Jamie hurled herself at me, and my world flew sideways.
The enormous rhino thundered past, its sharp horn missing my leg by inches. More sandy dust kicked into the air to choke me, and I scrambled alongside Jamie on all fours toward the grassy side of the road.
A dozen or so yards away, the rhino wheeled around, and lumbered back toward us, the dirt vibrating under my palms as it did. Jamie’s pistol lay where she’d dropped it in the road, and we were backed up against the intact section of the fence. There was no way the beast could miss.
Thwack.
Something red streaked through the air and caught the rhino on its right shoulder.
Thwack.
A second red streak plunged through the plumes of dust, and the rhino stumbled, one of its front feet buckling.
Down the animal went and slammed into the ground with a colossal thud that I felt in my ribcage. Like a stony glacier, it ground to a halt mere feet away from Jamie and I, it’s ear twitching, one of the stubby grey legs kicking.
At last it lay still, save for its sides rising up and down in the slow rhythmic bellows of sedation.
I stared, heart still racing, at the horn that had come mere feet from impaling me.
Did that really just happen?
Boots crunched on the gravel, and a figure bent over me, shadowy in the rising sun. “Hey, are you okay?”
I looked up to see those eyes, blue like the sky, set in a handsome face with mousy brown hair cut short around his ears. Last night still felt like a blur, but I would have been blind not to recognize the boy who’d scooped me out of the pile of dirty shoes.
He wore a yellow cut off T shirt with a scrapyard logo on the front of a crane poised to pick up a broken-down old car, both his muscled arms gleaming in the sun. A holster rested on his right hip much like Jamie’s, though the handgun inside it had a wooden grip with German markings on the metal. An old-fashioned military knife like the one my grandfather carried in Vietnam hung beside it, oiled and sharp. Well-worn blue jeans covered his legs, and in his hands, the boy held a strange looking silver rifle, with red feathered darts tucked in a pouch on the buttstock.
I let my eyes lock on his, and sat there drinking them in, too shaken and surprised to speak.
Where do they make people like you? Seriously, is there a lab somewhere, or—
“We’re fine.” Jamie coughed and spat into the nearby dirt as she rolled to her feet. “Landed on our ego, so nothing broken.”
Chris grinned at that, and offered her a hand up, though Jamie didn’t take it.
Instead, he turned to me, and held out his hand with a warm smile. “Still, that was close. You good, newbie?”
My heart roared in my ear, and heat poured across my face in a tidal wave. In the daylight, he was cuter than I remembered, and he spoke with a slight accent that I couldn’t place, something between Australian, British, and maybe German. I knew nothing about foreign languages other than a few movies I’d seen, and my track record with regular American boys hadn’t exactly been stellar.
Come on, say something, before he thinks you’re being weird.
“I-I, uh . . . yeah, I was just . . . eating my kabob . . .” Instantly, my face went from hot, to boiling in humiliation, and I bit my lip in self-loathing. My kabob? That’s what my brain had chosen to spit out in that moment? I didn’t give two figs about the stupid fish; I’d almost been trampled to death. Why did I have to be so hopelessly awkward?
A soft sound met my ears, and I realized he was laughing, as if I’d just delivered the punchline to a joke.
Chris reached down to grab my hand and pull me up from the ground like I weighed nothing at all. “Yeah, Margie’s food will be the death of us. You sure you’re okay? No broken bones?”
Coughing on the dust, I shook my head, and brushed myself off to avoid meeting his eye, still embarrassed. “I’m fine, really.”
Others crowded around the rhino, and from the haze, Dr. O’Brian jogged forward, another dart gun in her hands.
She let out a sigh of relief and knelt beside the huge animal. “Nice shot, Mr. Dekker. Poor Okura here is extra flighty today. No lacerations though, so he should be just fine, once he sleeps the sedative off.”
“We’re okay, thanks for asking.” Jamie grunted with a roll of her eyes.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Jamie.” Dr. Obrian waved us forward with an excited smile. “We’re witnessing scientific history after all. Come look, it’s fascinating.”
Everyone pressed forward, and I leaned in as well, the chalky dust mixing with the musky scent of rhino. At first, all I could see was the leathery gray skin of the beast in the morning sunshine, some mud, and a few flies buzzing around.
Then, my eyes picked up on the hair.
A thin coat of hair had begun to sprout from the rhino’s skin, growing in coarse brown strands all over its hulky body. I was no expert on rhinos, but I knew they didn’t have long hair, and to see it made my shock fade into wonder.
“Three centimeters more than yesterday.” Dr. O’Brian used a little white plastic ruler to measure one of the hairs, and a few of the other girls in the circle scribbled on little clipboards they had. Judging by their latex gloves, medical bags at their sides, and note taking material, I guessed these to be more researchers.
Chris also squatted down beside her and ran a hand over the thin fur of the rhino. “Southern Whites don’t grow hair this long.”
“No,” Dr. O’Brian pulled out a small syringe to draw some blood from the animal’s thick skin. “But their genetic ancestors did. Look at the length of his horn, and the hump on his back. Those are bigger than last week too. He’s changing fast.”
Changing?
I turned to Jamie and opened my mouth to speak.
“It’s the Breach.” She seemed to read my mind and whispered to me with an expression that held both curiosity and concern. “It’s causing some of our species here to mutate.”
“Adapt.” Dr. O’Brian corrected her, capping off the blood sample vial without skipping a beat. “Rapid physical adaptation through suppressed traits in the genetic code. And it’s affecting every species, so far. Some changes are just more profound than others. Our bison herd has shown very little adaptation, while these guys are going full pre-historic all at once.”
The others reached out to pet the sleeping rhino, and I dared to mimic them, placing my hand on the gray hide. It was softer than I’d expected, a strange mix between velvet and leather, with a hard layer underneath, and the hairs rubbed like a bristle brush against my palm.
“Ceratotherium antiquitatis.” Dr. Obrian clipped a few of the hairs into a little test tube with a pair of scissors, holding it up so her subordinates could see. “The world’s first natural hybrid between Ceratotherium simum and Coelodonta antiquitatis. All the vigor and heat tolerance of a Southern White rhinoceros, with the cold hardiness and armor structure of a wooly rhinoceros. Perfectly adapted to survive here.”
“And supercharged with enough adrenaline to punch clean through our fences.” Chris frowned and fixed her with a stern gaze. “He could have killed someone, doctor. We need to at least put him in one of the outer paddocks for safety.”
Dr. Obrian stood and wiped her hands on her work slack with a nod. “We’ll release him in a few days. I want to be sure his health is up to it. Rapid change can weaken the immune system, and Okura needs to be at his top strength if he’s going out into the wild.”
Jamie scooped her pistol from the dirt and waved her free hand at the distracted group. “Forgive us for not sticking around for another stampede. It was fun though. We should do this every Tuesday.”
Her sarcasm earned Jamie a few annoyed glares from the researchers, but Chris handed his dart gun off to one of the boys in the group and trudged over to us. “I’m headed that way too. I’ll let the maintenance crews know we need a fence-patching team out here asap. You have this under control, right?”
“Of course.” Dr. Obrian went back to talking over her shoulder, too infatuated with her specimen to look away. “Thank you for your help, Chris. I owe you one.”
Distancing ourselves from the group, we headed further into the road between the animal enclosures, the smell of manure, hay, and livestock heavy in the air. Jamie and Chris both fell into silence, and something about it felt tense, as though neither wanted to look at the other. Left in an awkward form of limbo, I instead chose to peer at the various animals I could see from our side of the fence line, wondering if any more would come crashing through to kill us.
There were more rhinos, though these seemed much calmer, and a small herd of four elephants, with teams of researchers crowding around them to measure their tusks, which seemed longer and more curved than I remembered from my last zoo trip. Zebra and antelope grazed, along with some furry kind of goat that I didn’t recognize, and tan colored donkeys. They were cute, and I would have smiled if not for what Dr. O’Brian had said.
It’s affecting every species so far. Some changes are just more profound than others.
What kind of changes would befall these animals? Would they all revert back to some kind of wild, unpredictable, pre-historic hybrid? What did that mean for us? I’d eaten a bison burger only this morning. Would I start changing too?
“Don’t worry.”
I jerked my head up to find Chris wearing a sympathetic grin.
“Adaptation is different for every animal. Okura was just confused, scared. We’re safe so long as we’re careful with them.”
He slowed to walk beside me, and I fought the fluttering in my stomach to nod. “Thanks for, you know, back there.”
Chris flashed a toothy white grin and offered a handshake. “Chris Dekker.”
“Hannah Brun.” I managed to get the words out without squeaking like a mouse, and tried not to think about how his calloused hand in mine felt both foreign, and exciting.
“So, where are you from?” He plucked a tall blade of grass from one of the plants alongside the road and twisted it into idle knots as we walked.
“Louisville.” I kicked a pebble in the road for something to do, the clinic passing by me on my right. Jamie stayed further ahead, almost as if she didn’t want to be part of our conversation, and I wondered if she was mad that I’d nearly gotten us killed. “Kentucky.”
Chris’s eyebrows rose and he tossed the blade of grass aside. “Another out-of-towner, huh? I’m from Pennsylvania myself. Got shot down only a month or so ago.”
Shot down?
Unsure if it would be insensitive to ask what that meant, I avoided that with a more innocent question. “So, your accent, is that Australian?”
Chris’s eyes brightened a little, and he laughed with another head shake. “Afrikaans. My grandparents on my father’s side were from South Africa and Rhodesia. My ouma raised me after they died, so I ended up being able to speak the home tongue as well as English. What about you?”
Not sure you want to know just how bland my life is.
I shrugged and went back to kicking my little rock. “I took Spanish once in high school but was never that good at it. My parents are both from Kentucky so . . . yeah, I’m kinda boring.”
That last bit came as a defeated slip, something I regretted saying right away. It sounded self-pitying, and I felt stupid for having said it in front of him.
An elbow gently bumped my upper arm, and I looked up to see him watching me with those eyes that turned my brain upside down. “I don’t believe that for a second. You’re here, right? Boring people never end up here.”
I almost stopped, dead in my tracks, and had to force myself to keep moving. A compliment? I didn’t get those, not from non-family members, and certainly not from boys who didn’t reek of B.O or want only one thing. Part of me feared that maybe Chris was working up to that, a cruelly elaborate sleazebag that knew how to charm a girl into sending him nude pictures so he could humiliate her in front of all his friends. But I didn’t want to believe that. This was nice, being seen felt good, and even if he was only trying to be kind, I didn’t want our conversation to end.
A shadow fell across me, and I broke from my jumble of thoughts to look up.
Two huge sheet metal buildings stood like square brown giants in the sunshine, one with its bay doors rolled open, the other shut tight. Across the broad, gently sloping rooftops, a sea of blue solar panels soaked up the sun, their fat black power cables running down into the side of the sheds. A crew of men worked on a complex series of pipes and cylindrical tanks that led to the back of the shed, while a nearby smokestack belched steam into the air. In the large gravel parking lot that surrounded the buildings on three sides, dozens of vehicles sat under various tarps in neat rows. Boxy and tall, they didn’t resemble any normal civilian car I’d ever seen, and as we passed, I couldn’t help my nagging curiosity.
“I take it those are for patrols?” I guessed, peering at a gap in one of the tarps to see welded steel spray painted an olive-green color.
“Among other things.” Chris leaned closer to me with a cryptic tone, but I couldn’t focus on his words for how his warm breath tickled the skin of my neck. “The research team figured out a way to layer the armor with aluminum so we can move faster than ELSAR’s Humvees, but still survive rifle fire. Took us three weeks to get the gas well online, even with the chief mechanic’s expertise on oilfield stuff. We had to move the solar batteries, restore the old-school generators, dig a storage bunker for the ammunition, and sneak every bit of aluminum past the Echo Spider nests in the scrapyard. All to build fourteen of these things.”
I scanned the vehicles we passed more closely, the gears in my head turning wildly over every word he was saying, since I didn’t want to look stupid. “To use against the mutants?”
“That’s the official narrative.” Chris cast a wary eye at the nearby garage and nodded to several more objects that sat much lower under their tarps, with long round tubes poking against the fabric. “With the new field guns, we might stand a chance at clearing most of the middle valley of freaks, or even making an assault on Black Oak to push ELSAR out . . . but if I’m being honest, I don’t think that’s why Carter decided to build them.”
Something about his tone, low and conspiratorial, like we were saying things that shouldn’t have been said sparked in my mind.
He doesn’t want to be overheard . . . which means this has nothing to do with the monsters.
Sweeping the parking lot with my eyes, I threw a cautionary glance over my shoulder, surprised at how I was already growing used to such a tactic. “You think they’re for the elections?”
His eyes lit up, and Chris grinned from ear to ear, a stunning smile that made my knees feel weak. “You catch on fast. Smart and lucky. I’m glad I pulled you out of those shoes.”
I surprised myself with a one-shoulder shrug, and a demure smile. “Me too.”
Chris laughed, and I could have sworn his eyes twinkled, which sent my overloaded brain into a tailspin.
Did I just flirt with someone?
“Watch your step.” Jamie called back to me, cutting through my euphoria as she held open a man door in the side of the first building.
Walking into the mechanical bay, I watched a dozen men in overhauls lower a gun turret onto yet another diesel pickup truck, its cargo bed converted into a box of armor plates. Workers shouted above the drone of machinery, an engine rumbled, and an air impact gun clattered noisily on a stuck bolt. One wall stood covered in stainless-steel racks of square white batteries, all linked with power cables that led to the rooftop panels. Against the opposite wall, two enormous generators hummed along, presumably fueled by the natural gas from the well I’d seen earlier. The air smelled of hot metal, propane, and grease, and somewhere in the background, a radio blasted classic rock through a patchy speaker. I dodged people as best I could, trying not to get in anyone’s way, as Jamie led us on toward another man-door in the back of the shop with a black outline of a rifle painted on it.
“Hey, Dekker!” One of the nearby crewmen wiped both hands on his overhauls and waved. “Give us a hand, will ya? We’ve got to get this alignment right, or the stupid thing won’t turn.”
Chris turned to me and made an apologetic half-smile. “Duty calls. But it was good to finally catch up with you.”
Trying not to show my disappointment, I shook his outstretched hand again, my brain choosing this exact moment to fuzz over with nervousness. “I . . . yeah, it was. I’ll see you later—I mean, around, I’ll see you around.”
Whether he noticed my fumbling, or simply because the crane behind him let out a whine signaling its slow descent, Chris threw me a quick wave, and jogged off. “Gotta go. Good luck at the range!”
I turned and let out a long, self-loathing sigh, both cheeks on fire. Like coming down from an adrenaline high, I wanted to run back to my room and hide, mortified that I’d even opened my mouth to speak at all. I managed to make him smile once, and then I’d botched it by stuttering like a fool. How could I not even form a basic sentence to someone?
I’m a human tripod. Good for holding up a camera, and not much else. Stupid, I should have just kept my mouth shut.
“Hey.” Jamie’s touch on my arm made me jump, something like pity on her delicate features. “You okay?”
Plastering on a fake smile, I brushed at dirt that didn’t exist on my arm. “Yeah, I’m good, just dusty.”
She wore a disbelieving arched eyebrow, but Jamie didn’t say anything else, and instead, pushed the door to the armory open, the two of us descending further into the world of sparks and steel.