by Dennis Fueyo
Sam then rubbed his hands on his pants and asked, “So, how you want to do this, Dad?”
“Release your friends. Let them rest in safety. You will come with us to Savannah. We will find out what the Atlantians know, and then catch a helicopter from the naval operations center in Augusta.”
“We have no ride, and that is a long walk.”
“A walk in the park, Son.” Tom motioned to the opposite side of the clearing. “With Emelia and Lou, we should see little trouble.”
Sam’s mind slipped into a fugue. He pictured a giant clock made of copper, cogs turning over in gears on the x and y-axes. Then he added a gear horizontally stretching out along the z-axis. Added to that, pistons, more cogs, and levers, until the pulsing copper mass formed the shape of an atom. All parts moving in synchronicity. No impurities or inconsistencies. Generic.
He gave Tom a firm pat on the arm and said, “All right, Dad. We will do that.”
Sam returned to his friends huddled around Abu. A more jubilant mood hung over them cloaking his approach. When he spoke, his friends quieted in anticipation. “I spoke with my Dad. Sheila, the spotters will take you to Little River. I will go with Dad and his friends south to get information.”
“Sammy,” Shaquan said, “you’re not going with us? I lost Tawney…my girl…I loved her, you know?” He bit his lip and continued, “I’m still recovering from tonight. Hell, my knee is swelling to the size of an orange and Abu looks like shit. Stay, man.”
“I will find you. Wherever you go, I can track you down, will get there and meet up with you.” Sam rested his hand on Shaquan’s leg. “If you seek your parents, I will catch up to help.”
“Bullshit,” Juan said and spat, coating a firefly in sticky mucus. “I’m going with you, jefe. You can’t hunt worth a damn, you need me.”
“Sammy, don’t do this,” Shaquan pleaded. “You go further south, and you won’t come back the same.”
Sam smiled. “That already happened, man. My soul died back in Topsail when the jackers attacked. Now, I need to understand what I have become. Stay with Sheila and get Abu back in working condition, Shaquan. I will find you, I swear on my life.”
Shaquan grabbed Sam’s forearm. “You better.” They embraced and pressed foreheads together. “You better find me, my brother from another mother.”
“I will, I swear it.”
“Sam.” Abu grabbed his hand and pulled him in. “Sam,” he whispered, “Tell your father what I told you. Don’t forget, we are all children of God. Allah be with you.”
Sam hugged Abu’s head. “You almost sound like Barry Trenton.”
“Alright, man,” Juan interjected. “Let’s get going. There’s a bed of soft bulrush around here with my name on it.”
Juan hugged goodbyes with Abu, Sheila, and Shaquan, and jogged back to Sam already converging with Emelia, Lou and Tom. Ready to head out, and a few nods later, Juan led them southwest on point.
∆ ∆ ∆
“Hey Dad, Abu wanted me to tell you something.”
Grass rose to Sam’s waist and then retreated in the fens. Wet plant matter squished under tired boots as the group plodded southwest inland.
“Oh, what’s that?”
“We are all children of God. Don’t forget.”
“Do you believe in God, Sammy?”
“Not really. I prayed to nature asking for Abu’s protection. My religious response to agnosticism, I guess.”
“So, in other words, we are all nature’s children.”
“How I would translate it.”
An idea strikes as hard as an avalanche of magma, sending the mind spinning into the ground and drowning it in molten rock. Revelations are the volcanic mothers of ideas, birthing and guiding them in nurturing crested arms. The revelation pelts consciousness into a coma upon receiving the idea, ensuring no loss in volumes of information taken each second after.
A revelation hit Tom in such a way. “All nature’s children…” he mumbled.
“What, Dad?”
“We are all nature’s children! We are, all of us who walk this Earth, nature’s children!”
“Doc,” Lou asked, “You ok?”
“Ha, ha! Of course, Lou!” Tom pulled Lou in on wobbling heels. “Cuddles, Lou!”
“What, with you? Not right now, Doc, I don’t really feel like cuddling, strange request as it is. I’m still worried about Abu.”
“No, Cuddles! Cuddles is a child of nature, like us! It gets upset when you call it a demon, right? Cuddles is a lifeform, not sure what, but definitely not supernatural.”
Lou bobbed his head: “Oh! I think I’m following you—which means the other screaming thing is not a demon, either. It’s also some sort of lifeform.”
“Ha, ha! Right!”
“Just now figured this out, Tom?” asked Emelia. She picked leaves from at a patch of mint and ground them between her molars.
“Dad,” Sam asked, “what are you rambling about?”
Because the revelation numbed Tom’s mind, he carried it through to form an idea. “That demon we saw during the battle is not a godlike thing from hell. We can kill it!”
“The thing that turned the biggen into a zombie horror show? How? I mean, the biggen, Dad, it turned into some zombie shark abomination from the lowest level of Hades. How does that even exist?”
Emelia spat mint cud and said, “We may be in over our heads on this idea.”
“No problem, Mel,” Tom said, danced, and clapped his hands, “the Atlantians will know!”
Chapter 20
The next morning, Sam awoke to a sign twisted upside down. He quirked his head and read aloud, “Wampee, hmm. Emelia, are you ok?”
She rubbed her bare feet in bottled water, dried them, and began wrapping one in gauze. Dozens of blisters, some with skin hanging out, covered her foot. “Well, let’s attribute it to what it is. I’m not an outdoors person.”
Sam crawled over holding a bottle and stopped her. Emelia smiled and tilted her head while he lifted her foot and sprayed goo over it. “Silica gel,” Sam said. He then unpeeled a package touting “lidocaine” on the label and held her foot in place while he re-wrapped it and pulled her sock over. “Better?”
“And I didn’t get you anything,” she quipped.
“I need you at your best to carry my gear,” he said and grinned.
Emelia shoved him backward with her healthy foot and laughed. “Did you have any dreams?”
“You tell me!”
“That’s a thick fog,” Lou said to Tom, interrupting the banter.
“Huh? Oh, yes! Very thick. Sammy, you better take point.”
Sam ignored Tom and Lou’s subterfuge and scanned a timberline running a road. “This country will be smoother than Armour. Juan, you ok with rearguard?”
“No worries, Sammy. Sometimes the pinch hitter has to step up.”
The group assembled gear and trekked southwest. Sam kept the team inside the forest near flooded fallows and bogs. Soon sunlight wiped away the fog to gentle, puffy clouds and recharged tired muscles.
Recovering from both the long day at sea and the midnight skirmish left larynxes and diaphragms spent. Tom replaced bandages on his arms, skin scraped away by concrete shards during their fight on the pier. Lou made sure his deltoids were replete with liniment oil. A pulled muscle in Sam’s lower back reminded him never to lift a barrel of moonshine again.
A flash caught Sam’s eye. He circumvented a large glade, hesitant to risk exposure, and called the group together. Pointing at a strange, limbless stump with a squared tip, he asked, “You guys see that weird looking dead tree?”
Tom put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Is it safe to investigate? I don’t detect anything.”
“These grounds have not been traveled for a long time. Keep low and follow me.”
He guided them under giant cane to a muddy clearing rife with feint smells of ozone and burnt plastic. Shrapnel splattered out over charred Carolina clay as if a plate full of embe
rs fell from the sky. In the center laid a deformed shell of a helicopter; its cabin ripped open and cockpit folded inward like an accordion.
“Oh no,” Tom said with a weakening jaw. “I wonder where they were stationed?”
Sam passed a canteen to Tom. “Drink some water, Dad. You lose a lot when the sun’s out.”
Tom took an extensive draft and squinted at the wreckage. “Looks like it came from…” Lifting each foot forward under tons of emotional weight, he shouted, “No, no, no!” and broke into a sprint. Tom tripped and landed next to the bird’s fuselage in a pile of hemorrhaged electronics and wiring. He said, reading its designation, “They were from Raleigh...out of Fort Dix.”
Sam asked, “Lou, do you detect any other humans around? We have to be careful and presume this stirred some attention.”
“No, I think we’re clear. That’s true, the crash would raise some eyeballs. Heck, the wreckage looks like it’s been here at least a day. Doc, why the hell wouldn’t Fort Dix send someone to recover the bodies?”
“I don’t know. Help me look through this.”
The others joined Tom in rummaging through the tumbled cabin. He slipped an arm into the cockpit and pulled out a decomposing body. “Christ, this is Andy.”
Emelia asked, “Commander Andy Ochoa?” She bit down on her index finger. “Anyone else we know?”
“Cannot tell, Mel. A name tag.” Tom wrestled and ripped away at the human stew. “Hansel. Not sure I know who that is.”
Lou asked, “Why was Ochoa out this far?”
“I have absolutely no idea. James was expected to turn south from Wilmington, maybe they tried looking for him.” Tom brushed away singed lining on Ochoa’s door. “He etched something here. Carver Warden. Wonder who that is?” He searched intact pockets on Ochoa’s body. “We have keys, a wallet. What’s this?”
A tiny, black USB ported cube flipped out the pocket. “A flash drive,” Tom whooped. “Can we read this?”
Sam loosened his pack and handed Tom an electronic tablet. “Juan, can we borrow your adapter?”
Connecting them together, Tom navigated through Commander Any Ochoa’s files. “Password secure. Let me try my remote login code.”
Lou crept in and sat next to Tom. Juan positioned over his shoulder. Sam found a seat not melted and repositioned it to recline on.
Emelia remained further back, aloof of their inspection.
“Ok, it worked,” Tom said and pumped his arm. “I found some info here. Project, secure network. Mission, secure areas under therapeutic Stone strain treatment from foreign interests.” He tapped his cheek and asked Lou, “Stone strain treatment? You know anything about that?”
“Never heard of it,” replied Lou studying the screen.
“It says here…status, number of foreign researchers penetrating network safety walls…sixteen. Number removed…eight. Number neutralized…seven. One outstanding, suspect possibly acquisitioned by invading tribe.”
Lou asked, “Neutralized? What does that mean?”
Emelia swayed on the ground as if rocking an imaginary porch swing.
∆ ∆ ∆
“Christ, what the hell on God’s green Earth have these guys been doing?” Tom scratched the hair on his forearm and then began pushing his thumb along the tendons underneath. “Look at this”—he marveled at the small screen as he squatted next to Lou amidst the wreckage of a helicopter once piloted by Commander Andy Ochoa—“they have been restricting others from coming in.” He shared the screen with Lou, then flashed it to Sam.
“Makes sense, Doc. We never find tags or lures. All the press we got from our strain, should’ve had some competition sneaking in.”
“More here, listen,” Tom continued. “Project, Savannah. Mission, obtain data from primary drops. Status, fourth team lost. James Laramie to infiltrate. Tribe referred to as Atlantians. Ok, James told us about them. Mel, where we expected to stay with him?”
Emelia bit down on her finger, then replied, “The admiral required James to accompany me. I believed it was for my safety, but the implication here states otherwise.”
Tom said as if speaking to a celestial body, “He must have planned on convincing us somehow.” His eye began to twitch. Ignoring it, he continued reading aloud, “Another one here. Project, Stone. Mission, drop Stone strain—there it is again, Stone strain—drop Stone strain in strategic locations between Jacksonville and Charlotte. Status, five years of continued drops, one per month. Latest batch from San Francisco ready for deployment. The version includes removed radiation resistance, removed oxygen enhancement, added visual stimulation enhancement, added food suppressant. What is this, Mel? What is all this crap?”
Emelia continued rocking and stared at nebulous clouds sliding across the sky.
Tom, the father figure, pushed for an answer. “Emelia? Tell me, ok.”
“I can’t.”
“What the…are you kidding me?”
“I wish I was. I’m sorry, Tom, I can’t.”
Tom crawled to her and asked slowly, “Mel, what is the Stone strain?”
“Please, Tom, don’t do this. If you want to go back, I understand.”
“Doc, can I see that tablet?” Lou swiped, slid, and depressed, moving fingers in and out of folders. “Found it. Remember the tests you wanted on that mosquito? The one you found in your pocket. Here are the results.”
Together, they reviewed photos of ultraviolet exposed DNA electrophoresis gel runs and probed purified proteins. Occasionally, a swipe on the screen prompted a grunt or nod. Tom exclaimed professional jargon about test controls and target genes, pointing to a gel picture that their strain had a solid band at the expression site, while the other one looked smeared.
“So,” Sam asked, “What does that mean?”
Tom’s eyes stuck to the screen as he replied, “A smeared gel lane means there are scores of different inserts at the same amplified site. Different sizes, which means different functions.”
Lou tapped on an icon uploading a display of lines colored in red, green, blue, and black. He scrolled the gene alignment and tapped the screen. “There’s the housekeeping gene.”
“That does not make sense,” Tom decried. “What are these inserts?”
Back and forth, the two scientists muttered and marveled for twenty minutes. Long, fanciful scientific words burped out their lips chased by grunts and snorts. Finally, Tom spoke, “Emelia—Mel, you know what this is. Something tells me you do.”
“Yes.”
“What is your family spraying in these areas?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Sam rested next to her, pulled her in, and kissed her. “Why not? Tell us, Emelia?”
“My grandfather made me swear not to. His name has been dragged through the public’s most rotten, putrid mud; I have to respect my promise.”
“Just great.” Tom rose and paced through metal fragments laced with ashen silicone and melted semiconductors. He picked up a fused mass and threw it against a loblolly pine. “Just perfect.”
“Emelia,” Lou asked, “You heard about the story in the Washington Post, right? If he’s responsible for things of an ethically questionable nature, you have to tell us what’s going on. Tom and I constantly received the brunt of his activities. We need to be ready if yet another one is heading our way.”
“Like I told Tom, if you want to turn back, I understand.”
Tom lifted his hands high. “And what, you will go to Savannah alone? Four teams sent there, Mel. None return. Goddammit!”
“Call it evolution,” Emelia said and sighed.
“Typical,” said Tom disgruntled, sifting for more wreckage to lob against solid objects. “Yet another example of the Stone family pumping nature full of chaos. Sending humanity hurling through a sea of insanity.”
“Don’t judge me, you hypocrite!” She shoved Sam’s arm off and stood to face Tom. “Typical of Dr. Tom Mason to be so hyper-focused on some perceived dispensation, he’s willing to shake fam
ily off the limbs of his genetic tree.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Who are you married to, Tom? Lisa, or the lab? Did you ever try to understand Sam’s way of looking at the world before becoming a swamp stomper? His world is beautiful, you only see rules and structure. Did you ever try to look past the boundaries of chemistry like he did, or did you simply name pipettes after him?”
“You have no right to pick apart my decisions. Half of them were made by your twisted grandfather.”
Emelia raised her fist: “A farce to cling onto! He offered you a carrot, and you bit down on that dirty root, swallowing it, soil and all.”
“At least I am not a liar! You knew who Clark was before he destroyed Wilmington. That would have been helpful information, right? Knowing Eva had some crazy, sick bastard for a child.” Tom shook his finger at her and continued, “You knew why James had to travel south. Another lie. And hiding Arnold Stone’s secrets are just more of your lies.”
Emelia stepped into his space. “You’re not a liar?”
“Prove me wrong!”
“I will.” Emelia’s lips lifted into a smile as Tom’s face dropped. “That’s right, Dr. Mason. You know I will.”
“Wait…Emelia, don’t do this,” he said, lifting two fleshy shields.
“When I discovered you made a bargain with a sentinel to arrange my marriage, at first, I was furious.”
“Please, Mel, don’t do this.”
Sam asked, “Sentinel?”
“Oh yes, my dear, sweet Sam. Your father made a deal with an entity named Cuddles. Cuddles is of the same race as the, quote, demon we ran into in Tar Heel. The one you saw in Topsail. They call themselves sentinels.”
Sam stroked his thick hair and asked, “What deal did my dad make?”
Tom squat down next to Lou and folded his head into knees, helpless to stop Emelia.
“The sentinel,” Emelia said with a reddened face, “the one who calls itself Cuddles threatened your father. Cuddles? A ridiculous name, what sentinel calls itself the name of a pet.” She swished her hair back. “It told him that if he did not bring me to Wilmington, it would kill you. Conversely, if he did match-make us like some sick cherub, the sentinel would watch over you.”