Madelyn checked their speed again. She studied the rearview mirror. Even thinking about Elijah’s story made her feel like they were being chased. Maybe they were.
“I kept saying we should wait an hour, climb back up, and then run. We could even take some of the deer steaks with us so the endeavor wouldn’t be completely wasted. My brother wouldn’t hear it. I think he cared more about adventure than survival.”
Elijah fell silent.
Madelyn and Elijah drove in silence for a kilometer or so.
“So he jumped?” she asked.
“Yes. He didn’t even take any of the meat with him. We risked our lives to go after that buck, got pinned down by the Hunters, and then he didn’t even get to try a single mouthful of the meat. It was tough and gamey anyway. Saul started well. The sail unfurled and he whooped as the updraft gave him elevation. He did one big turn and I could see the smile on his face. He lost control right after that. I saw him spinning towards the ground. When he disappeared around the side of the mountain, I didn’t even want to watch. The power units on those sails weren’t rated for impact. The ground shook with the explosion.”
“You didn’t see him crash?” Madelyn asked. She was looking for the twist ending, like this was a movie. She imagined Saul dropping a grenade at the last second so he could distract the Roamers. She imagined him surviving and the two brothers eventually reunited as the credits rolled.
“No, I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear a thing a few seconds later. His crash drew them all away and I was able to climb back up to safety. I spent the next three weeks hiking around in a big circle so I could safely reach his crash site. The spot was nearly inaccessible. Impaled on a tree, my brother’s body refused to die. His arms were shattered. He couldn’t find a way to take his own life. His eyes begged me to do it for him.”
“Oh, no,” Madelyn said. She shook her head. Elijah’s reality had replaced the happy ending that she had imagined. “How was he still alive?”
“I wrapped him up with everything we had. I thought that if I could stabilize him, I could get him down from the tree and carry him to safety. I suppose I had forgotten how difficult it had been to climb to his position. I had to squeeze through a crack to get up there. Getting an injured guy down wasn’t even an option.”
“How was he alive?” Madelyn asked again. She wanted Elijah to give an explanation before her brain filled in its own answer.
“My packs healed him enough so that he regained full consciousness and was able to scream. That’s what he did. He started to scream for mercy. The painkillers I infused didn’t even touch the agony. He screamed until I knew that he was putting us both at risk. I had to do something to shut him up.”
“Elijah,” Madelyn said. The man was lost in the memory. She jerked the wheel to keep them on the road.
“Elijah!” she yelled.
He was smiling and wiping away his falling tears.
“What?”
“Your brother was an Optioner?”
He didn’t answer.
“That’s why he was so bold and jumped off the cliff? He was an Optioner and didn’t believe that he could die, right?”
“He did die,” Elijah said. “He died when I cut out his beating heart. It takes a long time. His cells found other ways to oxygenate themselves. I saw his muscles contracting in strange ways so they could force circulation. It was amazing and horrifying at the same time. I looked him in the eyes while his body tried to compensate for the loss. Even with the terrible hole in his chest, he barely bled. His body held on to the blood as it struggled to live.”
“You knew that your brother took the Regeneration Option?” Madelyn asked. “You knew and you stayed with him?”
“He was my brother.”
They drove in silence.
# # # # #
She pulled to a stop in the middle of Circle Poke and then turned the wheel. She parked the truck where Jacob had found it, hidden next to the barn. Madelyn got out and dragged her pack from the back of the truck. Now that she was so close to her objective, there was too much stuff in it. She pulled water bottles from the pack and tossed them in the back of the truck.
“What’s the plan?” Elijah asked.
She didn’t even look at him. None of her plans included spending time with a relative of an Optioner. Elijah might as well have said that his brother was a rapist serial killer. Elijah’s brother had been part of the global conspiracy that had nearly extinguished human life on the planet. And, apparently, Elijah was just fine with that. Madelyn couldn’t imagine a more disgusting thought.
“Madelyn, I’m here to help you. You want to ignore me while I just follow behind, or do you want me to be a part of this effort?”
She ignored him. With her pack lightened, she turned for the trail that led around her cabin. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see the place—she did—but she had two reasons to take the other path. First, Harper would be more likely to take that path. Madelyn might find some sign of the young woman. Second, she didn’t want Elijah to see her home. The cabin was private, and she didn’t intend to share the existence of it with a relative of an Optioner. Back in Detroit, relatives of Optioners had been strung up by their necks until their dancing feet stopped moving.
She struck off at a decent pace into the woods.
Elijah fell in behind her.
He hit the middle of her pack with enough force to knock her off her feet. With his arms wrapped around her, they tumbled off the path into the brush and rolled to a stop. Before she could hurl a string of obscenities at him, he put his hand over her mouth. Madelyn was quick enough to understand in time.
Elijah was on top of her and the branches of the juniper bush blocked her vision. She saw a dark shape overhead and then heard snapping branches and groaning trunks as the thing bent the trees to either side. Soon the whole sky was blocked out by whatever it was. From what she could see, it looked like an enormous face that was a cross between a goat and a man. She saw human eyes and then the snout of an animal. The size of the thing was unfathomable. It instantly brought to mind her grandmother. She had always joked about how the devil would come as a giant goat man when the world was going to end.
It sniffed the air. When it exhaled, Madelyn smelled the rotten breath of the thing.
Gradually, the head withdrew.
She stayed there, frozen in Elijah’s embrace for several minutes. He climbed off of her and held out a hand to help her up.
She took it without thinking and rose to her feet. Madelyn stared up at the sky. Elijah brushed the leaves from her shirt and hair.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
Elijah looked up and then shook his head.
“I think we just found out what scared Gabriel.”
Madelyn put up her hand to silence him. For a second, she thought she heard something moving through the forest. It was nothing. She spun every direction, looking for a sign of the thing. Both the approach and retreat of the giant were undetectable.
She looked back to Elijah and raised her hands. She was afraid to speak again.
He broke the silence.
“We better get someplace safe,” he said.
Madelyn blinked and looked down, biting the inside of her cheek and trying to think of what to do. What was safe with a thing like that out there? What did it want? Something that big could stomp the truck into a pancake. It could rip the roof off of her grandmother’s cabin. How could she hope to hide?
“Madelyn,” Elijah said. He took her arm.
She let him lead down the path. He was pretty good at picking out the tiny clues that indicated the way. Once or twice she pointed when he slowed down. Some of the sections of the trail had to be taken on faith.
Elijah stopped when they got to the spot where the ground fell away and their path crossed through the dry marsh. He scanned the horizon, looking for danger. Madelyn looked at the woods behind them. The trees could have been hiding anything.
??
?How much farther?” he asked.
“About half a day at this pace,” she said. “Assuming he hasn’t destroyed the camps over there?”
“He?” Elijah asked.
Madelyn turned at a sound. It was probably just a bird, but her nerves were on edge. She wanted to keep moving. After scrambling down the bank, Madelyn continued at a fast walk through the tall grass. She locked in on a distant tree to make sure that she kept a consistent heading. It was easy to veer off course in the grass. She heard Elijah moving behind her until he got the hang of putting his feet in the right places. The grass grew in firm clumps. The dry grass rustled whenever his steps missed them.
They didn’t slow down until the other side of the field.
Madelyn hunched down to catch her breath. She wanted to climb the rocky hillside instead of circling through the woods. The hill would leave them exposed for a good twenty minutes, but it would cut off a good portion of the trip.
“I’m not going to slow down until we get to the top. Watch your step. You twist an ankle and I’m leaving you behind,” she said to Elijah. He nodded.
He didn’t have any trouble matching her pace. Elijah seemed perfectly at home on the rocks. She thought about his time in the mountains and nodded to herself. Once they reached the top, it was a relief to be back on flat ground. Madelyn took off at a jog to burn off her anxious energy. They were far from the truck and moving farther away from her grandmother’s cabin with every stride. Madelyn was starting to feel like she no longer had a home.
“Slow down,” Elijah said as he pulled up next to her.
She turned. “If you can’t keep up then stay here.” It was an absurd thing to say. Staying there wouldn’t do Elijah any good.
“I can keep up, but you’re not going to be use to anyone if you’re exhausted. Save some of your energy in case we have to run from something.”
She refused to slow down. “We’re running from something now.”
Elijah didn’t respond. His words got into her head and made her doubt her own stamina. She hated him for that. When they finally climbed through the leaves and broke into to the clearing, she could hardly catch her breath.
He gasped at the sight of the lake. She could admit that it was pretty from that side, but Madelyn wasn’t impressed. It was just something they had to circle around to get to the camp where Gabriel and Harper had last stayed. While she let her heart rate decrease, she squinted at the camp and looked for signs of life.
“It’s one of those?” Elijah asked, gesturing at the buildings.
She pointed out the exact one. He started down the shore. Madelyn looked to the sky. The carpet of gray clouds were moving fast. It almost looked like a quilt of smoke overhead. Just above the clouds, shrouded by the mist, she saw darting shapes, moving like giant dragonflies. She followed Elijah at a distance.
# # # # #
“Intrusion detected,” the kitchen said.
“Greetings,” Madelyn said. Elijah said the word at the same time. She looked over at him.
“Unwelcome intrusion,” the kitchen said. The windows began to dim.
“Greetings,” Madelyn repeated. She held up a hand to silence Elijah. The kitchen clearly didn’t like him.
“We request evacuation of unwelcome intruders,” the kitchen said. “Our environment will be rendered uninhabitable until the unwelcome intruders comply.”
Elijah grabbed her elbow and pulled her towards the door. A white gas began to spill from a vent on the wall. It pooled and then spread across the floor.
“Mode?” Madelyn asked.
“We request evacuation.”
“We have to go,” Elijah said.
“It’s just a bluff. It’s probably just harmless fog. They wouldn’t put lethal measures in a vacation home. The builders would have had their pants sued off.”
He still pulled at her arm. “You want to take that chance? She’s not here. Let’s go.”
Still, Madelyn resisted. She didn’t like the idea of being turned away by a house, especially one that she had been in before.
“Last occupancy?” Madelyn asked.
“We request evacuation.”
She pulled her arm away from Elijah. “Let go of me.”
He frowned at her and folded his arms.
“Turn off that smoke,” Madelyn said to the kitchen. “I will burn this damn place to the ground if you don’t turn it off.”
“We request evacuation.”
“We deny your request. Who was here last? Your mode was hospitality the last time I was here. Who changed your mode?”
The kitchen was silent. Madelyn looked to the vent. The white gas had stopped coming out.
“Hello?” Madelyn asked. She remembered the protocol. “Greetings.”
“We request evacuation of…” the kitchen began.
“We deny your request. Greetings.”
“Welcome,” the kitchen said. Despite the message, the voice was cold.
“Where’s Harper?” Madelyn asked. “Locate young woman who was staying here recently.”
The kitchen paused before it responded. “That information requires justification.”
“Gabriel sent us to locate Harper—the young woman who was staying here,” Madelyn said.
This time, the response was immediate. “Information is available on lower display.”
“Come on,” Madelyn said. She pulled on Elijah’s shirt and headed for the stairs.
# # # # #
They stared at the screen.
“Zoom out,” Madelyn said.
The screen didn’t respond.
“Like this,” Elijah said. He reached forward and gestured at the screen. The map zoomed out and showed them an overhead view of the lake, the camp, and the ridge line.
“A little more,” Madelyn said.
They saw the creek at the edge of the display. She turned her head so she could match the map to the one in her head. Elijah made another gesture and the display turned around. Madelyn nodded. She had her bearings.
“So where is she?” Elijah asked.
Madelyn pointed. The green marker was subtle on the view of the terrain.
“Turn off vegetation,” she said.
Elijah reached for the control, but this time the house did her bidding. They saw a shaded relief map in tan and gray. The green marker was obvious on that view. It was sitting, unmoving, on the hill to the south of the lake.
“I wonder if she’s alive,” Elijah said.
Madelyn looked at him.
“Has to be,” she said. “The marker would be red otherwise. Haven’t you used one of these scanners before?”
“No. Maybe.”
“Zoom out more,” Madelyn said. “Let’s see where the truck is.”
Elijah started to zoom, but jerked his hand back at what the display revealed. To the south and west, from the direction they had come, a big blue mass was hovering over the terrain. Madelyn cupped her chin and then moved her hand up over her mouth.
“Zoom out,” she ordered.
Elijah did it carefully, like the blob on the display could somehow sense them.
It looked like a cloud hovering over the map. The edge of it swirled and probed, like little fingers. Madelyn darted her eyes to the north and saw that the colors of the shape were more intense in one area. It happened to be the area where her cabin was located.
“We’ll have to go around the lake this way to avoid that thing. What do you think it is?” Elijah asked. He motioned to the east side of the lake.
Madelyn shook her head. “If we go that way, we’ll have to cross the ridge and hike down through the valley to come up the other side. It will take a long time. There’s a good chance that we were just under that blue shape. I’m not sure we need to consider it to be deadly or anything.”
“But what could it be?” Elijah said.
“I’m assuming it’s part of that giant goat man thing we saw near Circle Poke. It has to be.”
After a momen
t, she realized that Elijah was staring at her. He cocked his head.
“What?”
“Goat man?”
“Yes. The thing that put its head down through the trees and looked at us?”
He was still staring.
“You tackled me off the path and held me down until it left?”
“The bees?”
“What?” Madelyn asked.
“The cloud of bees. You think that the blue here is a representation of the swarm of bees? How could it be that big? There would have to be billions of them.”
Madelyn scratched her head and tried to think it through. The first and most obvious explanation was that Elijah had been hallucinating. Before she could say anything, she realized that it was just as likely that she was the one who had hallucinated.
“Maybe we should go the long way,” she said. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t find out which one of us is right.”
Elijah nodded.
Madelyn started to move for the stairs.
“Wait,” Elijah said. “You say she’s alive, but she’s not moving. Do you have healing wraps?”
“No. I gave the last big one to Oliver.” She thought for a second. “We’ll have to go back to the cabin.”
Elijah pointed his finger towards the ceiling. It took Madelyn a second before she understood.
“Greetings,” she said. “Do you have any large med-kits?”
“None available.”
Madelyn shrugged.
Elijah shook his head. “Greetings. Where are the med-kits? We will burn this damn place to the ground.”
The house paused, like it was contemplating whether or not he was serious.
“Med-kits are located in the closet under the staircase.”
He gave Madelyn a quick smile and then went to look.