The Sovereign Era (Book 1): Brave Men Run Read online

“I’m… uh, glad to hear that.” It was an understatement. I found myself smiling.

  He laughed. He seemed a little embarrassed himself. “Yeah, well, it was fucked up. Our fight, too.”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “No biggie.”

  More weird silence. I scratched my head. “Look, Teslowski, I don’t really know what else to say. Are we supposed to be friends again?”

  He squinted and looked across the parking lot. “Things are gonna get weird, maybe. Don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  He nodded. “You and me, we should watch each other’s backs.”

  I watched him stare off into the middle distance. “You mean like allies?” That wasn’t as big a stretch as friends.

  “Yeah.” He turned and looked at me. “Yeah, like allies.”

  He held out his hand. I shook hands with Byron Teslowski, a big moment of détente in the history of Abbeque Valley High, or at least in the life of Nathan Andrew Charters. I imagined Reagan and Donner, three thousand miles away in Washington, maybe doing pretty much the same thing. I shook my head.

  “This seem crazy to you?”

  He barked a short laugh. “Fuck, dude, it’s a trip.” His face clouded. “I mean it, though. We’re cool?”

  “Yeah, man, I guess we’re cool.” I cocked a thumb toward the school behind me. “What about your Wingmen?”

  “Huh?”

  That was funny. He apparently didn’t know the nickname we’d given his little band of followers. “Felder, and the rest.”

  He shrugged. “Fuck ‘em. They’ll do as I say or they can fuck off.”

  “Aren’t they your friends?”

  “If they thought I was a Sovereign, they’d shit, dude.”

  That took me aback. “They don’t know? What about your parents?”

  He shook his head and looked me in the eye. “Just you, dude.”

  I realized it made sense. He could hide his differences behind natural talent… which I guess it was, after all. He didn’t have to worry about big eyes that glowed in the dark, or hair that never grew. It was a pretty safe bet he didn’t have a note in the nurse’s office to excuse his funky metabolism.

  He was pretty lucky.

  “Who’s gonna know, anyway, right?” I shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re worried. Nobody can tell you’re any different.”

  The bell rang. Lunch was over. He stood up.

  “How long’s that gonna last?”

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Twenty Four

  Abbeque Valley is a planned community in Orange County, in Southern California. Basically, that means there are four or five different floor plans for the houses, everything has a red tile roof, and most of the street names are a random combination of two Spanish words. It’s pretty boring.

  The billionaires who designed the town did one cool thing, though. Most of the neighborhoods are broken up by these long, narrow areas that were never developed – they’re like woods. I don’t know if they call these places something different at city hall, but everybody I know just calls them “the Glen.”

  Tuesday afternoon after school, I finished most of my homework. I just had Pfalger’s essay to work on.

  I sat at the kitchen table and stared at a blank piece of college-ruled for fifteen minutes. Finally, I grabbed my jacket, a pen, and a notebook, and headed down to the Glen that cut between Mel’s street and mine. There’s a clearing in there, with these big California oaks on every side, and a big dead tree that makes a nice place to sit. It’s far enough from the street I can almost ignore the sounds of cars and stuff, too. I can think there.

  Birds flitted back and forth in the branches above and yammered at me. I think there’s something about my scent that pisses them off more than other people. It’s funny.

  The loamy soil filled my nostrils with warmth and comfort. A few yards away, a mouse darted back and forth in the bushes. I sighed. It felt good to be around wild stuff, even if it was suburban planned-community wild stuff.

  I opened my notebook. This is what I wrote.

  What the Donner Declaration Means To Me

  By

  Nate Charters

  The Donner Declaration is probably the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime. Now that people know there are Sovereigns, I think a lot of things will change.

  One thing that will make the world a different place is when the Sovereign people start to really show up. We might need new laws to learn how to live in a world where there are people with amazing powers.

  Right now, William Donner, the first Sovereign, and President Ronald Reagan are holding talks in Washington D.C. Maybe that’s what they’re talking about. Also, if there are really powerful Sovereign people, our government might want some of them for the army, or the CIA. If they’re like Donner, then our government would want them on our side. Maybe we want to make a Sovereign army before the Russians do.

  I don’t know if William Donner will want this to happen, though. His Declaration was more about people leaving the Sovereigns alone.

  I stopped. This wasn’t what the Donner Declaration meant to me. Not really. But how could I write about that, and not make a big announcement saying I thought I was a Sovereign, too? And if I did that, wouldn’t I have to act like a Sovereign?

  I didn’t even know what that meant, really. Pfalger explained the definition of Sovereign, kind of, but what would it mean to really be one?

  Ms. Elp thought William Donner was lonely. That made sense, in a way. If you were a whole nation, all by yourself, that would be pretty lonely. I wondered if he even thought of himself as an American.

  Or a human.

  Would I have to stop being an American? Would I have to be different than everyone else?

  I already was. I had been my whole life. But how would it be to actually accept that? Embrace it?

  I thought about how it felt when Byron Teslowski’s skin broke and his warm blood slipped onto my fingers. I remembered the look on Terrance Felder’s face when I grabbed his arm.

  I took a deep breath. A thousand separate scents washed across my senses… the whole world, right there on the wind. No one else in the whole world knew what that was like… at least no one who walked on two legs.

  I couldn’t deny I was different. Times like this, I liked it. But I didn’t want to be alone. When I hung out with Mel, or Jason… when I was with Lina, I didn’t feel any different from her. Why should being different mean being apart?

  A little smile came to my lips. I started writing.

  I know what it’s like to be different than everyone else, like Donner and the flying man in New York City. I know what it’s like to be able to do things no one else can do. I’ve always looked different from everybody else, so if it turns out that I’m a Sovereign, the only thing that will really change is I’ll be part of a group, part of a minority that’s bigger than just me.

  All the same, I’m still a person. I have a normal mom, and normal friends, and I don’t see any reason why I should act like I should be set apart from them or the rest of the world. I want to be part of the world – I want people to take me for who I am.

  I think William Donner is asking for trouble with his threats and demonstrations. I don’t want to be segregated, and I think it’s wrong for Sovereign people to try to segregate themselves. I don’t even know if I like the name “Sovereign.” It makes it sound like those people are better than everyone else.

  I might find out that I’m technically a Sovereign person, but I don’t want that name. I don’t have Sovereign friends, I have friends who are as normal or not normal or unique as everyone else. So I want to be counted with them.

  I stopped to count words. Almost four hundred. I could probably add more, but there wasn’t anything else I really wanted to say.

  I’d never written anything like this before. I read it over again, and it made me nervous. I pretty much came out and said I was a Sovereign. Even though I was sure Ms. El
p and Mr. Pfalger thought I was anyway, and the rest of the school probably suspected, it gave me a little scary thrill to actually put it down in black and white.

  I hoped Pfalger wouldn’t make me read it in class.

  The cool, early Spring wind shifted, and with it came a scent I’d never experienced. It was sharp, pungent, and tart. It made me jump to my feet with a shiver of adrenaline. I rocked back and forth on the balls of my toes and my body tried to decide to run or not.

  It was almost dark in the late afternoon shadows under the trees. My eyes adjusted, but lack of light washes out colors, and sometimes, details. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything that would have such an odor.

  My senses were confused. The scent had too much going on – it was like wet fur, and human sweat, and garbage, and old meat. All of those things together were just… wrong.

  The birds were silent. When had they stopped making noise?

  I tilted my head, the rest of my body frozen in a flight-or-fight crouch. There was no sound in the clearing. Nothing moved, or every living thing had high-tailed it. I couldn’t tell.

  It was just me. And whatever owned that scent.

  In the bushes, a dark patch of shadows moved, just a little. A really big patch of shadows.

  Every hair on my head stood straight up. My skin crawled. My lips pulled back from my teeth, and I could taste the shadow’s scent on my tongue.

  I backed away, then turned and ran for the street. I needed to get away from that thing, and out of the Glen.

  I hit the sidewalk, out into the open air, and ran across the road. I gave myself another fifty feet or so before I stopped and turned around.

  I couldn’t see back into the clearing. From where I stood, the Glen looked like it always looked. I also couldn’t catch the scent anymore.

  I could still feel it, though, on the inside of my nostrils and in my throat. I shook my head, sneezed, and spit. Then I spit again, and again, and when my mouth was dry I bit the inside of my cheek to make more saliva. I spit that out, too.

  I looked at the Glen. No change, except the birds sang again.

  I took the long way home, on the sidewalk, and I kept the Glen on the opposite side of the street as much as I could. I didn’t exactly run, but I walked pretty fast. When I got to my house, the driveway was empty, which I was grateful for. I wasn’t ready to share.

  I turned on the television just to have some noise in the house. I found myself standing in the kitchen, at a loss.

  What was that?

  Something big was in the Glen, not thirty feet away from me, and whatever it was, it snuck up on me. That’s really hard. Even though it had the wind on its side until the end, I should have heard it.

  I keep calling it “it.” That’s because I know it wasn’t human. Not exactly. It was too wild, too feral. But it was as big as a man, and I was pretty sure it stood on two legs.

  That scent haunted me. I realized the reason it startled me so much. At first, I thought it was because it was unique, like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and that was a shock.

  Thing is, it wasn’t really unique. It was too many familiar things. Animal. Human. Not enough of, and too much, of each.

  I felt a hot tear slide down my cheek. I couldn’t explain it. I just stood there in the kitchen. My breath rushed in and out of my lungs.

  Whatever that was, it was like me, in a way. Like me if I hadn’t had a bath in five years. Like me if I was a homeless guy. Who ate raw meat. And never cleaned up.

  “Shit,” I whispered with a long, trembling sigh. Another Sovereign in Abbeque Valley? First Teslowski the super-jock, and now this… this bear-guy?

  Maybe it was seeking me out. Maybe it caught the scent of a smaller version of itself, and wanted to check me out.

  Or eat me.

  It was dark outside. I strode through the house and turned on all the lights. I couldn’t decide if I was scared, or just really sad.

  When my mother came home she asked me if I owned stock in Edison and snapped off most of the lights.

  She had a bucket of Piccolo Pat’s Chicken. We ate dinner in front of the television and watched the news, which, apart from coverage that the Coca-Cola company was changing its recipe, was mostly speculation on the closed talks between Reagan and Donner. When I was done eating I took a shower and went right to bed. I didn’t say a word about the thing in the Glen.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Twenty Five

  Wednesday afternoon, Lina picked me up after school. We went to Anarchy Burger for an early dinner.

  “Get whatever you want,” she said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yup. I got some money from my mom.”

  I was pretty hungry, as usual. I ordered a triple cheeseburger, a large fries, a strawberry milkshake, onion rings, and a soda. Lina ordered a plain hamburger, small fries, and an iced tea, so she finished well before I did. I was about two thirds of the way through my meal when I noticed she was looking at me with a little smile on her face, her chin propped on one hand.

  “When I said get whatever you want, I didn’t mean get everything on the menu.” She laughed.

  “Told you about my metabolism,” I said around a mouthful of cheeseburger.

  “Dinner with you is a spectator sport, Nate.”

  I shrugged and smiled.

  Once she saw I was pretty much finished, Lina said, “So did you get your essay back from Pfalger?”

  “Yeah!” I pulled it out of my backpack and passed it across the table to her. “He gave me a C! Can you believe that? I practically come right out and say I’m a Sovereign, and he gives me a freakin’ C!”

  Lina granted me a sympathetic pout and looked at the essay. “He crossed out the whole first part.”

  “Yeah. When he handed it back to me, he’s like, ‘you would have got an A if you’d done the whole thing on topic.’”

  Lina smiled. “You know what that means, right?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Pfalger got it,” she said. “He used to teach over at O'Neil; I know what he’s like. He couldn’t give you a good grade since you didn’t really follow the directions. Half of this thing is what the Donner Declaration means to the rest of the world, not to you.” She handed the paper back to me. “You’re lucky you didn’t get an F. A C means he’s on your side.”

  I gave the essay another look. “Huh.” I smiled. “You think so?”

  “Yeah, sure. Now everybody knows…”

  That thought still gave me mixed feelings. “Yeah.” I hadn’t told Lina, or anyone, about the… whatever it was I’d encountered the day before. I’d been thinking more about it being some kind of homeless Sovereign, living like a bum because it was too different to fit in. I didn’t want that to be me one day.

  Lina looked at me. “What’s up.”

  “I guess I really have to deal with it.”

  She nodded; looked down at her plate. She found a remaining French fry and twirled it in ketchup. She looked up at me through her bangs.

  “Your mom’s gonna be pissed.”

  Lester Brenhurst – Three

  Brenhurst put down the phone and made a note in his planner: “Left third message with L. Charters.”

  He wasn't sure how much Andrew Charters' widow knew about her husband's work. He couldn't know if she connected her son's unique adaptations to Project: Rancher.

  He did know that she and her son left Abbeque Valley the night of Donner's grandstanding speech, and that they returned the next afternoon. Where had they gone? He was certain it meant something, but what?

  Brenhurst flipped through the file folder labeled “Charters, Nathan Andrew” that lay open on his desk. There were medical records from the boy's pediatrician, school records, and several photographs. The child had been almost grotesque as an infant and young boy, and while as a teenager he had almost grown into his big round eyes and bulky musculature, he was still visibly different from humans. Apparently, that made him int
o an isolated, withdrawn child with few friends. Good.

  His mother, though... she was real estate agent with dozens of friends and acquaintances, and an outspoken, left-leaning social critic and activist. That complicated things.

  His assistant buzzed from outside his office.

  “The Teslowskis are in C1, Dr. Brenhurst.”

  Brenhurst closed the Charters file and stabbed the intercom button with a thin finger. “Thank you, Tamara.” He picked up the Teslowski boy's file. Underneath, on his desktop blotter calendar, was a note he’d written to himself. “Mother – 4:00pm.”

  He looked at his watch. It was 3:50. No matter. He doubted his mother had any sense of the time. These days, she barely knew the decade.

  He buttoned his coat with his free hand, left the office, stepped across the lobby, and strode into the conference room.

  Jeri Teslowski was a thin woman who seemed worn beyond the thirty seven years the intelligence report claimed. She sat in a chair with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Marc Teslowski, a puffy, red-faced man who brought to Brenhurst's mind a football star gone badly to seed, stood and stuck out his meaty hand.

  Brenhurst's right hand fingered a plastic phial inside his coat pocket. He cracked it open with his fingers and felt the slick nanomech delivery fluid work its way up his fingers and across his palm. By the time he held out that hand and took Teslowski's, the fluid had evaporated. During the handshake, the tiny devices released themselves from Lester and found a new home on Teslowski’s palm.

  From there, they would eventually affix themselves to the wife. The nanomechs would gorge themselves on skin flakes and the nearly invisible fauna that rode every human being and use that fuel to replicate themselves so they would be ready to occupy everything at the Teslowski household, including their son, by the time they got home.

  By evening, Brenhurst would have eyes on site.

  It was easy to put on a bright smile. “Mister and Mrs. Teslowski. I appreciate your coming to visit Tyndale Labs.”

  When the husband smiled back, his eyes turned small and piggy. “I liked what you had to say on the phone, Doc. Especially the part about, uh, getting a little scratch for our son's time.”