Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (68 page)

“Ok, it installed,” she had been saying, telling me she had imputed latest version of Google Maps Mobile into her smart phone.

“Good, now open it and punch in the following: 5302 Monterey Road, Los Angeles, CA 90042.”  I did the same as she.  “Hit the view icon and select ‘satellite’.”

I watched her long fingers glide over the device as she did as I asked.  My eyes lingered on her fingernails.  They were painted red with tiny glittering stars inlaid within the enamel.  They were silver and shiny.  Of the girls, I had always liked Sandy’s hands the most.  They were large, but somehow delicate at the same time.  Maybe long-boned was the best way to describe them.  They weren’t thick or heavy in appearance, though one would’ve expected precisely that since they were almost as big as mine.

For as long as I’ve known Sandy she had worn her nails shorter than most girls, the edge of her nails never extending more than an eighth of an inch from the tip of her fingers.  It was many years after the summer of 2018 when I had finally got around to asking why she wore them that way.  I had mentioned to her that I thought all women liked their nails long.

She had said then, while she scratched the lower portions of my back, letting the edges of those very nails trace down, toward the bugle of my ass-cheeks.  “I don’t like breaking my nails and longer nails tend to break, so I keep them shorter.  That way, I’m not walking around with mismatched nails.”

I remember, I had chuckled and turned to admire her.

She had thanked me with a kiss – soft, tender, lingering.

Simple explanation, but not one I knew way back when I was only seventeen and on the cusp living life as a Mutant.  Yet, I think that was the day the question first formed in my head.  It had to be it, one night in ’18 when I gazed at her hands as she tapped in the address to my uncles’ safehouse. 
It’s funny what memories stick with you and what ones don’t… fingers, hands and nails…

“Ok, it’s finished uploading,” she said still looking at her phone.

“Do you know where it is?” I asked as we put our cells down side by side, but flipped in opposite directions.

“Monterey Road…,” she muttered in thought, “Is that the street that divides into three separate roads with the one in the middle sectioned off by a pair of weird
looking walls?  Aren’t there with light fixtures from like the 1930’s or something as well?”

“The very one,” I confirmed.  “Do you know how to get there from here?”

She bobbed her head in affirmation.

“How many ways do you think you could come up with to get us there if the fastest way is cut off?” I questioned, wanting to make sure she knew what she was talking about.

Her eyes came up to mine – light brown, trimmed in darker eye liner, framed from above by varying shades of shadow, mahogany, bronze, copper, even chestnut.  I was caught in her gaze.  She looked away.  “There are a shitload of ways to get there, Effy.  You can come from Highland Park, which is the fastest, or swing east through Mt. Washington and then hook around through Happy Valley.  You take the freeway and cut way south and come up from El Sereno or you can take the other northern hook and come down from South Pasadena.”  Her fingers were tracing across the digital map almost too fast for me to follow.

The girl knew her shit alright.

“Fuck, Eff, if the shit really came down on us hard, we could even break into the Regional Park on say Griffin Avenue and hoof it through the hills all the way to Monterey Road.”

“What?  Really, we could do that?
”  The two streets seemed miles apart, but when I peered at my own map and checked the legend, gauging the distance in both feet and meters, I was astounded to see that they were only separated by 2,100 feet at the shortest, maybe half again at the furthest!  It was amazing, and though the terrain was rugged, especially from the Montecito Heights side, the trek itself wasn’t all that far.  Even if we had to double back upon ourselves a few times, the whole journey wouldn’t be more than a mile.  To me, it felt like an excellent back-up plan, if ever there was one.  Who would’ve thought a little hike through Ernest E. Debs Regional Park might be the trump-card in our back pockets.

“Damn, Sandy, I never knew those two parts of town were actually that close!” I exclaimed, out of breath.  I was too dumbfounded to breathe correctly.

“Me neither,” was all she had time to say when a slew of yowls and yelps came from the other side of the room.

Sandy and I spun into sitting positions, uncertain what to expect and saw my cousin scamper from my bed to the bathroom, a slice of printer paper held before her – on fire, burning an angry yellow.

Looks like Katie’s Mutation was working just fine.

Now, all we had to do was make certain she didn’t burn down the whole, god damned house in the process!

{ ¹She-Ra:
a
fictional character
and the
protagonist
of the
Filmation
cartoon and series of toys produced by
Mattel
called
She-Ra: Princess of Power
.
}

{ ²“Stephen King movie”: a veiled reference to the movie
Firestarter
, a 1984
science fiction
thriller film
based on the
novel of the same name
by
Stephen King
. }

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

The Waiting Game

That night, I did indeed sleep sandwiched between Ramona and Katie, the three of us tangled together like a bunch of puppies.  I remember how distracting it was to resist the temptation to flip one of those pliant, young teens onto her back, pull aside her pajama bottoms and slide my hard cock into her.  I didn’t get much sleep, because my aching dick wouldn’t let me.  I had legs and arms draped all over me.  I had warm pussy rubbing up against both legs.  I was almost driven insane.  I think, I even dreamed of fucking someone that night, but I
’m not certain.  Let it be suffice to say, I was horny as shit, but couldn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t want to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities.

Sandy and Tirza had slept on the air mattresses, since Leda had won the rock-paper-scissors contest and therefore, got Katie’s bed.  Jolene slept in Flavia’s room, but only after her and my brother had about an hour’s worth of making out in his room.  Eventually, this left Johan alone to whack-off to thoughts of his girlfriend bouncing on his junk or letting him pound her from behind.

[A deviant thought makes him pause.]

I was always partial to doggy-style, so I naturally envisioned him choking-the-chicken to such a scenario that night.  This is true because I’m a sick, old bastard with a libido of a fourteen year old. 
Though I’m older than dirt, pussy still drives me to do crazy shit – all the time.

[He chuckles, though he’s still deeply submerged.  He is becoming ever more adroit with the program.]

Of the numerous kids in the house, my parents only knew that Katie and Jolene were sleeping under their roof.  If they had known the truth, I don’t know what they would’ve done, especially my mom.  She was deathly afraid I’d knock up some young girl and have to forgo my dreams.

And what fucking dreams were those?

Little did she know, back then, my only goal was to pork as many girls as I possibly could.  If she knew the type of life I was living right under nose, she probably would’ve died of a heart attack right on the spot.
  I knew, she was deathly afraid of Ramona, with her curves and her sass, and her street smarts.  Ramona wasn’t on the Honor Roll like me.  She came from a family that was more dysfunctional than we were, so I know my mom harbored some ill-thoughts about her.  I knew my mom was worried if Ramona and I didn’t work out, she’d try to use a pregnancy to “trap” me.  But those were my mom’s worries.  If she had known Ramona as well as I did, she would’ve known my girlfriend wasn’t made that way.  It was below her.

Poor mama… if only you could know how much I miss you.  I would do anything to have you back if I could…

So, for the next four days, we were a flurry of activity.

All of us woke up early in the mornings, cleaned up ourselves and the Loft, and then the girls – Jolene included – would sneak out.  Sandy would drive them back to their homes where they’d check in with their parents, get more clothes and other personal supplies, only to be picked back up by Sandy a couple hours later.  She’d do it in a cyclical fashion.  The first one dropped off was the first one picked up; thus, everyone had around the same amount of time to get ready.  The only real lag was the duration it took
for Sandy herself to prepare the coming day.

Each day, they’d all return with breakfast from some fast food joint in the neighborhood.  We did this, so my parents wouldn’t get suspicious over the quantity of food we’d consume if we relied solely on the food stores at my house.  We’d eat in the dining room, because it held the only table that could fit all of us and we’d talk about our plans, refining them, honing our memories of them until we were all sick of the subject.  Then, the conversation would descend into
some crud topic or another.  There’d be lots of laughs and jokes shooting back and forth, before we’d began to drift apart.  Each of us would clean this or that portion of the mess we had made, so – once again – my mother (or father) wouldn’t suspect there were a lot of kids in the house.

On the first day, we were done by noon and as we paired off into various groupings, Sandy had come up to me and asked, if her and I could take a ride around and personally scope out the different ways we had planned to get to my uncles’ safehouse the night before.

I had thought it was a perfect idea and agreed.  We should check things out, make sure we had all the details down pat.  The better prepared we were, the greater chance of survival.  We would need all the luck we could garner if we were going to go against the NIA Shock Troopers.

We spent the better part of two hours going over the four main routes and the ten or so lesser routes.  We went over the many branches and turn-offs from each of the main courses, so we knew which ones merely went around a given area and those that jumped us to entirely new route altogether.  By the time we made it back to the house, we were very confident.  If the shit hit the fan, we’d find a way to get to safety.

The only way we didn’t go was the one through the Regional Park, because to do so we’d have to break into the property itself.  We decided, instead, to print out detailed maps from Google Earth and hope for the best.  It was, after all, the last ditch, the ace up our sleeve.  If we needed to use it, we’d have to be in very deep crap.  At the time, I really didn’t want to think about what it would take to make us as
desperate
as that.

We walked into the house and found my parents had left with my two youngest siblings to do some grocery shopping and a nice leisurely walk around the Americana Outdoor Mall in Glendale.  It suited me fine.

Katie and Ramona were practicing their Mutations in the TV Room.  My cousin working intricate tendrils of flame from the palm of her hand, while Ramona explained in detail what the girl was doing with her mind.  It was incredible how fast mastery was coming to all of us.  It was so strange, but genetic aberration was like a walk in the park.  Shouldn’t it have been harder?

The two high points for the remainder of the day were, one, watching Jolene and Johan make out in the pool after no more than seven minutes of swimming.  Two, was me staring at the mirror in the bathroom up in the Loft, a terrified look about my face, after I had accidentally broke my shaver against my cheek.

The first event sparked a short, but intense discourse with my step-sister, who had stepped up to me and asked without preamble, “I know you have talked with your brother, and told him to use caution with my friend, but she’s going to let him have sex with her all the same, right?”

I whispered, “Yes.”

She had meandered off melancholy and sullen.  I could only guess at what she was thinking.  I found myself caught between duel notions of heartbreak, and couldn’t decide if she was sad about the loss of her friends’ purity or Johan’s.  It was confusing to watch.

The second began with me attempting to shave, but I had moved too fast and before I could react, I felt my skin catch underneath the razor sharp blades and knew, in that moment, I was about to shred my face.

What actually happened though, shocked me to my core.

Instead of gouging a horrific wound into the side of my face, the shaver caught, tried to bit, but found no purchase.  With the sharp
thwack!
of breaking plastic, I squinted, only to see the head of the triple-bladed Gillette tumble through the air.

For whatever reason, I had tried to catch it in mid-air, but I missed.  I cracked my fist into the heavy granite surface of the counter, expecting to feel a jolt of pain along the length of my arm.  I felt nothing, though.  My eyes fell to the polished rock where I chipped it with the knuckles of my hand.  Right then, the head of the shaver bounced off the very same surface and to the ground, beside my feet.

I had stared for a long time into the mirror, trying to understand precisely what had happened.  It was the first sign another of my Mutations had begun to manifest.  I couldn’t recall the exact moment this change occurred within me – one minute I was normal, in the next I was heavier, denser.  It was as though I’d been born upon another planet altogether, a bigger planet maybe with twice the gravity.

Moreso than being a walking, talking pheromone this newfound
power
would be the benchmark by which I would be known.  I was also a Heavy, one of the first, though I hadn’t really figured out what all of it meant.

Not much else happened for the remainder of the day.

When 6 o’clock rolled around, the girls left.

But, unlike before, this time they left on a mission.  They took nearly five thousand dollars with them and were charged with buying two sets of clothes for each of us as well as underwear, outerwear, socks and sturdy shoes.  Aside from that, they were to find portable camping and survival gear, rope, hunting knives, backpacks, duffle bags, snacks and energy drinks.  If the NIA came a’ knocking on my front door, we’d be ready to move out within minutes.

We had to ready.  We had to, because as the days went on, things were getting worse  Pretty soon it would be our time to run.  We could all feel it building up on our shoulders.  We could almost see it over the horizon.  It was coming.  We all knew it.

Nothing else of note occurred that night.  The girls came back about 12:30 am, leaden with mounds of materiel like pack animals in a caravan and we set about organizing what we would be carrying in case of an emergency.

By 2am, we were all fast asleep.  Katie, Ramona and I slept in my bed with Tirza in Katie’s and Leda and Sandy upon the air mattresses.  One again, Jolene slept with Flavia downstairs, in her second floor bedroom, and poor Johan slept alone.

We were all so tired, we fell asleep and didn’t seem to move until our multiple alarms sounded early the next day, and our routine began anew.

Not much else happened during the course of the second or third day either.  It was on the evening of the fourth day when Jacob called my cell and gave me an eighty-seven second update of what was going on with “things”.  It was nothing less than astounding news.

Apparently, four more families had been ambushed and slaughtered in the past forty-eight hours.  The brutality of the NIA Shock Troopers was escalating to a point that even my uncles were wary of how things might play out in the future, said Jacob.

It really didn’t shock any of us, because we could feel something ugly thickening in the air about us.  It was putrid and dank, and disgusting.  It came from the minds’ of ignorant men, sanctimonious officials leading the rest of humanity with their righteous terror and false religious fervor.  I imagine there had been times, in other faraway lands, where the air had the same putrid density, where time seemed to drag over-closer toward horror.  Places like Nazi Germany, Cambodia at the height of the Khmir Rouge and Darfur in the western Sudan – they were all the same.  We knew it.  We could feel the inevitability of it.  It was the verge of genocide.  We just didn’t know to call it such yet, because it hadn’t quite happened.  It would though.  It was only a matter of time.

It wasn’t long after that phone call when we pulled out all the guns and clips and rounds my Uncle Roberto had left for us.  We spread the arsenal out on the floor of the Loft and sat around it.  Even for hardened criminals it was impressive.

There were three 9mm Glock 23’s, four M9 Beretta’s, two M9 Raffic’s (with extended 20 round box magazines), five Smith & Wesson M&P Compact 9mm’s, 2 Colt Delta Elite’s (the 10mm version), two Glock 39’s (.45 cal.), two rare Colt M1911 .45 cal.’s, two Desert Eagle .357 Magnum’s and one whopping Desert Eagle .50 cal.

We must’ve stared at them for five full minutes before we moved and began to load them and the multiple magazines as well.

I don’t have to sit here and tell you… it took us a long time to get everything ready.

Yet, we did.  We went to sleep feeling all the more better for it too.  If the NIA came calling, we would make damn sure we blasted them as much as they were determined to blast us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~