CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“YOU’D BETTER LET me go first.” Adel stopped at the base of a metal ladder bolted into a crumbling rock foundation. “Wait until I call you up.” She climbed the first few rungs. Gripping the handle of the hatch above her head, she added a final thought. “They’re not as bad as they sound. They’re just really old, and grumpy.” She threw the hatch open and climbed into the light, the first real daylight I’d seen in what felt like months.

A male’s voice greeted her immediately. “Good, you’re back. Any news?”

“He’s secure.”

“Finally. His research?”

“Unconfirmed, but he says he destroyed it.”

“Before it was compromised or after?”

“Unconfirmed.”

“Has anything been confirmed?” The man shot back.

“Let’s see.” Adel raised her pitch and tone to match. “I’ve saved a young girl, lost a good man and managed to give us a chance to end this rotten war, once and for all. Plus, I’ve confirmed you’re just as stodgy and impossible as ever!”

“Adelaide, you haven’t.” The man’s voice turned cold as ice. “You wouldn’t betray us like that.”

“Ah,” she wavered, “betrayal seems a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” She whistled.

I took that as my cue, starting up the latter.

Adel continued, “I realize you might be angry, but take a minute to listen before—”

“Before what? Throwing you in prison indefinitely?”

The man roared, causing me to wonder if I’d be better off heading back to the tube. Instead, I gripped the wooden floorboards and pulled myself up.

“Everyone out. Out!” The man shouted. “After all your mother and I have done for you, this is how you repay us? Repay the whole town?”

I straightened, turning to face a burly, hairy chested man in overalls standing nearly 6’6”. Other than the overalls, he wore nothing more than a neatly trimmed grey beard, boots, and a shiny star pinned to one of his snaps. The bells above the door chimed as the last of the small crowd exited, leaving only the three of us.

Adel and the man who I assumed must be both her father and the local sheriff, assessed me silently until the moment advanced well beyond uncomfortable. I extended my hand. “Buckner. Jim Buckner.”

“Mr. Buckner, do you have any idea where you are?” He didn’t move or blink.

I scanned the room without turning my head. “Son of a—” it took a moment to sink in. I was standing in the middle of the small town diner. “I reckon I do. What was the name of the place…” I consulted the memory of my argument with Evie. “Everlast. Little place near one of my digs.”

“That’s right.” The big man turned to face Adel. “Did you also realize my daughter has gambled with your life and mine by bringing you here?”

The mention of the man’s daughter boiled my rancor. “I’ve only come here because my daughter’s been kidnapped. So you’ll have to pardon me if at the moment I can’t see how any of the rest matters.” I stepped closer, trying not to crane my neck up at the man.

“Spoken like a true father, Mr. Buckner.” He cracked his knuckles and pushed Adel aside so he could face me fully. “Unfortunately for both of us, the rest does matter, for the safety of your daughter and mine.”

“Pop, don’t—”

“Hush, child.” He swelled his chest, the straps of his coveralls stretched tight.

The man’s threatening posture pushed me over the edge. Crashing my foot through the floorboard, the oil and water of my minds rushed together in a swirling funnel. The windows of the diner cracked. The kitsch on the walls rattled and fell to the floor. “No one threatens my Evie. No matter how ugly, or how big.”

One of his eyes rose thoughtfully, the other in a permanent scowl. “No need for insults, Mr. Buckner. No one’s threatening your daughter. No one in Everlast anyway.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying. Yet, I still haven’t seen her.”

He turned to Adel. “Call the others.”

“But, Pop.”

“Do it, girl. I need me a word with Mr. Buckner in private before we decide the fate of everyone in Everlast.”

“Pop, don’t get—”

“Do it before I tan your hide!”

“Crusty old man,” Adel muttered as she left through the front door. “Treatin’ me like a—” the door closed behind her with a tinkling of bells.

“Fatherin’ don’t get any easier, Mr. Buckner.”

I nodded.

“Now why don’t you put me down so we can have a talk, father to father.”

I hadn’t realized the big man was floating several inches off the floor. I set him down.

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jebediah Everlast, sheriff of this little burg.”

We shook. “Normally I’d say nice to meet you.”

“Seeing how that’s all the time we have for pleasantries, I’ll get straight to the point.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “If you’d follow me to a more private venue.”

I shrugged. “Lead the way.” We tromped through the kitchen where he unlatched the freezer door and held it open for me. “The freezer?”

“Not much in Everlast is as it seems, Mr. Buckner.” Jebediah stepped in first, holding the door open.

I followed.

He pulled the door shut behind us. “You’re here for your daughter. I understand that. What I need you to understand is I’m here for every citizen of this town. Hell, beyond that, every citizen of this damn planet.”

“War. Adel told me. No offense, but I don’t care about the planet.”

“Fine. Then why? Why search for the lost gene, as you call it.” Jebediah leaned against a shelf of ice cream. Despite his bare chest, he didn’t seem affected by the cold in the slightest.

Anti-hero at its finest, I could think of a dozen appropriate answers for why I’d dedicated the last thirty-nine months of my life to discovering the lost gene. Only one was true. “My daughter.”

“Explain.”

It’d been our secret. Evie said she didn’t care if people knew. Evie was naive, confident in humanity’s goodness. I knew better. “You’ve heard of de novo?”

He nodded.

“You understand it?”

“Better than most.”

“My daughter has it, got it from me. She’s got maybe ten more years, probably less. She’ll die of old age in her twenties, if cancer doesn’t get her, and it’s my fault.” Hot tears forced their way toward the surface. I swallowed them. “The lost gene would give her a fighting chance.”

“You realize the gene would affect others besides your daughter.”

“You sound like Evie. I know.” I pounded a frozen package of chicken breasts. “But the gene’s a good thing. It’s not some designer drug, or headless effort to play God. It’s a product of nature, dammit. I didn’t design the human genome or any other genome.” Panting, I caught my breath. The chill air burned my lungs. “I just dig holes.”

“From what I understand, there’s a little more to it than that. But one thing is true, the lost gene is a product of nature. You may have heard the twitch is not. While technically true, the truth can be misleading, Mr. Buckner.” He took a deep breath, exhaling it with a puff. “Combine the lost gene with the twitch and, well, you are the result.”

“I don’t have the lost gene.”

“Like hell, son. You’ve got the twitch, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Since I was a kid.”

“And you haven’t died yet?”

“I’m just a carrier.”

“Nope. Carriers don’t move things with their minds. You’re actively infected, yet you don’t appear to be dying at an extremely advanced rate. I’m no scientist, Mr. Buckner, but that means you’ve got the gene.”

“I couldn’t. I just—”

“The only question is how long would it take you to figure out how to give the gene to your daughter?”

I shook my head. I knew it was the wrong question. Scientifically, I could answer it fairly accurately. That was the old Buck. “She doesn’t want it. She’s tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. I’ve caused all this. Me, not her. I’m done with the research. It’s gone for good.”

Jebediah stared at me for a long moment. “There’s no backup of the data, no second lab?”

“All destroyed.” I answered without hesitation. “Except…”

“Uh-huh?”

“Oleg read my mind. He has the gene sequence. With enough time and the right equipment he could synthesize the transposon and devise a lentiviral carrier to introduce it into human cells.”

“Reactivating the telomerase gene in humans, or twitchers as the case may be. Damn.” Jebediah turned toward the door. “If I let you and Evie leave, where would you go?”

I didn’t like the sound of his conditional statement. “We’d run, start over somewhere new. Spend her last years together.”

“Fine. I think we can help you across the Texicas border.”

“What about you? What about Oleg and the war, the ones Adel called the benefactors?”

“We’ll deal with them on our own.”

“And Adel?”

“Adel’s young, headstrong. She thinks war’s a good thing.”

“She wants to end the war.”

“With more war. It’s an affront to God, and it’s not our charge. But that’s enough.” He slammed his fist on a button beside the door.

The ground beneath me shifted. Jumping to the side, I watched the metal floor open as a narrow stair descended into a dirt room lit by fluorescent lights.

“Your daughter’s in a room at the end of the hall.” Jebediah opened the freezer door and started to leave. “Oh, if you see a waitress down there, can you tell her she’s needed in the diner?” He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Like that, I was left alone in a freezer leading to an underground bunker where I’d supposedly find my Evie, and possibly a redneck waitress.