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  Boone stepped to the side, motioning to the next chain link gate. “In there.”

  Ella took a step closer, and Boone stopped her with a raised hand. “Remember...”

  “I remember,” Ella said with a nod. Then she and Peter looked through the chain link fence together. When Peter saw what was inside, he took Ella’s hand again. She squeezed hard, digging her nails into his palm, channeling her rage. He accepted the pain without flinching. He barely noticed it.

  Inside the cage was an emaciated woman. She looked eighty years old, but Ella had said Lyn was forty-five. The woman’s blue eyes glanced in their direction, but she remained in place. Beside her lay her husband, Bob, whose white, withered eyes were motionless.

  Bob was a corpse.

  7

  “Ya’ll have had your curiosity satiated, yeah?” Boone had taken a few steps back, rifle raised. Peter couldn’t tell if the man was expecting trouble, or hoping for it. Either way, they weren’t going to give him an excuse to pull the trigger.

  “What did they do?” Peter asked.

  “Insurrection,” Boone said, and then spat on the ground by his feet. “Tried to change the natural order of things.”

  “This was their land,” Ella said, showing some of their cards. “Their home.”

  “No such thing as land ownership anymore. World went and changed. Only the fittest can survive. Some of the weak, too, I s’pose, if they don’t question things. Plenty of unfit people still living inside these walls on account of what the strongest of us provide.”

  “Makes sense,” Peter said. The words were hard to say, but sounded believable. “Like having kids.” He motioned to Jakob, Anne and Alia, who had yet to see what remained of Bob and Lyn.

  “Hey,” Anne complained. She fell silent when Jakob gripped her shoulder.

  But she didn’t go unnoticed.

  “I reckon you’re right about that,” Boone said, leaning down to Anne’s height. “You’re a feisty one, yeah?”

  “You have no idea,” Anne said, the words nearly a growl.

  Boone chuckled. “Looks like you’re made of good stock. White, but not like them two Cat-lickers.” He looked the group over. “Naw. Not a Fire Crotch among ya.”

  It took Peter a moment to decipher what Boone was saying, but he came to the conclusion that Marcus and Stevie were Catholic, and that ‘Fire Crotch’ was a reference to Marcus’s red hair and Irish ancestry. The caste system isn’t just racial, Peter thought, it’s also religious and ancestral, focusing on old prejudices.

  Boone clucked his tongue and gave Anne a wink. “Too young yet, but time’s still moving forward, ain’t it?”

  That last comment shocked a strange kind of stillness into the group. Boone had just revealed the stakes. If they didn’t get out of here—or got killed in the attempt—life would become a nightmare, especially for the girls.

  “So Mason did all this, then?” Peter asked, redirecting the man the way a parent would a child in the throes of a tantrum.

  Boone stood up, looking a little more relaxed after his revelation of Bob and Lyn, not to mention his not so veiled sexual threat to a twelve-year-old girl, didn’t incite violence. “Yes, sir. Well, he organized it. Was a contractor before things went crazy. Built the first of these here domes.” He raised his chin toward Lyn and Bob’s corpse. “For them. Found out what it was for and took matters into his own hands. Had three of ’em built before the world turned to shit. Most of us working on the outside have been here since the beginning, though we sometimes bring in new blood.” He nodded at Peter. “Something you might cotton to, if you’re still around tomorrow.”

  Peter heard the threat. If they weren’t around tomorrow, it wouldn’t be because they were set free. “Imagine I would,” Peter said. “We’ve been living in the wild for so long, I’m not sure I could stand more than a few days inside these walls without getting blood on my hands.”

  Boone gave a gap-toothed smile, clearly hearing Peter’s threat as comradery. “We are speaking the same language, my friend.” He pointed to the cell at the end of the row. “Now, yer rag head’s gonna have to sit things out for a bit. Kids, too, though I don’t think them two will be there long.” Boone raised a hand when he looked at Ella. Her anger was bubbling to the surface. “I know they’re your kids an’ all, but we got rules, and kids can’t go inside the house. And since yer new, I can’t let ’em have the run of the place, neither. Soon as Mason says ya’ll aren’t Questionables, we’ll assign shelters and jobs. Till then, you best do as I say.”

  “I have a name,” Alia said, her voice jolting tension through Peter’s body.

  Why couldn’t she have just stayed quiet?

  Boone squinted at her. “That so?”

  “Alia,” she said with a raised chin.

  Peter half-expected Boone to backhand her, which would set off Jakob and then their chances of escape would evaporate. But Boone’s reaction wasn’t violent.

  It was worse.

  He looked the girl up and down. “Well now, Alia, I reckon you’re of age.”

  “Of age...for what?”

  Alia had led a sheltered life before the Change, and a hermit’s life after it. Her only relationship with a boy was with Jakob, and the pair hadn’t been alone since their first kiss in Alia’s father’s biodome. Her innocence was on full display now.

  “Marriage,” Boone said. “I ain’t never been with a rag head before. Course, I ain’t sure I want to marry one neither. Course, I ain’t got to marry you to pork—”

  “Hey, Boone,” Peter cut in, sensing things were about to go downhill. Jakob’s fists had clenched and his eyes followed Boone like a bird of prey preparing to strike. And since Peter had been training his son for the past few weeks, Jakob might even be capable of...what? Killing a man? An ExoGen creature was one thing. Killing a human being left a mark on a man’s soul. He didn’t want that for his son. He motioned to Anne. “Young ears.”

  The fiendish look in Boone’s eyes melted into a lop-sided grin. “Right you are.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose with a dirty finger. “Follow me, then.”

  He led them to the last cell in line. Peter counted three people already inside, barefoot and hidden by the slanted roof’s shadow. He could see them shifting about, though. At least they’re not corpses.

  Boone twisted a key in a padlock and popped it free. The chain link gate creaked open. The people inside withdrew deeper into the shadows.

  Boone motioned inside the cell. “Welcome to Casa de Questionable.”

  Anne looked inside, but didn’t step closer. “Why are they in there?”

  “Stealing. Lying. General disregard for the status quo. Don’t you worry none. Not a one of them is prone to violence.” He gave her a wink. “Not like you, anyhow.”

  Anne sighed and stepped inside without any further protest. Alia hurried after, the prospects of staying free with Boone worse than being locked up with strangers. Jakob paused by the gate, looking back at his father. Peter just gave the boy a silent nod, and Jakob returned it. That nod, simple as it was, said a lot. Promises were made. Trust sought and given. One way or another, Peter was going to return for the kids, and leave this place.

  Jakob stepped inside the cell and pulled the gate shut behind him. He even put the latch back in place.

  “Much obliged,” Boone said, slipping the padlock into the latch and locking it once more. “Ya’ll ready?”

  Ella crouched by the gate, fingers hooked around the chain link. She whispered to Anne, who nodded a few times and then said, “Love you, too,” loud enough for Boone to hear. Peter doubted the pair were sharing typical parting words between mother and daughter. But there was no way for Boone to know that. In part, because they’d spoken softly, but also because he was a few bricks short of the world’s smallest chimney.

  “Ready,” Ella said when she stood back up.

  Boone led them back toward the farmhouse. It was three stories tall, white and in a very simple sense, it reminded Peter of h
is own home, before he blew it up. But there were a few obvious differences that stood out. The windows were barred on the lower floors. Peter wasn’t sure if that was to keep monsters out, or to keep people in. Maybe both. But with the twenty-foot wall and armed guards, keeping monsters out was a solved problem.

  Maybe the bars came before the walls? Peter wondered, but he knew he was just being hopeful, and that could be a fatal mistake. He chided himself for trying to find the best in the people who lived here. He should be on the lookout for the worst. Presently, that was Boone.

  “Be polite,” Boone said, as he led them up the farmer’s porch stairs toward the front door. Peter imagined the door had once been solid wood, but it was now a slab of steel. “Tell the truth. He can always tell when someone is fibbin’, and there ain’t no faster way to wind up in the Questionables. If he offers something, accept it. And if he asks you to do something for him, only appropriate answer is a ‘Yes, sir,’ and a nod.”

  Peter was surprised by Boone’s aid. The man had grown more friendly since taking them from the truck. He’d made some threats, sure, but most of them, aside from the sexual allusions directed at the girls, also included ways to avoid unsavory outcomes. Peter had gone out of his way to be agreeable, and it seemed to be winning Boone over. He doubted the man who’d organized this outpost of humanity would be as unperceptive, but maybe there was a way to avoid violence?

  There I go hoping again, Peter thought.

  Boone thumped his fist against the steel door three times. “It’s Boone. Here to see Mason.”

  The sound of locks snapping open came from the other side.

  Boone motioned to the door with his head. “Takes ’em a while. Not sure why, but Mason keeps the place locked up tighter than a nun’s poontang.”

  The opening door kept Peter from having to come up with a reply. A black woman dressed in a traditional maid’s uniform bowed as she opened the door. “Mistuh Boone,” she said in an old-fashioned, Southern accent, stilted and unnatural. “Massa Mason is expecting you. He’s in the study.”

  Massa? Peter thought. Did I hear that right? Peter went rigid as his eyes shifted from the uncomfortable maid, to the foyer wall where a large Confederate flag hung. A hint of music wafted through the air. It sounded pleasant enough on the surface, but in the current environment it felt more like acid in his ears. He heard the lyrics, ‘With a holy host of others standing ’round me, still I’m on the dark side of the moon,’ and he recognized the song as James Taylor’s Carolina in My Mind.

  Mason, whoever that was, had a deep love affair with all things Southern: good, bad, the ugly and probably even worse. The poor woman at the door was the last straw for Peter. He no longer wanted to just escape this place alive, he wanted to stage a coup in the process. There were good people here, people who deserved better lives, free of subjugation to racist assholes. Leaving them like this...

  He just couldn’t.

  As Peter followed Boone down the hallway, old wooden floorboards creaking underfoot, he came to the conclusion that he was, without a doubt, a Questionable. But the real question was, could he keep that from Mason long enough to kill the man?

  8

  Eddie Kenyon had gone native. With the exception of eating ExoGen crops, he had completely abandoned civility and decorum. He rode bareback upon a massive wooly steed, like something out of the last ice age. The brutes could travel for days without food or water, though both were plentiful. Their powerful bodies and rhino-like horns that split at the ends into an array of sharp, scooped blades, fended off all manner of creatures. Alone, the creatures might fall to an Apex predator, but their strength was in numbers, like the tribe’s.

  They called themselves Chunta, and they had a kind of language. Most was grunts and shouts, but there were words and phrases spoken by the males. Still, this was a matriarchal tribe. The three women stood a foot taller than Kenyon, who was just as much taller than the other males. The males were mostly covered in hair, ran with a sideways galumph and attended to the females’ every need.

  Kenyon, while male, held a position of prestige. The matriarch, Feesa, who spoke stilted English, understood that Kenyon was smarter than the rest of them. And he understood that she could rend his arms from his body as easily as he could petals from a flower. He had become an advisor, helping them defeat enemies, find sufficient food and shelter and most importantly, track their prey.

  While Kenyon was still fully human, and he managed to remain so by foraging non-ExoGen foods, his thirst for vengeance matched the feral woman’s. The Chunta were fiercely loyal to each other. Kenyon suspected that the Change had happened late in these people, when most everything else had already turned into ravenous killing machines. They’d banded together in the early days, forging a bond that remained, even after the Change. Instead of evolving into individual monsters, they had evolved as a group. As did their steeds, which Kenyon thought might have been bison from a farm. Copulation was frequent and polyamorous, often devolving into sweaty, hairy orgies that Kenyon had trouble stomaching. But he did his part, using his knowledge of female anatomy to help maintain his high stature.

  Over the weeks, he had shed his clothing, and thrown himself into tribal living. There were times he even enjoyed the primal comradery. But he never forgot the reason for his devolution and long sojourn across the country: Ella Masse. She had used him, betrayed him, broken his heart and left him for dead. She could have returned to ExoGen with him and Anne. Could have been safe. Could have made things right. Instead, she chose a life on the run, in the wild, with the fucker who had nearly killed him. Peter Crane.

  When Kenyon caught up with them, he was going to kill Jakob, Peter’s son. Make his father and Ella watch. Then he’d do Ella. Make the bitch pay. He’d kill her, but not Anne. That was Ella’s deepest fear, that her precious Anne would have to live in this screwed-up world without a mother. And then it would be Peter’s turn. But Kenyon wouldn’t get the pleasure of taking that asshole’s life. That fell to Feesa, the matriarch, who had been close to the previous matriarch, known as Kristen in her life before the Change. She had been Peter’s wife, whom he killed in front of his son, and the tribe. It was an offense that Feesa would not forgive, and the others followed her lead.

  Kenyon appreciated that about Feesa, and even believed that should he be slain, she would seek vengeance for his life. He wasn’t sure he would do the same, but he had grown fond of her, as much as a man could for a woman like her...if she could really be considered a woman still.

  Calling her ugly was an understatement.

  Her bottom teeth, like all Chunta, were long, curved and pointed. They jutted out from her pouty lower lip, curling upward several inches before punching back into the skin of her face. The wounds were really just deep, hard scars now, but it was still disturbing to look at. Her nose had evolved to deal with the teeth, pulling back into the face, so that there was barely a nose at all. The only bearable trait about her was that unlike the men, and to an extent, her female companions, the hair on Feesa’s body was fine and soft, and her breasts were ample. Kenyon had become somewhat fond of her, more because of her powerful spirit than any kind of physical attraction, but the parts of her that remained feminine helped make his more visceral duties bearable—and if he was honest with himself, sometimes fun. The Chunta lived without inhibition. He’d never felt such freedom, but he would risk it all for revenge. As would Feesa.

  He stood in a tree, looking down at the men below, all of whom were oblivious to his presence. Feesa was perched on a branch beside him, cocking her head to the side, while the men escorted a familiar armored truck down a long dirt road.

  He sensed Feesa coiling to strike. Seeing the vehicle enraged her, and her simple mind no doubt linked these strangers to Peter. But now was not the time to strike. These men had clearly encountered Peter and Ella, and would know their fates. There was intelligence to be gathered. Plans to make. But these concepts were beyond Feesa, who was guided primarily by instinct.<
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  But not completely.

  Kenyon reached out slowly and tapped her forearm. When she looked at him, he shook his head. Then he raised his hand and made a gun shape with his fingers. She shook her head at this, frowning so deeply that the teeth embedded in her cheeks strained against the skin. Kenyon tapped his head in a gesture that she understood was him telling her to think, that this was a matter of strategy, that she needed to trust him.

  And she did.

  Her face scrunched, but her muscles relaxed.

  When the men were a hundred feet beyond them, Kenyon and Feesa climbed down the tree into the foot-deep swamp water. Kenyon’s instinct told him to be wary for snakes, turtles and gators, but in the new world, most of those things had already eaten each other nearly to extinction. Those left alive wouldn’t be hard to see coming. Not in shallow water, anyway.

  But when Feesa raised her flat snout and sniffed the air, he remained still and vigilant. She hooked her fingers and raked them through the air—the Chunta sign for an Apex. Then she shook her head and pointed in the direction from which the men had come. Whatever it was, it was far enough away to not concern Feesa much. But Kenyon didn’t share her confidence. If there was an Apex hunting in these swamps, it might already be tracking these men. If that was true, it wouldn’t be long before it was tracking him and Feesa, too. And that was a problem.

  While the Chunta were ExoGenetic creatures, they weren’t Apex. As a group, sure, but individually, they didn’t stand a chance against a super-evolved predator.

  Kenyon pointed to Feesa’s eyes, ears and nose, and then back down the dirt road. She nodded and said, “Careful. Yes.” Her voice rumbled out of her throat, sounding more like Barry White than a woman—or even a monster who used to be a woman.

  Then they started off through the swamp, following the oblivious men. If the men didn’t lead him to Ella or to one of her group, he could interrogate them. If that didn’t work, he’d let Feesa interrogate them. Either way, he was going to find out where Ella and Peter had hidden themselves. If they were dead, these men would pay for stealing his vengeance. If they were alive...the swamp was going to run red.