I shake my head, and yet I say, “Yes.”
“Why did you do it?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have all the time in the world, don’t we?” he says, gesturing with his gun.
The fires of Hell burn at our feet, warming the air to an almost uncomfortable heat, even at night.
“My father was like yours—twisted,” I say. “But unlike yours, he didn’t love me. He saw me as his legacy. At the end of mankind, as he had known it, I was to be his only way to reach immortality. With his genes in someone powerful, he felt like he was leaving behind his mark on the world. He was a cruel and ruthless soldier. A true survivor, at all costs.”
“And you killed him to be free of him?”
I shake my head. “No. My father was cruel to the rest of the world, but he tolerated me well enough. He kept me alive for years and taught me everything I knew. I couldn’t fathom a world where he wasn’t with me. What would I do without him? But then, when I was fifteen, he left for a week to hunt down some men who had stolen our food. He loved the chase. And he saw me as a hindrance. And while he was gone, I met a woman.”
Jude’s eyebrows climb to his hairline. “A woman?”
Even to this day, more than ten years later, I remember her golden hair in the wind. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she laughed at her own jokes.
“Yes. But not in the way you think. Aurora was close to forty. She was a scientist who had worked on the Revival Project. When she saw me, she recognized that I’m a mutant. But she…” I swallow. I can’t believe I still can’t talk about it without shaking. I’m a fucking grown man now. “The first thing she said was, ‘Where have you been all this time?’ And ‘Are you okay?’” I laugh. “But when I threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave me alone, she said, ‘Oh, fuck off, young man. I have a son like you. You don’t scare me.’” I had been shocked to learn that there was someone out there like me who had survived. Some kind of brother. “She told me about the lab where she lived and the mutant she had raised. When the Revival Project was abandoned, they refused to leave the kid behind. So, they stayed. They became a family. The scientists who created me tried to kill me. I was burning with jealousy for that kid who had it all. But then she offered to take me in. I could meet my brother and his family…”
“And then?” asks Jude after I kept quiet for a while.
I have no fucking clue why I’m telling him all this. Even Helios never learned of it back in the days. I didn’t want him to know that I had failed to save my first friend in the wastelands.
“We spent a few days together. We became friends. She was out looking for books, of all things. I helped her. Her son’s birthday was coming up. He was turning twelve. Then Sergeant Kang came back. And as soon as he understood who Aurora was and what she offered, he killed her in cold blood. I was too slow to stop it.”
My father was a hard man to predict, even for me. He listened to what Aurora and I had to say, then without warning, he pulled out his gun and shot her in the head.
“And you killed him,” says Jude.
I nod. “Back then, I couldn’t control my electricity. And at that moment, I wanted him dead. I had no shovel, and the ground was too hard. I had to leave them in the desert.”
Jude nods grimly. “That’s why we burn the bodies.”
We both watch the eternal fires of Hell burn below us.
9
The hot spring.
“You know what I’ve been thinking about? The old gods—maybe they’re just the planet’s guardians. They ensure that life stays within the boundaries of what Earth can carry and manage. Pest control, of a sort. And you know who disappeared from the planet before us, millions of years ago? Dinosaurs. What if? Listen up. What if the dinosaurs weren’t killed by a giant meteorite? What if the old gods rose and managed life on Earth for a few centuries before going back to sleep? Leaving behind only the lifeforms that could adapt. What if mankind was the new pest?”
Video transcription of a video shared among survivors, creator unknown, 2046.
To Jude’s request, Fyfe flies to a place where we can ‘take a dip and get clean’. His map might be outdated, but many natural landmarks haven’t changed since the Rise. And so, we land near the Arizona hot spring, close to the Colorado River. It used to be a trail for hitchhikers, and some of the rusty signs are still up.
But even the prospect of taking a warm bath isn’t enough to chase away the haunting in Jude’s eyes.
“You go first,” he says to me, pointing at the hot spring with his gun. “While I cook. You stink.” He throws a towel he found in theFireflyat my face, followed by the soap.
I grab both and frown. “No, I don’t.”
Jude laughs and starts building a fire. We’re hidden between the canyons, and the light from the flames will be hidden from prying eyes.
I sigh and walk to the hot spring. It’s a knee-deep pool. I’ve never liked to get into water—not since the scientists used to drop me into the jellyfish tank—but I’ve learned how to keep my fear in check.
I take my clothes off and throw them in the hot spring. They need to be washed, too. The pants might be black, but they’re still covered in dried blood. And there’s a hole in the crotch area where Jude stabbed me on the first day. I walk into the pool naked.
