Chimera (38 page)

“Okay, then,” Chapel said. “Why don't you sit down,
and tell me a story.”

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW
YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:25

It took a while for Samuel to get started.
Chapel had to prod him, ask leading questions, and finally take him all the way
back to when Malcolm escaped, back when they were still just children. Once
Samuel got started, though, he seemed to almost fall into a trance. The words he
spoke sounded like an oft-repeated history lesson, a text he'd memorized.

“When the fence was closed, when they took the gate
away, things changed,” he said, looking into the middle distance. “They brought
Malcolm back to us. Many were jealous of him, and angry. They said it was his
fault the fence was closed. They said because of him, we would never leave
here.

“Many of them wanted to kill him. They thought that
would make it easier to bear. Ian said no. Ian had many friends, even then,
though no one thought of him as their leader. Not yet. Ian said he would talk to
the humans. He would talk to Miss P and she would get us out. She would free
us.

“He went so many times to her platform. He begged
her for help, for forgiveness. He spoke with the doctors, too. He listened when
they spoke to him through their megaphones and he shouted back, he shouted back
all kinds of promises.

“The rest of us were close by, hiding in the trees.
We listened to the things he said. He had an idea, a vision he called it, of
what we could become. Not everyone agreed with it. When he couldn't make the
humans change their minds, some of them decided it was his fault. Ian's. After
all, he had come up with the idea, the plan, that let Malcolm get away.

“Some of them, they tried to kill Ian on their own.
They challenged him or ambushed him in the trees, or tried to steal his food and
starve him. He beat everyone who came for him. He killed them if he had to. So
his enemies, they got smart, and they joined together. They made the first
gang.

“That was called the Blame War. It was our first
war. It was bloody and many died. The worst was the Battle of the High Oaks. Ian
had retreated to a place on a hill, northwest of here. Malcolm was with him and
swore oaths to him. Quinn was with him, too, Quinn who was always the
strongest.

“The gang came for them on a rainy night. Nobody
could see. The gang was led by Franklin, who was almost smart as Ian, and almost
strong as Quinn. But not enough of either. Quinn was the great hero then and
killed many. But in the morning, Ian was our leader. He told us what to do.”

Chapel's eyes went wide listening to the story. It
was amazing to him—this little world had its own history, its heroes and its
villains. Walled away from the world, the chimeras had created their own
struggles, their own nations.

“He had a way for us to live,” Samuel went on. “A
way to survive. We would each go and make our own place, our own house, as far
away from each other as we could stand. We would come together only when the
food was thrown over the fence, and then only to share it out. It was too
dangerous for us to be together.

“It worked, for a while. Winters were hard. It gets
so cold here, and the snow is so deep, and it's hard to stay warm. Some of us
made new gangs and slept all in a house together, even though Ian said not to.
Some of the gangs thought Ian was no good, and they wanted a new leader. There
were more wars then. But Ian always won. When they challenged him, he fought
back, though always he tried not to kill. Already there were so few of us left.
He said the humans wanted us to kill each other off. To destroy each other, so
they wouldn't have to think about us anymore.”

Julia shot Chapel a glance, and he knew what she
was thinking. From the sound of it, and what Ellie had told them, that probably
wasn't too far from the truth.

“Ian said we couldn't give the humans what they
wanted. Too long, we'd tried to be good boys. We did what Miss P and the doctors
told us. We listened when the guards talked. Ian said they'd turned their backs
on us, and now we had a duty to be better on our own. A duty to live.

“Still, we were chimeras. And that meant we fought.
Chimeras always fight. So Ian made new rules. He made rules about how fights
could go, and what you could and couldn't do. No weapons. No killing someone who
was already unconscious. No killing a chimera who couldn't fight back—that rule
was about me,” Samuel said, looking glum. “He had to make that rule so I could
live.”

He shook his head and went on. “Most times, we
followed his rules, and we lived. Nobody died for many years. We ate what was
thrown over the fence. We lived in our own little houses in the woods. We stayed
apart. Sometimes, one of us would steal food or take something from another's
house. Then we had to come together. The two chimeras who disagreed, the one who
claimed he'd been stolen from and the one he said did it, they would fight. Only
with fists, that was the rule. And then Ian would say who won, and it was the
one who followed his rules better. We would stand in a circle, with the fighters
in the middle, and the one who broke a rule first we would grab and pull away
and beat until he was unconscious, and that was that.

“It worked. For years it worked. Until they made
the last gangs.

“Alan was the leader of one gang. Him and his
three, they said they were done. That Ian wasn't a doctor, and he wasn't like
Miss P, and they didn't have to do what he said. It started because there was
less food; there were times, whole weeks, when no food came over the fence. What
did come, Ian split up among us all, but Alan said no. He said only the strong
should have food. He said I should be left to starve. Ian challenged him to come
to the ring, to send the best man of his gang to stand in the circle and fight
it out with Ian's best man, but Alan said that was stupid. Ian had Quinn, who
could beat anybody in the ring. Alan took a bunch of food that wasn't his and
said it belonged to his gang, and they were going to go live out by the pond,
and if Ian wanted the food back, he could come and get it.

“Ian went alone, just to talk. He said, if Alan and
his whole gang would come here, to the church, he would give them a bunch of
stuff he'd been hiding. He said he had a radio and some books and a lot of
medicine, and he would share it. It was a lie, but they didn't know that.

“Ian waited for them here. He was waiting with
Quinn, and Brody, and Malcolm, and Stephen, and with Harrison. They waited here
in the church and they had knives they made from broken windows. Alan and his
gang came, all four of them, and when they weren't looking, Ian and his gang cut
them and killed them.”

Chapel gasped. “The four in the schoolhouse,” he
said. “The bodies hanging on the blackboard—”

“That's them,” Samuel agreed. “He put them there
and told me he did it for me. So I could eat and not starve. I keep the animals
away from those bodies and make sure they don't fall down.”

“The words next to them,” Chapel said. “It says ‘we
did this together.' ”

“Sure,” Samuel said. “Ian wrote that. Him and his
gang, they broke the rules, they used weapons when they did it. They broke Ian's
own rules. But he said that was all right because they did it together. If they
worked together instead of against each other, then the rules didn't apply.”

Sharing the guilt,
Chapel thought. Ian didn't want them to turn on him so he'd made sure they were
all implicated.

“This can't have been that long ago,” Julia said.
“Those bodies weren't that old.”

Samuel nodded. “This was just last fall, when the
leaves were red. Just before the Voice came.”

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW
YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:59

“Some of them, some of Ian's gang, they
thought the Voice was a sign. They said the doctors had been waiting and
watching, that they had wanted us to prove ourselves. That we'd passed some
test, and that's why the Voice came. Some of us just thought it was because
there were so few left. The Voice needed us and wanted to reach us before we
were all gone. All dead.” Samuel shook his head. “I don't know. I just know when
it came, it changed things. It changed everything.”

“How did the Voice come, Samuel?” Julia asked.
“Where did it come from?”

“From heaven,” he told her.

“It came down from the sky,” he went on, when she
wrinkled her nose in distaste. “You can call it what you want. It came on a
parachute, a little parachute that got caught in a tree near here. It came down
and it was talking already, even before we found it. It was saying the same
thing, over and over. It said ‘Press the green button.' It said that for hours
while Ian and his gang, they stared at it, wondering if it was a trick,
wondering what would happen. Quinn thought if he pressed the green button, they
would all die. Brody thought it would make more food come. There was hardly any
food then, and there's been none since, so I guess Brody was wrong.

“In the end it was Ian who pressed the green
button. Who made the Voice come.

“It spoke to them all by name. It knew who they
were, and it said it would give them the thing they wanted most. It would make
them free. For most of a day it talked, making promises, telling them how strong
they were, and how smart. How they were better than humans. Ian spoke back to
it, and it answered him. He asked what the Voice wanted in exchange for freeing
them. And it told them.

“Eight humans had to die. That was all. Eight
humans and then they would be free forever. It would even help them do it. At
first Ian thought it had to be a trick. Miss P and the doctors always said if we
killed humans we would be punished. How could that be wrong back then, back when
Miss P said it, but right now, when she was gone? But the Voice kept
talking.

“It said the eight humans were people Ian and his
gang wanted to kill anyway. It said they had to kill Jeremy Funt, who caught
Malcolm when he ran away. It said they had to kill the doctors and Miss P for
abandoning us. There were other names, too, names I didn't know.”

“Christina Smollett,” Chapel said. “Olivia Nguyen.
Marcia Kennedy.”

Samuel bobbed up and down in surprise and
excitement. “Yes! I don't know who those are. The Voice said they were
responsible for us being here, for us being locked up. It said they deserved to
die like the rest.”

“What about Franklin Hayes?” Chapel asked. “You
must know that name.”

Samuel shook his head in the negative. “No. I don't
know him. But the Voice said he was the worst of all, the one who deserved to
die the most. It said Quinn had to kill him. The others could choose who they
went after, but Quinn had to kill Franklin Hayes. The Voice told them it would
help them, it would show them where these humans lived, and make it easy. And
then they would be free.”

Chapel frowned. He'd hoped that Samuel would have
heard something more useful. He'd hoped the Voice might have told them its own
name, or why the mentally ill women were on the kill list, or something. But he
supposed that had been too much to wish for.

“The Voice told them the fence would come down.
They might have to fight a little to get out, but they were chimeras and that
shouldn't worry them. It told them it would always be with them, as long as they
did what it asked, and it would help them.

“And they listened. They listened, and they did
what it said.

“Except—Ian wouldn't kill me. He disobeyed the
Voice in that,” Samuel said, and he sounded confused. He sounded like he
couldn't understand why he was still alive.

“They left you here all alone,” Julia said. “Ian
left you here.”

Samuel shook his head violently. “No, he—he said he
would come back for me. He said I would be okay!”

“It's all right,” Julia soothed. “It's okay. You're
going to be fine, now. We'll take care of you.”

We will?
Chapel
thought. Didn't she hear what Samuel had said, what he'd told her about wars and
gangs and constant bloodshed? Samuel might have a childlike mind and a naiveté
born of isolation but he was still a killer. He was still a chimera.

“Isn't that right, Chapel? We'll take him with us,
make sure he's okay?” she asked.

Chapel looked up, realizing suddenly that he'd been
lost in thought. “We'll figure something out,” he said.

“No,” Samuel told them. “No, I'm fine here.”

“Oh, sweetie, no,” Julia told him. “I can already
tell you're half starved to death, and it's too cold here to—”

“I said I'm fine! I'm staying!” Samuel shrieked. He
jumped up and loomed over Julia like he was about to attack her.

It had come out of nowhere. Chapel should have
expected it, though—he knew what the chimeras were like. They were implacable
killing machines. He raised his pistol to point right at Samuel's face—

—but before he could fire, Samuel had smacked the
flashlight out of Julia's hand and dashed into the shadows. Chapel tried to
track him, sure he would flank them and attack where they weren't expecting him.
He swung around wildly, pointing his weapon into every corner of the room,
trying to cover all angles while Julia groped around on the floor for the
light.

By the time she had it, Samuel was gone.

He'd simply vanished without a trace.

“It's broken,” Julia said.

Chapel turned to look at her. She was holding up
the flashlight and flicking its switch back and forth. “It's broken,” she said
again.

Chapel wondered how they would find their way back
to the gap in the fence without it—but then he realized he could see her face,
even in the darkened church. A little pink light lit up her cheek. It made him
think of the sunset on Stone Mountain, the day they'd made love.