Adam (Genetic Apocalypse Book 1) Read online

  I remember the huge difference in us boys’ size back then. I was your average skinny, scrawny little boy with a mop of reddish brown hair and a face full of freckles. I was about four feet tall and weighed all of about sixty pounds. Adrian, on the other hand, looked like a child version of the Incredible Hulk. Most of the gray kids were more gray than green. Adrian was even different from them. He had smooth shiny skin that was greener than gray, and not a hair on his body. Not even eye lashes. His skin shimmered in the sunshine and it almost glowed in the moonlight. My brother might actually be the most beautiful person in the world. He was as tall as Dad, but was heavier. His muscles were even bigger. Way bigger. The kid had abs at six! Adrian didn’t work out or anything, he just worked on the farm and played with me and the neighbor kids. At least before he knocked Dad out, he did. After that, none of the other parents would let their kids, well, their normal kids, play at our house. Those that had a gray kid let them play with Adrian, but they were usually down by the river. According to the adults, they played too rough for us normal kids. They never hurt any of us, so I’m not sure why the adults said that. Maybe they were just afraid that they might, because of their size and strength. Maybe that’s why the adults treated the gray kids the way that they did. Maybe they were just afraid of them, period.

  Later, Mom brought us dinner on a tray to our room. Her eyes grew big with surprise when she noticed Adrian’s lip. The tape was off, and it was all healed up. She just smiled.

  Chapter 3

  Adam:

  I started second grade that following Monday, and Adrian should have started first grade. Instead, he and all of the other gray kids simply wouldn’t be going to school. At all. The school system refused to allow gray kids to attend, starting this year. They said it was because the teachers and administrators couldn’t control them physically. They’re too big, too strong, and too unpredictable they said. They had tried it for two years, and it had been a disaster, they said. The first year that gray kids were old enough for kindergarten, the schools had decided that they were too big, compared to the other children. They decided that gray kids would just start first grade in the appropriate year. Not very many families wound up sending their gray child when they were old enough for first grade; even less sent them back for second grade. They got into too much trouble. They simply weren’t allowed to come back for third grade. So it would have been this year’s third graders that we saw smoking by the convenience store and in handcuffs by the pharmacy recently! There were no gray kids older than that.

  There was a movement to officially have the gray kids deemed unfit for the educational system at the State level. Mom and Dad had known for a while. They just chose to wait until the end of summer break to tell Adrian, thinking it may be over-ruled. As it turned out, it wasn’t, and he heard about it from his best friend Donald and his friend Suzy a couple of weeks earlier, while they were kayaking. He’d come home fit to be tied. Luckily, Dad had been over at Mr. Andersen’s barn helping him do something, so Mom was the one that got to hear about it from him. Mom was usually pretty good about keeping Adrian calm, but this time it didn’t work so good.

  “Oh honey, I’m sorry. I don’t like the rule either,” Mom said.

  “Then don’t go along it!” Adrian screamed at her.

  He’d never done that before, and it visibly scared Mom. I swallowed my fear and stepped between them. Adrian laughed at me.

  “Oh, what are you gonna do big brother?” he taunted, but he turned around and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

  Wow Adrian, good thing Dad wasn’t here!

  Mom sat down in a chair, shaking her head. “Maybe I should just homeschool both of you boys,” she said.

  “No! I like going to school! All of my friends are there and everything. I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Neither did your brother, Adam, but I see your point. I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry,” Mom said, drawing me in for a hug. “Your brother is extremely smart for his age. I’m not worried about him learning. He reads everything he can get his hands on.”

  “I know, he reads way better than me,” I said.

  “It’s his social skills I’m most concerned with, like you said,” she told me.

  “I said that?” I asked.

  “Haha! Yes, dear, you did,” she assured me.

  ~

  “Adam! Wake up son, we’re here,” Mom said, shutting the truck off. “Rough day at school?” she teased.

  “Naw, I was just day-dreaming and I guess I dozed off,” I answered, blinking my eyes several times to get them to focus. Man, I had really been out! Truth was I hadn’t been sleeping very well lately with all of the stuff going on at home. Mom and Dad hardly spoke a word to each other, which was not normal, I had started second grade at Linden Elementary the day before, and there had been one ugly incident after another with Adrian, because he hadn’t started.

  “Well, we’re going to check out as many different books as they allow us to,” Mom said, as we got out of the truck and began walking towards the library. “Maybe that’ll take your brother’s mind off his problems a bit.”

  “I hope so, he’s been a real jerk lately,” I said.

  “We have to get them today, or else wait until Thursday, because the library is closed tomorrow for market day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like waiting and listening to it for two more days!” Mom said.

  The building was really cool. It was called Linden Mills, because a long time ago, that’s what the building was built for, on the bank of the Shiawassee River. It was a really tall, old-fashioned looking, three story white washed place, with a long covered porch on the front of it. There were wooden benches for sitting and reading, planters filled with flowers, and an outside book-return box. It always looked really, really clean to me. It had a stone and mortar basement at the river level, and that always smelled like the river to me. The ceiling had some massive wooden beams holding the floor up. They kind of smelled like a mixture between dust and sawdust. Old. They smelled old. You could look out the windows on the north side of the basement, and the water was right there. The actual millstone and the water-wheel that drove it were long gone though. There were lots of cool old pictures of it from back in the day, when it was still there, framed and hung on the walls. There were maps showing the millpond and the whole chain of man-made lakes formed by the water that the dam held back. That was amazing to me. Tupper Lake, Lake Ponemah, Squaw Lake and Hidden Lake. Miles and miles of water.

  The library took up all of the first and second floors. It wasn’t like a huge library, but they had a lot of good books. On the third floor, there was a small museum of Linden, from the turn of the last century. Apparently, in the late 1800s, the river used to be the best way to get supplies to Linden. Sometime later, they built roads and the dam, just upriver, literally like only fifteen feet away.

  I was looking in a section of books that were about the history of Linden, Fenton and Genesee County in general. There was a man around Dad’s age looking at them too.

  “Do you like local history?” he asked.

  “Yes sir. I guess so,” I answered. “I saw that Lake Ponemah was made from a clay marrow mining company mostly, so I was just looking to see what they have about that.” I noticed him looking at my eyes.

  “Ah! They’re right by the end of the aisle. I’ve checked them out for my son Scott and I to read together before,” he said. He showed me right where to look.

  Mom saw me speaking to someone that she didn’t know, so she came right over. She had several books in here arms already. “Those are a little bit above your reading level son,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I bet Adrian can read them. We could do it together. His son and him read them together,” I told her, nodding to the man.

  “Oh hello,” he said to Mom. “My name is Terry Edan. I was showing your son where to find what he was looking for. My son Scott is a local history buff. We’ve read everything they have
on it from here. We live just up the shoreline a little bit. I walk down here several times a week to get books for him. He doesn’t like being in public too much, and well, I need the exercise.”

  “Hi, I’m Colleen Powell. We’re doing the same thing for my other son.”

  “Dad doesn’t let him come to town because he’s gray and has a short fuse,” I blurted out.

  “Adam! That’s too much information!” Mom scolded.

  Mr. Edan just smiled; “My son Scott is a hybrid too. He’s kind of shy. I understand,” he said.

  I was counting floor boards from embarrassment because Mom had scolded me in front of him, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, you folks have a nice day,” Mr. Edan said, and went to the counter with his books.

  Mom shook her head, bent over to me and whispered; “What have I told you about talking to strangers and giving out information? I guess I’ll have to keep you closer to me from now on, if you can’t remember that.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,” I whispered back. She smiled and ruffled my hair. We took our books up to the librarian at the counter to check them out.

  As soon as we were done and out the door, I got Mom by the hand and said; “C’mon, I want to see the waterfall!” There was a double-wide cement sidewalk that went over the dam just around the corner of the building. I always liked to walk across it, look way down the millpond as far as I could, and see what was out there. This time, a train was passing over the trestle that crossed it about half-way. After it had passed, I turned a few steps the opposite way to look down at the water falling over the back side. I had a bad habit of spitting over the side, watching it fall, then float away.

  “Adam! Don’t you… Ugh. That’s gross! Head to the truck, mister!” Mom said, in her famous loud whisper.

  Chapter 4

  Adam:

  The next day, during the ride home from school, us kids on the bus decided that right after chores we would all meet down at the bend of the river, at our swim platform. The air was still nice and warm, like summer. The water would be too. The men would be all gone to Linden to sell our produce at the farmers market, so we would pretty much have the whole afternoon free, like most Wednesdays.

  “Where’s Adrian, Mom?” I called down to the kitchen as I changed into my swimsuit.

  “He left earlier in his kayak to see Donald and Suzy, right after finishing helping your father load the truck,” she answered.

  “Ok,” I said, as I thundered down the stairs.

  “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

  “Meeting the kids at the swim platform.”

  “Don’t forget to water the animals first,” she said, popping the kitchen towel she had at me in fun.

  “Hey!”

  ~

  We heard the fire siren go off in Argentine and when we looked that way, we saw smoke way off in the distance towards Linden, but we had no idea what was going on. We just kept playing. Maybe an hour later, Dad came racing down the drive blowing the horn in his truck.

  “The dam in Linden is failing! Get to high ground. Get to high ground, everyone!” he yelled over and over again.

  Mom came running out of the house to see what all of the commotion was about. Dad skidded to a stop and jumped from the truck. “You kids! Everyone out of the water. NOW! Run to your houses. Get your families to high ground. The dam in Linden is breaking up, and the water WILL be coming!” he bellowed at us.

  Nobody hesitated for one second. We dove off of the raft and swam to shore, where we all lit out on a dead-run for home, yelling ourselves.

  I don’t really remember everything that happened after that. It was a huge mess. Mom was screaming for Adrian, I was screaming for my dog, who headed away from all of the screaming. Dad wound up scooping me up and throwing me in the truck; telling me to stay put. He grabbed Mom and forcibly put her into the truck, and away we all went, speeding up the drive. I could see the other families leaving too.

  At McCaslin Lake Rd, we could see the bridge over the river, downhill, just south of us. We watched in horror as a wall of water went right over it.

  “Oh dear God, it must have burst entirely,” Dad said. He turned the truck north and gunned it up the hill towards higher ground. He pulled off the road into a wide spot in front of Suzy’s house, and flung his door open. “Stay here!” he ordered, and ran back down the road towards our drive.

  The other neighbors that would be home right now came racing out the drive in their vehicles and pulled over where we were. The men all joined Dad, the families all stayed where we did. Dad ran back up and jumped in the truck, threw it in gear, and took off.

  “Nobody has seen Adrian or his friends,” Dad said, “but Andersen is going to keep an eye out for him here. We’re going to work our way back to Linden to check.”

  He sped along the back roads north of the river heading east, turning down every road that crossed the river to look. We slowed down and stopped in front of Donald’s house, but there was nobody home it appeared. Ripley Rd was the first road past the dam. We crossed over the river cautiously, but other than the fact that the current was faster than I’d ever seen it, everything looked pretty normal there.

  When we reached downtown Linden, Mom was frantic about where Adrian was and what had happened to him, but Dad, he just quit talking. He parked the truck in the parking lot beside the funeral home, jumped out and headed right for his market stall, leaving us there without a word. Mom and I followed cautiously, not knowing what to expect. There were crowds of people everywhere watching what happened. The fire department was trying to keep the fire from spreading. The flames went way up into the air, and smoke and hot cinders were traveling with the breeze. Luckily, the wind was from the west, like usual here, so the hot stuff just fell into the mill pond. The police were trying to keep everyone back, but it was a losing battle. People just had to see the fire.

  We stopped and gasped when we looked where the library should have been. It was gone, all but a burning pile of rubble on the bank. Only part of the stone basement remained. The long double-wide sidewalk over the earthen berm that formed the west end of the mill pond was quickly crumbling and falling into the rushing water, making the hole in it where the dam used to be, wider and wider. We could see other fire and police departments, along with a ton of people on the other side, doing the same thing. People were recording it with their phones, and there was a TV news crew there broadcasting it all.

  Dad came hurrying past us carrying parts of our market stall to the truck. Mom held my hand tightly and followed Dad asking, “Howard, where is Adrian? Where is our son? You have to stop and help me find him!”

  “He and his damned gray friends caused all of this,” he shouted at her. “He’s no son of mine. Not anymore. I’m through with him!” With that, he took off to carry more.

  Mom held my hand so tight it hurt. She was crying and dragging me around screaming along with other people looking for loved ones. “Adrian? Adrian? Has anyone seen my Adrian?” She got no answers, but she sure got plenty of dirty looks from people. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Mrs. Powell? Excuse me,” said a man. It was the man from the library, Mr. Edan. “I saw pretty much everything from my table…”

  Chapter 5

  Terry Edan:

  “I was right over here,” I said, pointing to a spot in the street just around the curve, where Main St. became Tickner St. “I was just a half-dozen spots east of your husband. I noticed some kayaks come under Bridge Street, heading upriver. Hybrid kids. At least a half-dozen at first glance, giggling and laughing. Their voices are what caught my attention over the din of the market. Hybrids in full sunshine, with lots of skin exposed get a super-charge of energy. It makes their voices project more and causes them to lengthen the duration of each spoken word, unconsciously. It makes them sound a bit like the ‘professional’ wrestlers that used to be on TV. My son Scott gets a big case of it every time, and he never realizes it unless we tel
l him. It’s like the opposite of what happens if an heirloom person inhales helium, then talks.

  “They beached their kayaks over there,” I pointed, “on the gravel bar in the middle of the river, where it’s really shallow.” It was about forty feet behind the gazebo where the stage was.

  “They got out and were dancing and singing along with the band. Just acting like kids. It was kind of cute, actually. They were having a helluva good time!

  “A couple of the men who had apparently accompanied their wives to market day to ‘protect them’, were fishing off the dam on the downstream side, because rumor has it, there are some pretty decent walleyes in the hole created by the falling water. The fishermen seemed to be pretty well drunk, but who knows? They started yelling at the hybrid kids to, ‘Get the hell outta there and quit scaring the fish’. The hybrid kids just ignored them and kept on partying it up. Pretty soon a policeman showed up. He told them that if they wanted to listen to the band, they had to get out of the river and sit on the bleachers on the hill like everyone else, and behave. They did. They put their kayaks on the bank and went to the bleachers. As soon as they got settled in there, between songs when it was quiet, some woman called the girls whores, for ‘flaunting themselves’ in front of the men like that. The boy that I later figured out was Adrian, told her to, ‘Shut up.’ Loudly. During the next song, the policeman came back and told them to get out of the bleachers, since they couldn’t behave themselves. They did. They walked across the dam over here to the farmers market.

  “About the time that they got to the far end of the market on the East St side, vendors started yelling at them from their tables and stalls to, ‘Get out of town and quit scaring the customers away.’ Again, Adrian yelled at them to, ‘Shut up!’