Epitaph Road (25 page)

I leaped over the side, caught an aft line from Tia, and half-hitched it to a dock cleat. Tia, then Dad, followed me over. “The men?” I asked her. “They're all dead?”

“A few took off for the hills once they figured out what was happening. They haven't returned. All the rest are dead, my man included.”

“Sorry,” we said in unison.

Glassy-eyed, the woman shrugged. “Never should've come here. People said it wasn't safe.”

“You buried them already?” I asked, wondering about traces of the Bear still hanging around. I pictured the mass grave at Epitaph Road, even though I estimated the entire population of Brighter Day to be less than a thousand. Much less now. Dad handed me the nozzle end of a fueling hose. I stuck it in
Mr. Lucky
's filler pipe and started the flow.

“Cremated,” she said, and Tia's hand went to her mouth. The breeze picked up. From
Mr. Lucky
's hold, overwhelming the smell of diesel, came the stench of rotting salmon. As soon as we'd gotten on board we'd dumped the carcasses and cleaned up as best we could, but the stink hung on.

“Is that the smoke?” Tia murmured, nodding toward the distant plume.

The woman nodded. “The co-op. Old wood. Good for burning. We moved all the stores out, all the bodies in. Then we torched it. If you need food or anything, some women are rationing out supplies near the marina entrance. They'll be surprised to see you, but they'll be generous. Everyone's leaving, heading back to so-called civilization, so there's no reason to be stingy. The stuff wasn't exactly ours anyway.”

“You're going to Seattle?” Dad said.

“Soon.”

“In that?” I said, gesturing toward her boat.

“It floats,” she said. “It runs.”

“Anyone else leaving soon?” Dad said.

“A couple of other boats.”

“Same shape as yours?”

“About.”

“We'll join you,” Dad said. “Just to make sure everyone arrives safely.”

The woman gave Dad a look, as if she wasn't quite sure about the idea or him. “That okay?” Dad said.

“It's fine,” she said. “It's good.”

“Elisha's Bear,” Tia said. “When did it hit?”

“Going on three weeks, probably. A day, or maybe two days, after all those cops showed up in town. And the other two.”

“You see planes?” Dad asked. “Helicopters?”

She shook her head. “Thought we heard some. Didn't see any.”

“Other two?”
I said. “What other two?”

“City women, nosing around, acting like they were interested in being here. I think they were just interested in slumming, looking down their noses at us.”

“What did they do?” Tia asked, and I got this empty feeling in my chest, recalling the junkyarddog items about women planting the deadly test versions of Elisha's Bear.

“Drove around, walked around, stopped at the co-op, ate at the café, went on a hike.”

“To where?” Dad said.

“Rainbow Falls.”

Dad shook his head. “More likely the reservoir. The trail passes right by Afterlight's water source. You were drinking it. Showering in it.”

“What?”
the woman said.

“We'll tell you,” Dad said. “Let's all go take a look at those supplies.”

As our small raggedy fleet approached the marina, the setting sun broke through the clouds and lit up the glass faces of downtown Seattle's tall buildings. I couldn't tell if they looked friendly or menacing. What kind of welcome would Tia and I get? And what had happened here? Had Elisha slipped past the quarantine?

But as we nudged against the dock we saw men, looking healthy and unconcerned.

“Do you think they know anything, Kelly?” Tia said.

“If they don't,” I said, looking around at the other boats tying up around us, “they will soon enough.”

Dad had to make arrangements for moorage space, and he wasn't ready to take on the city or Mom, anyway, so he gave us money for cab fare and turned us loose. We promised to find him at the marina by the next afternoon.

My e-spond and Tia's were history, destroyed and discarded during our adventure, but we could have borrowed someone else's phone to call my mother — a stomach-turning idea — or hers. We didn't. We decided our first hellos should be face-to-face.

So we climbed into the backseat of the cab without preliminaries. We would show up at our house unannounced, carrying nothing but Dr. Nuyen's battered backpack and its contents — the scary metal containers, the data storage chips. We had to do this, I knew, but my heart pounded. And as Tia pressed up against me, practically pinning me to the door, I swore I could hear hers pounding, too.

According to the clock on Mom's desk, it was past midnight. Tia and I were alone again, sitting close together on the couch, waiting for the start of the debriefing or inquisition or whatever it was that Rebecca Mack had in mind when she'd ordered us kept under wraps until she could fly in from San Diego.

I couldn't help picturing her on a broom.

We'd struggled past a tearful reunion with our mothers and a wrenching encounter with Sunday's. Then it was long showers, fresh clothes, and leftovers, all with Mom lurking around like a library cop. Finally, she dumped us in her office to watch over Dr. Nuyen's precious backpack, which Mom had rushed in here earlier, even before the tears dried.

Just for the record, none of those tears came from my eyes. Nothing about our homecoming felt especially warm and fuzzy to me. By now I mostly understood Mom's role in all of this, and seeing her again was way more bitter than sweet. The thought of living with her in this house — even for a short time — made me long for cedar boughs and damp ground and a cold-water lake.

“What are they going to do to us, Kelly?” Tia said. The fresh concern in her voice — fueled by the surroundings, no doubt — put an edge on the familiar question. We'd had weeks to talk over what we would face when we got back, but our fears were still there, ready to ignite. How could they not be, with images of Sunday and Dr. Nuyen and Gunny and smoke rising over Afterlight constantly replaying through our heads?

“I think they need to worry about what
we're
going to do to
them
,” I said. We'd had time to talk about that, too, although so far our plans were sketchy.

She barely nodded, maybe not even a little reassured by my brave words.

“Someone has to do something,” I said. “And the someone's us. We can't chicken out just because we're within PAC's reach again.”

“I'm
not
chickening out,” she said. “I just can't pretend I'm not worried about what could happen…afterward.”

“I'm worried, too,” I said, “so I'm trying to concentrate on what Rebecca Mack and her buddies caused. What they set in motion.”

“What they did to the people we loved,” Tia said, sitting up a little straighter. “And everyone who loved them.”

“Exactly,” I said. After seeing how Sunday's death had affected her family, I was more determined than ever not to let this just fade away.

We'd barely gotten into the house that evening when we attracted a crowd, including Sunday's mom. For days and days we'd worried about how we would tell her, but we didn't have to say a thing, at the start anyway. She could count to two. She could subtract two from three. Her face told us she knew who'd survived, who hadn't.

One night in the mountains we'd woken up to the chilling cries of a wild animal — a big cat of some kind, we guessed — drifting across the water. Sunday's mom came close to duplicating that mournful sound once we began answering her questions about Sunday's death, even though we left out or altered or sugarcoated the most horrific and revealing and unspeakable of the details.

An explosion, was what we told her. A cave-in. We didn't know the cause. We were outside. Sunday was inside, asleep.

Nothing about the second bear. Not to Sunday's mom or anyone. We'd save that piece of the story for later.

Tia's mom was a mess — overjoyed to see her daughter, crushed by the absence of her niece. The sisters were off somewhere together now, propping each other up.

The door opened. The old lady walked in, followed by my mother, who barely looked my way. After our first long embrace — too long for me — she'd kept her distance. My hostility must have been showing through.

Mom found a chair against the opposite wall; Rebecca Mack took the one at the desk in the center of the room, the center of attention. Fittingly, her perch was higher than the rest. She could look down on us.

“Is that the Formula V material?” she said, eyeing Dr. Nuyen's beat-up backpack. So far she hadn't even said hello, but it didn't bother me. I decided to let Mom answer the question.

“All there, as far as I can tell,” she said.

I didn't like the insinuation, like we might have lost something. “Everything Dr. Nuyen
had
in the backpack
is still in
the backpack,” I said.

“You and I will take it to San Diego first thing in the morning,” Rebecca Mack said to Mom, ignoring me. The old lady's thin hand crept up to her thin neck. She stroked her skim-milk skin. On her third finger was a big blue-green stone. Bones and turquoise.

“I'll call the lab when we're done here,” Mom said. “Let them know to expect us.”

So far they'd acted like they were the only people in the room, but finally Rebecca Mack turned to Tia and me. For an uncomfortable few seconds it was a stare-down. “You're both heroes, no doubt,” Rebecca Mack offered half begrudgingly, breaking the silence. “You've been instrumental in keeping the world on the right course.”

She didn't have an inkling of
how
instrumental, not yet. But I didn't feel like a hero. I didn't want to be one, especially with the recognition coming from her. “Isn't it kind of lame that you had to rely on a couple of kids to get the world out of a jam?” I said. “And that one of them was a
guy
? Your plan mostly sucked.”

“As Dr. Mack just told you, Kellen,” Mom said, “we're grateful for everything you and Septiembre did.” Her tired pale face was taking on a little color.

“We don't want your gratitude,
Mother.
Your boss here had an excuse or two for what she did. What she's still doing. What's yours? Did you know what PAC was all about when you joined up? Did you ever think about leaving?” I got up. Before I knew it I was standing over her, watching her shrink back against the wall. “Did you ever think
I've got a son? How can I do this? How can I do this to my son's father, someone I supposedly loved?

“And her name's
Tia.
”

Mom managed to close her mouth long enough to start a sentence. “Your father wasn't a target.”

“Wasn't he?” I said.

“Kellen
heard
you,” Tia said.

“Heard —” Mom began.

“That's right,” I said. “In your room. You and Aunt Paige and then Mack the Knife here.” I glanced at Rebecca Mack, wondering how she liked her nickname. She looked unruffled and half amused. “Plotting. Scheming. Ignoring Aunt Paige begging you to warn Dad or let her do it. You were perfectly okay with letting him die.”

“I wasn't
okay
with it.”

“You
were
! You're a cold-blooded killer, no better than the bad guys you've slaughtered. What about
me
? Would you kill me, too?”

“Your mother was moving you out of harm's way,” the old lady said.

“I wasn't talking to you,” I said. “Anyway, that was
this
time. What about
next
? If I'm in the way, is it just tough shit? What about all the innocent people who died during this little massacre?”

“The stakes were too high,” Mom said. Her voice was barely audible.

“Were they?” I said. “You don't have a clue.”

“We could have been better prepared,” the old lady admitted.

“Better prepared?” Tia said. “You don't know the half of it.”

“Really,” Dr. Mack said. Smug. The world's biggest know-it-all.