Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy) (25 page)

Luke whimpered and then snuffed.
Almost exactly how I feel.
Asher squeezed his eyes shut and focused. If he kept his breathing shallow, he could almost ignore her scent: the intermingled sweetness and salt. Also that strange hint of pine that she always seemed to carry.

Once, j
ust a few weeks after he’d met her, he’d even searched the pockets of her coat, sure that he would find bundles of fresh pine. He breathed out, a suppressed and strangled half-laugh. It was amazing, he thought, the power of a simple scent. The way the memories came in a rushing torrent…whether welcome or no.

Now, as he stood with his forehead pressed to hers, his infant s
on slung between them, he wished the memories away. He wanted to be numb, be blank. He wanted to halt the shaking in his legs, and banish the tugging of his brow. Anything, he prayed, anything not to show his fear.

He couldn’t decide which was the worst moment. Whether it was when the Army stopped its forward march, or when she changed into her “Marie” clothes, or when she took off the tokens of his love…her wedding ring and the lucky coin that had seen her safely to this point. His grandfather’s token of love and protection that had hung around his neck through many tournaments, steadying him. Even when she’d been a zombie staring at her pod wall while Luke wailed, that coin lying in the hollow of her throat had given him hope. But now she was stripped of her talismans. They weighed in his pocket, the densest point in the universe.
I don’t want to leave you
.

“Hey,” she
said.

His eyes flew open and h
e stared into the warm pools that had kept him captivated since day one.

She
scrunched her nose, forcing levity. “You stole my line.”

He’d said that out loud?
He sighed. “So I did. But this time it’s my line.” He cupped her chin. As he met her cool lips with his, he felt her shudder. His mind split open and screamed at him. How could he allow this? How could she risk it? It was too much. Too much!!!
Shut up! Shut up!
He closed his eyes. “I’m the one who has to leave this time, remember, Fi?”

“I know what you’re thinking.”
She laid her head on his chest. “But you’re wrong.” He waited as she drummed her gloved fingertips in silence. Finally she patted his chest twice, like punctuation. “This is going to work.”

This is going to work.
That’s what he repeated — tried to repeat — in his mind as he and Sean walked through the knifing wind in silence to rejoin the Army.
This is going to work.
My wife is going to be fine. My son is going to be fine. This is going to work.
Sean inhaled and coughed beside him. Asher saw him swipe at his eyes before he dropped his gaze.
It had to work.

------------ Fi -------------

“It’s time to go.”

Fi’s heart leapt
at Sara’s words. It was time. It was finally time. A shiver raced through her — the kind kids at school always swore was a ghost had passing through your body. She could believe it today. The thin barn jacket she now wore was useless against the icy wind, but she knew it was more than the miserable touch of winter that shook her. Mutely, she took Sara’s hand and they turned to the east.
I’m coming
, she thought, forcing her feet forward
. I’m coming for you.

T
hey made their way toward the Truther settlement hand-in-hand. Though this had been planned to emphasize their weakness, she felt incredibly grateful for the touch. There was a shout from the shadows in the distance and she squeezed Sara’s hand. They’d been spotted.

In minutes
, they were surrounded by the largest pack of Lobos Fi had ever seen. There were at least twenty of them and all were armed, though few had guns. Most gripped clubs or knives. With her free hand, she fingered her skirt nervously, feeling for the pull-tab.

“What’s this?”
A large man with white blond hair and icy eyes stepped forward and Fi sucked in her breath. This had to be the one the colonists called “the Ghost.” He was enormous, his muscles making no sense in the depths of the food-poor winter. Unlike the others, he most definitely had a doozy of a gun. His AK-47 was pointed right at her head. She dropped her eyes.

“M-my
name’s Marie,” she whispered. It turned out to be pretty easy to act scared. Her legs were shaking. “And this is my little sister, Sara. We came to find the preacher.”

“Hmph,” the man grunted.
“Seems like you’re the little sister, girlie.”

The men around them laughed, and the hair on the back of Fi’s neck stood up.
Jesus, she knew these Lobos were supposed to be working for the Truthers, but how much control did Carter really have?

The man narrowed his clear, nearly white eyes.
“What do you know about Father?”

Ugh.
She nearly jumped at the term. Sean warned her that they called Carter “Father,” but hearing it was like being dipped in acid. “Nothing,” she said, “except that he’s kind.”

“And he’s a man of faith,” Sara added, bowing her own head.

Fi
bit back a smile. As hard as it was for her to behave like an obedient little lamb, she knew it was darned near impossible for Sara. She was proud of her. “We’re all alone, my sister and I,” Fi said. Luke gurgled at just that moment, as if on cue. “And we need help. We come from people of faith, and we’ve been following the river ever since one of your kind directed us. Please. We won’t make it any longer on our own.”

She clutched Luke
and her eyes pricked with frightened tears. Her mind kept skipping like a stone across the waters of her experiences with Lobos: Asher, covered in blood with a half-dead Gary in his arms, Sara, bound and helpless as a Lobo slashed her cheek, and herself, pregnant and desperate while a machete hung above her head. She was shaking, gritting her teeth against the tremors so they wouldn’t chatter. It was on her now. No dream. No plan. She was scared shitless.

Knowing her tears would only help
her, she looked up and met the Ghost’s gaze.
Please pity me
, she prayed.
Please. Pity us. We’re defenseless.

Th
ough his expression didn’t soften, he gestured and the Lobos lowered their weapons. “I guess you look harmless enough. Follow me.”

Fi
exhaled, her head dropping. She sucked air, pushing back the desire to sit down on the spot. Sara squeezed her hand and Fi looked up to find her friend smiling. Fi took a deep breath and squeezed back. Sara was right. Phase One was complete. The Lost Lambs were deployed. She lowered her head again to cover her own smile and followed.
I’m coming for you
.

Ten minutes later she stood in a small wooden cabin, mere feet from the object of her bubbling rage. Dr. Carter Lawson’s appearance came as a shock. She’d been expecting a younger, more vital man, but then, he fit his false role to perfection. His large blue eyes, deeply lined face, and long white hair and beard were straight-up Sistine-Chapel-Old-World-God stuff.
Touché,
she thought, warming to the challenge.

No matter.
He might be God the Father, but she was Mary. She straightened up. “I don’t know what happened to him, sir,” she said, in answer to the question of Luke’s missing father. Sara rubbed her arm, as if to comfort her, just like they’d rehearsed. It was flawless.

Carter’s
eyes softened and he sat beside her and reached for her hand. For a second she flashed back to second grade, when Jonny Rollins, the class’s most notorious nose-picker, had reached for her hand. She’d nearly puked. Her gorge rose in her throat and she swallowed hard.

“It’s
hard for her to tell it, sir,” Sara jumped in. “Simon went out to get us supplies and we waited and waited, but…”

“…
he never came back,” Carter finished.

Fi nodded, keeping her eyes down as if she were too overcome to meet his
gaze. She leaned down and kissed Luke’s head.

Carter
took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. “My goodness, Marie and Sara. You’ve been through a lot. After all that you’ve done to survive, your only protector went missing and you walked all alone for weeks to find us.” He clucked and shook his head before reaching for Luke. “May I?”

Fi recoiled instinctively, and
Carter’s eyes widened in surprise.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sara
said, stepping in again while Fi reeled.

Shit!
She was failing. Asher’s voice echoed in her mind, “…They knew the stakes, Fi.”
The stakes.
Luke wiggled in her arms and the room seemed to melt.

“
She’s been terrified for his safety for some time. Sometimes I’m surprised that she lets me hold him.”

Sara’s voice snapped the room back
and Fi chastised herself. She had to get it together. She bumped Sara’s foot, grateful.

Carter
stood. “That’s quite all right. I understand your reticence to trust.”

Fi
steeled herself to do the single most revolting thing she’d ever had to do. She handed her child to the man she’d dreamed of killing every night for months. “No, Father. We came here for your protection. He’s as much yours as I am.”

As she said the words she found her center.
The more heinous the lie, she found, the more enjoyment she felt. She seized this, like an anchor in a storm.
Screw him!
she thought angrily, clinging to her rage.
Just let your lies be your fists.

Carter
’s face broke into a smile as he took Luke into his arms. Just then, an African-American woman bustled into the room, followed by the Ghost.

“Ah,”
Carter said. “Nona and Silas. Right on time.”

Fi’s eyes were
fixed on her son in the crook of her enemy’s arm. Her throat felt like it was closed, like the time she’d had tonsillitis so bad she could only swallow soup, and even that hurt. Somehow, she hadn’t pictured this in all her images of going undercover. She wanted to run forward and rip him from Carter’s grasp. It was killing her. The only thing that helped was envisioning shooting him over and over, like a video on loop.

“I hear we have some new arrivals,” the woman
named Nona said.

The kindness of her tone dragged Fi from her obsessive watch
over Luke. It was the first genuinely warm feeling she’d had since they’d set foot on Truther soil.

“Indeed we do.
Providential arrivals, it seems,” he said. “Nona, meet Sara and her sister Marie, the mother of our little one here…Luke. They’ve been wandering alone in search of us for weeks.”

Fi saw the change come over Nona’s face and she realized that she had met one of the truly faithful.
This part of the plan had been right, she thought, relieved. The allegory was perfect: three innocent Children of God, lost and seeking purchase in a world gone topsy-turvy. She held out a shaky hand in greeting. “Nice to meet you, Nona.”

Nona didn’t hesitate for a second.
She pulled Fi into a giant, comforting swirl of a hug with one arm and gathered Sara in with the other. “Oh you two girls! You angels! Praise God that you found us.”

“Now, wait a minute.”

Fi stiffened at Silas’ protest.
Even his voice was icy
, she thought,
like the scratch of freezing rain.

“We don’t even know these girls,” he
said.

Nona released them
. “Silas, you don’t have to be so overly protective. They’re just young girls…one a mother, for goodness’ sakes.”

“I don’t give a darn who they are, the fact is they’re not Truthers and I wan
na know what we plan to do with them.”

For the first time Fi saw the fire tattoo on Silas’ neck and she winced.
How ironic. She’d thought of him as the ice-man, and she couldn’t have been more wrong. It seemed clear that Silas was the heat in the powder keg. At least she and Sara seemed to have this woman, Nona, on their side.

“I guess you’re right, Silas,”
Nona sighed.

Crap.
Maybe she wasn’t on their side. Fi looked to Carter, who seemed to be lost in thought as he rocked Luke.

He met her eyes, which had widened in very real fear.
“No need to panic, Marie. We just have a certain way of doing things here to protect our settlement.”

He handed Luke back to her and it was all she could do not run from the r
oom. She cradled him tightly, thankful for his soft, warm weight in her arms. “I don’t understand, Father.”
God, it was hard not to gag on that word.
“You know that my sister and I are Christians, like you.”

“But Silas is right,” Carter repl
ied. “You’re not yet Truthers. Hmmmm…” He stroked his beard.

Fi’s eyes flicked between
the three Truthers. It was clear that they were deliberating something, but what? She felt Sara’s hand slip into hers and she squeezed gratefully. Carter seemed lost in thought. Fi’s heart pounded harder with each passing second that they waited for his response. It was excruciating. “Father, what do we have to do to prove our loyalty?”