Epitaph Road (11 page)

She touched the screen and a display of photos and names appeared. The heading read
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
,
2065
. Which was when men still walked the earth in large numbers, before they'd become dinosaurs.

But everyone on the Brighter Day board of directors was a woman.

And in the middle of the top row was a remotely familiar face and immediately familiar name: Rebecca Mack, M.D., Ph.D.

“Dr. Mack,” Sunday said. “Oh, crap.
Dr. Mack.
”

“Check out the second row,” Tia said.

I did. I didn't recognize any of the photos, but at the far right, under the picture of a middle-aged, attractive woman, was another familiar name, one from the history books.

Candace Bloom, the fifty-fourth president of the United States. The secretary of state when Elisha hit, she quickly assumed the presidency.

I'd been holding my breath. Now I whistled it out. A worldwide conspiracy. A real one, not some corncob–pipe dream of raving lunatics.

Rebecca Mack and Candace Bloom. Together. With their secret lab and male monkeys and diseases. “Why?” I said, half to myself.

“Keep reading,” Tia said.

Sweat started building on the back of my neck as thoughts swirled inside my head and Tia paged to a bio on Rebecca Mack. A leading authority on viral and bacterial illness, contagious disease, respiratory and cardiac disease, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy, Huntington's chorea, and other gender-linked and chromosomal-based diseases, Mack was a world-renowned epidemiologist and research superstar. “The brilliant researcher with a troubled past,” was how one Paris news site described her.

I didn't have long to wonder about her troubled past. Tia's next screen showed an article from the
Seattle Times E-dition
dated April 12, 2035. No photo, but the story covered the outcome of Rebecca Mack's trial in juvenile court: a manslaughter conviction for killing her mother's abusive boyfriend, the man responsible for her mother's death. Rebecca's sentence: three years in the Hillside Correctional Facility for Girls.

“So have you guessed my theory yet?” Tia said.

“Brighter Day caused Elisha,” Sunday said. “Rebecca Mack. The witch went over the edge. She — they — found a way to kill men.”

“Males,” I said. “Almost all males.” A sensation rose in my stomach, like I was going to vomit. I could taste dinner souring just below the back of my throat. I felt duped, half destroyed.

Mack the Knife and Candace Bloom.

My mother. My mother was a part of this.

I was so stupid. Why hadn't I picked up on these clues? The whole idea — the plotting, the execution — was horrible, outlandish, unbelievable. But I believed it.

Elisha's Bear hadn't shown up on its own. PAC wasn't the result of accidental opportunity. Women weren't our benevolent custodians.

My mother wasn't my guardian angel. My mother wasn't even my friend.

My mother was too young to have been involved in big Elisha, but she was involved now. My mother was my enemy.

Tia put her hand on my forearm. “I'm sorry, Kellen,” she said.

“It wasn't you,” I managed, but right now I felt angry and betrayed. My mother was one thing, but another woman — someone I'd met — had wiped out half my family, without blinking. Half of humanity.

And she was still free, treated like some kind of hero. How many other people had suspicions about her role in the plague?

It's a theory,
I told myself,
a kid's theory.
But I couldn't force myself to disbelieve it now. Anderson wasn't a kid. She believed it enough to point us in the direction of this stuff. Before this frightful chilling moment, I simply wasn't tuned in.

“McDonald's and Starbucks,” I said. “And the Studfast samples. It was how they distributed the bug, wasn't it?”

“I think so,” Tia said. “Mostly, anyway. They could have used other chain restaurants and stores, too, or put it in the mail, sent it on planes, trucks, trains. They could have had women or unsuspecting men carry it into more isolated places. Like the Afghanistan and Puerto Verde Island occurrences. They wanted to test it out somewhere remote first to be sure it worked.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“Anderson gave us the clues,” Sunday said. “All the cruelty and destruction and chaos in the world. Mostly because of men.”

“
Some
men,” I said. “What about all the
good
men? What about the
babies
?”

“There's no excuse for Brighter Day,” Tia said. “Or PAC. Or whatever Rebecca Mack is up to now.”

Rebecca Mack, the savior of the planet. The monster. Downstairs.
In our house. With Mom.
Cooking up the next “epidemic,” I realized. Plotting how to capture Aunt Paige. “They're getting ready to do it again,” I said. “My aunt figured it out. She figured out that my dad's in trouble.”

“Why the Olympic Peninsula?” Sunday asked.

“I don't know,” Tia said. “There's a group of throwbacks over there, but there are throwbacks scattered all over the world.”

Suddenly, I remembered my history. It jumped out at me like it hadn't before. “Three throwback colonies have been hit in the past,” I said. “Three strong ones, trying to flex some muscle. Elisha returned there. Except for a few women and girls, the settlements were wiped out.”

“You're right,” Tia said. “I wonder how many people made the connection.” She got to a website that discussed the 2081 outbreak of Elisha in northern Europe, in the state of Sweden. We read along with her. The male inhabitants of a large village secretly formed a totalitarian government, kidnapped and abused women and girls from surrounding communities, began to arm themselves, talked of rebellion and assassinations. Which is when Elisha resurfaced. The violent crime and rhetoric died with the men.

“I think we've learned enough to know what's happening next,” I said. “And now I have to find my dad.”

Aunt Paige picked up on the first ring. “I can't talk to you, Kellen,” she said.

I listened for background noise, clues to where she was. “I know what you're doing,” I said. Tia and Sunday sat up and stared at me. “Tia figured out everything.
Everything.
”

“I love you, Kellen,” Aunt Paige said. “Your dad loves you. Stay put.” The connection died.

Your dad.
Was she with him?

“Where is she?” Tia asked me.

“She cut me off before I could ask.”

“They ain't got her yet,” Sunday said. “She still has a chance.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I didn't like the odds. Unless she eluded the pack of dogs chasing her and got to Dad in a hurry, Elisha most likely would come looking for him. And regardless of what happened with Dad, what would they do to her when they eventually tracked her down?

I stood up and zombie-walked to the window. Up and down the street, lamplight glowed from the opposing rows of old two- and three-story homes. Even in this supposedly desirable neighborhood, though, some houses had stood vacant and deteriorating for decades or been torn down completely. Thirty years ago, the Bear had made quick work of their male occupants and sent their female tenants packing. They'd downsized to apartments or moved in with relatives or found rooms, support, and companionship in big houses like ours.

When I was seven or eight, Aunt Paige took me to an Oregon beach, where we discovered a gray whale, dead on the sand, swarmed by gulls and crows. Its plate-sized eyes were crusted over and vacant. The empty decaying houses on our street and elsewhere reminded me of that poor whale.

A woman jogged alone down the sidewalk, ghosting from one pool of light to the next, wearing skin-tight shorts and a workout bra and a carefree expression. Her long dark hair rippled and shone as she moved.

What would she be wearing if men were still around in big numbers?
I wondered.
Where would she be? Home,
with her treadmill and dead bolts and alarms?

I opened the window wide and drank in the cooling night air. In the quiet of the neighborhood, I could hear the runner's footfalls. I imagined she was leading a flock of other runners across the finish line of a marathon. I clapped for her, softly I thought, but she looked up at me and smiled and waved and continued on.

No fears.

I glanced at my watch. Just after eleven. After curfew. Without Minders, I wasn't allowed to go out for a run — or anything else — at this hour.

“Aunt Paige told me to stay put,” I said, my back still to the girls. I wanted a second opinion, and something told me I could trust them.

“You
have to
,” Tia said. “If you try to go to him, you could
both
die.”

Not the second opinion I wanted. “Not if I leave tonight. It's not that far. A quick ride to the ferry, a half hour on the boat, a few more hours on my bike.”

“How many hours?” Sunday said, giving me a little encouragement.

I tried to picture maps I'd seen. “I'd have to check.”

“You might not even
need
to go,” Sunday said, withdrawing her support.

“Sunday's right,” Tia said. “Your aunt might get through. She might already be with your dad.”

“By the time we know, it could be too late,” I said.

“I think we'll know soon,” Tia said. “Let's go down and see if we can pick up any vibrations.”

“In a minute,” I said. I was pretty sure I knew the big answers to the
Why?
question, but something was still missing for me. I got up and started for Tia's computer, but my e-spond sounded off. Without checking the display, I answered it, thinking it was Aunt Paige.

“Kellen?” a nervous voice said.

“Ernie?”

“They got Anderson,” he said in a half whisper.

“Anderson? Who got her?” Tia and Sunday eyed me, full bore.

“PAC cops. They came to the house a few minutes ago and took her away.”

“Where?”

“I don't know. I just wanted to tell you. My mom says she must have done something bad. But I don't think so.”

I again recalled Mom referring to Anderson as “unconventional” during our “visit” of a few days ago. Was Anderson already on the PAC hit list then? Did they think she knew too much? “I don't think so, either, Ernie,” I said. “Maybe they just want to talk to her.”

“Maybe. I'll watch for her.”

“You do that,” I said. “Let me know if she shows up.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for calling me.”

We disconnected. “PAC cops arrested Anderson,” I told the girls, in case they hadn't already figured that out.

“Because of what she gave us?” Tia said.

I shrugged. “Ernie doesn't know. He just knows they got her.” Under a cloud of worry now, I continued on to Tia's computer and touched in the years 2034 and 2035 and the name Rebecca Mack.

An instant later, the screen filled with references, mostly online news stories. I saw the
Seattle Times E-dition
article from April 12, 2035, but I wanted earlier stuff. What had come before the conviction? I sensed Tia and Sunday hanging close as I scrolled to the top of the list.

The earliest mention of Rebecca (Becky) Mack, age fourteen, was a
Seattle Times
story of her arrest on September 29, 2034, for the killing of a man named Chet Durbin. According to the article, Chet Durbin was Becky's mother's live-in boyfriend. A few days later, the
Times
ran a story in which neighbors related a history of domestic disturbances in the house.

Because Becky was a juvenile at the time, little emerged from the trial itself. I was about to give it up when I noticed a junkyarddog item on her from May 16, 2035, which was after she began serving her sentence.

The interview with Becky Mack, on the grounds of the Hillside Correctional Facility for Girls, revealed Chet Durbin's long-standing and continual physical abuse of Becky's mother and sexual abuse of Becky. According to the article, Becky's mother, although battered herself, didn't believe the sexual abuse was happening.

Rebecca Mack had had the seeds of Elisha's Bear growing in her when she was no older than I was now. And in a weird way, I understood why. As far as I could tell, she'd never received anything but suffering at the hands of men.