Gaia contest again. Prompts: less than 3,000 words; personal vulnerability; identity crisis; limitations of time; and to some extent, unique murder.

A bit of name recycling here with Ezra. Oh well.

“What do we have here, Jazzy?” I said quietly as I watched a figure appear over the edge of the hill.

Jazzy laid on my lap, purring contentedly as I stroked her soft white fur. She lifted her head as the figure drew closer, eyes squinted from fatigue and the bright sunlight that cast the grassy field aglow with a dewy mist. We watched as the figure took on the shape of a young man, a survivor with dusty blond hair that had become too common since death had swept the island.

“Ezra?” he called out to me. He stopped in front of the white mausoleum Jazzy and I sat on top of, shielding his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “You one of the refugees?”

He nodded. “My name’s Jarek. Your dad sent me to get you.”

“Come on up and rest for a few minutes; catch your breath.” I watched as he moved up the hill a bit and stepped on to the roof. “It’s quite a walk, isn’t it?”

Jarek sat beside me and let his feet dangle over the edge. “Yeah.” He looked between his knees at the ground while I stared across the grass again. After a few minutes, we jumped down and headed back to the farmhouse. I carried Jazzy in my arms, afraid she would get lost.

“How many of you are there?” I asked Jarek.

“A hundred, hundred-fifty,” he replied. “As many as we could collect as we came.”

I hugged Jazzy to my chest, taking in the scent of her fur. “So few…”

“There aren’t many left.”

“I know.”

We arrived at the farmhouse fifteen minutes later. As the day was brisk and the house too small, the refugees milled about the yard and packed driveway. They were a ragged bunch, many with packs filled with all their essential belongings. Since my father owned the largest piece of open land in the country, they had gathered here to regroup.

A man stood carefully on the well, obviously the leader. “Now that Martial Law has disbanded,” he said, “we must learn how to govern ourselves.”

I tried to tune him out as I wove through the crowd to the front door, Jarek following me.

“There is no government anymore – ” the words continued to reach my ears “ – and we cannot count on the other countries to help us as – ”

I closed the front door behind myself, muffling his voice. “He had better not try to take my father’s land,” I said, glaring at Jarek.

“He doesn’t want land,” he said, looking through a window. “He isn’t that bad, once you get to know him.”

Shaking my head, I said, “Coming with me, are you?” Jazzy followed me as I walked down the hall to the basement door, opening it and starting down the stairs. While the house and the land belonged to my father, he had chosen to pursue science rather than agriculture. My uncle had run the farm until he died.

I passed the tables and refrigerators full of scientific things I did not understand, finding my father seated at his desk. Taking a seat beside him, I said, “Find anything yet?”

He looked up from the medical dictionary opened in front of him and took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “No, unfortunately.” He placed a hand on my back and moved it up until he gently brushed my hair, causing goose bumps to rise on my skin. “Can you show the refugees the crop stores? They’re probably hungry by now.”

“Yeah,” I replied absently. He looked so tired – we were all tired. My eyes moved from his face to the face of a beautiful woman in a frame beside the lamp.

My father noticed where I was looking and lowered the frame so I could not see the picture. “She’d be proud of us,” he said, his hand on my back again.

I sighed and sat back. “I’ll let you get back to work.” I stood and left him at the desk, heading back upstairs.

Jarek had watched us the whole time from one of the top steps, and he followed me out of the basement. “What’s he doing down there?” he asked as I moved through the kitchen.

“Trying to find a cure,” I replied shortly. “He’s spent most of the past six months down there.”

“It’s good someone’s still looking out for us,” Jarek said, and I nodded. “He said something about food stores?”

“Yeah.” I pushed through the side door off the kitchen. “Can you go tell whoever that guy is that our store is this way?” I pointed at our barn.

———

I looked across the yard at the refugees – all the broken families praying for nothing more than someone to return things to normal. In the week since they had arrived, they had taken my father’s truck to town and collected all the tents and other supplies they could find. The yard looked like something out of an exodus film.

No one said much – the missing family members connected us all in a way that needed no words. Jarek sat stoically beside me on the swing, left with no one his own age other than me. He stroked Jazzy gently, his fingertips brushing my arm with each pass.

“This cat follows you everywhere,” he said, only to break the silence. “I’ve never seen you apart.”

I smiled vaguely. “My dad got her for me after my mom died. We sort of have a connection.”

“I’ve never had any pets.” He spoke with the bland tone that comes with small talk. Suddenly, he smiled. “I remember this one time when I was real little – my dad accidentally stepped on my aunt’s dog’s foot and it bit him right in the thigh. He couldn’t go near another dog after that.”

I made a sympathetic noise. “Jazzy would never bite anyone,” I said, rubbing Jazzy’s belly playfully. She rolled onto her back and caught my hand in her sharp little claws.

The three of us jumped as my father burst through the door. “Ezra!” he exclaimed, pulling me from the swing and embracing me. “I found out how it chooses!”

“That’s great, Dad,” I replied, patting his back. I smiled as he went on a scientific ramble about how the disease traveled through the bloodstream until it could analyze the host’s genes to find a specific allele. I could recall words, but did not understand what they meant. I was happy for him nonetheless. He would probably eat dinner with me that night.

He hugged me one last time, then rushed back to the basement to do more research.

I sat down again and said, “We’ve been waiting for this day for months. Now we know why my mother had to die.”

Jarek looked at me. “That makes it genocide,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever created it set out to kill everyone with a specific allele, one tiny part of a person’s genetic structure.” He looked worried. “It means that the creator took the time and effort to program the disease to find one blip in a string of millions. He wasn’t just looking to kill everyone – he wanted a specific group of people.”

I reached over and took his hand. “Finding the cause means he can move on to a cure. If he figures it out for this strain, he can figure it out for any more that may come up, right?”

Jarek nodded absently.

———

“Stop teasing her,” I said, taking the stalk of grass from Jarek’s hand and letting Jazzy have it. She sat on it, as she did with most of her other toys.

Jarek laughed. “She’s a cat – she’s supposed to play.”

“Yeah, but you’d get annoyed, too, if I tickled your nose with a piece of grass, wouldn’t you?” I reached over and grabbed his nose, refusing to let go as he tried to slap my hand away. “How do you like it?” I jeered. He managed to yank my arm back and kissed me before I had a chance to react.

“Boys.” My father’s voice shocked me on top of Jarek’s kiss. “Come back to the farmhouse.”

I looked down at him, a breeze blowing up my back. “Dad, I – “ I began, searching for an excuse.

“There are more important things to worry about now than whether you want to kiss boys or girls, Ez,” my father replied. His tone told me he was serious. “I just got word that a hurricane’s heading straight for us. I need you at the house to prepare.”

Need was not a word my father tossed around lightly. I stood, pushing away a sudden feeling of lightheadedness. My knee gave out as I took a step, and I passed out.

When I awoke, I was in my bedroom, and I heard wind pounding the windows. I opened my eyes to see my father sitting beside the bed, his head in his hands. “Dad?” I said, squinting.

He looked up, and I saw his fatigue in his eyes. “Ezra,” he said. “My God, you’re awake. How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. I felt a strange pressure in my abdomen, but nothing that hurt. “What happened?”

My father sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got it, Ezra,” he said gravely. He lifted my arm and showed me a rash on my elbow. “It must have found a way to mutate, got into your system.”

“Daddy...” I heard my fear more than I felt it. Images of my mother, weak and pain-stricken on her deathbed, ran through my head. “I don’t want to die.”

He pulled me into an embrace, rubbing my back gently. “I’m sorry my research is going so slow. I couldn’t leave you until you woke up.” His hand stopped moving. “I’m not going to let you die, Ezra.” He held me at arm’s length. “I won’t let you die.”

I took a deep breath to steady myself. He obviously felt worse than I did, so I became worried when his eyes suddenly went wide. “What?”

“One brown, one green,” he said, gazing into my eyes. “Not one, but in-between.” My parents had made up the rhyme when I was a toddler: If my eyes were different colors, it meant I was twice as fun. “You can’t be. But it would explain why it took so long to infect you.”

“Dad,” I pleaded. “What are you talking about?”

“Chimera,” he said. “The disease isn’t released unless the host has a certain allele. You have it, but not in your bloodstream where it looks first.” He seemed to realize I understood little of what he had said: “A chimera is a being with two different genetic codes in the same body,” he explained. “It’s a long shot, especially just from looking at you, but maybe when your mom was pregnant, there were twins, and you absorbed the other? Mismatched eyes from two different sets of genes – the same with your elbow.”

My body suddenly felt foreign to me. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“The disease took longer finding the allele in you, so it hasn’t infected you until now.” His gaze softened. “I’m going to be honest, Ez: I have a hunch, but it’s just that. I don’t know if I will have a cure before you...” He looked away for a moment. “But I’m going to work non-stop until I find it, I promise. I won’t let you die without a fight.” After kissing my forehead, he left the room before I could say anything.

I sunk beneath the covers again and closed my eyes, not feeling any better. My mother had died within a week of getting sick – I probably had the same amount of time, chimera or not. I tried not to think about what the next few days would hold for me, focusing instead of falling asleep again.

———

“Hey, Ez,” Jarek said as he brought me lunch the next day. He set the tray on my lap and occupied the chair my father had used, not looking straight at me. Neither of us said a word while I ate, until Jarek broke the silence: “I’m sorry about yesterday.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. “My dad didn’t – “

“I’m not talking about that.” He took a deep breath and looked straight into my eyes. “My brother created it.”

“What?” I pushed the tray onto the bedspread and faced him. Jazzy pounced on the scraps.

“He gave me immunity to it,” Jarek continued. “I wanted to give that immunity to you in case you got sick, but I wasn’t fast enough. If you hadn’t been a chimera…” He took a breath. “I left your father notes on how to make the cure – if he can figure them out, he can save you. But I have to go.”

“No,” I said. “You can’t.”

“I have to.” He looked at me again. “Those people out there want to start a new country on this island, as great as the old one. I could have stopped the epidemic months ago, but I didn’t. I can’t stay here.” He stood and leaned down to kiss me quickly before leaving.

Minutes later, I heard yelling outside my window. Pulling the curtain back, I watched as two men led Jarek across the muddy yard. When they had nearly reached their camp, they pushed Jarek to his knees and shot him through the head.

Clapping my hands to my mouth, I dropped the curtain and tried not to retch. I brought my knees to my chest and tried to disappear, but realized I could not.

“Ezra!” I heard my father thunder up the steps and looked up as he burst through my door. “You’re okay,” he said, gathering me in his arms and shushing me. “I didn’t know, or I would’ve stopped them. But he saved your life, Ezra. He gave me the cure. He saved your life.”