumped out of the cab before the runners touched down.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  But Storm had already slipped from Maria’s grasp and was running further into the woods, several strides ahead of her. Maria looked back only once as the men from the jet were met by the ones who had pounded on the door.

  ELEVEN

  Storm stood on a rock outcrop close to the water’s edge. Brief glimpses of trees appeared and vanished as quickly as the mist shifted.

  “Can you see anything?”

  Maria adjusted the weight of the pack on her hips and clicked the buckle around her waist. Her eyes were red rimmed and she looked as tired as when they had stopped the previous night.

  “No, but they can’t see us any better than we can see them.”

  The mist muted Storm’s voice, her words traveling no further than their few feet of rock. She peered harder, wondering if someone else beyond the blank wall of mist was staring back at them. A patch of tall grass broke through a momentary opening, the mist curled around the base of its straight, brittle blades.

  “That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

  Maria frowned. Strands of hair hung loose from what was now half of a ponytail, and there was a heaviness to her eyes that matched Storm’s, a poor night’s sleep on hard ground intensifying the lingering weakness from the seizure at the Gatherer.

  “Are we continuing in the same directi
on?”

  They had spent the previous day pushing through endless swamps, taking refuge on higher ground when they could. Every moment she had expected to be caught or corralled into a corner. They hadn’t spoken of where they were going or the unlikelihood that they had ended up together. It had been about getting away. But even without discussing it, there had been a direction, their trajectory leading them decidedly southwest.

  Maria’s answer was to choose the shallowest section and step off. Clouds of organic matter erupted around her foot as she entered the water, a larger bloom spreading behind her. Storm followed, hating the return of the icy water. She longed to be back in her bed, curled up next to Blue until she remembered that Mac would be there with shaking hands and panicked, pleading eyes, unrecognizable as the man he had once been.

  It shocked her that she hadn’t faced her pursuers. Choosing to flee with Maria, the woman who had haunted her following the Gatherer’s release.

  This is larger than you are. It’s irresponsible to release it without proper testing.

  She hadn’t cared. She had been more worried about it being taken from her control than she was by a few side effects. In truth, she hadn’t believed there would be any. The Gatherer and the principles behind it had felt so right, like she had been meant to find it.

  By the time Maria stopped on a higher patch of land, Storm’s feet were numb. She stepped up beside her, the earth soft underneath.

  “How many people are sick?”

  They stood on a high point above the marsh’s teeming surface, the thinning mist providing glimpses of an endless watery expanse.

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “Make a guess.”

  Mist drifted in front of them, its tendrils trailing along the water’s surface.

  “A lot of them drop off the radar once they’re sick. Go into hiding.”

  Storm’s irritation rose. She needed data to understand what had happened.

  “A hundred? A thousand? What are we talking here?”

  If the larger Gatherers were making people sick, it would be an easy fix. Manageable.

  “Tens of thousands. More by now.”

  She felt her heart constrict as if it meant to stop.

  “How is that even possible?”

  Maria looked to her feet as she repositioned them, the ground beneath Storm giving way at the change in pressure. Maria pressed her lips together, a grim resolution to her features.

  “You tell me.”

  Storm felt the pull of the Gatherers that had been delivered, an intricate web over the world with every branch leading back to her.

  “Has anyone tried to stop it?”

  Her raised voice echoed back at her, asking her the same question. If it was as extensive as Maria claimed, how could the corporation deny it? The company was unrecognizable from the entity she had hoped to create.

  “No one wants to give it up.”

  The truth of it was another cut into a body that was hardly set to bear anything at all. Hadn’t that been the whole point? Delivering free, limitless electricity to everyone so their lives would be easier?

  “How far has it spread?”

  “Everywhere there’s a Gatherer.”

  A noise across the marsh. It could have been a branch falling, an animal plopping into the water, or footsteps moving through the woods. Their breath rose in white clouds as they listened. No sound but the push of tiny waves against the decaying stalks of grass.

  Maria led, her steps soundless through the water that reached their shins while the splashes of Storm’s feet echoed around them. The enormity of her task had expanded to encompass the endless marsh, each footstep not even registering in the elaborate network that the Gatherer had created. Storm’s thoughts circled around a single question, returning to it and retreating. Her mother had taken over the operations of the Gatherer corporation when Storm had been forced to retreat to the Yukon. She had done a better job of it than Storm ever could have done, the distribution of the Gatherer spreading faster and wider under her focused attention. Her mother had never missed an opportunity to donate a Gatherer to a struggling community, or to skillfully navigate the obstacles and lawsuits thrown up by their opponents. So how would she not recognize that the Gatherer was linked to the plague?

  “What has headquarters been saying?”

  Maria didn’t respond immediately.

  “They issued a statement that it was another smear campaign from the fossil fuel industry.”

  Water had soaked above the knees of Maria’s pants, her feet and calves likely as waterlogged and numb as Storm’s.

  “And?”

  “The only real response came from the government. Saying that the Gatherer had undergone extensive testing and that there was no risk to human health.”

  “Do people believe it?”

  The Gatherer had in fact been tested, except the tests it had undergone had been totally unconnected to how the Gatherer functioned. The electromagnetic fields around the Gatherer were nonexistent. It didn’t send radio waves into the atmosphere. There was no test for what the Gatherer did.

  “A farmer released a video of the effects on their cattle at the same time a journalism student released a documentary called ‘In Plain Sight.’ It covered the contamination of a village in Peru.”

  “Which one?”

  “Rumira.”

  She had a memory of high expansive mountains and thin, cold air.

  “How many are sick?”

  Maria only shook her head, the number and the names of the people who had been afflicted not part of the documentary. Storm had been inside these people’s homes, shared their scant meals. And in return, she had given them sickness.

  The shelter of the trees lay a hundred metres ahead, and she wished their pursuers would step from the trees and take a quick, clear shot. A fast, cowardly end that would deliver some kind of justice.

  Maria waited for her with a look that went straight into Storm’s shame and her desire to escape.

  “We have to keep moving.”

  Maria’s usual abruptness was replaced by a trace of warmth.

  “When we get to the trees, we’ll take a break.”

  The water pressed cold around Storm’s shins, the mud drawing her down further the longer she stayed in one place, the marsh all too willing to take her in, forever if she wanted.

  Water splashed as Maria came back to Storm and stood next to her, the two of them standing side-by-side facing in the same direction. They stood together for only the briefest pause, Maria’s body providing a warmth where the wind had been. Low clouds lay in the west and the damp taste of rain or maybe snow hung in the air.

  “You take the lead.”

  The pull of mud was strong until the suction broke, the resistance of the water easier in comparison. On her second step Maria fell in behind. The mist parted as they walked, thinning and dissipating so that Storm’s shoulders rose. They were more of a target than ever.

  “Were those your people at the cabin?”

  They had stopped on a small patch of solid ground and had heard nothing despite listening for several minutes. Maria’s fatigue was evident in the drop of her shoulders, the exhausted stillness of her planted legs.

  “If those were my people, we wouldn’t have gotten away.”

  Maria continued walking, keeping to the higher ground. Storm followed close enough so she could speak in a low voice.

  “Who then? Do you know? You have to have a suspicion.”

  “The same ones that you do.”

  Maria’s response felt like an accusation. As if Storm would somehow know. There had been threats before she left, but she had been completely isolated up here and had assumed the world had forgotten about her.

  “If the Gatherer is the cause of the plague, then the people who were after me no l
onger care. They’ll be back in business soon.”

  Storm almost ran into the back of Maria when she stopped. They were twenty metres away from the shelter of the trees. Far enough to be an easy stationary target. Maria stared up at Storm in suspicion, crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes where they hadn’t been before.

  “How can you not know this?”

  A disturbance arrived on the air, faint like a bird lifting off in a distant tree.

  They turned together and looked up at the sky.

  The thick low lying clouds seemed to shift, their connection to the ground severed.

  They ran, covering the distance to the trees as the piercing whine grew more distinct, a pulsing beat penetrating into her chest.

  The trees were thin and too far apart to provide any real protection. They ran to the only dense section of underbrush and crouched beside it. Maria pulled at the contents of her pack, the black puffiness of the sleeping bag reluctant to pull free. Maria laid it over them as the white shape of the electric jet appeared at the far side of the swamp, sleek and white and sweeping low over the water.

  “They’re going to see us.”

  “Not if we don’t move.”

  Storm stopped breathing as the jet flew straight towards them, pushing a wave of dark churned up water ahead of them. It felt as if it were barrelling down on them, its navigation system locked on their exact location. At the last minute, when Storm was sure they would pull up and land, it veered upwards, giving them a clear view of the call letters on its underbelly. The letters didn’t mean anything to Storm. The open hands of the Gatherer logo on the side did. She could have stood up and waved them in. Let them take her back to the headquarters or somewhere safe where she could meet with her mother and find out this was all a mistake.

  The trees shook with the power of the jets as it passed over, stirring up the wet leaves into a wilted frenzy. She stayed where she was, stomach pressed flat to the damp earth.

  The sound of the jet faded and they didn’t move, both of them expecting its piercing buzz to return at any moment.