He nods, "The camp we were just at is one of our peace camps. It's like a retreat. The children and young and old stay there. We have people coming and going constantly. Didn't you notice how easily you were welcomed?"
"I guess. I just thought that’s what people were when they live in a camp like that. After the machine gun escort that is."
He laughs again. I like the sound of it but it reminds me of Jake.
"Well that is big timber wolf Emma. How did you end up with him?"
"His mother gave birth and must have gotten sick shortly after. Leo was waiting for me at the door to the cabin one day. He was tiny then. I could hear his brothers and sisters in the woods. I found the mother dead and half eaten surrounded by the other cubs who were weak and sick. It was awful. I shot them and burned them. It’s the closest infection ever got to my cabin. He's immune anyway so that's helpful."
"He's immune? Naturally? Maybe he never ate any of the mom."
I shake my head, "She wasn’t the only sick thing Leo has eaten. He likes the infected."
He grimaces, "That's disgusting. Disgusting and lucky all at the same time."
I nod, "It is."
"What do you know about the start of the infection?"
I shrug, "People got sick and some died and others lived but went a little crazy."
His eyes look dark as his expression looses its humor and the sun sets completely, "No Emma people didn’t just get sick. The infection was spread on purpose. Everything that’s happened has been a plan all along."
"That can't be true."
"I wish it weren’t. There was something called the United Nations. They did all of this."
I feel sick, "They were evil?"
He shakes his head, "Not evil just detached. The world was running out of resources and everyone was constantly putting a hand out to them and asking for aide and food and money. The UN had been warning us forever about the global warming and the ice melting and ocean becoming acidic. Anyway in 2012 all of Greenland's ice and snow melted in a week. The earth started to enter a drought. We thought it was a cyclical event but it wasn’t. It was man made. We had pushed it too far. The same time all this was happening, a conference was held in Rio about the environment. Canada, the US and China pretty much pulled out and admitted they had no intention of slowing their pollution to the recommended level. It would be too hard on their economies. That was the final straw. Apparently the UN had a backup plan for a worst-case scenario such as that. They had a plague. It had a vaccine, which made it easy to spread and then control. The problem was it mutated. They spread the virus at the same time they had bombs placed deep in the ocean along the Japanese coastline. They bombed the shelf and pretty much wiped Japan off the face of the earth and made the west coast of North America a target for huge tidal waves."
It felt like a movie. It didn’t feel real. It felt like the ramblings of my father, before.
I shake my head, "How could you know all this?"
"The work farms. I met people who had been part of the initial plan. The plan was to reset everything. Instead the UN decided they wanted to start humanity over but set it up to succeed this time. The breeder farms were built where only the fit and healthy were allowed to reproduce."
I shivered imagining it.
He laughed, "It isn’t what you think. I know what everyone thinks happens but it's not. The girls only breed every three years and only up to three times. The pregnancy isn’t the result of rape, it's done using science. The baby is made in a lab and then inserted into the woman's womb."
I gag and he laughs.
"The religious had the same reaction. The UN never mentioned this plan to anyone but the very high up. It never went well."
I frown, "The girls are still taken against their will and made to make babies against their will."
I see his head nod in the dark, "Yup and the babies are not God's children to the Christians. Anyway the UN runs the military but again they sit in their closed office and plan using numbers and facts and data. They don’t leave it to see what the world looks like or how corrupt the military is. They have built six cities world wide from the ashes and rubble of the previous cities. They plan on cleaning every inch of the world."
My head spins, "What about the borderlands?"
"They can't use anymore bombs without affecting the weather and pollution again, so the plan stands at leaving us to our own devices until they have this part of the world cleaned up. Then they will round us up."
"Why?"
"They want the diseases and illnesses bred out. They won't allow those people to live and breed."
"Oh my god it's like a nightmare."
"It is. On that note we need to sleep. You sleep first and I'll keep watch."
"That's some bedtime story." I liked Jake's better.
He laughs. I watch his silhouette in the dark for a moment. He doesn’t lean in to kiss me. He watches the hill we climbed.
I lie down on his jacket and snuggle into the smell.
"How long have they been breeding the science babies?"
His outline turns to me and I see the shine of his eyes in the dark, "A long time. They started in the early 2000's."
"Are the babies different than the rest of us?"
"Yes."
Chapter Thirteen
The broken branches lead us to a camp in a valley on the opposite side of the mountain where my farmhouse sat. The size of the camp is disturbing.
Will smiles as he sees it and walks directly up to the man holding the gun amid the trees.
"Halt."
"Lancaster." Will shouts.
The gunman smiles, "No shit, Willy boy you're alive and well. I heard they caught you."
He laughs, "They think they did. Is Marshall still in charge?"
Lancaster points to the camp, "He's in the smallest tent, you know what he's like. Still paranoid they will bomb us."
Will laughs and points to me, "This is my friend Emma."
I feel hurt he calls me his friend. I don’t know why but the word stings.
"I'm John." He puts a hand out and I notice he has a nice smile. I meet his gray eyes and smile back, "Nice to meet you."
His eyes flicker on Will for a moment and an even bigger smile crosses his lips, "So where did you two meet?"
I look at Will.
He shakes his head, "She walked up to the mountain retreat the other day with a huge timber wolf for a pet and an unruly teenager."
John's eyes grow wide, "You have a wolf?"
I nod. I want to find Anna and Jake. I don’t understand why Will isn’t busting inside to see them. I feel myself fidget.
"Well I'm going to go see Marshall and see what's new on this side of the hill."
We walk toward the camp as the sound of a bird squawking fills the forest. The gunmen lower their weapons as they hear the sound and we walk past them. The camp opens as the forest spreads thin.
It looks like the camp we were at before except that everyone is wearing a firearm or a knife. At one point I swear I see a sword. There are no children here.
"Will. You're alive!"
A girl with long blonde hair in two braids and cut off shorts runs and jumps into his arms. My heart stops. She kisses his lips. The lips that only just kissed me the day before. I feel heat radiating from my cheeks. I've read about rogue men in the romance novels and feel sick that I've fallen for one. All the years of reading the novels and judging the females who seem strong and smart and then fall for a jerk. Reality hurts. I want Jake and Anna and my cabin with Leo and Meg. I want to let the world kill itself and hide up in the mountains. I will never kiss him again. I can't believe I was so reckless.
"Star what the hell. You know me better than that." He twirls her around and looks sheepishly at me, "This is Emma."
I nod and grip my bow.
She beams at me, "Wow nice find Will. He save you from the farms too?"
I raise an eyebrow, "I don’t need to be saved. I'm the hero of my own story." I've died and gone to heaven when her face drops. I read that in a novel my granny had. I've always wanted to say it.
She looks at Will, who is staring at me. I walk past him and start to look around. If he doesn’t want to find his siblings that’s his problem. I'll be damned if I will let them live another moment without the knowledge their asshole brother is alive and well.
"You pissed at me?"
I don’t turn. I continue along. My eyes desperately scan the crowds of people.
"Willy boy." He shakes hands with a very tanned man with the whitest smile I've ever seen. It almost glows in the dark.
People continue to greet him, but I can't hear them anymore. I see what I'm looking for. I see a tall guy limping with shaggy dark hair. I break into a run. I run through the crowd and dive as I get close enough for the arm of the man.
As I make contact he turns. His face is exactly as I remember it. He has me in his arms before I can speak a word. He is mauling me like a bear, like granny always said.
"Emma oh my god. Emma it's you. Holy shit I thought they got you." He is planting kisses everywhere across my face.
"Where is Anna?"
His kisses stop but his grip on my face stays strong, "They took her."
I want to collapse into his arms and sob.
"Jakey."
Jake drops to his knees in front of me. His hands leave my face and fall onto the tops of his knees.
"Will? Will? Is that you?"
Will rushes at him and lifts him up. He pulls him into his embrace. The brother's hug is fierce but all I hear is the sentence 'they took her' repeating in my mind.
Jake looks back at me, "You found him?"
I shake my head. I have no words.
They hug and cry and laugh but I am stunned. Finally able to speak I mutter. "Where did they take her?"
Their reunion no longer means anything to me.