Chapter 30
Mountains fringed the horizon ahead, slate gray under a clear blue sky. Josh’s Jeep rumbled along the graded gravel road. The only other visible vehicle in either direction was Cole’s car behind us. We passed the brown wood sign I’d seen in my vision and a bird of prey squawked overhead. A chorus of chainsaws ripped into the vibrating grumble of tires on gravel. Figures on bikes came into view. The caravan of dirt bikers formed a line zipping perpendicular across our route and my brother reached out to get Josh to stop.
“Hold it here,” said Ilya, as though listening to the air around us. The
BRAAA, braaa
, of dirt bikes faded in the distance.
“What?” said Jonah.
“Shhhhh,” said Ilya, irritated.
Gravel crunched behind us as Cole’s car caught up and stopped.
“They work at a research farm. They’re on their way now. I’m pretty sure they’re variants,” said Ilya.
“Good enough for me.” Josh turned ninety degrees to the right and followed the bikers into the bumpy brush of the rough landscape.
“Can Cole follow us?” I peered out the back window. He followed, but slowly.
“Text Faith so they know where we’re going and why,” said Ilya.
I frowned and picked up my phone to tap out the message.
We followed the dust cloud left by the bikers, curving through the sage and around a bank of eroded sandstone. The dust cleared and we saw row upon row of tarp-covered plants and a large translucent plastic greenhouse butted up against the rock wall behind it. Unfortunately the trailer from my vision was nowhere in sight. We were in a natural cul-de-sac, closed in by small steep hills made of the layered red, brown, and tan clay deposits of the region.
Josh drove up alongside the rows of tarps and I could see they were more like mesh screens, not solid black as they’d seemed from far away. The screens were propped up by countless poles roughly ten feet up off the ground. I recognized the plants growing in the shade.
Seedling versions of the evergreens with venus-fly-trap-style mouths ran in two columns backward to the greenhouse. The rest of the plants were the teal ferns with pearl flowers, in various stages of growth from tiny sprouts to large bushy shrubs.
“This is what they were growing in Vancouver and the valley where we found Kingston,” I said to Jonah.
I got out of the Jeep and walked under the mesh screen closest to me. A flytrap snapped closed around a tiny purple butterfly. A sucking sound followed and the mouth opened, releasing a cloud of white powder that lingered around the plant. I took a step back.
A light buzzing drew my attention from amongst the ferns. Movement flickered around the taller plants where the pearl flowers were in bloom. As I drew closer to the ferns, I saw one of the large iridescent oil-slick bees land on a flower and feed.
“Guys!” I called out, not taking my eyes off the bee.
Jonah and Ilya came to my side.
“These are the bees Innoviro developed, the bees Kingston thought were so important,” I said in a hushed tone.
“Are they dangerous?” said Jonah.
“They’re probably not harmless. Look at them! Have you ever seen bees with metallic coloring?” said Ilya.
“We should catch one and save it for testing,” said Jonah as Josh joined us.
“What kind of lab will we have access to in the near future?” said Josh.
“If we can’t get a hold of
The Compendium
documents, we’ll have no way of knowing what Ivan’s got up his sleeve. The only alternative is to piece it together ourselves,” said Jonah.
“That could take years. We don’t have time,” said Ilya.
Cole, Faith, Bruno, and Nellie came to inspect the plants as well. Ilya stepped away from us looking thoughtfully towards the greenhouses and up to the sky.
“Did you see anything about what these bees are used for?” said Jonah.
“These plants reek of decay,” said Bruno as he peered at the evergreen seedlings.
“Where did those bikers disappear to?” said Faith.
“They drove towards that greenhouse on the far edge of the property, but then they disappeared. It was weird. It’s not like something violent happened to them. More like someone switched off a light. Their minds were there and then popped out of existence,” said Ilya.
“They must have gone over the hill. Look, you can still see the dust cloud,” said Jonah.
“Why is there no security here? Shouldn’t this place be guarded? How are we able to walk right up so easily?” said Cole.
“I’m sure Ivan’s got eyes on this place. We may have company soon,” said Josh.
“When Irina and I found the Innoviro farm outside Hope, there was no security there either,” said Ilya.
“Maybe these things protect themselves,” said Nellie, eying up a bee as it flew past her.
“Careful, there’s an animal coming,” said Ilya. No sooner had the words left his lips, a flash of fur caught my attention through the plants.
“It’s only a coyote,” said Bruno, sniffing the air as he stepped forward. Jonah put his arm out to stop Bruno.
The coyote yelped and broke into a run, swerving through the ferns. It yelped again and broke free of the plants. Two oil-slick bees clung to its side. The coyote snapped helplessly at the bees, flailing around as it tried to bite them. It fell to the ground convulsing and whimpering.
Blood sprayed from the animal’s mouth as he flung his head back and forth. The coyote stopped moving and emptied bowel and bladder.
“Jesus,” said Josh.
“I think it’s dead,” said Bruno.
“You think?” said Cole.
“Someone should examine it,” said Nellie.
“You examine it!” Tears filling her eyes, Faith retreated from the dead animal while I watched the bees shimmer and quiver.
“Guys, shut up! Look at the bees.” As the words left my lips, the quivering accelerated until the bees melted into liquid and slid off the coyote’s fur. The liquid dropped into the dust on the ground and dried up.
“They change. They’re like the beetles. Oh my god, the beetles! A mechanism of change. That’s what they were cultivating!” I shouted, to myself more than anyone else.
“What’s music got to do with bees?” said Bruno.
“Not the band, the insect. I saw chameleon beetles in Victoria. I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure Innoviro had made them, but now I am. These beetles didn’t merely blend, they disappeared into the surface they imitated. I have no idea how it works, but those bees look like gasoline because they literally turn into gasoline!” I said, still shouting.
“To what end?” said Nellie, confused.
“To deliver whatever contagion killed that coyote into an urban area without being detected. Not until it’s too late. I wonder how they make the first transformation, from liquid to insect. Timed exposure to air? A radio signal?” Jonah’s calm surprised me.
“Never mind how they do it! We need to get the fuck away from these things if we don’t want the goddamn plague ourselves!” Faith backed away from the ferns. Nellie, Bruno and Josh followed suit, backing out of the covered plant rows.
“I’m pretty sure we can relax. Everything Ivan and his partners are working on is engineered to remove humans and anything else they perceive as unwanted from the Earth. They made a point of leaving variants alive when they killed humans in San Francisco. I don’t think
The Compendium
attacks are meant for us. They’re meant for them.” Cole gestured behind himself, back towards civilization.
“How the hell are we supposed to stop something like this? We couldn’t even stop them from starting an earthquake–with one big clunky machine!” Fear crept slowly up my sides as I visualized places where a rainbow-colored oily sheen would go unnoticed, unsuspicious.
I pictured what our lives would really become with endless empty cities. No power. No television. No internet. No restaurants. No malls. No music on the radio. We wouldn’t even have pets, if the coyote on the ground in front of me was any indication. Fear evolved to panic. My lungs tightened and my heart raced faster and faster.
This is really happening
.
“We’re still going to fight him, them, whoever,” said Ilya as he put his arm around my shoulder.
The sound of the mesh fabric screen flapping overhead seemed to be concealing a faint crackling somewhere far away. I remembered the people on dirt bikes and I wondered if they were coming back. I stepped out from underneath the screens, away from the flapping and bee-buzzing.
A chorus of snarling growls sounded on the hillside. I whipped around and saw a group of Innoviro’s horrible hybrids, copies of the creature they’d used for security in the Victoria lab. In the full light of day, these abominations were more than disgusting, they were terrifying.
Black and dark brown fur and the face of a Rottweiler composed the creatures’ front halves. Their back ends were the shiny black exoskeleton and tail of a scorpion. They were much bigger than the large dog breed they were based on. Each animal approximated the size of a small cow. I counted five of them.
“Cole! Josh!” I shouted. They were already next to me.
“I think we could use a little electricity here,” Jonah said to Nellie. “I’ll tap the irrigation line and soak them, then you add power.” Nellie nodded, not taking her eyes of the dogs up on the hill.
“Or we could kill them with fire,” said Faith. She unleashed two thick powerful streams of fire in the general direction of the dogs. They scattered instantly bolting in different directions before the fire hit the ground. The sagebrush and dry grass where they’d been standing went up like paper. The snapping and popping of burning brush accompanied the whoooosh of fire as it spread across the hill.
Cole picked up one of the mesh screen support poles and threw it at a dog as it charged us. The pole speared the dog through the side and pinned it to the ground where it continued to claw the dirt and fight for freedom.
Josh charged another dog whose tail flung and stabbed at his back. CLING! CLANG-CLING! Josh’s skin deflected each blow as he struggled to wrench life out of the creature.
Faith took on another animal walking into the heat of her own fire stream. The dog yelped in pain and fell to the ground, curling into a blackened heap.
The apparition of a bear charged another dog. I knew the bear wasn’t real when it flickered briefly and I saw the look of concentration on Ilya’s face. The dog stood its ground and my brother had no choice but to continue intimidating and stalling with his bear. Faith rounded on Ilya’s dog and quickly created another blackened lump.
I caught sight of a large jagged piece of bedrock. I concentrated on levitating it over to where Cole circled a thrashing dog speared to the ground. I dropped the stone next to Cole who promptly snatched it up and crushed the dog’s head with the pointed end. He stepped over to Josh’s dog and finished it with the same devastating blow.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nellie shoot pure electric current into the dog charging her. The dog kept coming in spite of the charge. Bruno roared, bearing fangs I never knew he had. Thick black claws curled out of Bruno’s fingertips as he leapt onto the dog before it could reach Nellie. A giant black scorpion tail rose above Bruno’s back and pierced him squarely in his spine. Bruno roared again and fell to the ground, limp and lifeless.
“NOOOOO!” cried Nellie as she jumped onto the dog’s back, instantly electrifying the creature with every ounce of her life force. The dog’s tail lunged and missed, lunged and missed as it convulsed with the intense current passing through its body. The tail lunged again and struck Nellie’s side. The electricity stopped. Nellie and the dog creature dropped into the dust and lay motionless.
Chapter 31
Ilya and I saw Nellie and Bruno die. Faith, Cole, Jonah, and Josh were all still distracted. Faith had turned her fire on the mutated ferns and evergreen seedlings under the mesh tarps beside us. A ravenous blaze devoured the entire crop in moments. Jonah doused the brush fire started by Faith’s clumsy first attack on the dogs. He turned his attention to the burning crops and extinguished them as well.
Cole made the rounds to each dog, crushing heads and tails with the giant piece of bedrock I’d given him, until they were all definitely dead.
I ran to Bruno and felt his wrist, and then his neck. Both spots had a weak pulse. He wasn’t gone, but without Camille or Gemma to heal him, there was nothing I could do. I turned to Nellie. I felt her wrist. Nothing. I felt her neck. No pulse at all.
“Bruno, can you talk? Can you move?” I said.
“Nellie. Save Nellie.” Bruno gasped for air.
“Don’t worry about Nellie. We’ll take care of her. Rest. Be still.” I held his hand.
Whether he felt comforted or lost energy, I couldn’t say, but Bruno relaxed his grip. I brushed the hair off his forehead. Bruno took one more rattling gasp and went completely still. I felt his neck to find his pulse gone.
I looked up and everyone gaped at me. Ilya took a step towards me with his arm reached out for comfort. Josh and Jonah hung their heads.
“I thought he didn’t want to kill variants!” Faith shouted at Cole. She looked fierce, standing in charred clothes with charcoal smeared across her face. She shoved her brother, who allowed the blow to move him.
“Maybe he doesn’t know it’s us here. Maybe he’s willing to kill us at a point, if we get too close or go too far.
The Compendium
must mean more to him than our lives.” Dejected, Cole looked at Nellie and Bruno.
Faith let out a howl of rage and reignited the blackened crops behind her.
“Calm down! That’s not helping anyone,” said Ilya.
Jonah doused the fire again.
“We need to think fast,” said Josh. “We’ve probably attracted some attention. If these crops and whatever facility is nearby has more security than five variant dogs, we need to get moving. Now!”
I looked at Nellie and Bruno’s bodies. I looked at each of the crushed dog carcasses. It was obvious we wouldn’t survive another attack, especially not if it came soon.
“Can you create an illusion to hide us?” I said to Ilya.
“I can’t be sure I’ll fool anything that can smell us,” he replied.
“We need to get out of here and come back with a plan,” said Jonah.
“Let’s fall back to the main road and look for a spot to camp.” Josh stepped forward and picked up Bruno’s body. He nodded at Cole and down at Nellie.
“We’ll put them in the back of my Jeep. They deserve better than to stay with this garbage,” said Josh.
I risked one last glance around the landscape before I got back into Josh`s Jeep. The charcoal blackened field was as unrecognizable as the bloody lumps which used to be variant dogs. How could we possibly sneak up on this facility again?
The return journey to the Backway went quickly. We knew where we were going and fear spurred our drivers.
Back on the main road, such as it was, we continued northward rather than backtracking south. Josh felt we should look for somewhere secluded to dig in for the night. We had passed nothing on the way up the Backway that fit the description and none of us had reason to argue.
The sun crept down towards the mountains as we drove, igniting the rocky landscape with hot orange, vibrant pink and radiant yellow hues, complementing the natural reds and browns in the earth. The plateau and the mountains on the horizon looked like they were sketched in chalk. If we weren’t on the run, I would have wanted to stop and stare at the world around us until the light left entirely.
But we were on the run. Again. And as soon as we rounded a corner and found a cove in the rock to satisfy Josh’s military mind as a defensible spot, we pulled over and Ilya went to work on replicating the sandstone and clay rock wall in the air around our campsite.
I helped Faith, Cole and Jonah set up our tents on the inside of Ilya’s barrier. From the interior of the site, we looked out as though there was no barrier at all. I watched Ilya visually scan the rock wall behind me and Josh evaluated his progress.
When the tents were ready, we joined Josh on the outside of Ilya’s illusion to admire his handiwork. His camouflage worked masterfully. Once we had crossed out of the campsite and looked back to where we knew the tents were standing, a wall of rock defied us with texture and color capable of fooling any onlooker. A gentle slope connected the wall to the hillside behind, perfectly enclosing our camp. Exactly like Sombrio Beach, passing through the illusion felt like a thick grey fog.
“How much scrutiny can this illusion withstand?” said Jonah.
“As long as nothing comes sniffing around this exact spot during the night, we’ll be safe until sunrise,” said Ilya.
“What about our heat signatures? It’s entirely possible Ivan has acquired a drone or two since I worked for him,” said Josh.
“I honestly don’t know if a drone can see through one of my illusions. I ran from the lab before they could test me with all that tech,” said Ilya.
“Do you have to stay awake all night?” asked Cole.
“Not awake, I just have to stay here. And alive. If something snuffs me out during the night, you’ll lose the wall,” said Ilya.
“If something gets at you here in our campsite, your wall is going to be the least of our problems,” said Cole.
“I hate to be the one to bring this up, but we should bury Nellie and Bruno. I’m sure this isn’t where they wanted to be laid to rest, but we can’t carry them with us when we go back,” said Jonah.
“I’ll do it,” I said. Faith and Cole looked at me with furrowed brows. I tapped my temple and they understood.
I took a deep breath and approached the wall at the back of our campsite. I visualized giant hands scooping into the earth, effortlessly lifting huge handfuls of dirt up into the air. And it happened. A long
SCRUUUSSHH
preceded a mound of dirt dislodging from the ground and floating up. I concentrated harder, willing the floating earth off to the side of the hole. I repeated the process with another hole and dirt pile, a mirror of the first so Nellie and Bruno would be next to each other at rest. I took a step backward.
Guilt surged in my belly. I had once believed in heaven and life after death, but that time was in the clear-cut black and white years of my childhood. Even if I had not spent the last year confronted by a world of underground fringe science, my beliefs had already been muddled by the exponential growth of human knowledge. How could I continue to ‘believe’ while humanity probed out into a universe no longer compatible with traditional spirituality? But I
wanted
to believe. I wanted to believe in something so badly.
Where were Nellie and Bruno now? Where were my mother and Darryl? Would I ever have contact with them again in any form? Once I died too, would I or could I care? Why had I seen my mother in my ‘happy place’, whatever that place meant, along with Gemma, who still lived? It had to be more than my imagination or my visions wouldn’t be true and I would be sitting in a locked room staring out at a treed yard through barred windows.
I looked up and my eyes focused on the stars popping out and twinkling on the plain of flat black. I felt small. And feeling small felt right. I would have to make peace with knowing nothing about the fate of my friends and family who had died. I turned to see that Josh and Cole had retrieved Bruno and Nellie respectively from the Jeep’s storage. I stepped aside.
“We should say something, before we cover them. And mark their graves. It seems like the right thing to do,” I said.
“It’s only the right thing because everyone else does it.” Cole gently placed Nellie in a grave and retreated. Josh did the same with Bruno’s body.
“You don’t think they deserve a remembrance of some sort?” said Jonah.
“Of course they do. It doesn’t make it better though,” said Cole.
“Avenging them is all we can offer,” said Josh.
“In the beginning I wanted to put Ivan out of business. Now I’m going to take him out,” said Faith darkly.
“You knew Nellie best,” I said to Faith. “Let’s start there.”
Faith looked around at each of us, at a loss for words. She looked down at Nellie’s face.
“I knew Nellie because we were both hackers. She came from a bad scene. When she was a kid, her mom worked three jobs and her dad wasn’t in the picture. I don’t know if there were other variants in her family. Maybe Nellie didn’t know either. She was quiet and kept her variation a secret, until Rubin found her. I mostly knew her online. I only ever met her in person once when she came to Victoria. A couple of years ago, Ivan had a meet-and-greet type social for all of us research and office types to meet all his contractors and freelancers. Nellie wasn’t good with people. I was still new to Innoviro, but I talked to her and tried to make her feel like she belonged. We emailed back and forth a bit when she went back to Portland, but I honestly never thought I’d see her again. It wasn’t until we hit the road leaving Vancouver for San Francisco that I remembered her. She was smart and she cared about making the world a better place,” said Faith.
We all stood silently, listening for more.
“I wish I could say something about Bruno. I only knew of him until a couple of weeks ago,” said Faith.
“I’ll speak for Bruno,” said Josh. “He was a brave man. If I hadn’t known him for a moment before our last battle together, I would know the strength of his character. He took a mortal wound for the woman he loved. Dying for love is a good death, of all the things I’ve seen in my life,” said Josh.
We stood in silence under the weight of Josh’s words.
“Cover them up,” said Faith.
I wiped the tear streaks from my cheeks and concentrated on telekinetically nudging the dirt quickly back over my friends’ bodies. Cole and Josh patted down each of the mounds to make them neater and more secure. Cole ripped a slab of rock from the bedrock in the wall and slammed it into the ground at the head of Nellie’s grave. He did the same for Bruno. After she consulted her phone, Faith followed behind with a molten fingertip inscribing their full names and dates.
“We should get some sleep,” said Jonah.
“When do you want to go back to the farm?” I asked Josh.
“We’ll take tomorrow to rest and plan. Then we’ll go back after dark,” he answered.
“If we actually beat Ivan and derail everything he’s doing, no one will ever know,” said Cole. “We’ll have done all of
this
for all of
them
,” he pointed at the graves and made a sweeping gesture at the distant hills, “and nobody will say as much as ‘thank you’ to any of us.”
“Is that why we’re doing this?” said Ilya.
“It’s the right thing to do,” I said.
“We all know that. It’s hard to stay focused when you lose good men,” said Josh.
“And women,” said Faith.
Josh nodded.
Jonah drew moisture from the air and doused our campfire. We all went to bed in silence.