Project Aquarius (The Sensitives Series Book 1) (24 page)

The distinct clip-clop of someone coming up the main stairs quickly mixed the sadness with trepidation. Drea wiped the tears from her cheeks, rolled up the T-shirt, and stuffed it into her backpack for later. She didn’t want Sierra to think she had missed her message, but she also didn’t want anyone to know she had found it. Drea shoved the bureau closed with a slam and turned to find Taylor lurking in the doorway.

Drea half-smiled. “There’s some clean T-shirts in there if you want them,” she said, eyes averted.

“Thanks,” said Taylor while x-raying Drea’s expression. “What about you?”

“Nope. Not my size.”

Taylor opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it promptly. Drea squeezed past her into the hallway refusing to exhale until she was back down in the rec room. She was more certain than ever that Taylor was powerful and needed to be kept at arm’s length.

***

“
It’s not far from here,” the pretty girl claimed.

Drea was tired of hearing it. Taylor had been pushing the issue for the last five days.

“Define, not far,” Drea challenged.

“A few miles, maybe,” Taylor said.

But miles were hard to gauge deep in the New England woods. There were deceptive layers of growth all around— decaying leaves underfoot, shadowy branches that hung above. Everything looked the same. And it had looked the same for centuries.

“You keep saying it’s a few more miles and then it’s a few more miles and another few. It’s not happening Taylor and that’s final!” Drea snapped.

Quickly, she scurried ahead, her quads straining as she charged up the steep incline.

“I think it sounds cool,” Darnell defended.

“Of course you do,” Drea muttered under her breath.

Darnell had taken a liking to Taylor the Wonder Girl. That was obvious. He had been suspiciously positive lately. And his sarcastic bite had all but gone away. He was Taylor’s Little Yes Man, agreeing with everything she suggested and it made Drea’s eyes permanently roll backward.

The two had become inseparable. Darnell was the eager student Taylor so desperately craved. With her help, he was getting better at “scanning buildings.” He was now able to stand outside the building and tell if there were any corpses inside. Taylor was getting him to focus in his ‘mind’s eye’ she called it. She acted like she invented the term, but Drea was onto her.

Now, the unstoppable duo were scanning the tree branches for life, heads sweeping left to right in tandem. Somehow Taylor had hypnotized the city kid so that he had forgotten he was walking through the woods. On top of the fact that she got him to slow down for a minute…

Every observation fueled Drea’s belief that Taylor was dangerously powerful. Drea was keeping score. Beautiful. Smart. Intimidating. Two years older. Walked across half a state alone. Talks to the dead. Tamed Darnell.

Taylor’s abilities gave her an odd kind of authority that she was using to purposefully manipulate the plan toward her detour. And Drea didn’t want to change course. The New Hampshire plan was all she had. It was her only hope. Making it to another state meant freedom, a chance to start over, and an escape from the blast radius that had wiped Massachusetts off the map. Drea’s family could be in that cabin in New Hampshire. Taylor’s leadership threatened everything…

Drea felt her blood pressure rise. She stomped hard on a twig. It made a satisfying snap.

“Remember, to stay close to the pine underbrush, it’s softer on the feet,” Taylor reminded the group.

Ugh. Taylor’s unrelenting attempts to be a mentor made Drea nauseous. The girl made everything into a lesson.

“How are your blisters?” she asked Drea.

“Fine,” Drea lied biting through the razor-sharp sensations on the back of her heels.

“Any signs from Sierra?”

“Nope,” Drea lied again. She was sure that Taylor was purposefully attempting to drill through her carefully crafted hard shell. But Drea needed to maintain a thick buffer from the real world in order to survive. She was barely holding it together as it was. She didn’t have the energy to keep looking for ‘signs’ from the dead. Dreams were one thing, but freaky symbolic stuff didn’t happen in real life. That’s what Drea kept telling herself despite the green T-shirt in her backpack…

Truthfully, Drea wanted nothing more than to have her best friend back, but she was a realist and had come to terms with the fact that she was never going to see Sierra again. So she took refuge in the strange comfort of anger.

Drea looked over her shoulder to find that Ms. Perfect had joined Sammy at the back of the pack. They were slowly meandering, picking daisies or whatever. That was another thing that irked Drea; Taylor was always talking to her brother about his mushrooms and weeds. What a suck up. Sammy and Darnell had accepted Taylor’s leadership without question and it made Drea burn.

A pinch in Drea’s palm made her look down. Four deep red grooves stared back. She had been digging her nails into her own flesh, her hatred for Taylor literally causing wounds.

Drea had hit her limit. It was time to assert her dominance as the true leader of the pack.

“Let’s pick it up a little! Keep heading north. I want to make more headway before dark!”

She looked behind her to find none of them had even lifted their heads. She was losing them altogether.

“I said pick it up!”

“We know, we know. We gotta go north, blah blah blah,” Darnell imitated.

Taylor jogged to catch up with Drea. “Have you given any more thought to my offer?”

“I told you, I don’t want to go on your hippie detour. I’m heading to New Hampshire and
my
group is coming with me.”

“That’s fine. I get it. You want to find your family.” Taylor paused for a moment and drifted off in her head. “But you should know that we’re not walking north any more. We haven’t been for quite a while.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! We’re walking up the incline, toward the outline of the mountains. That’s north. We haven’t deviated from the path,” said Drea.

The by-the-way-Taylor-always-knows-best routine was getting old.

“We are heading uphill, but the trail is heading somewhat east, and that may be counterproductive to your overall goal of getting to New Hampshire. That’s why I suggested we stop by—”

“––I know what you’re doing, okay,” Drea said cutting her off. “You need to stop. This is my family and I’m in charge and we are heading north to New Hampshire. End of story!”

Drea’s palms vibrated with heat. She was not a violent person, but she wanted to slap the smirk off of Taylor’s face.

“I don’t want a fight,” Taylor said, reading the aggression in Drea’s fists. “I’m trying to help you out. Look at the sun. It’s setting in the west. You should adjust your internal compass from there.”

The girl just wouldn’t quit. She was like the teacher’s pet whose hand shot in the air after every question, waving for the teacher’s attention. Taylor needed to be right. And Drea had a hatred for people who needed to be right. It reminded her of her mother.

“If you don’t believe me, ask your brother.” Taylor called out to the genius ginger, “Sammy, show your sister some of the lichen you pointed out earlier.”

At the mention of his special interest, Sammy perked up and scampered over. “Right here, Drea— at the base of this tree. There’s some lichen. Oh, and there’s fungus on this one too. That means they are friends, the lichen and the fungus.”

“And where does the lichen grow Sammy? Tell your sister,” Taylor added the slightest sting to the second syllable of sis-ter.

“On the shady side of the tree, usually near the bottom.”

“And the shady side of the tree, which side is that?” Taylor asked.

It was like she was getting off on it.

“In the northern hemisphere, it’s the north side of the tree,” Sammy proudly replied.

Drea’s fists swayed at her sides. First the sun was setting in the wrong direction and then the lichen was on the wrong side of the tree. Taylor made everything wrong. Drea’s breathing turned fast and shallow.

Taylor continued, “Thanks for sharing Sammy. So if that’s north, then we’ve been walking…”

“East,” he said in his matter of fact singsong.

“Burn,” said Darnell.

Drea straightened her spine.

“So we course correct and head north. No big deal. Still no need for detours.” She emphasized her point by taking larger strides uphill. Case closed.

“This detour is more necessary than you know.” Taylor reached out and stopped Drea’s momentum, tugging on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me.”

“It’s time to stop, Drea.”

“Our plan is working just fine,” Drea asserted. “At least it was fine until you showed up and ruined it.”

“Just fine?” Darnell butted in. “You don’t even know where you goin’. Taylor saved our butts. Just sayin’.”

Darnell’s words pulled the hammer all the way back. Drea snapped. She turned and barreled down on Darnell, shoving his shoulders backward with mighty force. His small body buckled under the pressure and he fell to the ground, his head jerking backward and striking a root. He wailed in pain. Drea stepped on his left arm to pin him down and finish the job. She needed to be the leader and she was willing to kill to get it.

“Listen you little turd. You’re an ungrateful unlovable piece of garbage. No wonder your foster parents threw you away. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me. Your mouth would have killed you by now. Hell, even the Applewood Gang would have taken you out with a pitchfork if I hadn’t show up. So you listen to me or I’m going to leave you out here in these woods to rot. I’m the leader! I’m in charge! You obey me! Not her!” Drea’s voice growled, spraying frothy saliva everywhere.

“Stop yelling! Please stop, Drea!” Sammy was on his knees with his hands clamped over his ears.

“That’s enough,” Taylor said in a hush.

“Shut it, you know-it-all bitch. I’m talking to this loser.” Drea’s words flew off her tongue like sparks escaping from a fire. “Mr. Witty finally has nothing to say and if he speaks again, I’m going to rip his tongue out!”

She looked down at Darnell’s face. Though his eyes were cold and beady, his lower lip had started to quiver. He looked small on the bed of leaves like a baby bird fallen from the nest. He clutched the back of his head with his right hand and whimpered.

“Stop, you’re hurting him,” Taylor pleaded.

Darnell was just a helpless little boy. A third grader. And Drea was trying to devour him with her words. When had she become a monster?

She shifted her weight to free Darnell’s arm. He curled into the fetal position and wept quietly.

Drea felt sick. The new world had changed her into some sort of angry beast. She doubled over and spat on the ground, her throat full of bile. The anger was dripping out Drea’s fingertips, leaving her hazy. Her whole body was shaking. She felt like crying, collapsing into a sobbing mess in her mother’s arms. Then she remembered it was an experience she could never have again, being held by her mother. She couldn’t be a kid anymore. Someone had taken her mother from her. Someone had taken the world away. Someone had to pay. Drea needed to uncork her anger on whoever was responsible for the end the world. That was who she was mad at, not some inner city third grader.

Taylor tried again, “We need to change course. Things are starting to get too steep and thickly wooded. Soon there won’t be many houses to choose from. The breaking and entering plan isn’t going to function forever.”

“Things are changing,” Taylor reiterated.

Drea was someplace else, but she managed to nod, giving the control to Taylor. Things were changing. Was New Hampshire really the best option? Maybe Darnell was right; they should go back to Boston and face their enemy.

“Your plan got you this far. But you’ve marched us outside the radius of suburbia. There are no canned goods out here in the woods. We have minimal camping supplies. We aren’t prepared to be out here in the world.”

The truth hurt. Drea knew Taylor was right. The plan was solid back when she was in Cambridge full of adrenaline and hope. The plan was solid when Laura was around…

“Look around, Drea, we need a new plan, and I’ve got one.”

Drea took a deep breath, drinking in the stillness. The light filtered slowly through the leaves casting an antiquated yellow on the forest floor. The distant croak of peepers highlighted the serene solitude. She had never been more alone. And dusk approached with sincerity.

To her left, ATV trails cut through the underbrush in wide grooves. The tire tracks had faded to a smattering of solid bumps indicating they hadn’t been used recently. It fact, it had been hours since she had seen any mailboxes or driveways. Drea had to admit the landscape was pretty rural. And the previous night they hadn’t found a suitable house until after dark…

She made eye contact with Taylor.

“Fine. Let’s do your plan. You’re in charge,” Drea conceded.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Cyril

The thick package of 8x10 glossies felt heavy in Cyril’s grasp. This time he was confident he had something that was sure to please the boss. He only needed to wait for the right moment to speak.

     The Master was bent in half, pouring over an array of photographs spread out on the glass tabletop in front of him. Cyril smirked as he noted the poor quality of the Other Recon Team’s grainy images. He had combed through the footage of his Recon mission himself and printed only the frames showing the best detail. Recon Team B wasn’t going to disappoint again. Cyril was sure of that.

The Master held up Team A’s photograph of two teens hiding behind a wood shed. He squinted at the image, shook his head, and grunted in displeasure.

Cautiously, Cyril seized the moment and slid the new stack of 8x10s into the Mastery’s periphery. “Here are photographs from Team B’s air and land deployment focusing on communities west of the city, sir.”

He carefully nudged one photograph closer toward the Master. It was an infrared image of five bodies huddled together in a basement.

“Good job, Commander Cyril.”

“It was my idea to use infrared, sir. As you can see, in the surrounding suburbs there are a number of survivor camps. Sensitives have taken up residence in schools and old Cold War era bunkers.”

The Master flipped through the stack of photographs, noting several images of people peeking out from behind curtains, hiding from the sound of the helicopters.

“Nice job sticking to orders this time, Commander. Observation served you well,” he said with a hint of condescension in his voice.

It had been very hard for Cyril to stick to orders. He had wanted to interact with the survivors, smell the fear on their skin, let them know who was in charge now…

Cyril shook it off and cleared his throat. “The aerial team hit the jackpot about an hour west of the city, sir. The choppers saw motion in the woods and infrared confirmed there were four survivors heading north.” Cyril pulled a starkly clear picture from the stack. “The red-haired kid was unmistakable. It’s the same group I tracked on the Pike two weeks ago, the one with the adult female.”

The Master took his time pouring over Cyril’s photo, as if noting every freckle on the red-haired kid’s face. He made several notations on a legal pad in complete silence. Then he flipped to the next photo in the stack and screeched in urgency, “Do you know where this was taken? And how long ago?”

Cyril looked at the image. “Yes sir, I was there.”

Beads of sweat formed on the Master’s brow and the usually unshakable man began to stutter. “Ww… when? When was… was it? Is this girl still alive?” he asked in a frantic voice.

“It was yesterday, sir. I’m sure she’s still near—”

“Go get her! I want to see Subject 37 in person,” Master Shin said as he slid the picture toward Cyril. “Everything is going to be okay. This is our proof.” He double-tapped the face in the middle. The Master sighed and slouched back in his chair.

Cyril’s smirk edged into a grin. “Subject 37? From the early millennial experiments?”

“Yes, now find her!”

Everything was going to be okay.