The Exodus Towers (14 page)

The pungent aroma of grilled fish filled Skyler’s nose and he found himself salivating.

Gingerly, he turned his head to one side. He lay on a bedroll a few meters from a small cookstove painted in glossy red, the kind Skyler imagined rich adventurers would buy before a guided trip up the Amazon. Fortunes spent to see an actual rainforest, to set foot in wilderness, before it was too late. Who knew back then that it would be the humans
that vanished. The forests had the better end of the Builders’ bargain.

On one burner, half a gutted fish lay in an oiled steel pan, sizzling. A pot of canned beans and rice steamed away on the second burner. Skyler licked his lips and found they had been coated with ointment.

A plate of food lay near his head, he realized, white picnic fork daring him to get up. He couldn’t resist, and struggled to one elbow, trying to remember exactly where they were and how they’d come here. He remembered the beach, and walking in silence through the twisted city streets. He’d been too tired, and still a bit dazed, to pay much attention. Now he cursed himself for it.

He had a forkful of fish in his mouth before he noticed Ana and Davi, sitting opposite the stove. They both sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor, a plate in the right hand, fork in the left. Ana had tied her hair back, and if the two of them had worn matching clothes Skyler might have failed to tell them apart.

Dim light came from an LED lantern set so low it barely chased the darkness from the otherwise empty, windowless room. Skyler shoveled a forkful of beans into his mouth and wondered if they’d set the lantern that low for safety, or out of sympathy for his head injury.

“Delicious,” he said after scraping half his plate clean. “I mean it. Best meal of my life, I think.” Even as he said the words he wanted to take them back. Prumble, and that bowl of ramen, still held the top spot. The memory made his eyes water.

“It’s time we talked,” Davi said. “Are you well enough?”

Skyler nodded, then hefted the last of his food from his plate. He chewed as long as he thought polite, savoring every last second of the flavor. Ana crossed the room and set a bottle of water in front of him, and he’d gulped half of it down before she even returned to her place on the floor.

He probed his head and found it had been wrapped in gauze. It still hurt to touch the gash, but not so much that he saw the heavens. Belatedly he noticed his gun, leaning
against the wall behind his two hosts. “You start, or shall I?” he asked.

Davi nodded to him.

“Me first, then,” Skyler said. He sat, cross-legged as they were, and wrapped the blanket they’d given him around his shoulders. Part of him became aware of the foul stench his body and clothing emitted. Something to resolve tomorrow, he decided, and told his story.

He left out only the details of the shell ship he’d found, and the transforming subhuman he’d seen within. There might be a time for that, he thought, but right now it would only complicate matters. The twins hung on his every word when he explained what had happened in Darwin over the last five years. They’d heard nothing since the disease spread, save for a rumor or two that Darwin was safe, which they had assumed was just that … rumor. Ana asked far more questions than Davi, especially about the aura towers, and Skyler quickly assessed that she was the brains of this brother-sister team.

The idea that there could be survivors who still could catch the disease rattled their worldview in a way Skyler could only imagine. He guessed they must have been sixteen or seventeen when the disease struck, and within months must have found themselves alone, forced to survive while being attacked constantly by the subhumans that ran rampant in those first days. How these two kids managed to last he had no idea.

When he told them how he found Camp Exodus overrun by the militant immunes, they both leaned forward, eyes narrowed. He explained his attempt to enter the camp and recounted what little he’d learned from the immune he’d questioned. Davi nodded constantly, confirming the information whether he meant to or not.

“So who are these people?” Skyler asked. “What do they want, and how do you know them?”

Davi did most of the talking. While he spoke, Ana set a pot of water on the portable stove and removed a trio of instant coffee packets from her backpack.

They were twenty-two years old, the son and daughter of
wealthy winemakers in Argentina. A world-renowned brand, Davi claimed, though Skyler had never heard of it. He said he was a “coffee man,” which earned a smile from Ana just as she handed him a steaming cup.

Their life had been one of large family gatherings, private tutors, and vacations to all corners of the world. Then the disease arrived. They were seventeen at the time.

For a year they’d stayed on their family land, defending it from subhumans and living off the garden and livestock there. Eventually they had to make forays into the nearby town. Davi spoke with pride about teaching Ana how to shoot a gun, and the day she made her first kill. Skyler gathered that the girl had been something of a princess before the disease came. Having seen her graceful dance in the flowing white dress, he had no problem picturing that. He wondered if Davi knew she still clung to that part of herself.

A fire ultimately drove them from their land. How it started they had no idea, but Skyler had seen enough of the world to know that failing electronics and other equipment often sparked such infernos. Entire neighborhoods, even towns, would be reduced to ash with no one to fight the flames.

They moved north after that, deciding it better to seek out other survivors, with all the risks that entailed, than to live in solitude.

Not long after entering Brazil, they came across Gabriel and his group, just eight strong then. Davi spoke at length about Gabriel’s charisma, his innate way of forging friendships and loyalty. Before the disease, he’d been an undercover police officer working the drug-ridden slums of Rio de Janeiro. He never spoke of himself as the leader of the group; everyone just knew he was and accepted it.

Davi and Ana had found a family again, and happiness.

A sense of purpose, too. They joined gladly.

Things changed, though. So slowly Davi and Ana didn’t notice at first. It wasn’t until the group met an immune who refused to join that Gabriel showed his true colors. The reluctant immune was held captive, and Gabriel spent hours
every day talking to the man in hushed tones, usually alone but sometimes with his closest members present.

Eventually the man joined. Still in the group now, in fact, and one of Gabriel’s closest members.

“Brainwashed,” Skyler said.

The two nodded. Davi then explained what happened with the next immune who declined to take up with the group. She’d left in the night, Gabriel had explained, with his blessings. Anyone could leave provided they spoke with Gabriel first.

Davi saw the body by accident, later that morning while gathering firewood. Bound hands and feet, a dry trickle of blood running down the back of her neck. The poor young man spoke of it like any seasoned war veteran might.

“Why is he doing all this?” Skyler asked. “Banding all the immunes together, I mean.”

Davi spread his hands. “To start over. He thinks those of us who survived were meant to build a new world.”

“
He
thinks. But you disagree?”

Davi glanced at his sister. “Right or not, his methods are what we fled. He runs the group like a cult.”

“A religious nut, then?”

“No,” Ana said, before her brother could reply. “If Gabriel has a god it is himself.”

“Don’t get her wrong,” Davi added. “Gabriel has a calling; it just comes from his own warped head. He gives those who resist plenty of time to see things his way, but if they make a move against him, or fight him, they vanish.”

Skyler nodded, noting the intense hatred on both their faces. He sipped the rest of his coffee while Ana excused herself for a few minutes. Davi spent the time with his nose buried in the screen on a handheld electronic device. A book or video game, Skyler guessed.

The gadget reminded him of his paired radio. Skyler rummaged through his backpack and found the device. He turned it on, heard static, and turned it off again.

“What’s that?” Davi asked as his sister returned. She stood behind him, an eyebrow raised.

“I hid the other one in the main building of our camp. We can listen in on them, if we get closer.”

When Ana sat down again Skyler set his mug aside. “Tell me,” he said, “if you two escaped from this cult, why stay so close to them?”

Davi’s eyes became distant for a moment, and Ana just stared at her brother, waiting for him to decide what information they would share. Her constant deference to him made her dancing in the courtyard all the more curious. Sitting here, Skyler could not imagine her straying too far from her brother’s side.

“There are more like us,” Davi said after a time. “More who started to question, and more who never believed in the first place. Friends of ours, in other words. Gabriel holds them captive, eleven that we know of, and we intend to free them.”

“But we have to find them first,” Ana said.

Skyler found himself nodding. The pair may be young, but they spoke as if an extra decade had been dumped on their shoulders.
Just like Samantha
, he thought, who was barely a year older than these two. He’d forgotten all about her youth within a few weeks of meeting her. The death toll caused by the Builders and their vicious disease was so omnipresent that Skyler rarely thought about it, but this—stolen childhood. Kids who watched everyone they knew die or become wild, only to find themselves caught up in a murderous cult of personality.

With sudden clarity he understood why Ana danced. Why she’d set aside her gun and her clothing, her shoes, her very persona, and risked her life to spin and twirl in that square. Without moments of escape like that, her life was one of constant terror.

“Eleven, you say.” Skyler focused on Davi. “Gabriel now holds a few hundred of my people at our camp, and he’s effectively trapped a few thousand more up in space. They’ll die without air and water from down here.”

Davi’s mouth twisted with anger. He rose to his knees and pointed off to his right, presumably toward the space elevator. “You mean your people are more important than ours?”

“Hear me out,” Skyler said, motioning for the young man to sit back down. “We find and free your friends. With them on our side, we can retake my camp, and take down Gabriel in the process.”

Davi’s head shook before Skyler had even finished. “Your camp is your problem.”

“Oh, Dav,” Ana said.

“We’ll rescue our friends and get away from here, with or without your help.”

“You do that,” Skyler growled, “and all you’ve done is traded eleven lives for two thousand. And for the rest of your life you’ll know Gabriel is still out there, gathering others just like you. Can you live with that?”

“Davi,” Ana whispered, a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

He recoiled from her, muttered something in Spanish, and stormed from the room.

“What did he say?” Skyler asked.

The girl waited until her brother’s footsteps faded down the hallway beyond. “He just needs to think. You are right, and he knows that, but he doesn’t like it when his plans are changed.”

She set to work cleaning their cups, using leftover water from the pot on the stove. When Skyler offered to help she waved him off. “Rest, please.”

“I need to use the bathroom,” he said.

Ana looked at him, then toward the door her brother had exited through.

“You still don’t trust me,” Skyler said. “It’s okay. In your shoes, I’d be a skeptic, too.”

Her mouth turned down in silent apology.

“Here,” Skyler said, removing his boots. “I can’t get far without these, and my gun and pack are here. Fair?”

She nodded and pointed toward the hallway. “Take a flashlight. Down to the end, and I suggest you breathe through your mouth.”

Digesting the ominous warning, Skyler removed a small key-chain LED from a pocket in his vest and set off down the hall. Hardwood flooring creaked under his feet. He trailed one hand along the wall as a precaution against dizziness,
feeling the ridges where bands of red and gold wallpaper met. Without working air-conditioning to chase away humidity, the glue that held the covering up had started to degrade, leaving edges peeled and folds where the heavy paper had gone slack.

Gold numbers on the doors implied the building was a hotel. An ancient low-budget one, if the communal toilet said anything. At the end of the hall, Skyler found the bathroom door open. He paused before entering when he noticed a stairwell directly across, leading up and down. Though he had no intention of fleeing, a quick jog up to the roof held a certain appeal. The sensation of not knowing exactly where he was grated on some corner of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. The hotel they’d brought him to could be a hundred meters or a hundred kilometers from the space elevator, for all he knew.

Nature called, though. Skyler slipped into the cramped bathroom and nudged the door closed with his toe. A janitor’s bucket served as toilet, the real item rendered useless by lack of running water. A faded wooden toilet seat lay propped against the wall, removed at some point for the screws that held it to the bowl. Moonlight from a small window on the back wall provided enough light, so he set his tiny flashlight on the porcelain counter and unzipped his pants. What felt like a minute passed as he relieved himself, and he had to prop his elbow against the wall to combat a mild wave of dizziness as the bucket filled. Finished, he hoisted the bucket out the tiny window and flipped it over. He shook it to make sure nothing remained inside.

Rapid footsteps came from outside the door. Davi, he thought, bounding up the stairs in a hurry. Skyler heard him turn the corner and race off down the hallway.

“Ana!” Davi shouted, muffled by the door and his distance down the hall.

Then Skyler heard others. Heavy footfalls now, in the stairwell. He stood frozen in place, holding the waste bucket out the window in the night air, unsure if he should move or keep silent.