Estranged (4 page)

His head snapped back and
his body tumbled off the moving car, into the clawing arms of the
dirt-smeared men and women who climbed up after him. Kalei took
them out one by one until the slide on her gun slid back and stayed
there.
Out of ammo
. But it didn’t matter; only one Estranged remained. The
teenage girl with her heavy, smeared makeup and her bedraggled
brown ponytail didn’t stand a chance as Fenn switched into first
gear and charged down the road. She lost her grip on the spoiler
and fell away, hitting the pavement and rolling in a swirl of torn
sweatshirt and jeans.

Kalei looked up as the
girl’s body slipped into the distance and spotted three more
figures pulling into the road on street-class motorcycles.
Seriously?
She returned
to her seat and continued to watch the bikers in the side mirror.
She knew they were Estranged because all three bikers were
helmetless, shirtless (even the one woman), and they were coming
straight at the car with the kind of hell-bent determination that
could only be from an Estranged after a high. It didn’t make any
sense. Why were there so many? She pushed the questions from her
mind and focused on what mattered. Opening the glove box, she stuck
her hand inside where she found napkins and registry paperwork and
tire gauges, but— “Honey, where’s my revolver?”

“
I didn’t want Teia to
find it, so I put it back in the gun safe.”

Kalei took a deep breath and pushed
her palm into her forehead. Now was not the time to argue. This
wasn’t the end of the world. Instead, she stuck her hand back into
the glove box and started rummaging through the papers. Once more,
she came up empty handed. “Where are my spare
magazines?”

“
In the house with the
rest of the ammo. I cleaned the car last week,
remember?”

Kalei threw her empty gun at the
dashboard and yelled, “Well, it’s a damn good thing I don’t have
any bullets, because I could shoot you!” Kalei regretted those
words the instant she heard them come out of her mouth. The
whimpering in the back seat grew a little louder as Fenn grew
silent. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that...” But it was no
use. The damage was done.

She turned around and checked on the
bikes. The Estranged were right on top of them now, just a couple
feet behind the spoiler. No ammo, no weapons; just a car holding
what little family she had left. She looked back at the girls and
her heart broke as she watched the tears slide down their small
faces. Kas protectively clutched her little sister as Teia
quivered.

Then heartbreak turned to
determination as Kalei steeled herself for the plan forming in her
mind. Fenn wouldn’t like it, but it was the only way she could keep
these girls safe. She said, “Kas, Teia, Uncle Fenn and I love you
very, very much. You’ll get to see your daddy soon; Uncle will take
care of you.” Kalei’s emotions threatened to overwhelm her, but she
clenched her jaw and stuffed them back. “Everything is going to be
okay, alright?”

Kas nodded, grimacing as she squeezed
a couple more tears out of her watery eyes.

Kalei turned to Fenn. “Whatever
happens, I need you to get them out of here.”

“
What are you talking
abou—”

“
I need you to keep the
girls safe— that’s all that matters right now. Take them to the
police station, call your brother, tell him what’s happened. I’ll
meet you there.”

“
Kalei, I—”

“
...I love you.” She gave
him a kiss on the cheek and saw his anger soften as his confusion
deepened.

Balancing his attention
between Kalei and the road, Fenn said, “I love you too. But, honey,
I don’t understand what you are talking about. You and I are in
this car together. You don’t have to tell me all this.
We’re
going to the
police station,
we’re
going to call Qain—”

By this time, one of the
motorcycles had pulled even with the car. It pained Kalei to hear
Fenn say
we
when
she knew she would be abandoning him. She mouthed one more “I love
you” before opening the door and slamming it into the nearest bike.
The motorcyclist wobbled and quickly lost control, his machine
crashing into the blur of pavement. Without looking back, she
jumped out after it.

CHAPTER TWO

Darkness

A practiced tuck-and-roll
protected Kalei from the worst of the fall. That, and the very
healthy bush she crashed into. For once, Kalei appreciated her
neighborhood’s obsessive attention to gardening. The Estranged, on
the other hand, was worse off. His neck and head lay at an awkward
angle to the rest of his body, and the front of his skull had caved
in.
The government has helmet laws for a
reason
, Kalei mused grimly.

She looked back over her shoulder to
see the blue car disappear as it took a right at the end of the
street. She was relieved. Her biggest concern was that Fenn would
try to come back and talk her out of it while the remaining
Estranged closed in on them, but he had listened to her. Only for
the girls’ sake, she was sure.

The next part was a
gamble. The two bikes; would they turn back or would they continue
their pursuit? Kalei wasn’t sure she could catch up to them if they
continued after Fenn, but she told herself that her familiarity
with the neighborhood would allow her to cut them off at another
intersection. Fortunately, she didn’t have to test that theory
because the Estranged dropped their speed for a moment and doubled
back for her.
Typical predators.
She was hoping they would go after the easier
target. Now it was just a matter of eluding them.

Kalei sprinted over to the
downed bike and extracted it from the dead man’s grasp, carefully
avoiding his exposed skin. He might be dead, but she was still wary
of him. Once the bike was erect, Kalei threw her leg over it,
kicked it into life, and took off just as the others started to
catch speed again. The thrill of speeding across the pavement on
two wheels poured a new surge of adrenaline into her veins along
with a vibrant sense of optimism. Not only were Fenn and the girls
going to be all right, but this was going to be
fun.

Blondie was still MIA, though. He
wasn’t standing in any yards, he wasn’t riding either of the bikes,
he wasn’t following in any car. His absence didn’t sit well with
Kalei, but she pushed it out of her mind as she tried to put more
distance between herself and the last two Estranged.

She twisted the throttle, but instead
of gaining power, she started losing it. The bike began to slowly
die beneath her. Her optimism quickly faded to dread as she looked
down and saw that the entire left side was demolished. The plastic
and metal framework was so twisted and torn that she was surprised
the bike was still functional. In fact, she was surprised the thing
hadn’t exploded beneath her the second she fired it up. When she
had made her plan, she didn’t count on the bike taking so much
damage in the crash.

Fuck!
She looked back at the other bikers and assessed the
situation. They were gaining on her. Not surprising. Side by side,
elbow to elbow, they rode at her. Kalei looked forward, formulated
a new plan, and prepared to act.

Without warning, she dropped one foot
to the ground, whipped the motorcycle around, and released it. The
momentum pushed Kalei off balance, causing her to fall backwards
onto her butt, yet the new plan had worked. The bike crashed into
the ground and skidded across the pavement, straight for the
Estranged. With no time to react, the bikers slammed into it and
were thrown violently into the air. Kalei first watched with
triumph, then alarm, then horror as one of the bodies flew right at
her. She scrambled backwards as fast as she could, then dropped
onto her back as she realized the Estranged woman’s momentum was
going to carry her over Kalei, not into her. But it wasn’t enough.
The woman’s bare, flailing arm brushed against Kalei’s exposed knee
as she sailed over her.

Pain ripped through every cell in
Kalei’s body.

***

The light at the corner of the
television blinked one, two... five times, then the black screen
came to life with light and sound.

A fair-haired woman sat before a fake
cityscape backdrop as she continued in mid-sentence, “...news
coverage on this seventeenth anniversary of E-day. We just spoke
with news correspondent Jim Neilly from the scene of the attack,
and now we have Professor Laney Daskalov of the Alundai University
joining us to help answer the question: what exactly does this all
mean to the people of Celan? Professor Daskalov, thank you for
joining us.”

The screen split so the newscaster’s
face could share the screen with another, dark-haired woman. This
newcomer occupied some sort of office, with shelves full of books
and unidentifiable knick-knacks filling the wall behind her. The
Professor smiled and replied, “Thank you for having me.”

“
So, Professor, let me ask
you: now that we have witnessed what seems to be the first
organized attack from the Estranged since E-day, what kind of
implications does this have for further attacks, and how can those
at home protect themselves?”

“
These are questions I
have been asked many times, even before this latest attack. As far
as implications, I expect we will see a lot more activity from the
Estranged. We now know they have the capacity to be organized, and
this makes them even more dangerous than before. So in light of
this, my advice to your viewers is this: Lock your doors. Don’t let
anyone in without checking their nails first. This includes your
friends, your cousins, even your own children, because to be
perfectly honest, anyone can become an Estranged. I cannot
emphasize this enough:
You cannot know who
to trust until you have seen their nails
.”

Joanne-the-Newscaster replied in a
light, incredulous tone, “You’re saying we can’t even trust our own
children?”

Professor Daskalov answered, “That’s
right, not even our children. Because, you see, the second someone
is touched by an Estranged, they are gone. Whether they die or not,
they are gone. The few people who survive to become Estranged are
no longer the same innocent friends we once knew. Sweet little Suzy
down the road will no longer be smiles and sunshine once her nails
are black. If the Estranged-Suzy sees you, she will do everything
in her power to kill you.”

Joanne leaned forward and clasped her
hands together. “What causes that?”

The Professor hesitated briefly.
“What? The change, or the need to kill?”

Joanne paused, then shrugged. “Both, I
suppose.”

“
Unfortunately, what
little we know about Estranged is very complicated. We do not know
whether it is a disease, a parasite, or something else entirely,
but we do know for certain that it targets the limbic system in the
brain. In layman’s terms, the presiding theory is that every
Estranged is occupied by something we call the darkness. Now, we
don’t know why, but we believe that the darkness, in a sense,
embodies and enhances the negative emotion that resides within us:
sadness, anger, destructive cravings... So when an Estranged
touches another person, their darkness seeks out these emotional
centers within the other body and immediately floods these areas of
the brain. If the victim cannot withstand that initial rush, they
die. But if they survive, they begin generating darkness on their
own and become Estranged themselves. For the survivors, all
thoughts of family, food— everything falls away in the face of a
single-minded drive to obtain that limbic excitation they received
when they were converted. In other words, a high.”

“
A high?”

“
Yes. It was discovered in
a recent test that when an Estranged touches another person—
Estranged or Untouched; doesn’t matter— they receive a high that we
have found to be well beyond anything modern drugs have achieved.
This is what the Estranged are after when they attack the
community. To put it in perspective, several years ago, a pair of
scientists named Olds and Milner performed an experiment in which
rats received a controlled electrical impulse to excite the limbic
system in the brain. If you recall, this is the same system that is
targeted by the darkness in Estranged. Every time the rats pressed
a lever, they received this limbic excitation, and it was found
that the rats began ignoring food and sleep in preference to
pressing this lever until, eventually, they died of exhaustion.
However, the dose these rats received is minimal compared to the
excitation Estranged are receiving from the darkness.”

Joanne’s hand was over her heart as
fear and concern lightly played across her face. “It’s a good thing
we have SWORDE. Actually— does SWORDE really quarantine Estranged?
Or do they—” Joanne stopped herself and looked at somebody behind
the camera.

Daskalov finished the
sentence for her. “Do they kill them? Honestly, I can’t say what
SWORDE does with the Estranged. As far as I know, nobody has
definitively seen an Estranged leave Downtown, for good reason, of
course. Perhaps that should be your next
FactLine
story? ‘The Mystery behind
the Fence.’” Daskalov laughed at her own cleverness.