The Raven Read online

  Junk DNA is non-coded. It remains a mystery, hence its throwaway name.

  Here’s the kicker:

  Junk DNA accounts for ninety-eight percent of all DNA. Stop and think about that for a second. Ninety-eight percent. That means that the vast majority of human DNA is a total mystery to modern science.

  This is where the Bastards from Baltimore come in. Evidently, they were able to identify the function of at least some of this junk DNA. Furthermore, these geneticists realized that the roots of mythology were intimately connected with DNA previously thought to be useless.

  Turns out, it has a use.

  Destroying the world.

  The virus in the Four Winds bombs created a catalytic reaction with people’s junk DNA, and the monstrous impulses and characteristics that had lain dormant for eons were awakened. Don’t ask me how the awakening worked, but the proof is everywhere. When you came into contact with the virus, your junk DNA was activated.

  Or, if you were like me, you remained the same while everyone around you transformed.

  Now might be a good time to explain how they did it. The unbelievable part is how straightforward it was.

  Once Four Winds Aerospace cultivated the virus and recruited some radicals from the Applied Physics Lab, it became a simple matter of dissemination. Utilizing the same technology our government employed for THAAD, its truck-based missile interception system, Four Winds Aerospace developed six Nano Satellite Launch vehicles designed to carry the payload of suborbital ballistic missiles.

  Confusing? Because the first time I heard all that, it confused the shit out of me.

  I’ll take a step back and explain it the way Susan explained it to me. Thank God she’s smart; otherwise, I’d have never understood how it all went down. She wasn’t a rocket scientist in the old world or anything. She was a grad student at Purdue University. She was just getting started on her dissertation – about drones – when the missiles flew.

  It seems much of the same technology we’d developed to save us from nuclear annihilation ended up bringing about the end of the world.

  According to Susan, THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, was pioneered as a last resort to intercept missiles fired toward the continental US. Uniquely portable, the launching apparatus could be outfitted on specialized trucks. Or, in this case, on the backs of tractor trailers that were parked approximately a hundred miles away from our nation’s six busiest airports.

  Atlanta.

  L.A.

  Dallas.

  Chicago.

  New York.

  Denver.

  The semis looked like any other big rig, only they had whopping huge trailers draped with massive tarps. Twelve-person crews accompanied the six tractor trailers to sparsely populated areas, parked, and typed in their coordinates. Obviously, being in six different locations around the country, the weather varied, but unfortunately for the rest of us, the Bastards from Baltimore chose an ideal day for their launch. Only Denver experienced a breeze, enough to scatter the virus, but not enough to ameliorate its effects on the hosts who were infected.

  The missiles were launched. Eight minutes later, they reached their targets.

  Four Winds Aerospace detonated their bombs approximately four hundred feet over the targeted cities. Fired during daylight – for maximum infection – the bombs exploded at approximately three o’clock Eastern Standard Time. There was no fire – that would have incinerated the virus. Instead, onlookers witnessed what’s known as a BFRC: Big Fucking Red Cloud.

  It must have been disconcerting. Local and state governments were utterly bewildered. We’d always speculated about how to deal with a foreign attack. But a ballistic missile launched on American soil by its own citizens? Not so much.

  The point is, the virus found its hosts. From that point on, it was simply a matter of travel.

  Highly communicable, the virus showed no outward signs, which meant no one knew they were infected. The virus was not only airborne; it could be spread by touch. And the genius of it was, you never knew you were infected. There was no coughing, no lethargy, not even a sniffle. You went about your day infecting everyone around you, your wife, your parents.

  Your children.

  You boarded your airplane to Tokyo, unaware you were about to deliver the virus to one of the most densely populated nations in the world. You left JFK Airport excited for your French honeymoon; you didn’t intend to doom Paris. The wealthy businessman heading to Kuwait, the entrepreneur traveling to South Africa, the Australian college students returning home after a month abroad. None of them knew about the virus. None of them knew what was happening to them, deep in their DNA. None of them suspected that, within a few weeks, they’d be ripping their loved ones to shreds. None of them knew they were turning their friends and coworkers into monsters.

  Dammit. Just thinking about it makes me crazy. The question I can’t get over is this: Why would a group of seemingly reasonable people – men and women of learning and, one would have hoped, empathy – take such drastic steps to avert a nuclear war? Yes, a nuclear holocaust would have obliterated much or all of the human race. At least it might have. And yes, the other forms of earthly life matter too.

  But launching the Four Winds missiles ensured the annihilation of mankind and doomed a great many species as well. Large mammals, like cows, horses, and pigs, only exist now in cannibal compounds. So there you go, you heartless sons of bitches: You killed Bessie, Seabiscuit, and Babe too. Happy now?

  God, I’m cracking up.

  I gotta get some sleep.

  If Jim the Werewolf eats me before I wake, and if you find this journal sometime in the future, please send it to the assholes from Four Winds Aerospace. Or their children.

  They need to know how Mommy and Daddy murdered the world.

  Chapter Nine

  The Matter of Catherine

  Dez sensed a change in the house even before he went downstairs. Moments like these, when his body thrummed with unreasoning tension and his intestines roiled and slithered as though packed with live snakes, he wondered if he really was a Latent, an individual whose powers only needed the right moment to rise to the surface. Psychic abilities were not terribly common, but they were one of the powers unleashed by the Four Winds. It was why some bands of survivors were destroyed after everything went to hell, and why others managed to cling to hope.

  It helped to have a psychic in your camp.

  It was one of the primary reasons why the riverside colony had lasted as long as it had. Lori, a curly brunette in her early forties, hadn’t told anyone about her second sight, perhaps in the fear that her gift would be exploited, or worse, that it would give someone reason to expel her from the group. It was one of the many things that amazed Dez most about the destruction of civilization. In the third decade of the twentieth century, humankind believed itself enlightened and far removed from the abominations of its past, wholesale genocides like the Holocaust, or small-scale lunacies like the Salem Witch Trials.

  If the Four Winds proved anything, they proved mankind hadn’t changed at all.

  So Lori kept her secret hidden, and to her credit, no one had any idea she could see the future. Until one evening around moonrise, she stood, her face going fishbelly white, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “What is it?” one of the colonists asked, half-smiling.

  “They’re coming,” Lori said.

  Exchanged glances. Uneasy laughter.

  “Who’s coming?” This was the leader. Jason.

  “The maneaters.”

  That word sobered everyone quickly.

  No idiot – he was many things, but he was not an idiot – Jason Oates had ordered everyone inside the cave.

  Less than a minute later, they’d heard the haughty voices echo over the river. Had the colonists left any trace of food or clothing outside
, the cannibals would have spotted it and descended on the camp. But due to Lori’s early warning, the killers passed them by.

  Within the murk of the cave, Dez had been present when Jason clicked on his flashlight and regarded Lori first with awe, then with hunger. Not for her flesh of course – Jason was no cannibal – but for her gift.

  One of Lori’s fears did come to pass. Her gift was exploited. Again and again. The colonists only felt safe when she was awake, which meant they gave her little rest.

  It drove her insane.

  Compressing his lips, Dez crammed his things in his backpack, snatched up his bow, and toted it all down the creaky farmhouse stairs.

  He told himself the tension he was feeling had nothing to do with psychic powers. It was just…tension. Who wouldn’t be tense under a werewolf’s roof?

  Dez entered the living room, where the aroma of popcorn still perfumed the air. His stomach growled in response, but he was eager to get going. He could probably snag another meal from Jim, but he’d tested fate too long. Dez abided by the theory that werewolves were largely like regular people. Many didn’t want the change, had no desire to rend and kill. Of course, others felt no compunction about eviscerating people, and Dez had heard of werewolves like that. Thankfully, he’d never been around one.

  He had, however, witnessed the change twice.

  Twice was more than enough. On both occasions, he’d been lucky to escape with his life.

  Best not to push his luck.

  He came around the corner into the kitchen and discovered the old man cracking open eggs, the stovetop clock magically illuminated.

  Seeing Dez’s frown, Jim said, “The generator.” He cracked another egg, his fingers long and carved with tendons. “Only use it during the winter months, and then only when a deep freeze is on. But this morning I just felt like eggs on the stove, you know?” A smile.

  Dez relaxed infinitesimally.

  It apparently wasn’t enough because a hint of frost crept into Jim’s eyes. “Now come on. If I was gonna eat you, don’t you think I’d have done it last night? You snoozing down the hall from me, helpless as a lamb?”

  Dez fought off a surge of annoyance.

  “Mistrust,” Jim muttered, waving a hand over the black skillet to test for heat. “A minute or so longer,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Dez said, placing the crossbow on the floor beside a small round table. “It’s just conditioning, you know?”

  Jim opened a drawer, came out with a metal whisk. “How do you like yours?”

  Dez sat. “I’m not picky.”

  “I favor sunny-side up.” Jim returned the whisk to the drawer, poured the eggs into the skillet, where they immediately began to crackle.

  Dez noticed the old man wore a different plaid shirt today, this one navy blue, carmine, and a dingy white. His shoulder blades bulged like harrows.

  Dez said, “My mom always claimed a hot pan was the key to good eggs.”

  Jim reached out and retrieved a metal spatula that looked a couple years older than Abraham Lincoln. “Can’t be suspicious of everybody all the time,” he remarked. He scooped the eggs, flipped them over. “That way leads to prejudice, and prejudice leads to hysteria.”

  Dez propped his elbows on his knees, chastened. “I’m sorry for doubting your motives. You don’t encounter much kindness these days.”

  But Jim went on as though he hadn’t heard him. “One minute we’re a community, and the next we’re raving at each other in the streets and barricading ourselves in our homes.” Jim’s right arm, the spatula arm, moved jerkily, punctuating his angst. “Looting businesses. Stealing all the goddamn gasoline. Turning into petty thieves and forgetting basic human decency.”

  Dez decided against reminding him of his popcorn looting. He sought for the right words, if only to break the old man’s gloomy mood. “Would you like me to help with anything?”

  “Like what?” Jim snapped.

  Dez looked around. “I don’t know, maybe I could get some plates? The silverware?”

  “You really want to do me a favor?” Jim asked, glowering at him over his shoulder.

  Dez shrugged. “Anything.”

  “Stop looking at me like I’m a goddamned monster.”

  Dez opened his mouth, but the old man half-turned, jabbed the spatula at him. “Don’t tell me you’re not doing it, because I see you doing it. Could barely enjoy my popcorn last night because you acted like I was gonna go all Lon Chaney on you and fillet you like a smallmouth bass.”

  “Hey, I—”

  “It’s bullshit, Dez. I open my home to you and you act like it’s a trap. You ever think a guy might just want some company? Some fucking conversation?”

  Dez put his hands up. “Okay. Okay. No need to get worked up.”

  Jim made a face, flapped the spatula at him. “Don’t give me that stuff. I’m not gonna start howling at you.” He shook his head. “For Christ’s sakes.”

  Dez saw no sign of lycanthropic change, so rage wasn’t Jim’s trigger. He had no idea what was, but he was reasonably sure anger wasn’t it. It had been the catalyst for one of the werewolves he’d encountered. For the other, it had been lust. The theory – one that Dez ascribed to – was that werewolves’ triggers were powerful negative emotions, but for every werewolf it was different. For Jim, it appeared rage had no effect. And Dez doubted very seriously the old man would be experiencing lust any time between now and the end of breakfast.

  Yet for some reason, the fear sweat still trickled down his back.

  Psychic?

  Dez brushed away the thought. He stood up because he’d go crazy if he continued to sit at the table. He hated being idle while others worked, and the fact that the one working was a werewolf only intensified his unrest.

  He moved to the cabinets at the opposite end of the L-shaped counter. “You keep the plates in here?”

  Jim eyed him for a long moment. Then, apparently deciding he was done being irate, nodded at the cabinets to his immediate right. “In there. Use the paper ones. I don’t want to waste good water washing dishes.”

  Glad to have something to do besides worry, Dez went to the cabinet, opened it, and spotted a thin stack of paper plates. Not the cheap kind, the ones you had to double up on in order for them not to get soggy and rupture. He separated two plates from the stack, closed the cabinet. He eyed the eggs and noticed the skillet was scummed with a substance that resembled chocolate cake. A miasma of burnt eggs reached his nostrils.

  Jim shook his head. “Got me going. Too distracted….” He noticed the paper plates, jerked his head. “Over here on the counter, so I can shovel the eggs onto ’em.”

  Dez moved around behind the old man, set the plates on the counter to the left of the stove.

  Jim worked the spatula under the eggs. “The yolks broke. Guess we’re having scrambled after all.”

  “Scrambled’s fine with me.”

  Jim had transferred half the eggs to one paper plate when his gaze flicked to something at the rear of the counter. Dez followed his eyes and discovered the picture of Jim and his wife, the one where Mary was in his lap, both of them smiling broadly, their life together still ahead of them.

  Something small and furtive scurried down Dez’s spine.

  Jim’s eyes took on a glaze, the skillet and spatula still held before him. Like a troll at dawn, he looked like he’d been turned to stone.

  Dez glanced from Jim to the picture, knew there was no avoiding it. “How long were you two married?”

  In a croaky voice, Jim answered, “Forty-seven years.”

  Dez chewed the corner of his mouth. “You look happy together.”

  “Most of the time,” Jim said, but his voice was distant. Was he imagining them as they were back then? The feel of his wife in his lap, the taste of a cold beer in his mouth? Making love to her that night,
both of them tipsy from the cookout?

  Or was he remembering the way she died? Had she been changed by the Four Winds? Or victimized by them?

  “She saw everything,” Jim said, his eyes on the picture but unseeing. “She saw it before I did.”

  There was no need for Dez to ask him what he meant. Dez glanced at the stovetop coil, which glowed a seething, satanic red.

  “Our daughter didn’t call after things went haywire. We knew that was a bad sign. We were worried sick, her halfway across the country in Boulder, married to a nitwit who happened to invest in the right technology…some app…acted like he was a genius or something….”

  The heat from the stove shimmered the air. Dez longed to sidle around the old man and twist off the burner, but something kept him rooted in place. Pants-shitting terror, probably.

  “We didn’t hear word one from Catherine for more than a week. By that time I was frantic with worry. Mary was too. We’d loaded up the Dodge, had the topper on so we could sleep in it if we got stuck. You know, all the highways were snarled up by then.”

  Dez remembered it well. Just like in the movies. Things go to hell, people flee the cities for the country. Then again, after the Four Winds, the country was just as precarious as the cities.

  Monsters everywhere.

  Including right next to you, a voice warned. Get him off the topic or get the fuck out of the house. Now!

  “Hey, Jim, maybe we should—”

  “We’d fired up the Dodge,” Jim went on, “actually had it idling in the driveway. Mary was on the way to the passenger’s side when my cell phone rang. We both stopped and gaped at each other…service had been so spotty, we were surprised anybody was able to get through. Less than a week later, they went silent forever, but that evening, they worked.”

  Dez watched him, heartbeat thumping. Had a cloud passed over the already muted sun? Or had Jim’s face gone a half-shade darker?

  Jim said, “My trance broke, and I fumbled the phone out of my pocket. Damn near dropped it, my hands were shaking so badly. When I picked it up, I knew who it would be even before I heard Fabian’s voice.” A hollow chuckle. “You know, I should’ve known what kind of guy my daughter was in love with when I heard that name. Fabian. That’s a weasel name if I ever heard one.”