Free Subterrene War 02: Exogene by T.C. McCarthy Page A

hatch and secured it behind me before stepping onto the roof.
    The sun had almost disappeared over the horizon, and its fading light cast a pink glow across the fields. As a wave of delirium washed over, it occurred to me that the countryside was beautiful, but the sight lasted only a few moments. Soon, a moonless night threw its dark shroud over us, and in the stillness I heard Megan snoring.
    A distant formation of more than a hundred burning lights—white hot on my infrared sensors—streaked eastward, sending sonic booms to roll over the field. I almost woke Megan. But the aircraft passed well to our north before cutting sharply northeast, toward Kazakhstan, and disappeared quickly over the horizon. The moment of fear brought with it a memory of footprints and of the swinging bodies. I considered the explanations, calculating the probabilities before arriving at an answer.
“If you ever run from us, we will find you.”
    We were being tracked. But for now there was nothing to do except wait, so that Megan could get some rest.
    I hadn’t had time to enjoy the fact that she had changed. All night, while I stood watch, I kept smiling, unable tobelieve that if we made it to safety we’d be able to stay together. Focusing on any one thing became difficult. Megan and I had taken the first step, running west, away from the war and away from our family so part of me felt happy—like there was nothing but hope and I couldn’t keep from laughing—but another part couldn’t fathom it. How would we survive? What would we do and where would we go? What else was life
but
war? For the time being my hatred and terror had subsided, had seeped deeper into my subconscious where I knew they both waited for the right moment to emerge—the correct conditions, their infinite patience providing them with a capsule that would never mold over or rust into impotence. And I wanted it to stay there, never wished for it to leave. They called me Little Murderer. It wasn’t just a name, it was me, an immutable fact of my existence and the substance of who I was, and no matter where we wound up, in war or peace, that was my purpose, my talent, and the only available vocation; it was an identity that
needed
hatred, and besides, the thought of getting rid of it never occurred to me because it was a leviathan, a thing that could at times be pushed aside momentarily, but never eradicated. How did you sweep away an elephant? To destroy it would require something momentous, a realization like this—that a Lily had fled from discharge. Such a world had never before existed and my darkest moments on the line had always been staved off by a recollection of immutable facts that any one of us could have recited, even when nearest to death. Lilies never spoiled, Lilies never faltered, Lilies were the purest among the pure, the trusted among the honorable, and so I had always thought Megan sure to die whether anyone wanted her to or not.Corruption had never been a contingency. Yet even as my thoughts orbited this, began to spiral around the puzzle of how this could have ever happened, I set it all aside; the realization that she was with me pulled me back into the present and I hugged my chest with happiness, having to fight the urge to abandon my post and hold her. And hatred?
I would hold onto it too
, I decided.
    Then the sun made the sky lighten. My muscles ached, and a lack of sleep had rendered me so tired that I almost missed it when a pair of lights flickered into view on the southern horizon, but my goggles zoomed in, forcing me to watch for a few seconds before I got up and ran toward the hatch. It took less than a second to slide down the ladder.
    “They’re coming!”
    Megan jumped up and began pulling on her armor with one hand. By the time we got her helmet on, the sonic boom shook the windows and both of us dove to the floor.
    “There,” said Megan, pointing to a trapdoor in the kitchen.
    Everything moved in slow motion. There wasn’t