Incubation (The Incubation Trilogy Book 1) Read online

Almost in a trance, I obey, returning with the compact kit. I should have thought of it myself. “You’re helping me,” I state the obvious. “You’re not mad that I’m leaving?”

  “Might as well be mad at water for being wet,” he grumbles, hitching his robe out of the way so he can organize the backpack more efficiently. “Compounds have to behave in keeping with their elemental make-up,” he says. “Remember that.”

  When I stare at him blankly, confused and more than a little inclined to tell Wyck and Halla I can’t go with them, Dr. Ronan straightens and glares at me from under the furry shelf of eyebrows. “Your going is pointless, but I don’t expect you to understand that now. There’s a lot of work left for you to do when you realize it, so don’t get yourself killed.”

  “I won’t,” I promise, feeling half-comforted and half-foolish. “Thank you. You . . . you won’t get in trouble for helping me?” I catch sight of the time: 2355. I’ve got to go.

  “Pish.” He flips his hand. “I haven’t so much helped you as turned a blind eye. Besides”—he smiles almost impishly—“no one will know anything about it. You don’t think I haven’t figured out ways of entering my own lab without leaving a record of my presence, do you? There’s no such thing as a security system that can’t be penetrated with enough time and ingenuity. And I’ve got both, goddamnit.”

  I’m seized with the urge to hug him, but it feels like an impertinence, so I merely say, “Goodbye, and thank you. I’ll miss you. Oh, and the new strain of wheat? You should call it Triticum yuna.” I sling the backpack over one shoulder, and head for the lab entrance, resisting the urge to catalog all the projects I won’t see to completion, the data I’ll never finish analyzing, the other lab apprentices and scientists I’ll never see again. I’m close to tears.

  I think I hear Dr. Ronan whisper, “Go with God,” but it’s drowned out by the sound of the cooler door sliding open and an irascible, “Where did that flask of Wexl get to?”

  I step through the lab doors for what I’m sure is the last time, letting the gentle humidity of the dome caress my face, and start toward the docking station. Soon, I’m trotting, then running, the backpack thunking awkwardly between my shoulders, and my hair flying. It’s midnight. It’s time.

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  It’s unbelievably dark four miles from the Kube. I can barely make out Halla and Wyck, even though Halla is an arm’s length to my right and Wyck rides in front of us. Our scooters skim inches above the train tracks; it was Wyck’s idea to simplify the first part of our journey by sticking to the tracks. We’re heading for the central train transfer station on Jacksonville’s west side. Adrenaline courses through my body and I’m hyper-alert, scalp tingling as the wind flaps my hair, ears attuned to the whisk of insect wings zipping by and rustlings deep in the kudzu, nose trying to categorize the many semi-familiar scents: creosote, rotting vegetation, smoke from someone’s cooking fire, brine. The air is heavy with humidity and I’m damp all over by the time we see the strip of lighting around a tunnel entrance.

  “This is as good a place as any,” Wyck calls. “We can use the tunnel light.”

  I know what he means and I reluctantly bring my scooter to a stop. Keeping a healthy distance from the tracks, we crouch in a circle. Halla looks nervous but resolute.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I say. I push up my jumpsuit sleeve, exposing my forearm. It seems unbearably white. “Do me first and then I’ll do you,” I tell Wyck.

  Without speaking, he rummages in his backpack and withdraws a knife. The short blade gleams. “From the kitchen. I brought several. You never know when a knife will come in handy. Good for hunting, filleting, protection and the occasional minor surgery procedure.”

  It’s nerves talking, I can tell. I grip my lips together and nod. I extend my arm. Halla holds my wrist while Wyck’s thumb runs over the sensitive flesh of my inner arm until he can feel the locator, a grain of rice-sized lump beneath the skin.

  “Hold her tight,” he murmurs to Halla. “This might sting.”

  He pulls the skin taut between one thumb and forefinger, and then the knife slits my skin, a bright line of pain, and I’m gritting my teeth. A worm of blood oozes, black in the limited light. It makes me light-headed. Blood always affects me like that. Wyck wiggles the knife tip briefly and then it’s over. The anticipation hurt more than the knife.

  Wyck’s holding the tiny locator up like a prospector with a multi-carat gem.

  “You’ve got a future as a surgeon,” I tell him, semi-mockingly. “You would’ve been wasted as a border sentry.”

  Wyck grins and punches my shoulder lightly. I can tell he’s as relieved as I am that it wasn’t worse.

  “I’ve got sterile wipes and sealant,” Halla says, pulling the items from her bag. Hers isn’t a backpack like mine and Wyck’s; she’s brought a roomy diaper bag from the nursery. She blots the trickle of blood with a steri-wipe and seals the short incision with a thin strip of surgical sealant.

  I do Wyck next and then he does Halla. We're surprised to see that only twenty minutes have passed since we hunkered down outside the tunnel. With our wounds safely covered by our sleeves, we’re ready to move on.

  Ten minutes later, Halla and I huddle behind a broken concrete block while Wyck uses the train ticket that was supposed to get him to his Border Security Service base to enter the train station and toss our locators onto a train bound for Dallas, the last stop on the line before the Cali-Mex frontier. Everyone will think we're headed for an outpost. When he gets back, we power up the scooters and head away from the depot, away from Jacksonville, away from everything I’ve known in my sixteen years. It’s a weird feeling.

  We skim west along the old interstate highway, I-10, for a couple of hours. The road is cratered in spots, bombed during the Between, undoubtedly, but navigable by ACV. It’s no wonder, though, that no one drives wheeled vehicles anymore. No one's about at this hour, and I can see nothing past the thin spear of my headlight. A soupy patchwork of darkness stretches on either side and makes me feel like I’ll drop off the edge of the world if I steer a bit left or right, even though I know the landscape is probably a relatively level mix of abandoned buildings, kudzu, old parking lots, and sand. The small odometer says we’ve gone forty-three miles when the horizon lightens and a salmon-colored ribbon slits the seam between earth and sky, quickly expanding to a display of crimson, pink and gold that makes us all slow and finally stop to stare back the way we came in appreciation.

  “It’s an omen,” Halla says when blue has reclaimed the sky. “Like the rainbow after the Great Flood.”

  I can hear how desperately she needs to believe that we are going to succeed.

  “It’s a sunrise,” Wyck scoffs, igniting his scooter again. “We need to keep moving.”

  We glide on, past weathered and dangling signs that announce exits for towns long abandoned: Bryceville, Baldwin, Macclenny. The sun rises, beating down on us, and I’m grateful it’s April and not the middle of the summer. My legs feel tired now, aching from standing on the scooter for so many hours. My shoulders hurt, too, from the backpack’s weight, and my forearm burns from the incision. At least I’m not pregnant. Halla's shoulders are hunched forward, her head drooping.

  “We need to stop,” I call out. “Food.”

  Wyck, fifty yards ahead of Halla and me, circles back. Halla gives me a grateful smile and we pull to the roadside. A thicket of trees is nothing but gnarled branches bent west by the prevailing wind. The leaves are gone, courtesy of the locusts. Dust like fine powder poofs up with every step we take off the crumbling asphalt; if we have to leave the highway our ACVs will produce a dust cloud that even a brain-dead searcher could spot. The dust catches in my throat and I cough. Kudzu climbing over some of the branches makes a shady canopy and we head for the more sheltered spot and drop our bags.

  “I’ve got to pee.” Halla disappears into the brush.

  “I’m stiffer than a board,” Wyck proclaims, s
tretching his arms skyward.

  “I’m dying of thirst.” I find a water bladder and sip from the attached tube. It’s warm and tastes like rubber. I could drink a gallon, but we have to conserve our water. Wyck and the returned Halla are likewise drinking and they tear themselves away reluctantly.

  “We should take stock of what we’ve got,” I suggest, emptying my backpack. The others do the same, although from the way Wyck manipulates his pack, I suspect he’s hiding something. I don’t challenge him on it. It might be something personal, like my feather and my Little House book, which I keep in the messenger bag slung across my chest, along with the maps. I’m sure Halla has her Bible tucked away in a corner of her bag. I catalog the supplies on the ground. Dozens of vegeprote bars in their edible wrappers cascade from each of our bags. A quick survey tells me we’ve got enough food to last a week, and water to last for three, maybe four days, if we’re careful. After that, we’ll need to find fresh water. Additionally, Wyck has brought four knives and a selection of hand tools, a couple of batteries, and a thermal imaging device which he must have stolen from an IPF soldier. Halla’s bag contains intelli-textile blankets, a flashlight, an extra jumpsuit, and various small items like fasteners she must have filched from the nursery.

  “We should each have a knife,” Wyck says, handing me the longest blade and Halla a serrated one. He tucks a broad blade into the back of his belt. “And we should divide up the food, in case we get separated, or lose a pack.”

  We divvy up the food. I give them each a compass. In silent agreement, Wyck and I split the rest of the items so we are carrying the bulk of the weight, leaving Halla a lighter bag to contend with. When we’re finished, we munch on high-calorie vegeprote bars. I slide an extra bar toward Halla. “You’re eating for two.”

  After a brief hesitation, she nods and bites into it.

  My “meal” only half satisfies the gnawing in my belly, but I ignore it. I know there’s worse to come on this journey than hunger pangs.

  On the thought, an eerie howling and yipping breaks the silence. It’s not close by, but it’s not too far, either. I hurriedly zip my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. Wyck does the same.

  Halla jerks her head up. “What was that?”

  “Dog pack,” Wyck says.

  Halla pales. We’ve all heard stories of people being mauled to death by the packs of feral dogs descended from pets left homeless when whole cities of people perished from the flu virtually overnight. The bounties on them have killed off the majority, but the government still issues warnings during Assembly sometimes. Two months ago, they showed video of a family that got overtaken by a pack. I had nightmares about it for a week. I reach down to help Halla up. As she grips my hand, she asks, “Do you think they know we’re here?”

  The wind is blowing softly toward the slightly louder barking. “Yep. Hurry.”

  We jog to the scooters. The air cushion pushes mine the usual foot off the ground and I wish it were six feet, out of reach of the dogs now crashing through the underbrush. One of them is baying, a chilling sound that sends goose bumps up my arms. Halla and Wyck head for the road. On impulse, I snatch up a fallen branch before following them

  “Can a scooter outrun a dog?” Wyck calls over his shoulder. He’s the first to hit the highway.

  I lean forward, closing the gap between me and Halla as we veer onto the asphalt. The first dog lunges into the shady clearing. “I think we’re about to find out.”

  Chapter Ten

  The dogs waste brief moments snuffling around our picnic area for crumbs, giving us time to put precious distance between us and them. We’re leaning forward, reducing our wind resistance, and the scooters are skimming at their top speed, a little more than twenty miles an hour. I’m beginning to hope the dogs might not think we’re worth pursuing when a sharp bark makes me look back. The dogs stream out from under the trees, a small pack of eight or ten. The largest has a wolf-like snout and gray-black fur, and looks big enough, to my terrified eyes, to bring down a mastodon. Most of them, after decades of interbreeding, are a gray-brown lot, medium-sized, with scruffy coats. The one in the lead, though, is long and lean and comes at us like a missile, outpacing the rest of the pack. He’s running twice as fast as the scooters, eating up our lead bound by scary bound.

  We ride grimly in a line: Wyck in the lead, Halla in the middle, and me right behind her. The dogs are gaining. Halla looks over her shoulder, eyes wide with panic.

  “Don’t look back,” I call to her. “Keep going, no matter what.” I catch a movement in my peripheral vision and look down to see a narrow head drawing level with the back of the scooter, as high as my knee. Small, triangular ears are pressed against the bony skull, but it’s the sharp teeth, revealed by drawn-back lips, that hold my attention. It snaps at my leg, missing by a hair.

  I react instinctively, slashing downward with the branch. It catches the dog across the snout and it yelps. Lines of blood criss-cross its muzzle. The dog snarls and lunges. It snaps. A tug, a lance of pain in my shin, and part of my jumpsuit tears away. The attack pulls me slightly off balance and it costs me precious seconds to right the scooter. The pack has drawn closer. The lead dog spits out the fabric and comes toward me again as I regain speed.

  “I’ll try to draw them off,” Wyck calls. He veers off the road, trilling “Yi, yi, yi,” in an attempt to get the dogs’ attention.

  A couple of the dogs are slowing, giving up on the chase, but the one who has had a taste of my blood shows no sign of flagging. Spittle flecks his muzzle. Slavering. I don’t know where the word comes from. If he so much as bumps into the scooter, I’ll crash and they’ll be on me. I’m desperate. Letting go of the handlebars, I hold the branch with both hands, and drive it into the dog’s open mouth. The dog makes a horrific gagging sound as the bough’s forked end lodges halfway down its throat. He stumbles. His fall yanks the branch from my hands and I grab for the handlebars. The scooter slews wildly. The air cushion cuts out for a second. Fatal. I’m sure the leading edge of the scooter will catch on the road, I’ll tumble off and the dogs will rip me to shreds. I frantically thumb the igniter which catches immediately.

  Even so, I’m surprised the dogs haven’t taken me down, and I risk a glance back. They’re nosing at their wounded pack mate, and circling indecisively. One trots after me half-heartedly, but then gives up. I face forward, relief swamping me. Wyck glides to my side and asks, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I’m alive. “Thanks.” I push hair off my face with a trembling hand.

  He shrugs. “It didn’t work. Your leg is bleeding.”

  I look down and see a trickle of red where the dog’s tooth sliced through my jumpsuit. I sway and look away. It doesn’t hurt yet. “It’s okay for now,” I say, wanting to put more distance between us and the pack before we stop.

  Wyck nods as if he understands and we continue on, side by side, catching up with Halla until we’re riding three abreast. No one says anything for another hour. As the adrenaline slowly leaches out of me, I think. We need sleep and we need shelter. The highway, the entire landscape, is too open. Damn locusts. A proper forest would have come in very handy. By now, Proctor Fonner knows we’re missing. I envision him in his office, thin-lipped, implacable when he hears the news. In all probability, he’s had the IPF searching for us since shortly after six, when we would have been missed at breakfast. Assuming they were able to ping our locators and determine we were on the Dallas-bound train, by now they must have contacted the IPF somewhere along the train’s route.

  Worst case, the train has been searched already at one of its stops and they know we’re not on it. That still leaves a lot of territory to cover, but Fonner's got resources, including microdrones. We need to find a town to hide in. We can’t sleep in the open. We’re too vulnerable. I share my thoughts with the others. “I’m not talking about a populated city," I say when Halla exclaims. "We need a small town, someplace deserted.” Heaven knows, there are enough of those, t
owns where every citizen died off, or where small groups of survivors abandoned their homes to reunite with family members in areas less affected by the flu. Looters had a field day, at first, but as the flu spread, even criminals became reluctant to risk contact with infected items.

  “A ghost town,” Halla says.

  I’d have thought she’d be spooked by the idea, but she seems fine with it.

  “Right.”

  “Let’s go,” she says. “I’m so tired I’m going to fall off this scooter. And I have to pee again.”

  “I’ll scout ahead,” Wyck says, steering immediately off the highway. He swerves the scooter playfully in deep “S” turns and then takes off.

  “We should stick together,” I call after him, but he doesn’t even acknowledge me. Halla and I look at each other and then turn our scooters to follow Wyck. We’re going slower, conserving electricity—the readout on my dash is hovering perilously near the half-way mark—and pretty soon all we can see of Wyck is a dust cloud. Then, even that disappears. I frown. He can’t be that far ahead. As we draw closer to where he disappeared, I spot something amazing. Green.

  “Look,” Halla breathes, pointing. “It’s grass.”

  It is grass. Green, emerald green grass stretching as far as I can see. It’s short, less than two inches tall, but it’s so beautiful it makes me tingle. Clearly, the locusts haven’t come this way in a month or so. On impulse, I stop and get off my scooter. I bend and begin to unstrap my boots.

  Halla giggles when I scuff off the boots, shuck my socks, and stand, barefoot, in the grass. I walk slowly, letting the blades tickles my soles, then scrunch my toes into it. Something like peace settles over me. I sink down and run my splayed fingers over the grass.

  “Me, too,” Halla says. Removing her footwear, she comes to stand beside me. “Can you imagine?” she asks.

  I know she’s asking me to imagine the days before the birds died off and the insects rose up, when grass carpeted the earth, strewn with weeds and small flowering plants, when trees were crowned with leaves. I’ve seen pictures, but it’s almost impossible to imagine. “No, not really.” If I’d stayed at the Kube, I could have continued working with Dr. Ronan to find ways to eradicate the locusts and bring back the green. I thrust the thought away.