Feast (15 page)

19

Eddie Kenyon was impressed. After seeing the number of still-human men at the gas station, he suspected one of Ella’s biodomes would be nearby. Sure, the swamps could be scavenged for food, but the men had looked well fed. And he’d seen some of their stomach contents spilled out on the floor of the moving truck. The men were eating vegetables, and not the kind that could be foraged. His suspicions were soon confirmed when the men spilled their guts, literally and figuratively. He learned the location of the camp, known as Hellhole, and that Peter, Ella and the kids had been taken there as captives. Easy pickings.

After leaving a contingent of male Chunta and their steeds behind to watch the gas station, Kenyon, Feesa and the other female warriors had trudged through the swamps, moving slowly and quietly, until they spotted the twenty-foot-tall wall that looked like it could take a beating. They wouldn’t be forcing their way inside, though he suspected the large gates might eventually give way to a persistent assault from their steeds.

But the wall wasn’t what had him on edge. From his perch in a tall tree, he looked out at what might be the last vestige of civilization outside San Francisco.

The camp was vast. More like a small town. There were five biodomes. He could see the lush plant life growing within them. Enough to feed dozens of people. The shanty town surrounding the farmhouse at the camp’s core looked like it could house a hundred people. And there were signs of activity everywhere he looked. Everything was maintained. Footprints were scattered about the barren earth. And the land itself was completely clear of ExoGenetic crops, a feat that could only be accomplished through persistent and daily labor, the evidence of which could be seen in the form of ash. There was a layer of it mixing with the brown soil beneath. The place looked like it should be a beehive of activity.

But there was no one in sight.

No workers.

No guards.

No Ella.

Were we spotted at the gas station?
Kenyon wondered.
Did they evacuate? Are they hiding inside?

He could tell Feesa wanted to leap the wall and find out for herself, but she didn’t fully understand the strength of mankind. The men they’d attacked earlier were unsuspecting, caught out in the open. It had hardly been a fight. But here, with a wall separating them, if the occupants of Hellhole were ready for a fight, the Chunta could be mowed down in a hail of gunfire before reaching the shanty town. For all he knew, there was a minefield between them and the house.

He placed his hand on her hairy arm and felt the muscles beneath quivering with anticipation. Her mind was primitive, but she understood that this was the place they’d been told Peter Crane had been taken. “Patience.”

Her hand squeezed and crushed the branch to which she clung. They were in the trees again, just high enough to spy inside the camp, but not close enough to leap over the wall. The trees had been cleared away, thirty feet back. The space between the tree line and the wall had been filled in by densely packed cauliflower plants. The bulbous white heads would provide firm enough footing, but each step would let out a rubbery crunch. They wouldn’t be able to approach without announcing it. And leaping over would be impossible from this distance, even for Feesa. Whoever built this place had planned its defenses well.

They’re in there,
he thought.
Waiting. And with those biodomes, starving them out isn’t an option. Damn.

“We go,” Feesa said, pointing at the farmhouse. “Revenge inside.”

“We wait,” Kenyon replied, then repeated the mantra that had carried the Chunta this far and helped them overcome a myriad of deadly encounters. “Watch. Listen. Think. Plan. Attack.”

“Just attack,” Feesa said.

“Then Chunta die.”

Feesa looked about ready to tackle him out of the tree and rip out his throat. The female warrior had bonded with him in more ways than one, but the Chunta, like all ExoGenetic creatures, were guided by instinct first and intellect only on rare occasions. Luckily for Kenyon, Feesa was one of the most rare ExoGenetic creatures, capable of rational thought, and at times, restraint. She opened her mouth, sliding the long hooked teeth from their cheek pockets, and hissed at him. But she didn’t attack.

Kenyon wasn’t sure if Feesa had simply retained a portion of her human intelligence, or if she’d lost it and then evolved a new primitive intelligence. That she could still speak limited English suggested the former, but if she had any memory of her life before the Change, she never spoke of it, nor seemed disturbed by what she had become.
Smart enough to understand revenge
, Kenyon believed,
but not emotionally complex enough to experience regret.

Kenyon on the other hand... Regret fueled his need for revenge. He’d put his trust—his love—in a woman who betrayed him. Who might have planned to betray him from the very start. He’d been a tool. Nothing more. And even after several weeks, his chest still burned with a newfound fury. Not because he’d never really had her, or lost her to another man, but because despite all of that, he still loved her. And he hated her all the more for it.

Sloshing water revealed the return of their scouts. They’d sent two of the females around the wall’s perimeter, searching for weak points or signs of life. Feesa exchanged words in the Chunta’s ape-like language, which was composed of grunts, a few actual words and a good number of hand gestures. The returning females scaled the trees as the conversation came to a close, joining the fifteen other warriors waiting to attack. Their steeds were positioned deeper in the swamp, tended to by a handful of smaller males, all waiting to be called to action.

“Wall all around,” Feesa told Kenyon, tracing a circle in the air with her black, claw-tipped finger. “No people.” She snarled, her embedded teeth stretching the skin of her face. It was a horrifying sight, but one he’d grown accustomed to. “No revenge.”

“They’re here,” he assured her, pointing at the biodomes. “Inside. Hiding.”

Had the residents of Hellhole fled, the two scouts would have picked up their scent.

“Think,” Feesa said.

Kenyon nodded.

“Plan.” Before Kenyon could agree, she added. “My plan.” Then she turned to one of the females perched in a nearby tree and let out a deep huff, a few barks and a finger pointed at the house.

The female Chunta obeyed immediately, leaping down from the tree. She landed in the cauliflower with a crunch that was far from stealthy. Then she charged across the gap toward the wall, leaving a mangled path of vegetation in her wake that anyone would spot.

He wanted to chide Feesa, to tell her she didn’t think hard enough, but he knew better. Not only did she have the patience of a ball-clamped bull at a rodeo, but he understood the Chunta. They weren’t the disciplined surgical strike team Viper Squad had been. They were a brute force instrument of destruction that was made more effective when they were guided. Right now, Feesa was at the helm. If the female’s fact-finding mission bore fruit, he had no doubt that Feesa would consult him before taking action. They’d built up that trust, though he was aware seeing Peter, her hated enemy, might send her into a primal rage. And that could undo his own plans for a protracted revenge, but he could live with that. As long as Peter Crane and his brood didn’t.

He watched the female leap to the top of the wall. She clung to the carved spikes that had been hardened by fire. When she hoisted herself up into clear view of anyone on the other side, Kenyon expected a bullet to tear into her. But nothing happened. The female looked back to Feesa, who urged her onward with a bark and waved hand. The female jumped down and loped toward the house. When she reached several feet in without being blown to bits, Kenyon was convinced there was no mine field. When she strolled through the shanty town without incident, he felt positive the residents were holed up inside the house. But when she stepped onto the steps of the farmer’s porch without being gunned down, he began to doubt every scenario he’d imagined so far.

The distant female took one step at a time, her body language shifting as she did.
What the hell?
Kenyon thought. The female normally stood hunched over, but by the time she reached the top step, she was standing tall again. Like a human.
Is she trying to trick the people inside?
Kenyon nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of it. And when the female rapped her knuckles against the door, all casual, like a neighbor just stopping by to say ‘hello,’ Kenyon did laugh.

Feesa grunted at him. Was this all part of her plan? Had all this been transmitted during the grunting exchange? If so, the Chunta might be more intelligent than he gave them credit for. That meant they’d been holding back, hiding their true selves from him all along.

Not trusting him.

And for the first time in weeks, Kenyon wondered if he should so fully trust these...monsters.

He shook his head, unable to consider the idea of being betrayed by another woman, especially one as devolved as Feesa. She might be able to come up with a plan that involved knocking on a door, like people used to, but she lacked the subtlety to string him along for weeks.

He glanced at her, watching her yellow eyes track the movement of her scout.

How smart are you?
he wondered.

Her eyes shifted toward him, meeting his gaze. She squinted.

Too smart
, he decided.

Then Feesa beat her chest twice and coughed a series of low chuffs. In response, the Chunta warriors shook branches, getting geared up like ancient soldiers about to charge the field of battle. “Go,” Feesa commanded, and the horde descended from the trees as one, charging the wall.

Feesa reached a hand out for Kenyon, and he understood the unspoken request. At times like this, when the tribe was on the move, Feesa would carry him. It was degrading, but he couldn’t move as fast as the Chunta, and he certainly couldn’t scale a twenty-foot wall without help. He hesitated for just a moment and then moved toward her arms.

But before they could leap down together, a male Chunta sprang into the tree. His sudden arrival startled Feesa, and she nearly bit his face off. The male reeled back, but then barked a few words, one of which Kenyon recognized. “Petah.” The male pointed behind them, toward the dirt road approaching the camp’s gate. “Petah.”

Feesa gave a nod and chuffed a few commands. She then turned to Kenyon and said, “Peter.” She pointed toward the road. Then she said, “Ella,” and pointed at the farmhouse.

Before Kenyon could respond, the large leader of the Chunta sprang from the tree and headed for the road, leaping between trunks and calling out to the nearby males gathered with the steeds. Then Kenyon was scooped up in the male’s arms. He was smaller than Kenyon, but far stronger. The male dropped down to the ground and followed the other warriors’ path to the wall, which he scaled with ease, even while carrying Kenyon. Just seconds after Feesa’s departure, Kenyon found himself deposited inside the compound. Ducking low, he brought his assault rifle around from his back and scanned the house, looking over the barrel. He’d taken the AR-15 from one of the dead men at the gas station. It wasn’t a long range weapon, but in his practiced hands, it would do the trick. Seeing no immediate threat, and knowing this would be his one and only chance to breech Hellhole’s defenses, he joined the charge.

20

The hurled potato missed its mark—Mason’s nose—but struck his forehead and sent the Ascot hat fluttering away. The blow did daze him, though, and as he stumbled back wiping at his eyes, Ella realized some of the soil clinging to the root vegetable had sprayed into his eyes.

A growl escaped her lips as she got her feet underneath her and sprang toward the man. She drove her fist into his gut. He doubled over, clutching his stomach with one hand while still pawing at his eyes with the other.

“Bitch,” he hissed.

Ella hooked her fingers and swiped at his face. She was aiming for his eyes, hoping to make his temporary vision problems permanent. Instead, she struck his cheek, digging three troughs through his skin. He screamed in pain, reeling back.

I’ve got him,
she thought, eyeing the bulging jugular vein on his neck.

Her stomach churned. Survival in a post ExoGenetic world meant sometimes devolving into something like the beasts that now populated it. Occasionally, savagery was the only way to survive. And if it meant saving her family and ridding the world of one of its worst monsters, she would go down that path and deal with the ramifications to her soul another time.

Hooked fingers reached out, ready to latch on.

She opened her mouth, teeth bared. She lacked the sharp canines of a true predator, but the human jaw was strong enough to bite through raw human skin, muscles and veins. One bite.
One bite and he’s done.

Ella dove for his neck.

And missed.

Mason’s heel slapped into a raised garden bed and he toppled backward. Ella sailed over his body, and when her shin struck the same bed, she sprawled onto the concrete floor, tumbling into a collection of hard metal gardening shovels, which collapsed atop her with a loud clanging.

Wounded, but not defeated, Ella shrugged off the shovels with an angry shout and leapt to her feet. She turned to continue her assault, but Mason was already up and facing her, standing in the garden bed. He had one eye squeezed shut, his left hand on his gut, and rivulets of blood running down his cheek, but his right hand clutched a handgun. He leveled the weapon at her chest. Then he moved it lower.

“How long will it take you to die, if I shoot you in the stomach?” he asked. “Hours, I imagine. Of course, shock will set in long before that. You won’t struggle much then, will you? No, you’ll be as docile as a bunny.” His face lit up with a grin. “Oh that’s good. Bunny. That’s going to be your name. I’ll even get you ears and a little fluffy tail to wear.” He frowned. “Or not. You won’t be any fun when you’re dead. My tastes aren’t that aberrant.”

“You need me alive,” Ella said, trying hard to hide her anger. “ExoGen—”

“Will believe whatever I tell them. You tried to escape. I had no choice.” He motioned to his bloody cheek. “I’ve got the wounds to prove it. And it’s your daughter they really want.”

He stepped out of the raised garden bed. “I wonder why that is. Why are they more interested in a little girl than in the great Ella Masse, architect of the apocalypse? Of course, maybe I’ll say she escaped. Let them head off into the wilderness in search of your precious daughter. She could be my Bunny. She’d look precious in a set of ears.”

Ella took a step toward him, fingers hooked once more.

He stepped back and raised the gun at her head. “Not another inch.”

“They’re going to kill you,” she said. “You know that, right?”

“Words of a desperate woman.”

“Hellhole is a direct threat to their plans.”

“And what plans might that be?”

Ella wasn’t entirely sure. She’d never been let in on that secret. But she had her suspicions, and she decided to share them with Mason. “They’re rebooting the human race. On their terms. With the creation of RC-714, ExoGen stopped mucking with the genomes of plants and turned their attention toward other forms of life, including humanity. They’re building better people. Better animals. And when the ExoGenetic world eats itself into oblivion, ExoGen would repopulate the world. Humanity as we know it is nearly extinct. It’s ExoGen’s creations that will inherit the Earth.”

Mason stood silent for a moment, and then said, “Why would they doom themselves by creating a replacement species?”

“They’re changing themselves, too,” Ella said. “You’ve seen what RC-714 can do. Imagine if you could select the adaptations. What kind of person could you build? What kind of person could you become? And for their plan to work, humanity—all of it—needs to perish.”

She motioned to the dome around them. “This place wasn’t supposed to exist. You and everyone else here should be dead. The only reason you’re not, is because of me. Because of the good people you locked up in a cage.” She pointed at the vegetation growing all around them. “People who could have helped undo the damage ExoGen did...with my help. And now...you naïve, pitiful man, you’re going to die.”

Mason grinned. “Perhaps. But I still have something they want. I still have you. And Anne.” He squinted. “She’s one of them, isn’t she? A new kind of person. What’s different about her?”

Ella didn’t move. Didn’t talk.

“Tell me!” Mason stepped closer, leveling the gun at her head, finger on the trigger.

The decontamination chamber hissed and opened.

Mason didn’t flinch. Didn’t take his eyes off of her. He’d learned how dangerous she could be.

“If this is not a matter of life and death, I will cut out your tongue and have it cooked in a pot pie.” Mason didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Ella didn’t think it mattered. But when a man replied, Mason looked thrown.

“Uh, sir. I’m sorry, but—”

Mason gave a quick glance toward the door. Too fast for Ella to attack, but she had no intention of attacking. While Mason felt afraid to take his eyes off of Ella, she was free to look at the newcomer. He looked like one of the good ol’ boys from the swamps outside the compound, but she didn’t recognize him. What she did recognize was the terrified expression on his face.

“What the fuck are you doing in here!” Mason shouted, and he squeezed off a round toward the door. The bullet ricocheted off the wall just below the glass dome and punched a hole into a raised garden. The man ducked back behind the door, but he didn’t fully retreat. Just as fast as he’d taken the shot, Mason pointed the gun back at Ella.

“They’re gone, sir!” the man shouted.

“Who is gone?”

“E-everyone.”

The coiled muscles wrinkling Mason’s face flattened a bit. “What do you mean, everyone?”

“The captives. The wall guards. The workers. Even your girls. They’re not in the house.”

“Shawna, Charlotte and
Sabine
are missing?”

“They’re not here. I checked. They’re all, just...gone.”

“You’re the
lookout
, Chad. You can see the whole compound from the third floor. How can they just be
gone
without
you
seeing?”

“I-I...”

Even Ella could guess that the man had fallen asleep on the job. Probably had many times before. Life in Hellhole had gotten too safe. Too comfortable.

Mason fired off two more shots toward the door, shouting in anger. Ella took a step toward him, but stopped when the gun swiveled back in her direction.

“There’s just me and Dave left. He’s watching the front door.”

A hissing filled the air behind Chad. It was followed by a buzz and a flashing red light. The airlock had been overridden and the system was flashing a warning. Whoever was coming in might be contaminating all this food. And whoever it was likely knew that. Something was seriously wrong in Hellhole.

Chad ducked back inside the decontamination chamber and partly closed the door behind him. She could hear two men whispering in a rapid fire verbal sparring match that ended with, “Shit...shit!”

The door reopened and Chad’s head poked out. “Sir...someone is at the door.”

“One of the missing people?” Mason asked.

“Uh...no. A big, hairy lady. She’s knocking on the door.”

Ella snapped her head toward Chad and took a few steps in his direction.

“Hey!” Mason said, stepping in front of her, gun raised.

She looked around him. “Describe her face.”

After a few hushed words with the second man, who could only be Dave, Chad leaned back out. “Long teeth coming out of her lower jaw, poking into her cheeks. Real gnarly looking.”

“Do you have any weapons in the house?” Ella asked Mason. “Bigger than that?” She motioned to the gun in his hand.

His face twitched with confusion.

“You’re going to need them,” she said.

He said nothing. Just stared at her.

“If you stay here, you’re fucked. We’re all fucked.”

“What’s out there?” he asked. “Who is the hairy woman?”

“Friends of Peter’s wife.” She looked Mason in the eyes. “Who he killed five weeks ago...in front of them.”