Terra Nova (The Variant Conspiracy Book 3) (15 page)

Chapter 21

We pulled over at Samburu Curio Shop, a pair of bright red wood buildings with vibrant yellow trim. The simple yet colorful building overflowed with wares. Striped and patterned fabric hung in layers from racks. Drums, plates, and bowls were mounted on the wall above the large open doors. Inside sculptures and carvings covered every inch of the first two tables I saw. Batik squares of canvas covered the wall behind it.

"You look, you buy," said an older woman who approached me out of nowhere. She held a painted wood lion in her hand and thrust it at me. I took it from her, caught off guard.

I took in my friends one by one. Each of us had a sales person chattering away about buying, buying, buying.

“Handmade. Good deal,” said another lady, older than mine, tugging on Jonah’s arm.

“Gifts. Treasures. Take many,” said a little boy, no older than twelve who held up two shell necklaces, one in each hand in front of Gemma. She took a necklace and smiled.

“We don’t have much money. We can’t stay long.” Cole frowned at the man showing him a painted soapstone keepsake box.

Melissa browsed inside, miraculously unattended and Faith had slipped away to the bathroom shed. I handed back my lion and excused myself to the van.

I pulled our melatonin crackers from my backpack and said the only thing I could think to say to our driver. “Sir, can I offer you a snack? I packed these crackers for myself, but the sun hit me funny. I’m still not feeling well.”

I held out the plastic baggie casually, pleading with the universe, willing him to take the bag while trying to come off as nonchalant as possible.

“Thank you, miss. You sit. You feel better, you shop again.” The driver set the crackers down on the dashboard of the van and said something in Swahili to my saleswoman who rapped on his window.

I imagined she complained because I hadn’t bought her lion. Maybe, one of the others had told her I had all the money, which in terms of cash shillings was mostly true.

A handful of excruciating minutes passed and then our driver did the unlikely. He absent-mindedly reached into the bag of crackers and pulled one out. He ate carefully. Then he picked up the whole bag and ate the rest. Ten crackers laced with whatever form of concentrated melatonin Monsieur Bonne Nuit was capable of imparting.

Another tour bus pulled in and a couple dozen American schoolchildren stomped out squealing. The salespeople rushed to greet the eager children.

I tiptoed back to the front of the van. Our driver slept deeply. I inspected the parking lot. Josh and Cole were on their way to the van. Melissa, Faith, Ilya, Jonah, and Gemma followed.

“Is he asleep?” Josh poked his head in the door.

“Don’t you think he’d speak up if he wasn’t?” I answered.

“We’d better get rid of him quickly. These people are obviously his friends.” Cole opened the driver’s side door and slipped his arms under the driver’s legs and behind his back.

The rest of my friends got into the van quickly. I stole a quick glance at the curio shop. The kids and their chaperones were the perfect fit for the aggressive salespeople piling trinkets and keepsakes into wicker baskets for anyone who would hold them.

While commerce commenced overlooking the valley, I watched Cole carry the driver to a nearby tree. He laid the man in a seated position back against the trunk. To a newcomer, the man simply took an afternoon nap. It was perfect.

“All right, time to go.” Josh slid into the driver’s seat. He started the van and Cole hopped into the front passenger seat. Josh pulled out onto the road and we sped back toward the city, the van rattling at our speed.

“Ilya, can you please get rid of these stupid passport personas?” I’d grown to hating being anyone but myself.

“Wait, take the next dirt road. We need more practice.” Jonah pointed to a path. Josh peered ahead and shook his head dismissively.

“There isn’t enough time,” I said.

“We’ve still got Ilya, right? So nothing’s gonna happen until they get their hands on him.” Faith’s uneven voice betrayed her lack of confidence.

I paused to consider her logic and it made sense.

“It’s a fair assumption.” Melissa sounded impressed.

“Irina, you’ve got to have another vision. I hate this not knowing. If I don’t know what’s going to happen, how can I stop it?” Ilya’s concern moved me. Faith leaned forward with wide eyes that begged for hope.

“This one! There’s a stream!” exclaimed Jonah as we passed a sign for the Ngong Hills Recreation Area.

Josh hit the brakes and turned hard. Inertia shoved me against my seatbelt. We banged our way up the hill and crossed the stream. The road curved around a bend to a plateau on top and we found a pond surrounded by rushes and several baboons bathing in the pool. I froze in my seat as Josh parked.

One of the baboons ambled over to our van and Cole stepped out. The baboon eyed him up for a moment, assessing every square inch of Cole. Then the animal let out a primal scream of rage that rattled me to my core.

“Bring it!” said Cole in a deep angry tone.

Sensing the challenge, the baboon rushed Cole. But Cole was faster. The baboon leapt into the hair, springing from its powerful hind legs. Cole snatched it out of the air and tossed it down the hillside behind us.

Josh hopped out of the van in time for another baboon to pounce on him. The baboon swiped. Instead of rending flesh, a sickly scrape was followed by a whimper as Josh’s fist connected with the baboon’s face and sent him flying. The remaining two baboons ran off down the hill after the animal Cole had tossed.

“Come on out. It’s safe now,” called out Cole.

“Are you sure this is a good place to practice?” My glance darted around the space, waiting for something to materialize behind a tree.

“Could you see this pond from the road?” said Josh.

“What if someone comes up here sightseeing?” said Melissa. “Or a local?”

Ilya stared back the way we’d come. “Then they’ll find the illusion I just threw up of a barricade with biohazard symbols.” “It’s a universally recognized emblem.” Jonah seemed unconcerned.

Faith shot a thick stream of fire into the ground. She pressed energy from her hand into the earth until only a molten crater remained. The edges cooled, shiny and dark while the rest of the giant fresh glass bowl stayed red hot. She lifted her arms to the sky triumphantly. “That felt awesome!”

“You’re getting better. You’re stronger.” Ilya leaned in over her handiwork.

“How about aim?” I levitated a fist-sized rock in the air above Faith’s head. She shot a thin stream of fire at the rock, knocking it into the distance.

Jonah sent a column of water after it quenching the rock with a hiss before it hit the ground.

“It’s a good thing you two usually go hand in hand,” said Josh.

I frowned. I saw his point, but I wanted to change the fact that my boyfriend and his ex were a better fighting team than he and I would ever become.

“That may be the case, but he’d no more go back to her than she’d go back to him. I wouldn’t stay with Faith if I didn’t know she was into me a hundred percent.” Ilya stood next to me watching the show.

I threw three rocks up over the pond.
Turn them into doves. Just for kicks,
I thought at my brother.

The rocks blurred as I squinted into the sun. I heard a series of crack-crack-crack and I glanced over to see Cole swing a tree trunk. Dark shapes flew back at me and I shrieked. Huge bats zoomed at my face and veered up at the last minute, sailing over my head.

“I said doves, you idiot!” I yelled at Ilya.

“Doves aren’t going to scare anyone, wimp,” he replied.

“I need practice too,” said Gemma indignantly.

“You want one of us to intentionally get hurt?” said Melissa.

“If you want me to get better at healing different things quickly, then, yes,” said Gemma. There was that pout.

“Can you heal regular humans?” The carnage at Chatham Park popped into my mind. The lobby, the front yard, the back lawn. So many bloody bodies.

“I think that’s outside her control.” Ilya frowned at me fiercely.

“It is for now. I’ve grown, maybe she can too,” I said.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Ilya.

Cole stretched his bare arm toward his sister. “I’ll go first.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Better take your shot now.” Cole gave Gemma a gaze of approval and she blushed.

“This is going to hurt.” A smirk of satisfaction and a frown of deep thought wrestled on Faith’s face as she contemplated how best to burn her brother. She shot a thin stream of fire barely the width of one of her fingers straight into the fleshy muscle of Cole’s forearm.

Cole grunted as he bore the burn.

“That’s enough!” Gemma ran to Cole. Her pained expression betrayed more than general concern.

A patch of Cole’s arm was a ruin of bloody red flesh and bubbling black blisters. He dropped to his knees and braced his wounded left arm by squeezing the bicep above with his right hand.

Gemma’s hands shook as she hovered over Cole. She panted with panic until she took a deep breath. She focused, staring hard at Cole’s arm. In a sudden burst, golden light shot out of her hands and onto Cole’s burn.

Relief washed over Cole’s face. The burn diminished. Red faded to pink and back into the hardy beige of his regular skin.

Gemma released the energy and stepped backward, grinning at her handiwork. She rubbed her hands together waiting for Cole’s response.

“How do you feel?” Jonah’s eyebrows arched as he assessed Cole.

“Good. Better. The pain is gone.” Cole made a fist and flexed his arm.

“All right, then.” Faith turned her attention back to the crater and shot a burst of flame back at it, re-heating the hot orange glass.

Melissa created a portal and a second liquid silver oval appeared in the air over the pond. She threw a rock in the portal in front of her and I watched as it fell out of the opening over the water.

I held out my hand and caught the rock before it fell. I concentrated hard, picturing the rock being crushed inward, crumbling into dust under the weight of nothing. It turned over and over in the air, flaking bits of dust. And then it began to crack. One crack turned into a handful of fractures. Suddenly the rock exploded sending fragments everywhere.

“What the hell was that?” yelled Faith.

“Nicely done!” Jonah walked over and patted my back.

“I hope Ivan and Tatiana don’t know just how much you’re capable of,” said Josh.

I looked down at my hands, my tiny unremarkable smooth small hands, and I made two small fists. I relaxed and rubbed my temples. I took a deep breath and tried not to solve the mystery of understanding exactly where my powers came from or how they worked. That knowledge wasn’t what I needed for the fight ahead.

What I needed was power and a flash of an idea struck me. I smiled with mischief. I turned back to Jonah and summoned him with a crooked finger. He gave me a perplexed smirk and closed the distance. I stood on my tiptoes to reach his ear. “Kiss me. I need your energy.”

He cupped my face gently and brushed my lips.

“You can do better than that.”

He laughed and kissed me again, deeply, reigniting that surge of raw force that was becoming an addiction.

I broke contact to test my theory. I lifted a rock with my mind and blew it to bits in a second.

Chapter 22

Freshly revitalized, I rested under a tree as I watched Jonah perfecting his pressurized jets of water. His skills had advanced to carving rock. The crashing and smashing of rocks being thrown and dropped punctuated the sounds of crackling flame and rushing water.

Gemma sat cross-legged at the edge of the pond watching Cole. If he hadn’t noticed her attention yet, he would have been the only one. I wondered if he returned her feelings. I’d probably point her out to him, if we weren’t on the verge of an apocalyptic disaster.

I sat enjoying the cotton fluffiness of the clouds above when I heard a low growl. It had a chilling familiarity, a sound I never thought I’d hear again.

“Look out!” shouted Melissa.

The growls turned into aggressive snarls as a pair of scorpion dogs crested the hill. Cole tackled one and Josh pounced on the other. Melissa quickly opened a portal.

“Toss them in! This goes back to a pit in the Mojave!”

Cole lifted his dog and tossed it into the portal. The creature let out a squeal of panic as it flew. Josh threw his dog in afterwards and Melissa closed the oval.

“We should have known Ivan would have a stash of variant creatures somewhere in the area,” said Jonah.

“Do you think he knows where we are now?” Faith glanced around, her feet planted in a wide stance, ready for action.

“I think he’s got something with at least one of our scents on it. We should be happy he doesn’t have Thorn or Hugo or Casey to send after us at the moment,” I said.

“We don’t know he doesn’t. Has he ever rolled without some kind of monster at his side?” said Cole.

A fresh wave of prickling chills shot up my back at the sound of a fleshy thumping overhead. A grotesque black stain in the sky above had the wings of a huge bat and the head of a cobra, eerily similar to the alien demon from my vision. Its thick abdomen was much like a snake, but it had two clawed feet separating body from tail. The creature was larger than any eagle I’d seen in Northern BC.

The giant snake-bat hissed and a long blue tongue darted out to taste the air as another creature flew in behind it. And another and another until four demons circled our group.

Faith shot a stream of fire into their midst sending them scattering with a chorus of hissing.

Melissa raised her arms to open a portal in front of one. The creature dodged it artfully and fixed its gaze on Cole. The thing flexed its mid-section and sent a wave of spiked darts at Cole’s head. Cole dodged, enraging the animal. The giant snake-bat broke into a dive and swooped at Cole, mouth gaping, fangs dripping with neon yellow liquid.

“Don’t let it bite you!” I tried to focus on the creature long enough to hold it still. The thing fought hard and I felt agonizing pressure inside my head.

Cole whipped a rock at the bat’s head and it made contact with a loud crack. The blow sent the creature into a downward tailspin.

Another creature dove at Cole with vengeance in its eyes, but a molten stream of Faith’s fire knocked it off trajectory and engulfed the thing. Flames spread from the body into the fleshy wings like liquid death. The bat hissed, curled into a ball, and fell to the ground.

The other two bats broke away and flew southwest, back in the direction of Kibera and Nairobi.

“Fuck them! Fuck you, Ivan!” Faith yelled up at the sky.

“Back to the van. Now!” shouted Josh.

Jonah took me by the arm and I let him. We ran back to the van. Josh had us rumbling toward the highway while I stuffed my hoodie into my pack.

Kenya had surprised me by having chilly mornings and the odd cool breeze. With my heart pumping hard again, I wouldn’t need it for a while, but I couldn’t afford to lose it. I needed every possession in my bag. I had become the ultimate transient, chased sometimes moment to moment.

I never knew when my next visit to a store or a shop would come. Tears welled in my eyes at the ridiculousness of my stress. Here I worried about keeping a toothbrush and lip balm on me at all times while running from another encounter with a surreally mutated vicious animal.

Josh turned hard on each corner on the highway back to Nairobi. My pulse raced and I panted as I leaned forward into the van’s speed. The faster we got to Kibera, the closer we were to the end. I almost wanted the end more than the outcome. A small part of me thought that when I saw Ivan, I would just walk out to him and surrender, letting him crush my throat with his own telekinetic power. I visualized it for a moment.

“Don’t you dare!” Ilya rounded on me from the row of seats in front of me.

“Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you afraid?” I said.

Jonah put his arm around me. “We’re all afraid. But we’re strong.”

“Stronger than Ivan,” Cole told me. “We’ll beat him, Irina.”

“Speak for yourself.” Gemma sat on my other side, gazing up at Cole. He looked bashful for a moment and I rolled my eyes. Then the ratty roof tapestry of Kibera caught my eye on the horizon.

Josh pulled over in a field full of trash on the outskirts of the slum. He fished under the seat and retrieved a steering wheel club. He fitted the security device into the steering wheel, locked it and removed the key.

“Take everything with you. Stuff your pockets. We need to prepare for this van being gone when we get back,” said Josh. “I don’t know how long it will last here.”

“I can get us to the hotel with a portal,” said Melissa.

“We might not want to go back to the hotel either. Once that driver gets back into the city, the hotel where he met us is the first place he’ll check,” said Jonah.

Outside the van, Josh took stock of all of us, appraising our condition more than making inventory.

“Once we save the world, I think a stolen van and an unpaid hotel bill are kinda justified.” Faith said sarcastically.

“Can you pick Ivan or Tatiana out of the crowd? How close do you have to be?” I asked Ilya.

My brother grimaced as he listened to the sea of minds in the slum. His face contorted. I wondered what he heard, but I tried to keep my mind as quiet as possible. Not speaking was a given, but it was hard to not think either.

“There are too many people. So many are sick already from regular illness. So much misery.” Ilya lifted his hand and pointed at the slum. “Over there, a woman is desperately worried about her baby. She’s sick and she isn’t making enough milk. The baby is sleeping too much. She thinks it might die.”

Ilya shifted his gaze and closed his eyes. “There’s a man nearby who’s planning to kill his brother over a girl. He’s very drunk. He’s drinking something called Changaa. A little boy is crying. His brother just hit him, hard, for eating the last of their bread. Their father died and now the big brother is in charge while their mom is at work. It was for him to say when they ate and they were supposed to share. They’re both young. The little one just turned four. The older one is six.”

Ilya did something I’d never seen him do. He began to cry, quietly and softly.

“Okay, there’s too much going on here for Ilya to pick out a single mind in the mess,” said Jonah.

“Yeah, this is lame. We should move on foot until we find something.” Faith studied Ilya with uncharacteristic sympathy and it made my heart ache too.

“Should we go in ‘bare’ or should we try a new look?” Cole watched Ilya who wiped tears off his face.

“I’m more concerned about being hassled by the residents rather than being spotted by Ivan or Tatiana,” I said.

“Good point. We can’t unleash our powers just to side-step a squabble or a shakedown,” said Josh.

“I’ll turn us into the staff from the Samburu Curio Shop,” said Ilya.

“Perfect!” said Faith.

Ilya’s wet foggy air engulfed us and when my reflection sharpened in the van’s passenger window, I saw my new best friend, the older lady who had tried so hard to sell me a wood lion. It was possibly the strangest disguise Ilya had given me yet. Just when I thought I had been someone else for the last time, I smiled at my reflection, missing the same canine tooth as the original woman. “Should we stay together or split up?”

“We will cover more ground if we go in pairs,” said Cole.

“If we split up, we may never find each other again, especially not with unfamiliar faces,” said Josh.

“If Ilya can’t single anything out and we can’t split up, how the hell will we find anything in here?” Her new persona conveyed as much fury as Faith herself.

“Anybody pick up any Swahili?” said Jonah through yet another strange face.

“Are you serious?” said Ilya.

“We should start by doing a circuit of the perimeter,” said Melissa.

“Good idea. Let’s start by rooting out an entrance to something underground. Ivan won’t keep animals like those scorpion-dogs or snake-bats in some pen above ground,” said Josh.

“I think I’ll recognize the ditch where they’re growing that hedge and releasing the infected bees,” I said.

“Once we find ground zero, we can stake it out and wait,” said Melissa.

“I might be able to single out my father or Aunt Tat if we’re close enough to them,” said Ilya.

“What’s the plan if we come across them?” I said.

“We don’t know if they’ll have back up, or in what form.” Josh rubbed his new chin deep in thought. “This stage is extremely important to them. They’ll have security measures in place to ensure it happens according to plan, on schedule. And then there’s the variable of Ilya’s conversion. Everyone keep a close eye on Ilya. We can’t afford to assume that they can’t or won’t move forward without him. Ivan’s weak, but he could still finish what he started. I’m suggesting we kill on sight. Shoot first, ask questions later. If any of us sees Ivan or Tatiana, take them out at all costs.”

“Are you suggesting we disregard civilians?” said Melissa.

“I’m not willing to throw innocent people under the proverbial bus,” said Jonah.

“I think the universe already did that if they’re living here.” Faith’s tone had a current of sadness unusual for her.

“I think we can all agree casualties are unacceptable. Let’s try to keep this behind closed doors.” Ilya reached out, again trying to comfort Faith. Their new dynamic rattled me.

“We’ll do the best we can, but if you’ve got a civilian between you and one of the Krylovs, remember, it’s the whole rest of humanity at stake,” I said.

“We’ve talked this through again and again. If you don’t think you can make a kill when the time comes, get back in that van right now and stay out of the way,” said Josh.