Sometimes, now that late autumn’s outstretched shadows

and first snowfall have sugarcoated the bitter landscape of reality,

now that bare dogwood branches tick against the front window

like small knuckles, I imagine you on the porch steps,

bouncing on the soft soles of your sneakers,

Dr. Seuss in your hand, a joyous smile on your face,

waiting for me to answer your home-from-school knock.

Sometimes I go to the door, just in case.

— EPITAPH FOR BASAAM AZIZ(MARCH 3, 2059–AUGUST 11, 2067),

BY HIS MOTHER, LATEEFA AZIZ,

NOVEMBER 27, 2068

CHAPTER NINE

Aunt Paige picked up on the first ring. “I can’t talk to you, Kellen,” she said.

I listened for background noise, clues to where she was. “I know what you’re doing,” I said. Tia and Sunday sat up and stared at me. “Tia figured out everything. Everything.”

“I love you, Kellen,” Aunt Paige said. “Your dad loves you. Stay put.” The connection died.

Your dad. Was she with him?

“Where is she?” Tia asked me.

“She cut me off before I could ask.”

“They ain’t got her yet,” Sunday said. “She still has a chance.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t like the odds. Unless she eluded the pack of dogs chasing her and got to Dad in a hurry, Elisha most likely would come looking for him. And regardless of what happened with Dad, what would they do to her when they eventually tracked her down?

I stood up and zombie-walked to the window. Up and down the street, lamplight glowed from the opposing rows of old two- and three-story homes. Even in this supposedly desirable neighborhood, though, some houses had stood vacant and deteriorating for decades or been torn down completely. Thirty years ago, the Bear had made quick work of their male occupants and sent their female tenants packing. They’d downsized to apartments or moved in with relatives or found rooms, support, and companionship in big houses like ours.

When I was seven or eight, Aunt Paige took me to an Oregon beach, where we discovered a gray whale, dead on the sand, swarmed by gulls and crows. Its plate-sized eyes were crusted over and vacant. The empty decaying houses on our street and elsewhere reminded me of that poor whale.

A woman jogged alone down the sidewalk, ghosting from one pool of light to the next, wearing skin-tight shorts and a workout bra and a carefree expression. Her long dark hair rippled and shone as she moved.

What would she be wearing if men were still around in big numbers? I wondered. Where would she be? Home, with her treadmill and dead bolts and alarms?

I opened the window wide and drank in the cooling night air. In the quiet of the neighborhood, I could hear the runner’s footfalls. I imagined she was leading a flock of other runners across the finish line of a marathon. I clapped for her, softly I thought, but she looked up at me and smiled and waved and continued on.

No fears.

I glanced at my watch. Just after eleven. After curfew. Without Minders, I wasn’t allowed to go out for a run — or anything else — at this hour.

“Aunt Paige told me to stay put,” I said, my back still to the girls. I wanted a second opinion, and something told me I could trust them.

“You have to,” Tia said. “If you try to go to him, you could both die.”

Not the second opinion I wanted. “Not if I leave tonight. It’s not that far. A quick ride to the ferry, a half hour on the boat, a few more hours on my bike.”

“How many hours?” Sunday said, giving me a little encouragement.

I tried to picture maps I’d seen. “I’d have to check.”

“You might not even need to go,” Sunday said, withdrawing her support.

“Sunday’s right,” Tia said. “Your aunt might get through. She might already be with your dad.”

“By the time we know, it could be too late,” I said.

“I think we’ll know soon,” Tia said. “Let’s go down and see if we can pick up any vibrations.”

“In a minute,” I said. I was pretty sure I knew the big answers to the Why? question, but something was still missing for me. I got up and started for Tia’s computer, but my e-spond sounded off. Without checking the display, I answered it, thinking it was Aunt Paige.

“Kellen?” a nervous voice said.

“Ernie?”

“They got Anderson,” he said in a half whisper.

“Anderson? Who got her?” Tia and Sunday eyed me, full bore.

“PAC cops. They came to the house a few minutes ago and took her away.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you. My mom says she must have done something bad. But I don’t think so.”

I again recalled Mom referring to Anderson as “unconventional” during our “visit” of a few days ago. Was Anderson already on the PAC hit list then? Did they think she knew too much? “I don’t think so, either, Ernie,” I said. “Maybe they just want to talk to her.”

“Maybe. I’ll watch for her.”

“You do that,” I said. “Let me know if she shows up.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for calling me.”

We disconnected. “PAC cops arrested Anderson,” I told the girls, in case they hadn’t already figured that out.

“Because of what she gave us?” Tia said.

I shrugged. “Ernie doesn’t know. He just knows they got her.” Under a cloud of worry now, I continued on to Tia’s computer and touched in the years 2034 and 2035 and the name Rebecca Mack.

An instant later, the screen filled with references, mostly online news stories. I saw the Seattle Times E-dition article from April 12, 2035, but I wanted earlier stuff. What had come before the conviction? I sensed Tia and Sunday hanging close as I scrolled to the top of the list.

The earliest mention of Rebecca (Becky) Mack, age fourteen, was a Seattle Times story of her arrest on September 29, 2034, for the killing of a man named Chet Durbin. According to the article, Chet Durbin was Becky’s mother’s live-in boyfriend. A few days later, the Times ran a story in which neighbors related a history of domestic disturbances in the house.

Because Becky was a juvenile at the time, little emerged from the trial itself. I was about to give it up when I noticed a junkyarddog item on her from May 16, 2035, which was after she began serving her sentence.

The interview with Becky Mack, on the grounds of the Hillside Correctional Facility for Girls, revealed Chet Durbin’s long-standing and continual physical abuse of Becky’s mother and sexual abuse of Becky. According to the article, Becky’s mother, although battered herself, didn’t believe the sexual abuse was happening.

AT THE END OF OUR INTERVIEW, BECKY MACK, HOLDING HER TATTERED BUT OBVIOUSLY BELOVED BIOLOGY TEXTBOOK ON HER LAP LIKE A FAVORITE TEDDY BEAR, POINTED OUT TO ME A HERD OF TWO DOZEN OR SO DAIRY CATTLE IN A GREEN FIELD BEYOND THE RAZOR-WIRE FENCES OF HILLSIDE. “THE COWS LOOK CONTENTED, DON’T THEY,” SHE SAID WISTFULLY, AND I AGREED. “AND SAFE,” SHE ADDED. SHE NODDED IN THE DIRECTION OF A LONE BULL, A HUNDRED YARDS AWAY FROM THE REST OF THE HERD, MUSCLED AND MENACING BUT NOSE-CHAINED TO A THICK POST. “THAT’S BECAUSE THEY LIKE THE ODDS. AND THEY KNOW EXACTLY WHERE HE IS. AND WHERE HE’LL STAY.”

Rebecca Mack had had the seeds of Elisha’s Bear growing in her when she was no older than I was now. And in a weird way, I understood why. As far as I could tell, she’d never received anything but suffering at the hands of men.

I eased back on my concentration and noticed the girls again, still shadowing me, the ins and outs of their breath and little else. “Let’s go downstairs,” I said.

In the living room I checked my watch: 11:30, and there was still an old lady in the office. Shouldn’t she have been in bed by now? I kept listening for something, one eye on the office door.

But it was the front door that got my attention. Someone rapped, and I jumped up and scrambled to it with Tia and Sunday on my heels. When I opened it, the two PAC cops stood there. They looked much less concerned than the last time I’d seen them. They were almost glowing.

A bad sign.

“Dr. Mack still up?” Stoudt said.

“I think so.” I stepped aside so they could come in. “She’s probably in the study.”

“Did you find Paige Winters?” Sunday blurted out, brassy as usual.

“We need to talk to Dr. Mack,” Blevens said. By now they knew where the study was. They pushed past us and headed in that direction. We followed, but not so close that we were too obvious.

They knocked. Mom came to the door, then Rebecca Mack. We heard them more than saw them.

“We got her, Dr. Mack,” Stoudt said. “She didn’t take a ferry. She was driving around the long way, but we nabbed her at a roadblock before she even got in the vicinity.”

We? Stoudt was taking a share of the credit, but her wide rear was nowhere near that roadblock when Aunt Paige was arrested. I was in no mood for this overzealous kiss-ass cop. A moment ago I’d been halfway pumped up with hope, but suddenly I felt deflated.

“Where is she now?” Rebecca Mack demanded.

“In custody, ma’am,” Blevens said. “On her way to the Seattle office for confinement.” I pictured Aunt Paige, in the back of a PAC car speeding down a dark peninsula highway, her hands cuffed behind her back.

“Tell them to keep her there,” Dr. Mack said. “No visitors. No communication.”

As I started for the stairs, I looked just past Rebecca Mack and saw Mom standing in the doorway of the study. She was giving me this sad-eyed apologetic look, but I didn’t swallow it. She’d chosen to be a part of this. She’d chosen to track down Aunt Paige as if she were a criminal. She’d chosen to condemn Dad to his death. I looked through her and away and hurried to my room.

I’d been at my desk for two minutes, searching the Net for maps of the peninsula, when Sunday and Tia pushed open my door and walked in.

“You haven’t heard of knocking?” I said.

“What are you gonna do?” Sunday said.

I didn’t answer, but it was too late to clear the map from the display.

“You can’t go,” Tia said.

“I have to,” I said. “He’ll be dead if I don’t.”

“He’s a loner,” Tia said. “He doesn’t hang around the throwbacks that much, does he?”

“Not unless he has to. But there’s a reason the whole peninsula is being quarantined. You think the Bear will stop with just the throwbacks?”

Someone knocked at the door. I blanked the screen and stood. “Who is it?”

Mom came in with a big green duffel bag, empty. She saw Tia and Sunday standing by the desk and dropped the bag on the floor. Opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, eyeing me, the girls, me. She had something to say, but she was holding off. Maybe she hadn’t expected an audience. Maybe she would have preferred not to have one. But Tia and Sunday didn’t volunteer to leave the room.

“No school tomorrow, Kellen,” Mom said finally. “I’ve already called and let the administrator know you’ll be absent. She’s sending me your take-homes for the next twenty lessons.

“In the morning you’ll get up at the usual time, but instead of jumping on your bike and heading off to class, you’ll be going on a little trip. Before you go to bed tonight, you’ll need to pack clothes and whatever else you want to take — enough for three weeks — in this bag. Have it and yourself downstairs by eight thirty. A PAC van will be curbside to pick you up.”

She said it like it was all decided. Like I had no voice, no choice. “Why?” I asked.

“I want you away from the city for a while,” she said.

“That’s not a reason.”

“There are signs of a recurrence in this area,” she said. “Elisha’s Bear.”

“Signs?” I said, knowing it was all bullshit. “I didn’t know Elisha posted signs.”

“I wouldn’t have you go otherwise.”

“Go where?”

“Montana.”

“By myself?”

“You’ll be accompanied by other boys and some women. You’ll be back in Seattle in three weeks. It won’t be so bad.”

I wanted to argue, tell her what I knew, but what was the point? I’d just make her suspicious and watchful, and I didn’t need that. I was going on a trip, but I wasn’t waiting for the PAC van, and I wasn’t going to Montana. “Eight thirty?” I said.

She smiled a little. “Yes.”

“Three weeks without Anderson,” I said, dangling the name in front of Mom, wondering how much she had to do with the arrest. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

Mom’s smile got a little less tentative, a little wider. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, not taking the bait, and backed out the door, closing it behind her.

“Boys are good liars,” Sunday said.

“It’s what got us in trouble,” I said.

“You go to Montana,” Tia said. “We’ll go warn your dad.”

“By yourselves? You’ll get caught. You’ll end up behind bars with Aunt Paige.”

“Why would they suspect us?” Sunday asked.

“Guilt by association,” I said. “If you go missing, even without me, they’ll know where you went.”

“We won’t die,” Sunday said.

“If Elisha returns in the middle of this rescue attempt,” Tia said, “we’ll be safe. You won’t.”

“I’m going,” I said. “Just don’t get in my way. And don’t say anything.”

“We’ll go with you, then,” Tia said. “You’d be under suspicion, a boy traveling by himself. A cop magnet.”

“And if you’re thinking about a girl-disguise,” Sunday said, “forget it. You couldn’t pull it off.”

I figured Sunday was right, but I knew Tia was right, too. A lone male pedaling away from the city on a bike — even in daylight — would be a lure for the wrong kind of fish — local authorities or state cops or PAC enforcers. Sharks. Predators. Then what? “Why would you? You barely know me.”

“We know you well enough,” Tia said. “We know what happened to you.” She gave me a look, like Why argue?

“Okay,” I said. “If you also know what you’re getting yourselves into.” I was sure they didn’t, because I didn’t know myself, and getting them into this made me feel guilty. But I needed to go. I needed to get to Dad. And the girls were my ticket.

“We know,” Sunday said, and I didn’t argue with her. My thoughts had shifted to Mom. She wanted to protect me, but what about everyone else? What about Dad?

“You have a plan?” Tia said.

A plan. The pieces of a plan were rattling around in my head along with all the other stuff, but I — we — needed to sort them out and glue them together. I chose a bed and sat. Tia and Sunday bookended me, Tia closer than Sunday. I began to put the pieces into words.