Halfkinds Volume 1: Contact (26 page)

The night sky colors the streets
with a shade of orange and the only noise I hear is that of the wind blowing on
an empty street.

I continue to sniff their trail
methodically, making sure not one footstep goes unnoticed.  It goes for ten
feet, then another ten, and then another.  With each stride I feel like I’m
getting closer and closer.

But suddenly something unexpected
happens - the scent turns cold.  I can’t smell them anymore.  It appears they
have disappeared into thin air.  I’m confused at first, I don’t understand how
this could’ve happened.  Then I realize the feeling of the ground has changed
from the gripped surface of pavement to the smooth, slipperiness of metal.  I’m
standing on top of a manhole cover, a remnant of the once glorious sewer system
humans were so dependent on.  I’m sure this is where the twins escaped to.

There’s only one problem, I can’t
open it.  My paws can’t lift the metal enclosure.  Not to worry, my suit has
grappling hooks in case of situations where opposable thumbs are needed.  I
fire them and they latch on to the small holes of the lid.  I then retract the
wire and the manhole cover slides open.

It’s dark down there, so I say,
“flashlight.”  A white stream of light comes from my helmet and I look down. 
I’m worried the drop will be huge, but, after I shine the light, I see it’s
only about ten feet deep.

I gracefully hop down and smell a
foul odor.  The sewers haven’t been used in some time, but their stench still
remains.  It’s too much for my nose to handle, so I unequip the booster and try
to sniff out the twins’ trail.  It’s faint, covered by the musk and lasting
filth of the sewer, but it’s still traceable.

The sewers are even more silent
than the ground above.  I hear a few droplets of water here and there, its
impact on the floor timed out like a metronome.  It’s nearly pitch black down
here, the only source of light is some dimly lighted bulbs, but my eyes are
able to adjust.

I follow my nose for another
hundred feet, when suddenly, the trail makes a sharp U-turn back the other way.

“That’s odd,” I say to myself,
“Why is it going the other…”

I don’t finish my thought.  A
flat, dizzying, throbbing sensation hits the back of my head like a wrecking
ball.  I hear a thunderous clang noise behind me.  My vision takes a straight
nose dive to the ground.  The cloudiness of my consciousness makes it hard for
me to piece together what has happened, but it comes to me - I’ve been struck a
heavy blow to the back of my head.

I am paralyzed.  I try to move my
legs, but the slam has tired me and my perception is less than coherent.  The
only thing I can feel is a deep ache at my neck.  All I see is a hazy picture
from my eyes.  Two blotches emerge into the fold.  I hear discombobulated, but
recognizable, speech coming from them.

“What… should we… do now… Isaac?”
I hear one of them say in a distorted tone, slow in pace.

“We… should… kill him for… what
they’ve… done,” he says.

“But… he’s… defenseless… right
now….”

“So… was… Oscar…”

I’m breathing more heavily than
before.  I feel my awareness slipping from me into a cloud of grey.  But I stay
steady to hold on, even if it’s just for a few more minutes, a few more
seconds.

“No…. Isaac…” the voice responds. 
“It’s…not… right…It wasn’t…. his…fault… it was…the…pigs’.”

“Sister… if we don’t… kill him…
now…he and… his team… will kill us… later…”

“Isaac, please…. don’t…do it…
please…”

I am a victim at his mercy and can
only pray his sister’s intervention is a success.  A few moments later, I hear
a clashing noise and see a metal pole drop to the ground.

“Fine… sister…we’ll… do it… your
way…”

After those words, the two shapes
walk away.  Their size gets smaller and smaller until they fade into small
specks that I can’t see anymore.

I take a few deep breaths, until
my mind gives up and things fade into darkness.

November 17, 3040
1:28 AM

“Now’s our chance,” Isaac says to
me.  We’re still on our knees, but the dog and human are too busy tending to
their injured comrade to even think about us.

“But what about the others?” I ask
him.  Maddie had attacked the pig and now she’s dead. Oscar was shot without
warning.  My brother and sister were killed in front of my eyes and I was
helpless to prevent their deaths.  I look at their bodies, splashed with blood,
twisted and deformed as they lie lifeless.  I’ve lost so much these past days.

Isaac’s voice interrupts my
thinking.  “If we don’t move now, we’ll be like them.”

“But the human promised that we
wouldn’t be killed,” I say.

“That promise might be broken if
their teammate doesn’t make it.”

I look at the pig, screeching and
thrashing in misery.  Red liquid stains the floor and gushes out of his wound. 
Things don’t look too good for him.

“I don’t think he is,” I respond.

“Then we have to go while they’re
distracted,” he says.  I nod my head.  We both slyly get up in unison and
lightly sprint to the back door.  With all the noise and chaos happening, the
two don’t even notice us slip away to the exit

Isaac carefully opens the door, it
smoothly glides open without a sound.  He holds it for me and then with steady
hands, like he’s conducting surgery, he closes it.

The moment it’s shut, we start to
run.  We don’t really know where, we just know to get as far away as possible. 
The night light creates shadows of our rapidly moving bodies.  They flicker on
the ground like sunlight leaking through a windy field.  Our scampering echoes
through the barren streets, creating a cadence of hectic footsteps.  Gusts of
winds blow on our faces, it intensifies the adrenaline fueled rush of our
escape.

For a few minutes, I feel
invincible.  We have fled from certain death, from a group of highly trained
individuals.  Nothing can catch us, we’ll run forever.  But then reality starts
to set in: we’re getting tired.  My legs move slower, my breaths get heavier
and heavier, and then Isaac and I have to stop.

We are under Primm’s lights, tired
and bent over.  I realize that standing in plain sight will get us killed, but
I’m too exhausted to care.

“We can’t run forever,” I say
exasperatedly.

“Don’t worry,” he says.  “No one
is on our…”

Right on cue, we hear metal clang
from behind us and run to a corner.  I slowly peer out from behind and far, far
away, I see the back entrance of the casino that we had departed from. 
Something is nudging its head out, sliding the door open with its body.  The
dog is on our trail.

“Isaac,” I say worriedly, “the
canine is after us.”

“Shoot,” Isaac says in a panic,
“He’s probably on our scent, he’ll find us in no time.”

“What do we do?”

Isaac looks around and tries to
think of something on the spur of the moment.  He looks downward and something
catches his eye.

“I have an idea, sis,” he says. 
“Follow me.”

He walks to a metal grating on the
ground and grasps it.  He struggles as he pulls hard.  Eventually, he’s able to
lift and slide it to the side.  A putrid smell radiates from the opening.  I
look in and see a ladder leading to the darkness below.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask
him.  I’m ready to jump in, but the odor is a bit deterring.

“Got any better ideas?  The dog
will have a hard time finding us down there.  If anything, the smell will help
mask our scent,” he says.

“Okay,” I say reluctantly.  I
climb down the ladder first and Isaac follows.  He slides the metal grating
back over the hole to cover our tracks.  After descending a few feet, I feel
the ground and stand.  It’s hard to see anything, but my eyes gradually adjust
to the dim lighting.

Isaac plops his feet on the ground
and we look around to figure out where to go next.  The tunnels seem to stretch
on forever, so we just start walking in the dried, caked-out grime of the
underground.

I can’t believe we’ve been reduced
to walking in the sewers.  Things have changed so much in the past days.  We
went from hiding in refuge to having our family break apart to watching the
execution of our brother and sister.  And now we’re running scared in the
dreariest of places, a literal dog and cat chase.

I wonder how long we’ll be doing
this, what our next move will be.  Isaac wonders the same thing.

“We can’t be on the lam forever,”
he says.  “Even if we lose the dog, this is not where I want to live the rest
of my life.  And with the United Species Alliance on our tails, we could be
running a long, long time.”

“We need a place to hide,” I tell
Isaac.

“So far, hiding hasn’t worked
out,” Isaac says.   “And if we do find a place, they’ll catch up to us.”

“There’s nowhere for us to go,” I
say.  “But you’re right, there’s nowhere on Earth that will keep us safe from
the Alliance.”

“Maybe there isn’t a place on
Earth that we’ll be safe, but there is somewhere else.  Do you know what I
mean?”  He asks the question, and I know his answer.

“Tiago,” I say.  “You want us to
go with Tiago’s plan.”

“He’s the only family we have
left.”

“But what about my visions?  The
slaughter, the gunfire, the death?”

“I don’t know if they’re always
right.  Why didn’t your visions show what happened to Oscar?  Or Maddie?  Or
us?”

I pause, not really knowing how to
answer him.  “You know that’s not how it works, Isaac.”

“Then how does it?”

“I don’t know, it just does.”

When we were young, things kind of
came to me.  I was able to see, on more than one occasion, what the weather
would be on certain days, when arguments with family members would arise, where
my brothers and sisters were when the others couldn’t find them.  I saw visions
of future events.

I couldn’t and still can’t see
everything, though.  I didn’t know mother was going to die or that we’d be on
the run from the government.  I didn’t see that Lombardi or Leonard would be
killed either, and I certainly didn’t see that Oscar’s plan would turn out the
way it did.  Things come at me randomly, but when they do, I’m never wrong.

I never could fully explain my
powers to my brothers and sisters.  Even I’m unsure what I’m capable of since
it happens so infrequently.  For the most part the others recognize that
there’s something special about me, especially Tiago and my twin.

I didn’t see a lot when we were
hiding, but once Tiago mentioned his plan to go to the Moon it came to me.  His
plan would end in disaster and those who went along would die.  I personally
had no qualms with his idea.  On paper, I think it’s a good plan and if anyone
has the gall to try to attempt it, it’s Tiago.  But what I saw in my vision
gave me chills.

Smoke rising, things exploding, a
hail of gunfire, a bright light, and lots of dead relatives.  No one made it to
the moon, just to their graves.

After that, I was desperate to
find a way out and when Oscar volunteered to leave, it was my opening.  If I
were to live, I needed to be as far away from Tiago as possible.  I convinced
Isaac it was the only way to survive, so he went with me.  But now that Oscar
is dead, he’s questioning my abilities.  He never really wanted to leave in the
first place, it took a lot to persuade him.

“I still have that bad feeling
about Tiago and his grand scheme,” I say to Isaac worriedly.

“I know,” he says, “but this isn’t
the weather or finding out where one of our brothers snuck off to, this isn’t
some trivial thing.  This is life or death, this is for our survival, and I’m
sorry to say, sister, but things are getting hot and heavy.  I don’t know if I
want to risk our fate on your unpredictable guesses.”

He breaks my heart.  Isaac never
questioned his faith in me before.  He believes in the abilities I’ve been
gifted.  But then again, he’s right.  Maddie and Oscar died, we’re getting
chased, and I didn’t infer anything suspicious.  Maybe I could detect the
little things, but it seems that my knack for clairvoyance may be a liability
in heavier situations.

“What about what that guy said,
their leader?” I ask Isaac.  “He mentioned something about a note, meeting and
talking, and Oscar looked confused by his words.  What do you suppose he
meant?”

“I’m not sure.  They were speaking
quietly,” he says.  “I couldn’t make out what they were talking about.”

“Do you think Tiago had something
to do with them showing up?”

Isaac scoffs at my suggestion. 
“Don’t be ridiculous, sis.  Why in the world would you say that?”

“I don’t know, I mean, it’s a
possibility.”

“Is this one of your senses?”

“No.”

“Then don’t even think about it. 
Sure Tiago and Oscar never got along, but he wouldn’t tip off the law.  I know
Tiago’s rough sometimes, but that’s extreme.”

“But he didn’t like Maddie,
either.”

“But it’s not just Oscar and Maddie,
we were there too,” Isaac says defensively.  “You know Tiago has always had a
soft spot for us, especially for you.”

“That’s true,” I say.  Tiago sees
something in me.  Whenever we talk, he says I understand things better than
most.  I’m unsure what he means because his words are always so cryptic, but,
according to him, I’m special.

“At this point, Tiago and the
others are the only ones we have left, everyone else is dead,” Isaac says.  “We
have to go to him.”

I’m still skeptical.  “Are you
sure he’ll take us back?  We did leave him, after all, and he didn’t seem too
happy about it.”

“Once he knows that Oscar is dead,
that we have nowhere else to go, I’m sure he will.  He can’t dump us out on the
street.”

“I…I suppose you’re right,” I say
reluctantly.  “You supported me when I wanted to leave, I’ll support you now.”