“This seems cruel,” I said.
“Don’t fret. Timothy is old, only a year or so left. In the wild, he would’ve already been slain for his weakness. And he’s contributing to my ability to understand their culture.”
“My friend Tegan is curious about them too. What have you learned about their eyesight?” I recalled how she’d wondered when she heard the story about the way I slipped past the horde to rescue Fade.
“It’s on par with ours, meaning not good. They rely on their olfactory senses more.”
“What do you mean, ‘not good’?” Fade asked.
“Compared with some animals, humans have terrible vision. A hawk, for instance. The mutants have an advanced sense of smell, however, akin to a hound or wolf.”
At that, the Freak glanced up from its gruesome feast, strings of meat threaded through yellow fangs. Now that Wilson had pointed it out, I could see that it was missing four teeth, crucial ones for ripping and tearing. From context, I figured he meant their society—and once, I’d have found the idea absurd—that they could have customs and rituals similar to ours, but that was before I’d glimpsed the Freak village hidden in the trees. I realized that Dr. Wilson could probably give us a better picture of what happened to the world … and what we could do about it.
So I put aside my shock and asked, “We came to retrieve information for the colonel, but I wonder if you could answer some questions first.”
“As long as it’s not about Timothy.”
The Freak looked between us as if it recognized that Wilson was talking about it. I shivered. “It’s about what happened before, actually.”
“You want a history lesson? Well, I have time to indulge you. Let’s have a drink then and I’ll answer your questions.”
Fade was still staring at the Freak, but he followed when we left the room. The thing whimpered as Wilson pulled the door shut, like it was lonely. That bothered me too. I didn’t want to sympathize with the monsters, not even a little; that would make it harder to kill them.
This time Wilson took us to the kitchen, though it was unlike any I had ever been in before. There was no hearth for cooking, only more rectangular units like the one where he’d gotten the meat. It was bright and clean, though, and he gestured for us to take a seat at the table. I did, feeling like the world had once again stopped functioning according to the rules I knew. Fade perched beside me; he looked every bit as flummoxed as I felt.
Wilson turned a lever and water gushed into the pot he was holding. The scientist moved a dial and concentric rings kindled to a glowing orange. It was astonishing. Then he set the pot to boil; at least that much hadn’t changed. He joined us at the table with an expectant look.
“Go on, then. I’ll grant you the time it takes the water to heat and our drinks to steep.”
I nodded. “At this point, sir, I’m not even sure what to ask. So whatever you can tell me about what left Gotham in ruins and Muties everywhere, well, I guess I’d find that helpful.”
“You really don’t know anything?” he asked, visibly surprised.
“Only what we were able to glean from old papers, but they weren’t clear,” Fade put in.
“Then let me be concise. A long time ago, in labs similar to this one, scientists developed all kinds of terrible things. You probably don’t know what biological or chemical weapons are, do you?” He sounded like he pitied our ignorance.
I squared my shoulders. We were trying to amend that lack, weren’t we? “I don’t.”
Fade shook his head silently. His father’s stories only went so far, and he was young when his mother died. There was a limit to what you could learn when the people who raised you didn’t know the truth, either.
“They came in many forms—gas, powder, liquid—but they served only one purpose, death and destruction. Whenever such things are created, bad men want to test them. That led to war among the great nations of the earth. Are you with me so far?”
I could tell he was simplifying matters for us, and while somebody else might be insulted, I appreciated it. What good were answers if I didn’t understand them? So I nodded and said, “I’ve heard part of this story, but with a religious slant. My foster father told me men were full of hubris and meddled with matters best left to God.”
“Some might agree with him,” Wilson said.
“Edmund also said there were horseless carriages and flying wagons,” Fade offered doubtfully.
“He’s correct, but they were called cars and planes. You can find wreckage of them to this day.”
“Do you still use them?” I asked.
The scientist shook his head. “Fossil fuels are no longer in production. The only reason we’re able to continue using technology that runs on electricity is because we’re positioned favorably for our windmills to generate enough power to keep the town going.”
“What’s a windmill?” Fade wanted to know.
“If you came in from Soldier’s Pond, you won’t have seen them.” Wilson got a scrap of paper and sketched, then he launched into a complicated explanation of how the thing turned in the wind and that generated the power.
I had no interest in that. As the pot whistled, I grasped that the man’s limited patience with our curiosity would soon be coming to an end. He had important work to do. “What about the Muties? How did the world end up like this?”
“I mentioned the war,” he said, spooning some herbs into three cups. “It was … long. But it wasn’t fought with guns and bombs. We tested new horrors on one another, time and again, usually in the cities, where the populations were highest. The last of these synchronized strikes was more virulent than anticipated.”
“Virulent?” Fade asked.
“Powerful. It took effect quickly and the results were horrific. A vast number of the population died and the bioweapon created lesser plagues that troubled us for years to come. Governments created quarantine centers and tried to control the contagion, but all such measures failed. In fact, one vaccine even made the problem worse.” Here, his account faltered. “My forefathers were responsible for part of that … and I’ve continued their terrible work.”
“You must’ve had a good reason,” I said.
He lifted a shoulder, continuing the account. “But not everyone died. The pathogen affected others differently. Some DNA chains mutated, a systemic devolution. They became primal and savage, concerned only with the urge to feed.”
“The Freaks,” I breathed, forgetting to use their Topside name. Though I didn’t grasp everything, I had the gist.
The scientist looked interested. “Is that what you call them? Fitting, I suppose. And, yes.” He paused as if trying to figure out how to phrase a complicated idea so that we’d understand. “Others simply changed. DNA is the building block of our bodies, containing all the code that makes us who we are. It’s the reason you have brown hair and blue-gray eyes. It also carries incredible amounts of data regarding your ancestors and lineage.”
I stared at the back of my hand, awed. “Can you read this code?”
Fade’s eyes were wide because this sounded like more of Edmund’s stories. “Can the code be broken?”
“It’s not cipher in that sense, but, yes, if I had the proper equipment, I could show you what I mean.” He took his pencil and sketched out what looked like a long figure eight on its side. “This is what I’m talking about.”
“And it’s hidden in our bodies?” I asked.
“Somehow I don’t think this is pertinent to what you really want to know. You’re curious about the changed folk, yes?”
I nodded, remembering Jengu and the small people who had saved my life down below. They’d been changed, definitely, but not monstrous like the Freaks, so I understood what Wilson was talking about.
“This is an unproven hypothesis, of course, but I suspect that an alternate evolutionary track was activated in their DNA. Some other animal in their genetic history took precedence, creating a divergent physiology, and since the pathogen was so powerful, it forced these changes much quicker than should’ve been possible in nature, occasionally with horrific results. Such a shift would naturally take millions of years.”
“So the world was poisoned,” Fade said, “and it made monsters out of some people and changed others, and a lot more died?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“But why is everything so broken?” I asked.
Wilson strained the leaves out of our drinks and brought them to the table. I made up my mind to sip slowly, so I could keep accruing information. I wasn’t altogether sure whether I believed him, but his account dovetailed with Edmund’s just without the religious shadings. Fade cupped his hands around his mug, and I wondered if he felt as overwhelmed as I did.
“After the quarantine centers failed, governments tried to protect their dignitaries. Evacuations of the wealthy, influential, and powerful took place in cities around the world.”
“Leaving Gotham empty apart from the people who were expendable,” Fade said grimly.
“Yes. They were left to fend for themselves without support or infrastructure.”
“Are those governments still out there?” I asked.
“To the best of my knowledge, no. The information I have comes from historical records. Those new enclaves fell in the chaos that followed, and new towns and settlements sprang up, populated by pockets of survivors.”
“Like Salvation and Soldier’s Pond?”
The scientist nodded. “Granted, since I have no way of communicating long distance, I cannot tell you what it’s like in other parts of the world. But if things were different elsewhere—and if they had the means—surely they would’ve made contact by now.”
That made sense to me. “How do you know all of this?”
“Journals. My people have always been scientists and they kept meticulous notes on everything that occurred, insofar as they were able. Would you like to see them?” When I shook my head, Wilson looked troubled. “I wish I had a child to whom to pass on this legacy. My wife passed and I never found anyone—oh, never mind. That isn’t why you came.”
In that moment, I saw him as he was, an old man surrounded by relics of a lost age, irrevocably lonely with only a caged Freak for company. He might be the smartest person I’d ever met, but he was also the saddest. I restrained the urge to pat his hand, thinking he wouldn’t appreciate it.
Fortunately Fade distracted the man from thinking about his dead wife. “I have a couple more questions, if you don’t mind. Unrelated.”
“Go ahead.”
“My parents both died of sickness in the ruins. It swept through and carried a lot of people with it. Was that one of the lesser plagues you were talking about?”
“The initial deployment was such a long time ago,” Wilson said gently. “So I rather doubt it. But there are a number of diseases that could account for it. What were the symptoms?” Fade told him, then the scientist asked a number of questions about their living conditions and the water they drank. “It sounds like dysentery, but I can’t be sure.”
