Chapter Two
People were everywhere—entering and leaving the stores, pushing big metal carts on wheels, and walking to and from the many vehicles parked in the lot. The only people Leonardo had ever known were the scientists at the lab, but none of these people seemed in the least bit threatening like they were.
A small group of men all wearing the same maroon-colored shirt huddled outside the double doors to the store on Leonardo’s right. He figured they must work there. Two of the four were smoking cigarettes, and all of them were talking loudly about their “crappy” work day.
The disgusting, suffocating smell of the tobacco smoke wafted into the narrow alley that he was carefully peering out from, almost causing him to retch when he knew that drawing attention to himself was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead, eyes watering, he retreated to the back of the alley where a Dumpster blocked off the other end to the small gravel road behind the buildings.
His entire body remained taut with anxiety as he prepared to be discovered at any moment by some wandering person or, in the worst case scenario, by them. So he made a plan to leap onto the top of the Dumpster and dash away if he were cornered. Crouching down beside a heaping trashcan, he made his form as small as possible so that anyone glancing in from the lot wouldn’t spot him.
But he couldn’t stand not trying to absorb every new sight and smell around him. He lifted his head just high enough to watch the people outside the mouth of the alley. He heard the cheerful sounds of children laughing and saw them running away from their parents, and he even heard children singing. He was captivated and wished that he could remember more of his own childhood, no matter what horrors he’d been forced to live through. Outside of books, he’d only ever seen adults in all his life.
Suddenly, a rusty door on the other side of the trashcan burst open, flooding the alley with artificial light. Falling back against the wall, blinking against the glare, Leo could hardly breathe as he watched the looming shadow on the opposite wall move within the doorway, carrying some kind of hulking object in his left hand.
Leo smelled the sour sweat of a man. The guy grunted as he shifted what was now obviously a large garbage bag to his other hand and bumbled out into the alley, crossing directly in front of Leo’s crouched body. The man was obese and perspiring heavily, and his face was stubbly with a sparse beard. When he swung the bag into the gaping mouth of the Dumpster, he caused the heavy hinged lid to fall into place after it. That was okay; it’d make it easier to get away.
Leo sat so still that, for a moment, he didn’t think the man would even notice him. But when the guy turned around to walk back inside, he froze in the step that he’d been about to make, his eyes wide as he stared at Leo in blatant surprise.
After a moment of shocked silence passed between the two of them, the guy, whom Leo could now see was only a few years older than himself, asked, “Um…Can I help you?”
The words didn’t register.
Leo’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he feared it would burst. His eyes went wide, and his muscles were so tense that his body began to ache and tremble with the adrenaline that was now surging through his veins.
Panicked, his entire body screamed, RUN!
Before he thought about what he was going to do, he leapt to his feet in one fluid movement, pulled back his lips to bare long, pointed canines, and sprung for the Dumpster. He was up on top of it and leaping out into the gravel road so quickly that he barely heard the startled cry of the young man behind him.
Stupid! he scorned himself as he ran. He’d known that it was a bad idea to stay in one place for too long. He’d hidden in that alley for more than two hours before being discovered.
He ran back into the forest out of which he’d escaped earlier that morning. He found it ironic that he would return to this place in yet another desperate attempt to flee a threat.
But then his pace slowed to a jog. Then to a walk. Slowly, he came to accept the fact that he hadn’t actually faced any threat at all. That man had, after all, only been attending to his job, whatever that job might have been, and hadn’t even known that Leo was there.
Stopping, he inhaled a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling in a rush. Looking around, he tried to make the tranquility of the forest bring him peace as it had before. But his mind was too distracted.
When his eyes finally rested back in the direction that he’d just come from, he stared longingly. He couldn’t return to that alley, but he also couldn’t leave town. After all, he hadn’t the faintest idea where he was or how far away the next crop of civilization was, so this place was his only hope at deterring his pursuers. Of course, that was based on the assumption that they wouldn’t attack him in a public setting full of civilians.
Out of nowhere, just to further complicate things, his stomach made a gurgling, growling noise.
He was hungry.
Looking back at the stores, he remembered seeing people carrying away bags of food to their vehicles. But how did they get it? Did a person have to have some sort of identification card to even enter the building, like the ones that everyone back at the lab carried?
Distressed, his stomach grinding painfully, he leaned back against a tree, feeling helpless. Picking at the bark with the claw of his pointer finger, he thought of what he should do. Wait for nightfall? Go back to the stores now and beg for food?
Immediately, he shunned the latter idea, hating the thought of begging and hating that he couldn’t care for himself. No one had ever taught him how. They’d filled his head with nonsense, it seemed, because ever since he’d escaped, everything that they’d taught him was useless. He knew how to kill a man with one swipe of his claws, and he knew how to dismantle an AK-47, but he didn’t know how to walk into a store and get food. He knew that money was involved, but he had none.
Sighing, he looked up through the treetops, watching the clouds drift lazily across the sky. The tiny window in his old cell hadn’t allowed him to ever see this much of the sky before. But even as he tried to use his appreciation for this as a distraction to his growing hunger, he couldn’t ignore the hunger pangs as the muscles of his stomach contracted tightly within him.
Giving up, he straightened, absently rubbing his belly. It was still early in the day, so there was no chance that he’d be patient enough to wait until nightfall to eat. That was the one good thing that the lab had offered him six times a day, in enormous quantities: food.
Veering right, he walked in a diagonal line that would lead him to the road which connected to the stores. Before he reached it, though, he looked down at himself and realized that he’d need to be less conspicuous in case anyone saw him. Blotted in dried blood and wearing only the white pants that the lab had permitted him, he would undoubtedly draw attention to himself. So, changing direction once again, he kept to the shadows of the trees and tried to think of a better course of action.
* * *
General Jameson cursed, his entire face hot with anger. His worst fear had realized: Leonardo, the product of over two decades of work, was gone, and Jameson would be found out.
“Give me his location again!” he barked at Roberts, who squirmed under the pressure of the old man’s fury.
“Uh…he’s still in Kingwood, sir,” Roberts managed, his forehead dampened with sweat.
The General mumbled under his breath, cursing every other word and grinding his teeth. He had been so close to retrieving Leo. His GPS system had had him only a mile from the monster, which was when he had planned to abandon the ATV and continue on foot. But he’d realized all too late that Leo’s enhanced hearing had picked up the noise of the engine at a greater distance than what Jameson had thought possible. He remembered watching hopelessly as the marker on the tiny screen of his GPS began to move rapidly before Jameson was even close; and, finally, how it had breached the boundaries of Kingwood in less than three minutes.
“And you thought this could be good,” he whispered in quiet rage, as if the whole incident of Leo’s escape had been Roberts’ fault. As far as Jameson knew, it very well could have been.
He turned, walking out the door with determined steps.
The doctor was silent behind him.
* * *
“Hey, Arby, wait up!”
Arabelle Magnano cringed at the use of her wretched nickname, then turned to wait for the scrawny redhead that was racing up the sidewalk towards her: Crystal Florington.
Disguising her sigh of irritation by pushing back the hair that had gotten stuck in her lip gloss, she forced a smile and said, “Oh, hey, Crystal. I didn’t see you.” Lie. “I was just on my way to Foodland for my mom.” Again—lie. She really just wanted to walk.
“Great! I need to pick up some stuff for my mom, too.”
Oh, please, no, Arabelle begged inwardly, frowning just a little.
In general, people knew Arabelle as a kind person, but this girl was unbearable! Still, she knew that the polite thing to do would be to say nothing. Just smile.
Starting back up the sidewalk, she remained silent, enduring the never-ending onslaught of Crystal’s pointless jabbering. Every now and then she nodded her head or gave a little “yeah” when expected.
“So, did you get your history project done?” Crystal asked in a bright, chirpy voice.
It took a moment for Arabelle’s thoughts to organize, and then she answered, “Yeah.”
“Hmm. I didn’t.”
“Yeah?” Now, this was something that Arabelle couldn’t resist. Her self-assigned sense of responsibility for others kicked into gear. “You know, it’s due tomorrow. You really should do something about it tonight. It isn’t hard. Besides, we all know Mr. Bern’s an easy grader.”
Her non-monosyllabic answer excited Crystal, who was used to doing all the talking. Immediately, the petite redhead plunged into a long, breathless explanation in which she said that she had wanted to go to the Terra Alta hospital to look into its history of ghost sightings, and how she believed in ghosts, but hadn’t had any time to drive all the way there, what with the gas prices rising like they were, and didn’t Arby believe in ghosts, too?
Recovering from the flood of run-on sentences and hard-to-follow subject changes, she answered, “Um, no. I don’t.”
“Pity. Not too many people do, I guess.”
She had the sudden urge to ask why that was a pity, but decided that she didn’t want to give the girl any more excuses to talk. Then, after a second of silence, she was hopeful that Crystal might be running out of things to talk about. But, from experience—for the girl sat right beside her in their History 108 class—she knew that that was impossible.
The two of them were reaching the crest of the hill, passing Advance Auto Parts, when Crystal gave a little gasp and whispered, “Look!”
The girl was blatantly pointing, which Arabelle thought was quite rude, at a figure walking through the woods far to their left. Whoever it was, she presumed that the person was male because he was shirtless, but he was too far away for her to notice anything else in detail, except that his pants were white.
“Eew, creepy,” Crystal murmured with a dramatic shudder.
Arabelle rolled her eyes as she heard Crystal murmur under her breath, “Looks like a ghost.”
* * *
Food-food-food-food.
It had become like a chant in Leo’s mind. Compulsively, his thoughts were filled with flashes of the various trays of steaming flanks and fowl that had been brought to him every two hours between the times of seven a.m. and eleven a.m. and then again between three p.m. and seven p.m.
He was salivating so much that, if he relaxed his mouth and let his lips part, drool would ooze out over his bottom lip to wet his chin. Disgusted, he wiped at his mouth with the back of one of his soiled hands, unknowingly smearing dirt across his face.
Where could he find food? How long had it been since he’d eaten? He guessed that he’d escaped from the lab around midnight last night, and now the sun was shining above the treetops. Did that mean that it was nine in the morning or ten? He’d read about telling the time from the sun’s position in the sky, but that had never seemed important to him since he’d barely glimpsed the sun from the small rectangular window that had been high above his head all his life.
Lowering his eyes, he continued on, not quite sure where he was going. But then a potent flower-and-musk scent stopped him in his tracks. Lifting his nose to the air, closing his eyes, he inhaled the intensely sweet odor that suddenly floated around him like a heavy aromatic fog. For some strange reason, his body responded to the scent in a way that he was not expecting: a warm flush of sensation brought a shiver up his legs and through his groin.
What the—?
When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at two girls walking down the sidewalk at the other end of a small, open field to his left, beyond the edge of the trees. For a moment, he just stood there stupidly, breathing the potent odor that he now knew must be coming from them.
But then he realized that the shorter one with fiery hair was pointing straight at him. Deliberately, trying to appear as anything but suspicious, he turned lazily and started to walk again, even when he had wanted nothing more at that moment than to run for cover.
Once he was behind a thick tree, he couldn’t resist the temptation to peer around its trunk to catch another glimpse of them. For a moment, he felt a strange disappointment when he couldn’t see them anymore. Moving his eyes up and down the span of sidewalk that he could see through the trees, he started to accept that they were already beyond his sight when they suddenly reappeared.
A space between two trees far ahead of him allowed him to catch a fleeting picture of the taller one who walked on the inside of the sidewalk, almost completely obscuring the one with the fiery hair from his view. She had waist-length wavy brown hair and a tall, slender body. If he could see smells, he imagined that she’d be coated in the tantalizing scent, wearing it like a gown.
When he felt that sensation stirring in his groin again, he was ashamed for spying. Turning away, he leaned against the tree, but the smell still taunted him, lingering about his head. Was that the smell of a young female, then? He hadn’t known any females in the lab except for one cruel doctor whom he’d despised more than the others. She had always smelled like disinfectant—nothing like this flowery, musky sweetness.
Sighing, he sat on the ground with his back against the tree, closing his eyes and grimacing. He was brutally reminded of his more demanding problems when vicious hunger pangs in his side caused a brief wave of nausea. He had only known painful hunger once before, when his primary guardian, Sir, had refused him food for an entire day. The five-year-old memory surged unwanted to the foremost of his mind, blotting out all else and bringing with it the old anger…
“Get a move on it,” the burly bear of a man spat in Leo’s ear, nudging him in the side with the butt of his rifle.
Leo knew that rifle. It was the one that shot needles that made him go to sleep. He feared that rifle more than any other. He was afraid of slipping into the darkness.
Obediently, the thirteen-year-old boy crossed the threshold of the doorway and found himself in a walled-in courtyard that smelled like rotting wood and cement and something bitter with decay. On all sides, glossy marble-faced walls rose no shorter than twenty feet, making escape by climbing or leaping impossible.
Before him, a ten-foot-tall tower of vertical logs rose up from a foundation of cinder blocks. Around that, a number of barrels sat upright, connected to the tower with slanting boards. That was all that he could see, but the sense of foreboding wouldn’t leave him. Why was he here? What did they want him to do? Was this another test?
Trembling, he stood as if paralyzed. Then, all nerve he still held was ripped away when he glanced down at his feet and saw that the putrefied odor was coming from large, rust-colored stains all over the smooth cement floor.
Blood.
Eyes wide, mouth agape, he backed away, mortified beyond reason that he had been standing with bare feet right in one of the dried puddles and hadn’t even realized it.
He turned to rush back through the doorway, only to crash into the hard chest of the man with the rifle. Stumbling backwards, his next attempt to flee was halted by the raised muzzle, which pointed threateningly at the tender skin of Leo’s neck.
“Don’t even think about it,” the brute muttered in a low, gravelly voice.
Suddenly, Sir’s voice echoed loudly from seemingly nowhere, causing Leo to screech and cover his ears with his hands. He looked skywards, seeing only a square of cloudless blue, unable to find where Sir was standing above him, shouting down. But the old man wasn’t anywhere. Wildly, he turned every which way, a panic rising up to engulf him as Sir’s disembodied voice rang through the stillness of the courtyard once again.
A heavy hand clamped tightly on his shoulder, forcing him to stand still.
“It’s the intercom, you idiot,” the brute snarled, pushing him forward a little as he let go of Leo’s shoulder. “So listen up.”
He listened.
“Leonardo, I need you to pay attention,” Sir said in his usual authoritative tone. “Are you paying attention?”
Leo gave a feeble nod. Then, unsure whether or not Sir could see him, he uttered, “Yes.”
“You have to find the med kit, Leonardo. It’s hidden somewhere in the courtyard. It’s like a game, okay? You have to find the med kit while avoiding the enemy.”
He couldn’t stop himself. He shouted, “But why the blood? Who did you hurt?”
“It’s not human blood, Leonardo, it’s pig blood,” Sir’s voice explained with false patience. “The blood’s used as a distraction to your sense of smell, as well as creating a realistic environment.”
A realistic environment? Was the world covered in blood? If it was, he wanted no part in it.
“All right, now I don’t want anybody hurt. Remember, this is only a game. Now go!”
What? Already?!
Hot, stinking breath came down on the back of Leo’s neck, stirring the hairs there and sending a shiver down his back and arms.
“Guess who your enemy is, punk.”
The brute laughed menacingly, shoving Leo from behind so that he fell forward onto his hands and knees, causing the blood stain to crack and flake under his splayed fingers. His small claws, which had fully unsheathed in response to his fall, pierced the caked mess, and a wave of nausea rose within him so powerfully that he swayed, shutting his eyes.
“What’s the matter with you? Get up!” his enemy shouted. “Come on, let’s have some fun!”
When he still didn’t move, even after the man’s boot pushed him over onto his side, that same powerful hand as before grabbed him by his upper arm, yanking him painfully to his feet. And then the brute slapped him.
Leo’s head snapped to the right under the force of the blow, and pinpoints of light danced in his vision, which was suddenly fringed in blackness. The left side of his face stung, and he tasted blood in his mouth where the inside of his cheek had sliced open on his teeth.
The sharp sting of pain melted quickly into a tingling numbness. Leo gawked, stunned. He had never felt so violated in all his life before that moment. A fury unlike any that he’d ever known rose as a searing heat within him, and before he could think to stop himself, his right arm snapped out in a blur of movement, and he experienced for the first and only time the perverse pleasure of feeling flesh rip open beneath his claws.
Even more pleasing was the sound of that nasty old bear’s strangled scream. He’d gotten the monster right across the face.
A snarl deeper than he’d ever heard himself emit before came roaring out of his throat, and he was about to swipe from the left when something sharp bit him in the side of his neck. Instinctively, he reached up, grasping a feathery little shaft and pulling it free.
A dart! No!
But already the heaviness was sinking into his limbs, and before he could look to see who had shot him, he collapsed into darkness.
Later, when he woke, he was informed by a well-guarded Sir that he would receive no food that day. As the hours passed, lightheadedness claimed him, and he felt dizzy to the point of fainting. Worse still were the unbearable stabs of pain that accompanied each contraction of his empty stomach, cutting through him like jagged knives.
“Please,” he begged in vain, doubled up on his little bed and feeling as though his body were eating itself away from the inside.
But no one was there to help him.
Leo opened his eyes, the threads of memory drifting away. He felt a sharp sting in his palms and looked down in mild surprise to find his fists clenched so tightly that he’d pierced his own skin, drawing four little dots of blood out of each palm. Licking the salty liquid away, he tried not to think that, if he didn’t find sufficient nourishment soon, he would end up as the piteous creature which he’d become that long-ago day, wailing and moaning and snarling with pain.
But he had no idea what to do. Where were those instincts that Sir had always been telling him to rely on? Hadn’t he told Leo that he would be able to find his own food when the need arose? It certainly seemed like that need was here.
But, no, he wasn’t near that point of suffering yet. That would come later. Right now, he could afford to use his head, not his instincts. Then, trying not to think about it, but thinking about it anyway, he feared, on the inside, that he didn’t even possess those instincts.
* * *
“That’s strange,” Roberts murmured, his voice slightly slurred with fatigue after twenty-two hours without sleep.
“What?” Jameson glanced over at the doctor, who was still slouched in front of the computer. “Has something happened?” Something important? But he didn’t say those last words, knowing that he’d worked the boy long enough. Still, he was irritated by the number of false alarms that Roberts had fed him over the hours, and so he could only hope that this wasn’t another one of those.
“Well…” The doctor’s voice faltered as he sensed the General’s growing impatience. “I’m just surprised that he isn’t shying away from the people, sir. In fact, he’s slowly going into downtown Kingwood.”
Jameson swore under his breath, clenching his hands into tight fists. The scars on his knuckles from past fights and years of living a rough life showed white against his browned skin in the dim light of the room. Since they were both suffering headaches, he’d turned the harsh halogen lights off and lit only a small corner lamp.
“What are you going to do?” Roberts asked in a small, sheepish voice. The confidence and easy cool that the boy had exhibited earlier had completely vanished from his tone. Smirking to himself, the General was pleased that the good doctor finally didn’t seem to believe that this catastrophe was for the better.
His answer to Roberts’ question had just formed in his thoughts, spur of the moment.
“I’m going to send out the big guy.”
“And then?”
And then? The boy’s words echoed in the General’s thoughts. He hadn’t gotten that far yet.
His mind still working, he gave the only vague answer that he could think of, just to appease the younger man. “And then, when the moment’s right, he’ll shoot him up and bring him home.”
* * *
No danger.
Leo still couldn’t believe that he hadn’t been ambushed yet. In fact, looking around himself, he realized that none of the people whom he’d glimpsed even seemed to be very interested in him.
He couldn’t let that weaken his defenses, though. Remaining alert, he allowed himself to venture closer and closer to the houses and businesses. Despite feeling skittish and on-guard, a childish, giddy excitement was starting to bubble up within him as he witnessed normal living.
And something smelt delicious!
Sniffing the air eagerly, he recognized the smell as beef—his favorite. The scent tugged at him as if it were hooked into his flesh and was physically drawing him in. But he fought against the impulse to rush to the source of the smell as a pinch of fear meddled its way back into his mind.
The woods had ended, giving way to an enormous expanse of house upon house, each one sitting on neatly tailored lawns. To his left, a two-lane road was constantly busy with fast-moving vehicles. To his right, gently rolling slopes rose to more homes. His only options were to turn back or to head forward.
He started forward before his smarter self thought, Don’t be stupid.
Stopping, he thought again of his other option, the one that had been available to him the entire time, but that he was too impatient with hunger to accept: he could wait until nightfall and then move through the network of houses.
As he considered the last choice, the smell tugged at him again, stirring his stomach back into action so that it clenched painfully inside him. He groaned. That right there almost decided for him, but when he looked at the intimidating closeness of the houses and the wide-open, nearly treeless lawns between them, he knew that the last choice was the only real option.