Genesis (15 page)

Emily took a moment to warm her own hands beside the fire. When its warmth had permeated through her fingers and she could feel them again, she slowly stripped off her own clothing.

“Here, let me help you,” said Rhiannon. She helped Emily slip from her clothes.

Even with the warmth of the fire, the cold air of the room against Emily’s naked skin had her shivering again. Rhiannon offered her the blanket, but she refused.

“Keep it,” Emily said.

She changed quickly into her dry clothes and sank down as close to the fire as she dared.

Ten more minutes beside the fire and she could feel sensation returning to her limbs and muscles. They ached and complained with every movement she made, and the fingers on both her hands tingled and twitched with pins and needles, but pain meant she was still alive. And with the return of feeling, Emily also felt the
tug-tug-tug
of her son pulling at her, a nagging sensation that she knew would only subside when she was moving toward him again. But even that siren call could not motivate her exhausted body to do anything other than sit in front of the fire for the next hour and feed it pieces of broken shelving.

The smoky aroma, life-giving warmth, and exhausted muscles conspired to drag Emily toward sleep. Even though she fought it, she was no match and felt herself drift off.

When Emily awoke in the middle of the night, she was stiff from having sat too long in the same position. Rhiannon was asleep across from her, her knees pulled to her chest, the blanket beneath her. Thor had retreated back to the corner, and she could see him watching her, the light of the fire’s flames reflected in his eyes.

She allowed herself the luxury of simply sitting there, her mind empty of almost all thoughts other than how wonderful it was to feel warm. Even the wet rumbling complaints of her stomach could do nothing to dampen the feeling.

Eventually Emily set about picking up their wet clothes from where she had dumped them. She hung them over the metal cabinets to dry by the warmth collecting within the room.

She had packed light, with only the second set of clothes she was now wearing and her soaked set, the rest of her backpack taken up with the MREs. Rhiannon, on the other hand, had taken a little more time and had an extra set of neatly folded clothes and shoes.

The fire was rapidly eating through the first batch of wood, so Emily made another trip back into the main room of the store and scrounged up enough wood to last through the night. By the time she returned to the back room, her arms laden with broken pieces of wood, Rhiannon was awake again, kneeling next to the fire, a saucepan full of food heating over it. Thor was already busy munching on his own dinner.

The two women devoured their meal in silence, occasionally smiling at each other across the fire, savoring the satisfying feeling in their stomachs.

When they were done Rhiannon climbed into her sleeping bag and was soon asleep. Emily vowed that she would remain awake to make sure the fire stayed alight, but the warmth of her own sleeping bag soon overwhelmed her; she felt her eyes begin to close, and soon she was gone too.

Emily awoke sometime later to an almost dead fire and a concerto of rainwater
splat-splat-splatting
off of hundreds of unseen leaks.

She poked around in the glowing ashes of the fire with a stick of firewood, blew gentle encouragement on the embers she found there, and gradually added more wood until the flames were established again. Her wristwatch said it was just after three in the morning. The rain had stopped at some point after she’d fallen asleep.

Rhiannon was curled up in a ball, her face the only thing visible above the caterpillar form of her sleeping bag. Thor lay next to her. The Malamute’s eyes opened when he sensed Emily was awake, his tail giving three slow beats against the floor.

Other than the continual drip of water, the occasional creak of the building’s rotting wooden bones, and the crackle of the fire, the world seemed to have ground to a complete stop.

Emily’s body ached. The last twenty-four hours had been one of the most physically stressful days of her life. Each time she shifted position she found a new pain. But her pummeled body was nothing compared to the inner turmoil she felt.

It was almost as though Mac’s announcement he was leaving for Norway had started a chain reaction of negative events. It escalated with Adam’s abduction, her realization that he was alive, and then Valentine’s attempt to murder her. She realized her mind was probably making connections where there really were none, but it was so much easier to link them all together as part of a single huge event than to simply allow for a confluence
of multiple unrelated actions—a really, really shitty confluence.

Valentine.
That
woman. Emily understood, expected even, the Caretakers’ murderous motivations, but Valentine? She was
human
.
She understood how precarious the human race’s position was right
now, or
should
. They were all on life support, for Christ’s sake, and
here was Valentine making a bid to demolish the hospital and put up
a set of condos. It was simple to Emily. The future of humanity teetered on the brink of extinction, so you put aside whatever petty dif
ferences you had and you worked together to ensure the survivors,
well, survived. How blind did Valentine have to be to ignore that?

Pretty fucking blind, apparently, because she was more than willing to have Emily murdered to ensure that whatever fucked-up plan she had would become reality.

Emily had already concluded, if only halfheartedly, that Valen
tine was crazy, but she wondered now if that was actually the answer.
A sociopath was someone who held no regard for people other than
themselves, who had no conscience, right? That description would seem to fit Valentine perfectly. She had already cost two lives.

In the glow of the fire Emily thought back to the guard she had hit . . . and killed, albeit by accident. There was no doubt she had caused his death; she took full responsibility. That Valentine would use his death against her was a foregone conclusion, which kind of put a big speed bump in the way of any return back to Point Loma. Under any other circumstance she would have pleaded her case to the council and accepted whatever penalty was handed down to her. But the truth was, under any other circumstances, the events of the past couple of days wouldn’t have ever happened. She was convinced that there was no way Valentine would give her a fair trial. The woman had already trumped up the charges against her to murder when she had seen the opportunity. The death of the guard would be all she needed to have her shot at dawn.

And she was still at a loss for how it had all happened. How it had escalated so incredibly quickly. Had Valentine been planning to get rid of her all along? If Adam had not been abducted, would she have met with some kind of unfortunate “accident” while she was out taking one of her strolls? Or had the woman simply taken advantage of the situation when it had presented itself? Jesus! The fact that people like her were willing to screw over a fellow survivor
when the human race was hanging by a such a precarious thread was
almost impossible for her to imagine. A week ago she would never have entertained the possibility that anyone would have been willing to kill to advance their own agenda. What was even worse was to find out that there were still men like the guard Curtis, sadistic bastard that he was, who were quite happy to work with Valentine. Emily wasn’t sure whom she despised more: Valentine
for coming up with the plan, or Curtis for being so fucking eager to carry it out.

Another thought suddenly came to her: What was going to hap
pen to Mac when he arrived back from his mission? There was no
way he would believe any of the story that Valentine would spin for
him, and that bitch was smart enough to figure that out and plan
accordingly. She would have Mac arrested on some equally trumped-up
charge, and that would be that.
Jesus!
Valentine probably had enough
of the council in her pocket that she could potentially take the whole
crew of the HMS
Vengeance.
It would all hinge on how many of the survivors were willing to stand with Valentine, but, since she was so
capable of spinning the most enticing lies, it might
be easier for the
survivors to believe them than to see the truth. And while she was on the subject of the “truth,” all Valentine would have to do was make an example of a couple of the ranking officers and crew, and the rest of the camp would, understandably, cave.

“Shit!” she hissed under her breath.

Thor’s head popped up and his brown eyes stared at her through the flames of the fire. He got up and walked over to her and lay down again. Emily reached out and stroked the dog’s head, then down between his eyes, until he lowered his head again.

She was going to have to find some way to contact Mac and let her husband know what had happened, warn him that Valentine might be plotting against him and the crew. How she would do that she had no idea. There was no way for them to get back to Point Loma, no way to reach the submarine while they were radio silent, and no way to know if or when the
Vengeance
had made it back to California.

Of course, all of that was beside the point if she did not survive finding Adam. But Adam was the key to all of this. If she could locate him and take him back with her, she would have the proof she needed to fight Valentine, or at least cast some doubt on whatever story Valentine concocted. If there was some way to prove that the woman was the conniving murderous bitch Emily knew her to be, then maybe there was a chance.

Jesus!

Emily compartmentalized the negative thoughts. It would do no good to dwell on them right now. There was not a thing she could do about that particular problem, anyway—not right now. She would figure out how she was going to deal with Valentine after she had found Adam.

Emily lay her head back down and stared deep into the flames. She had fought so hard to survive, to ensure that the remnants of humanity had a chance, and had beaten the odds on more than one occasion. After all that, she would be damned if she was going to let another human being be her downfall.

The next morning, the sun was a ghost haunting a leaden gray sky. While the clouds threatened to resume their downpour, the day was so far mercifully free of rain.

Emily shivered as she stepped out onto the wooden deck of their shelter. The morning air was just the wrong side of cool for her, but the mug of coffee she had brewed over the fire warmed her hands and insides. She had slept surprisingly well for the rest of the night. No dreams, thank God. She had left Rhiannon still sleeping in her bag, Thor ever watchful beside her.

The flat featureless landscape stretched off in all directions, giving Emily a clear 360-degree field of view for many kilometers, the open plain broken only by three distant clusters of Titan trees, nothing more than black silhouettes. Patches of early morning mist still lingered on the ground here and there, adding to the feeling of complete isolation. In the washed-out light of this new day, Emily could finally make out the building where they had spent the night. It had been some kind of tourist souvenir store. A sign, perpendicular to the roof, had been cut in half by the explosion that split the building in two, and now it read “Indian Supp.” A rusting soft-drink machine sat just a little farther down the wooden deck from where she stood next to an equally rusted bench. She made a mental note to see if she could open the machine before they left; there might still be some goodies inside.

Emily tested the bench to make sure it would not collapse and sat down. She took a deep swig of coffee and allowed herself to relax.

Since the night she had woken to discover Adam missing—What was it, three days ago now?—Emily’s life had been spiraling out of control. This, she realized, was the first chance in all that time that she had had a second to simply sit, just sit.

She sipped at her coffee and allowed her eyes to wander over the scenery.

The freeway cut across the red skin of the world like a half-healed knife wound, east to west. Large pools of rainwater had collected on the freeway’s surface, the channels running along the side of the freeway full to overflowing; she could hear the rush of water from where she sat. The building they had taken shelter in was on the west side of the freeway. The store’s parking lot, veined with cracks and tufts of plant life, was surprisingly empty of any vehicles. Not a single car or truck. She supposed the building would have offered very little in the way of shelter back when the red rain had fallen. Travelers would have just wanted to get home to their families, and that would have included the staff. She had seen no evidence of the telltale circular holes that would have indicated humans had died here, been transformed into spider aliens, and then cut their way out in search of others like them. She shuddered at the memory of the
millions
of those same creatures she had witnessed swarming through the streets of Manhattan in the first days after the rain.

Still,
something
was out of place.

Emily could not put her finger on what it was exactly, but the scenery seemed different somehow, subtly altered just enough to alert her brain that
something
was not the same; it was like looking at one of those puzzles in a magazine that asks you to spot the difference between two seemingly identical pictures. Until you concentrate, you don’t see the changes, but you know they are there. She stood up and began to slowly turn in place, taking in every detail that she could. While their arrival last night was hurried, to say the least, everything looked just as she remembered; the debris field of wood and broken glass in front of the store and their footprints through the mud-covered ground and then up to the doorway all looked as it should, but still . . . she could not shake this perception of change.

Emily stepped off the porch and walked a few feet across the concrete of the building’s parking lot. Beyond the cracked tarmac, where once there had been green grass, there was now nothing but the ubiquitous red mosslike plant every survivor had long ago substituted the word “grass” for. It carpeted every inch of arable land.

Why was the building even still standing? Where was the voracious building-eating plant-animal they had encountered in Las Vegas—the all-you-can-eat bug, Mac had labeled it—that seemed so intent on reducing every building to dust? It had been just as prevalent in California, reducing the nearby cities and naval base to nothing but holes in the ground. Hell, Point Loma had a daily team dedicated to finding and eradicating any of the hybrid all-you-can-eat they found within the camp. Could it be as simple as localization of the species? Like certain plants or animals that could only be found in specific areas, before the red rain came?

Emily’s pondering was broken by the sound of the door creaking open, followed by the clatter of Thor’s paws across the porch and a not-so-bright “Morning” from Rhiannon.

“How are you feeling?” Emily asked, watching Rhiannon, the blanket thrown around her shoulders like a shawl, descend the steps into the forecourt.

“Okay. Better, I suppose. How about you?”

Emily smiled. “I’m good—a little tired, but okay.”

“So, what do we do now?” Rhiannon asked.

Emily stood. She didn’t even need to close her eyes; all she had to do was turn to the east and she could feel the warm glow of her son, burning like a pulsar, tingling her skin like tiny pinpricks of excitement.

“We head that way.” Emily pointed toward the rising sun. “We just need to stay on the freeway; it’ll get us all the way to the East Coast if we have to go that far.”

Rhiannon looked pensive.

Emily watched her for a second. “What’s on your mind?” she asked, trying to keep her tone as nonchalant as possible.

Rhiannon stopped, staring at her shoe for a moment, biting her lower lip. When she spoke it was almost apologetically. “Are you sure you know where we’re going, Emily?”

Emily was not surprised by the question, but she was surprised by how long it had taken Rhiannon to ask it. It was one thing to tag along out of friendship and love, another altogether to believe in some kind of mystical compass that everyone else thought of as indicating that Emily had bought a first-class ticket on the Crazy Train Express.

“I don’t know exactly where we’re heading,” Emily said, “but I know that we’re closer now than we were before we left Point Loma.”

There was no need for words; Rhiannon’s conflicted expression of befuddlement was question enough:
How? How do you know?

“It’s like there’s a thread, a connection, running from me to Adam. I can feel it tugging at me. And when I stop moving, it pulls even stronger, like he’s telling me not to stop, to keep on moving.”

Rhiannon continued to look at her with that same conflicted gaze.

“Look, it’s okay. I’m not crazy . . . something weird is happening, I’ll be the first to admit it, and I know it’s hard for you to accept, but I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adam is waiting for us. If we follow it, it’s going to lead us to where he is.”

“Or it’s a trap,” said Rhiannon. The words fled her mouth as though they had been released from chains.

“Yes, of course, I’ve thought about that. But it’s not a trap; this is something . . . much deeper.” Emily raised a hand to silence Rhiannon’s objections. “Don’t ask me how I know, because I won’t be able to tell you. I just do. You
have
to trust me. It’s a matter of faith, okay?”

Rhiannon was about to add something else but stopped, and her whole body seemed to relax, whether in resignation or acceptance of her explanation, Emily could not tell.

“Okay,” the girl said finally, “let’s go find him.”

Emily smiled broadly, stepped closer, and threw her arms around Rhiannon.

“Thank you for your trust,” Emily said as Rhiannon returned the hug.

They held the embrace for a minute, two humans just being.

The soda machine on the front stoop proved to be full of nothing but burst cans, the victims of so long an exposure to the elements, but they found a couple of candy bars in one of the lockers in the staff room and ate them as they continued their scavenger hunt around what was left of the remaining building. Emily gave the last half of hers to Rhiannon; the candy was way too sweet for her palate after so much time of no sugar or corn syrup.

“Oh! This will be useful,” said Emily as they rooted through the front of the store, carefully trying to avoid the broken pieces of glass. She held up a tourist map of Arizona and New Mexico, protected by a clear plastic envelope, with only a few blotches of mildew near the corners.

Emily spread it out on the counter and followed the route she thought she had taken from California, guesstimating the distance they had travelled before setting down.

“I think we’re somewhere around here,” she said, poking an area on the map with her finger. If she were right, then they had lucked out and found the remains of the I-40, an interstate route that bisected most of the lower states from California on the West Coast across to the east of the country. They were somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a major town or city for a good two hundred kilometers . . . assuming her guesstimate was correct, of course.

Emily folded the map up again and placed it in her back pocket.

She checked her watch. It was pushing toward eleven already. “Let’s see if there’s anything else of use in here, and then we need to get going.”

They wandered deeper into the almost cavelike recess of the store, carefully picking their way through the debris of a lost age.

“I think this place must have been owned by one of the Native American tribes,” Emily said when they found themselves standing in a room with the remains of scores of moccasins spilled across the floor, their boxes nothing but gray mulch, and the shoes all but disintegrated from exposure to the elements. Grime-covered statuary of wolves and cougars, bronco-riding cowboys and stalking warriors bearing mute witness to an extinct world, rested on glass shelves covered in splotches of red moss. The sparkle of broken glass glinted across the floor.

“Thor, sit,” Emily commanded before the malamute could wander in and risk getting a paw sliced open. The whole building smelled of rot . . . and something else, something that smelled halfway between bad eggs and vomit.

“What
is
that?” asked Rhiannon, wrinkling her nose at the stink and switching on her flashlight to illuminate the heavily shadowed room ahead of them. In the far corner, beneath a glassless window, something had made a home from the desiccated shoes; it looked like a grossly oversized wasp’s nest, about four feet tall and two wide, narrowing to a funnel at the top. A large opening halfway up the body of the nest was a pool of darkness.

“It looks like a—”

A pair of oval, luminescent green eyes flickered open in the entrance of the nest.

“Oh . . . shit!” Emily whispered, instinctively placing a protective arm across Rhiannon’s chest.

A second set of eyes opened above the first. Then a third below.

Thor growled quietly and took a step backward.

Emily felt an odd sensation flicker over her; just for a second, she had the sense that she was looking at herself, Rhiannon, and Thor from the corner. It lasted for just a moment, like a subliminal frame in a movie, barely perceivable on a conscious level unless you were looking for it. But in that brief flash she saw herself staring at the corner, her hand still across Rhiannon’s chest, Thor backing away. She sensed a mixture of fear and inquisitiveness at what she was . . . and, was that shock? Yes. There was an afterimage, an emotional imprint, if you like, of surprise.

“Just back up slowly,” she whispered when she had recovered from her own shock. “Thor!” she hissed as the dog took another step forward.

The three companions edged back a few more steps, Emily’s
hand on the butt of her .45, before she turned and ushered Rhiannon
back toward the room where they had spent the night.

“We slept here with . . . with whatever those
things
were right next door to us?” Rhiannon said, more a statement of doubt than a question.