Teen Frankenstein (39 page)

He opened the door, and misty rain sprayed my cheeks. “Get out,” he said.

“You're going to have to untie me.” I stared straight ahead, unmoving. “I'm not going to be much help if I have my hands tied together.”

Another spike of fear punctured my lungs when the buck knife slipped between my hands. There was a pop, and the ropes fell to the floorboard. I rubbed my wrists and moaned.

McCardle spat on the ground then took the gun from his waistband and flipped off the safety. “Well?”

I climbed out. The storm breeze flattened the shirt against my stomach. Even though the generators belonged to my dad, the woods felt like McCardle's territory.

“You move him.” McCardle wiped his nose on his sleeve and trained the gun's barrel at my heart.

“Me?”

He nodded with the barrel, a language that translated universally. I went round to the back of the truck. McCardle had rigged a crude wagon, where the casket lay on a plank of wood with four wheels and rope tied to it. I shuddered to think where else he'd taken his son.

He grabbed a lantern from the truck bed. The yellow glow cast a short path in front of us. I strained my weight against the rope, and together we entered the forest.

My back tightened against the weight of the coffin as I pulled it over uneven ground, stumbling every few steps. My eyes kept scanning the trees for signs of Adam. The soles of my shoes dug into the soft ground. Only spare raindrops fell through the canopy. Icy cold, they stung at my skin. The rustling of brittle leaves from above drowned out all sound.

Nearby, McCardle stalked through the woods, walking heel to toe like a predator. He swept the surrounding area with his gun. I was breathing hard now under the burden of the casket. A monstrous curiosity caused me to keep looking back, to study the body with the bulging eyes, which was only a shadow now sloshing over the forest floor.

Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the trees to their roots. I chewed on my cheek and continued our crawl forward. With every step, I expected to see Adam. Where was Adam? He'd saved me from Knox. He'd stayed close when he thought I was in danger. I needed him now more than ever.

We were getting closer now. McCardle stretched out his arm, the one with the lantern. “
Shhhh
, do you hear that?”

I strained my ears to listen. My pulse thudded. “No.”

We walked a few more yards, then I heard it. It sounded like crying. I felt the beat of my heart like a ticking time bomb in my chest.

“Someone's come to join us.” I didn't like how he said that. “Watch your step now,” he said. “Follow right after me.”

My ears rang. Or else what?

I heeded McCardle's advice. We snaked our way through the trees. He watched the ground closely. The crying grew louder.

I jumped at the sound of a metal clap behind the wheeled coffin. McCardle paused. He held his lantern high over his head. “Looks like you found one.” On the ground, the jaws of a bear trap had clamped shut after one of the wheels had passed over it.

McCardle lowered the light and continued on. I hurried to stay near.

“Hello?” I heard the quiet call of Meg's voice over the rustling branches. “Hello, is someone there? We need help.”

The rain poured harder over the foliage. More of it trickled onto the bare spots of my skin. My hands were freezing around the rope. We entered the empty clearing. The sobbing felt nearby now. I looked frantically around before I saw Meg's face, a few paces away on the outskirts of the clearing. It was twisted in agony. She sat on the ground next to a figure that was lying prostrate.

“Adam.” My voice was hoarse. “What's wrong with him? Adam?” I called.

“I don't know.” She wept. “I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He just gave up.”

McCardle's boots trampled the wet grass. Rain now soaked through our pants, our hair, our everything. Lightning streaked through darkness like a network of blood vessels. He held the lantern over the pair. Meg's hands were wrapped around her ankle. A trap bit through her foot. She rocked back and forth. Close by, another trap had caught Adam around the anklebone. He groaned but didn't move.

I stopped myself short of blurting out the obvious. Meg hadn't recharged him. Who knew how long it had been. Days? A week? My eyes darted to McCardle. I didn't want to volunteer any extra insight.

No
. That was all that was going through my head. No, and this couldn't be happening. There was no one here to save me. I was as good as alone.

“I need to help him,” I yelled over the storm.

He shook his head and looked up into the heavens. “Come on. They're not going anywhere.”

“Tor!” Meg screamed.

McCardle pointed the gun at me. I weighed my options. I wanted to run to Adam, but the gun was a convincing reason to stay.

“We need to go in there.” I pointed to the center of the generators. “Is my leg going to be snapped in two if I walk any farther?”

McCardle grunted no. We passed beneath the shadows of the three great columns. I stared up at the giant orbs. Their motors hummed with life. A low charge hung in the air.
Think, Tor.

My steps were heavy. I marched to the center of the ring of generators. McCardle's mouth hung open as he took them each in. In the middle, I stopped and stared up, turning in a slow circle. The lightning was gathering closer and stronger.

“Stop stalling,” he said.

I dropped my chin. “Right, sorry.” But stalling was my only plan. “I, uh, have to prepare the body. It's … complicated.” I let go of the rope and went around to the back wheels where my borrowed tools were. “I … may need your help. We'll see.”

I felt his eyes on me as I carefully sifted through the equipment he'd brought. Instead of a scalpel, there was a small Swiss Army knife blade and a rusty razor. I pressed my thumb to the knife's point, testing it. I wasn't sure what good it would be against a gun. Besides, McCardle seemed to know his way around a blade just fine.

I glanced over my shoulder. McCardle had yet to so much as look away as far as I could tell. I found a screwdriver, a hammer, a few copper wires. I stared at the tools. I had no plan of actually resurrecting the corpse, but I still felt shorthanded.

“Victoria…” I stopped at the moan coming from Adam. “Victoria…”

McCardle waved the gun at me again, and I lowered my head.

My hand trembled. I balanced the Swiss Army knife between two fingers and stared down at the body. Its shriveled lips hardly looked human. Rain dripped from the tip of my nose. I bent over and gingerly pressed the blade at the point between the boy's collarbones. He sank a few centimeters in the viscous liquid before finding the bottom. I pressed harder. The skin opened up. The insides were yellow like a dissected frog. Not a hint of blood on the knife's blade.

I lifted the back of my hand to my mouth and stifled a gag. I cut along the ridge of his sternum, all the way to the bone underneath. Foam squelched from the open wound. Another flash of lightning lit up the clearing. When it did, I nearly screamed. I had seen Owen unmistakably making his way through the woods toward Adam and Meg. The lightning abated, and his figure was blotted out. I looked to McCardle. He was still watching me closely. He hadn't seemed to notice anything amiss.

Owen
. Owen was here. I had almost forgotten that I told him my plan was to go to the generators. I wanted to cry with joy and with fear. My mind raced. Somehow my entire life seemed to have converged on this moment. The loose threads of a plan began to dangle in front of me, waiting to be knitted together.
Keep the old man distracted
. I could do that.

“Is this what your son would have wanted?” I asked the first question that fell on my tongue. Over my top lip, beads of sweat mixed with the rain.

McCardle's features were twisted, and, in the rearranged pieces, I could see underneath where the guilt and the years had worn at him like termites on damp wood. “He shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days, the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. So sayeth the Lord.” He was eaten alive by the death of his son, and what was left over was a haunted shell of a man whose blood had been transformed to poison.

Instinctively, I looked away, like I was witnessing something that no one should ever have to, the unbuttoning of a man before my very eyes. So I sliced downward on the corpse's body until I reached the bottom of his breastbone. I hardly noticed the chill of the stolen eyes staring up at me anymore, and long moments passed when all I could see from the forest was darkness.

I kept my eyes on the corpse, scared that I'd give something away, that maybe the hope would show in my eyes. “And the boys that you murdered.” My voice shook. “What would the Lord have to say about that?”

Thunder vibrated the air around us, and the bowels of the clouds above let loose. Cold rain poured over us with renewed intensity.

“For just as Jonah was in the belly of this fish,” McCardle called, “so will the Son be in the heart of the earth, for his subsequent rescue from death is what vindicated his mission to go forward.” He turned his face up and let the rain fall on his forehead, run into his eyes, and wet the thin strips of hair on his scalp.

I flattened the kinks of four copper wires in my hand. I was running out of time. The orbs above us had begun to glow a dull bluish tint. Sparks zipped between the cables that connected the generators.

At the next burst of lightning, I saw Owen fiddling with the traps. My breath lodged in my throat.
Careful
, I wanted to tell him.
Don't get too bold.
I wondered if he had seen the gun or if Meg had told him. I was thankful for the blustering storm that offered a cloak.

At the center of the ring, I peeled back the layers of skin, exposing the mealy rib cage underneath. There, I inserted two of the wires in the crevice I'd created. The chest cavity matched Adam's almost exactly but for the fact that I had no metal plate to give this dead boy.

Another groan came from the distance. The sobbing had continued nonstop.
Quiet, Adam
.

“He'll look like an abomination of your son,” I said. “He'll be an idol. A fake. Look at him.” And there was no mistaking that I was right. This person, this thing, was nothing like Adam. He might have started as someone's child. He might have been good and kind in life, but there was nothing left of him that was sacred. Dwarfed by the giant monoliths of the lightning generators, I felt like McCardle and I were in the midst of a sacrificial ritual. I wiped water from my eyelashes.

“And thou shalt believe,” McCardle murmured. He turned his face up to the sky and let the rain pour over him. “And thou shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead.”

The sky above was being torn apart by light. The generators were doing their job. “It's not safe here,” I said, beginning to shake. “We could be killed.”

The next burst of lightning came from directly overhead. When I looked over, I saw that Owen was gone. And so was Adam. A jab of dread filled me. What if they had left? Was that less than I'd deserve for killing Adam and for lying? I wedged the Swiss Army knife in my fist, ready to fight.

The next lightning strike looked as though it landed somewhere in the forest. The brightness flickered. And then I saw Adam's face inches away from mine. This time I did cry out.

“Victoria.” He staggered, looking less human than he had ever looked before. His joints were stiff. He teetered unevenly on stilt legs.

Now I smelled the first hint of smoke.

McCardle wheeled around. He dropped the lantern. It rolled on the ground. Another burst of lightning. But this one lingered, caught between the generators' crosshairs. I had a split second to react.

“Now!” I shouted as if this had been my plan all along. With all my might, I grabbed Adam by the arm with both hands. I wrenched him over, pushing him on top of what was left of McCardle's son. He splashed into the liquid.

Above, lightning tangled, mixing and blurring. I shielded my eyes. The orbs lit up bright blue, electric with energy. I scuttled back. One great, combined streak of lightning shot down. The glass coffin was a wash of white-hot color.

There was the sound of glass cracking like a footstep on a frozen lake. I held my breath for a heartbeat. The coffin shattered. Liquid poured from broken shards.

“No!” McCardle howled, and it sounded like a dying animal. He lunged for the heap of flesh where his son's body lay at the same moment that the silhouette of one body emerged. The outline that was Adam arched his spine. He rolled back his shoulders. McCardle realized his mistake too late. He should have known by now what Adam was capable of.

Adam stretched out his arm, grabbed McCardle by the neck, and flung him sideways. The old man crumpled to the ground. The wind burst from his lungs, and he wheezed, clutching his chest. The gun skittered an arm's length away.

Adam's eyes shined in the flickering light of the lantern. They were cold. He lowered his chin, and his brow hid his eyes in shadow. I recognized the look from just after his recharges or in the moment that he hurled Knox off the stage. He moved methodically toward McCardle with a slight limp to his gait.

McCardle cowered on the ground as Adam closed on him. He lifted an arm to shield his face. “You … would save her?” The old man's voice was ragged, and he puffed for air. “The girl that killed you?”

I went limp. The truth, the one I'd been holding on to with a death grip, the one that every day I'd had an opportunity to share and that every day I'd chosen not to, was out. What could I say now that hadn't already been said in one bone-crushing sentence?

Adam stopped. When he turned, his expression was a raw wound. His eyes held pools of sorrow. “Victoria?” There was still awe there and hope, and I felt it begin to crumble through my fingers.