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Like all 17-year-olds, Molly Porter had never heard of the Filicide Program. She learned its name the day her parents tried to murder her. On that day, every parent in her secluded, North Carolina beach town conspired to kill their own children, and many of Molly’s friends did not survive the night.
But what is the Filicide Program? How could an entire community of loving mothers and fathers turn on their own in a day? And why?
These questions will haunt Molly as she scrambles to keep her two younger brothers—and herself—safe from the two people she thought would always be on her side no matter what. Her mom and dad have "switched," and now they will never stop hunting her. Either she must kill her parents or they will kill her, unless…
Unless Molly stays alive long enough to unravel this conspiracy and answer the most important question of all:
How do you stop the Filicide Program?
Prologue:
She drew a smiley face
inside of a heart on his paper lunch bag, just as she loved to do for
him every morning before school, so she certainly didn't look like a
mother who was two minutes away from murdering her own son.
The switch hadn't activated yet.
Carol Hutchins was
still herself when she ambled down the stairs in her slippers and robe
that morning. She was still herself when she put on a pot of coffee, and
when she let Riffraff, the two-year-old
German Shepherd, out in the back yard. She sat at the kitchen table and
skimmed CNN on her iPad while waiting for the coffee to brew. Just like
every morning.
There was no need to
check on Scotty and make sure he was out of bed. Scotty was one of those
12-year-olds who actually enjoyed school, and she knew he'd be down
soon all on his own, excited to seize
another day.
The coffeemaker gurgled
to a finish. She poured a mug and took the lunch bag she'd made for him
last night out of the fridge. After drawing the heart and smiley face
on it with all the care that only
a mom can give in such a simple gesture, she returned to the kitchen
table.
Riffraff wagged his
tail at the back door, ready to come in, but she ignored him. She didn't
let him in because at some point between the counter and the table—
The switch had activated.
Riffraff was big for
his age, already 85 pounds, and she couldn't predict how he'd react to
what was about to happen. Better to keep him outside, a non-factor.
She'd let him in later after cleaning up
the blood.
Scotty's footsteps
rumbled overhead as he bounded down the stairs, then he darted into the
kitchen with a backpack on his shoulders and a smile on his face. He had
the same smile as her, and the same
eyes and the same hair color. Without stopping, he snatched his lunch
off the counter and bolted toward the kitchen door leading into the
garage.
"Hey, Mom. Thanks for lunch!"
"Hold it. What's the rule about running inside?"
He halted and turned, speaking fast: "Sorry, Nate and I are gonna race our bikes to school today."
"Wear your helmets." If
she showed any sign of being different after the switch, Scotty didn't
seem to notice. She looked and talked like she always did. It's just
that now, she was acting. And waiting
for the right moment.
"I know," he said, turning back toward the garage.
"Hang on, mister. Give
me a hug." She rose from the table and crossed the kitchen, walking
within reaching distance of a hammer. The past two evenings after work,
her husband had helped Scotty build
a Purple Martin birdhouse for the back yard, and last night he'd left
the hammer on the counter by the back door.
But Carol passed by it. There were more efficient methods.
She opened her arms to hug him. "I love you, angel."
He gave her a quick hug
back. "Love you, too." He let go, but she did not. He rolled his eyes
and hugged her again. "Mooooom, I'll see you after school."
The counter closest to
the garage had a knife block on top of it. As she hugged Scotty tighter
with one hand, she drew a carving knife with an eight-inch blade in the
other.
He didn't scream. Maybe
he was too shocked or too confused, or most likely, he simply couldn't.
The knife entered the right side of Scotty's neck and had no doubt
severed his larynx before the tip broke
through the left side of his neck. His jaw gaped. Blood pooled in his
mouth then overflowed onto his lips and chin. His shoulders shuddered
and he would have collapsed, except she was still hugging him tightly
with her other hand.
That's all the force it took—one thrust from one hand, and her one son was dead.
Her fingers relaxed
around the knife handle, leaving it impaled through his neck. Scotty's
head went limp, bobbing twice, then fell to a rest against the handle.
He looked peaceful, as if taking a nap
on it.
Carol had to be at the
Sands Club for brunch in two hours to make sure everything was set for
tonight’s gala, and she still had to shower and put on her face, so it
was time to get busy cleaning.
She kissed him one last time on the forehead and eased him to the floor.
She’d meant what she
said before—she loved her little angel and always would—it's just that
the switch had activated and... well, she didn't know why, exactly, but she knew with every fiber of
her being that she'd had to kill her son.
Hadn't she?
The question loomed in
her head as she drifted toward the cleaning closet. Her body ran on
auto-pilot, somehow grabbing trash bags and a mop, while her mind
replayed everything, trying to convince herself
it had to be done. But had it?
Riffraff barked, still
standing at the back door. Only now his tail pointed up stiffly and his
ears angled forward, alert. All of his focus on Carol.
She met his anxious stare and the faintest hint of tears glittered in her eyes.
"It's all right, Riffraff. Mommy will let you back in in just a bit."
He barked again and cocked his head the way dogs always do when trying to understand humans.
#
The most notorious urban legend about the
bridge went like this: a Wall Street banker drove his wife and three
kids all the way down from Connecticut to North Carolina for their
annual two-week beach vacation, but as soon
as they'd parked at their house on the island, he started walking back.
After ten hours in the car with them, he'd had it. At some point as he
was crossing the mile-and-a-half bridge over Bogue Sound, it occurred to
him that the height was likely high enough
to kill himself, so he jumped. It was not high enough. A gentleman out
for a Saturday cruise on his Hatteras Yacht saw him smack the water,
pulled him out and sped him up to Morehead City, where doctors
determined he'd fractured his spine in two places and
would spend the rest of his life confined to his bed, surrounded by his
wife and three kids.
If the story had a
message at all, it was the last thing on Molly Porter's mind as she
accelerated her Jeep Cherokee onto the bridge toward the island. She was
busy laughing at the bug-eyed expression
Claire was making in the passenger seat.
Claire had Molly's
graded test paper and waved it in front of the steering wheel, taunting:
"Your dad's going to kill youuu! He's totally gonna kill—"
Molly tried to snag it
but Claire whipped it up through the sunroof and held it, flapping in
the wind. Molly couldn't reach it and drive at the same time, but she
could reach Claire's face—specifically,
the sunglasses on Claire's face, which she yanked off and dangled out
her own window.
"Give it back or your
Roxys go in the sound!" They were zooming up the bridge's peak now, 80
feet above the water, and that first really good taste of salty ocean
air filled the Jeep.
"Fine, here. Here's
your lousy C+." Claire tossed the paper at Molly's chest. Of course, it
never made it. The draft between the open windows caught it and Molly's
Spanish midterm shot out of the Jeep
like a jet ski. Both girls' mouths hung open, then they burst into
giggles. The kind of giggles all high schoolers have on their way home
from Friday classes, giddy about the endless, limitless weekend before
them.
Molly twirled the
sunglasses by their stems. "I should absolutely torch these for that,"
but she dropped them in Claire's lap instead.
"Thanks. Sorry about
your test. For real, though: your dad's gonna be pissed. How does
someone who spent all last summer in Costa Rica only manage a C in
Spanish?"
"Don't call him my dad,
that's weird." Richard had been Molly's stepfather for two years now,
but she wasn't used to the whole "Dad" thing yet. That is, if she ever
would be.
"Just admit it: all you did down there was surf, didn't you?"
Molly wasn't yet used
to her friends being jealous of Costa Rica, either. She'd be a senior
next fall and Richard was obsessed with her earning a merit scholarship
to college. All her friends knew he'd
sent her down there solely to work in an outreach program, but all
they'd seemed to hear was, "Costa Rica: home to some of the best waves
on the planet."
"That was like a year
ago and most of my group spoke English anyway. Besides, he's not gonna
know about the test since you blew it into the sound, bee-otch."
Both girls cracked-up again.
The quartz-colored sand
of Claire's driveway crunched under Molly's tires. An actual cement
driveway was buried somewhere under there, but Claire's house was down
near The Point, the southern tip of
the island where the ocean met the sound, and where the ever-shifting
sand didn't exactly cater to the landscaping preferences of beach
residents, even those as wealthy as Claire's parents.
Claire checked a text
on her phone. "Okay, it's for sure: Ryan's parents aren't coming back
before the bridge closes tonight." After the ferry shut down a decade
ago, the bridge was the only way by car
on or off the island, and its wear and tear had started to show. In
January, the NCDOT stated the bridge couldn't go another summer tourist
season without repairs and they scheduled a maintenance closure for this
entire first weekend in April. "They're getting
a keg. So are you coming out or what?"
"I'm supposed to watch Ben and Nate tonight. Your parents are going to that gala-thingy, too, right?”
"Can’t they get a babysitter? They’re not your kids."
"I don't mind. Ben is so cute, you have no idea. He does this thing where—"
“How come you never go out anymore? And when you do you don’t even drink.”
"Claire-Bear, sweetie, you say that like it's a bad thing. Why don’t you come hang out til it’s over? We could watch—"
“You want me to stay in
with you and your munchkin brothers... on a Friday night? Wow. Your
stepdad has seriously gotten in your head. Maybe we should fish that
Spanish midterm out of the water and show
it to him."
"Yo, Spanish is muy hardo. Comprendo, ese?"
"For real for real: you're telling me Mr Tightwad isn't getting to you? You’re so different now. Ever since—“
"Yeah, yeah—ever since I got back from Costa Rica, right?"
"No. I was gonna say you've been different since before you even left."
Claire looked past her
massive, four-story house, out at a lone pelican gliding over the
breakers. They usually flew in groups. "I miss my partner in crime."
And with that, Claire
got out, swung her bookbag over her tanned shoulders curving out of her
tank top, and trotted toward the steps. Every oceanfront house had a
ground floor that was just a garage
and stilts, with the actual front door up a flight of wooden stairs on a
wraparound porch. When Claire's flipflop clacked on the first step,
Molly called to her:
"Hey, maybe I'll see y'all later."
Claire smiled, but it
was one of those forced smiles, like she didn't believe her. Molly
couldn't blame her because the truth was, Claire was right: Molly had
been neglecting her friends and that needed
to be rectified, whether Richard liked it or not. Tonight, she'd find a
way to that party.
As she backed out, she
thought about how notice of the bridge closure had been plastered all
over the island for months. The high schoolers had lucked out—Ryan's
party was only possible because his parents
decided at the last minute to stay at their mainland house for the
weekend. The adults' gala, on the other hand—not only had some genius
accidentally planned it for the same night as the closure, but none of
the other adults even noticed in time to reschedule
it. Really? What morons, Molly smirked.
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