A Better World

CHAPTER 29

It wasn’t that Ethan was tired, though he was. Exhausted, in fact, walking-dead tired—there were the zombies again—bleary-eyed and wasted, his arms leaden from holding Violet. Twelve pounds didn’t seem like much until it was sagging deadweight carried for miles.

And it wasn’t the pain, although there was plenty of that. His hips and back felt like hot steel rods had been inserted into them. His knee had swollen up. Worst were his bare feet. Before bed, Amy had taken off her socks with her shoes, and so once they’d left Jeremy’s, he’d peeled off his own and insisted she take them. Hours of walking through the darkness across fallow cornfields and state park land had cut his soles ragged, and he tracked blood with every step. It would have been easier on roads, but they were done with roads.

Still, it wasn’t any of that. What was killing him was the helplessness. He’d never felt so goddamn useless.

Violet had woken up an hour ago and had been crying ever since, piteous, confused howls of hunger, and he had nothing to feed her.

A man had pointed a shotgun at the people he loved, and he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Even with a gun in his belt, he hadn’t been able to do anything. His belly still burned at the memory of that. He knew he had made the smart move, knew that what he was feeling was just leftover monkey stuff, but it didn’t matter.

He was supposed to protect his family, and instead they were wandering the countryside with nothing, no food, no shelter, no money. Not even much of a plan.

Dawn had broken on the three of them hiking a back road, fleeing a burning city. Refugees, simple as that. They must have crossed the quarantine line sometime during the night without even knowing it. They’d seen a helicopter a while back, at a distance, but it had passed without incident.

Not the most empowering feeling, though, to be huddling under a bush with his family, watching a helicopter circle.

Last night you swore you’d do anything to protect your family. And you meant it.

So take another step. And then another. And another.

He switched Violet to his other arm, took the steps, and then more after them.

“Hey,” Amy said.

Ethan had been staring at the ground so intently that he was almost surprised to see the rest of the world was still there when he looked up. “What?”

Amy pointed.

A couple of hundred yards away, at the edge of the field, stood a gas station. Cuyahoga Falls.

“We made it.”

They used the gas station restroom to clean up as much as they could. Washed the dirt off their hands and faces, the blood off his feet. Changed Violet, although with no diaper to put her in, the term felt hollow. They’d ended up wadding up about ten feet of toilet paper as a makeshift diaper.

While Amy used the bathroom, Ethan held his daughter, cooing to her as he paced the inside of the gas station. A minimart, just candy and soft drinks and the essentials.

Including packs of Huggies and tubs of formula. He stood in front of them, staring.

After a moment, he heard a cough. The clerk leaned on the counter, eyes alert. A bulky guy with grease stains under his fingernails.

“I’m not a shoplifter,” Ethan said.

“Good.”

“Listen.” He opened his mouth, willed words to come, better ones than those that presented themselves. He was a first-rate scientist at the top of his field. Sought after by universities and research laboratories. A man who had always prided himself on finding a solution, who had always believed that if fortune turned on him, he would still manage, still be able to provide. That he would find a way.

And what he was left with was begging.

You promised the universe you would do whatever it took.

“Listen,” he repeated. “We got robbed last night. My wife and I are okay, but my daughter is starving.” He picked up a tub of formula. “Is there any chance—”

“Sorry about your trouble, but nope.”

“I’m not a bum or anything, I’m just a guy having some bad luck.”

“And I’m just a guy pulling a double.”

“I’ll pay you back. Plus twenty bucks for the kindness.”

The clerk yawned, looked back at a magazine on the counter.

Ethan said, “She’s three months old. Come on. Be a human being.”

Without looking up, the guy said, “Move along, buddy.”

There’s another way. You still have the pistol in your waistband.

The thought felt so good that he let himself indulge in the momentary fantasy of how much fun it would be to watch the clerk’s expression change as Ethan pulled out his gun.

It felt good, but it was crazy. They’d have money again in a few minutes. Load up on diapers and food—somewhere else, no chance he was giving this gas station a cent—and then rent a car. Worst case, catch a Greyhound. Strange and bad as things had gotten, they were almost over. The three of them had made it out of Cleveland, had escaped the National Guard and faced down a shotgun and walked across a quarantine line, and they’d made it.

Just get cash and get on the road.

His bank looked the same in Cuyahoga Falls as it did in Cleveland. Blue and gray carpet, fake wood desks, bulletproof glass, a security camera over the door watching the tellers, eighties pop music playing in the background. He didn’t know how people worked in banks. Nothing wrong with it, just, how didn’t they go out of their mind?

“Can I help you?” The greeter’s tone was polite but circumspect, her eyes sliding down his ragged clothes and bare feet. He was glad Amy had decided to wait outside with Violet; the three of them would have looked like a Dorothea Lange photo.

“Yes,” Ethan said. “We got carjacked. Two guys with guns.”

“Oh my God!” Her eyes wide. “Here?”

“A couple of miles up the road.”

“What did the police say?”

“My next stop. Is the manager around?”

He was. A jocular guy in an off-the-rack suit, he introduced himself as Steve Schwarz, and led them into his office. “So sorry to hear about what happened to you. Is everyone okay?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “Just rattled. And broke. They took everything. Our phones, wallets, everything.”

“We’ll get you fixed up. Did you open your account here?”

“Cleveland.”

Schwarz cocked his head. “You coming from there?”

“No,” Ethan said. “We’ve been on vacation.”

“Do you know your account number?”

Ethan slid into a seat opposite the man’s desk. “Never memorized it.”

“Ah, me either. How about your social security?”

He rattled off both his own and Amy’s. Schwarz typed away. “Since you don’t have ID, I have to ask a couple of security questions.”

“Shoot.”

They went through PIN numbers, the location of their preferred branch in Cleveland, recent charges, the rough total of their monthly mortgage payment. The manager was quickly satisfied, said, “We’ll get you new debit cards right now. Credit cards will need to be mailed, I’m afraid.”

“Sure. Some cash too, please.”

“How much?”

“Say five thousand?”

“No problem, Dr. Park.” More typing. “You got lucky, you know.”

“How’s that?”

“They didn’t take your wedding ring.”

Ethan had been relaxing in the chair. He looked up to see Schwarz staring at him, a question in his eyes. Let him wonder. “Guess you’re right, we got lucky.”

The man looked like he was about to say something else when the phone on his desk rang. “Excuse me,” he said, and picked it up. “Steve Schwarz, branch manager.”

Ethan couldn’t hear the voice on the other end. But whatever they said, Schwarz hadn’t been expecting. He stiffened, his hand tightening on the phone. His eyes jumped to Ethan and quickly away again. “I understand.”

Then he held the phone out. “For you.”

What the—? He looked around; the office walls were glass, and he could see the rest of the bank, everything looking just as it had. But what had seemed comforting in its familiarity now seemed pregnant with menace. Ethan took the phone.

“Hello, Dr. Park.” A man’s voice, assured and smooth. “This is Special Agent Bobby Quinn of the Department of Analysis and Response.”

“Quinn?” It didn’t make any sense. That was the name of the agent who had come to his house, who had told him that Abe had been kidnapped. “What are—how did you know I was here?”

“That’s not important. Listen, Doctor, I know we didn’t part on the best terms, and I apologize. But it’s crucial that we talk.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know that, sir, and I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, no nothing like that. We need your help, Ethan.”

“With what?”

“I can’t explain over the phone. A matter of national security.”

National security? What is he talking about?

Then, Does it matter? He’s a government agent, and you’re an American citizen. “When?”

“Just sit tight. I’m in DC, but I’ll requisition a jet and be there in two hours. If you’d like, I can bring fresh clothes and some shoes.”

Ethan started to thank him, and then thought, Shoes? A tingle slid down the back of his thighs. Slowly, he turned.

The security camera by the door had rotated to point into the bank manager’s office.

Behind the counter, two more gazed unblinking.

Out the window, a camera on a telephone pole stared at his wife and child.

“My God.”

“Dr. Park, we’ve taken control of every closed-circuit camera for a two-hundred-mile radius. That’s how important you are right now.”

“The drone,” he said. “The National Guard.”

This man has gone to enormous trouble to find you. A man you didn’t trust when you met him before; a man who lied about the reasons he was there.

“That’s right. You’re starting to understand.”

“No,” Ethan said. “I’m not. Why aren’t you having the police pick us up?”

“I told you, I’ll come myself.”

“But you said that time is a factor. And you’re in Washington, DC. So why not have the police meet us?” He shifted the phone to the other ear. Stared at the security camera. “Is it because you don’t want them involved?”

The thoughts coming fast and hard now, dots connecting. True, the serum was years away from being publicly available. But it worked. They could give normal people gifts.

Which was revolutionary in every sense of the word. Not just get-astonishingly-rich revolutionary; change-the-world revolutionary.

Maybe the DAR doesn’t want the world to change. Not this much.

“If local police picked us up,” Ethan said slowly, “there would be an arrest record. Processing. A trail. Not to mention a number of cops who knew we had been taken.”

“What difference do you think that would make?”

“If there are no witnesses, it’s easy for us to just disappear.”

“Disappear?” The agent laughed. “Dr. Park, you’re being paranoid.”

“In the last few days, my boss has been kidnapped, my city quarantined, my house put under surveillance, and military drones tasked to search for me. I’ve had four guns pointed at my head, two of them by soldiers, and been robbed of everything down to my shoes. Last night I watched the National Guard kill an innocent man. Guardsmen you just admitted you sent for me. I’m starting to think I’m not being paranoid enough.”

“Ethan. Listen—”

And then another connection. Abe. Dr. Abraham Couzen. A genius. A massive pain in the ass who had found the answer to a question the whole world had been asking for thirty years. A question that had shaped everything, changed everything. That had given rise to the DAR—and to the Children of Darwin. And now he was gone, his work missing, blood in his lab.

Ethan said, “Agent Quinn? Where’s Abe?”

There was a long pause. When the government man spoke again, what he said was, “Dr. Park, what you’re thinking of doing? Don’t.”

But by then Ethan had already dropped the phone and started running.