City of Beasts

by Corrie Wang

  I let out a low whistle. “Well done, nags.”

  “That is a fee-only word,” Comma says.

  “Yes. And I’m a fee. So I can use it however I like.”

  All the walls are lined with gas canisters. Hanging from the ceiling is a rowboat, a canoe, and a fast-looking motorboat similar to the ones the EMS use when they go scavenging. Beneath and to the left are two sleek motorcycles and two solar glider riders. And next to them, unbelievably, is a brand-new, glossy black SUV. I can’t even imagine how they got it up here. All I know is that is a thing of beauty.

  “Let’s take that one.” I point at the SUV.

  “Good choice,” Comma says. “It can drive underwater.”

  “The Rinspeed?” Sway laughs. “Not on your life. Why are you still holding a puppy?”

  I look down. It licks my chin. “I panic clutched it.”

  “You’ll need one for the Influencer anyway,” Comma says, then hands me my pack. “He’ll be safe in here. Also, I included a few wardrobe changes that should cover just about any social situation this boy lands you in. And the nail-polish colors that you thought Twofer would like. Can we all please agree? That is such a heat hairstyle.”

  Su leans against the shed door. Normally, she would be all about this room. Now she crosses her arms, looking bored. Which is a feat, considering there are literal bombs exploding outside. I unzip my bag. Inside, along with everything previously mentioned, is the book I bought Twofer as well as all three of my girls. Freshly washed.

  With a squeal of delight, I slide them into place, saying their names as I do.

  “Mama Bear. Baby Bear. Slim.”

  “Slim?” Comma asks.

  “Well, I couldn’t have two Mama Bears, could I? And Goldilocks was such a drip.”

  “Ha!” Sway says.

  As Comma puts the puppy in my backpack, Sway weaves through the bikes and pulls a dust cloth off a third very fast-looking motorcycle. It is entirely pre-Night except its tires are covered in snow chains.

  “The Indian?” Comma asks. “But that’s your baby.”

  “And it’s the only bike that can outpace Rage’s pack.”

  This time I don’t hesitate. I climb on behind Sway just as the bike rumbles to life. The males clutch hands. Comma brushes at imaginary dust on Sway’s shoulder. Sway blinks back tears. This has all the awkwardness of rom-com-ing, but it isn’t. It’s genuine affection. I didn’t know beasts felt that. I look to Su, but apparently now she’s highly interested in the battery on the solar gliders.

  “Have I mentioned this is insane?” Comma sniffs.

  “Com, if you don’t hear from me in a few days…”

  “You shush your mouth.”

  With a swipe at his eyes, Sway takes a small remote from his pocket. It looks like the same temperamental garage door opener we have at the cul-de-sac.

  Comma waves it off. “You know I don’t like to. Let him do it.”

  Sway tells me to push the red button. I do as I’m told and off in the distance there’s an earth-quaking series of booms followed by the sound of glass shattering. All those times we heard “heat thunder” out on the cul de sac, it was probably the males blowing things up. Grand would be repulsed at the waste of it.

  “Congrats, sweetie,” Comma says. “You just torched a few city blocks.”

  “Don’t spoil the puppies,” Sway says, giving the bike gas. “It makes them impossible to train.”

  Su is suddenly beside me. She clutches my arm, panicked now that we’re leaving.

  “Don’t let your arm fall on your parries,” I say.

  “And don’t forget to floss,” Sway adds as Comma pushes open a back door.

  “And remember, you stab up and through.”

  “Good Galena, we know.” Comma flaps his hands at us to leave, then tucks an arm through Su’s. “Don’t stay up too late watching porn. Always go for the groin. For bumps’ sake, we’re not the ones to be worried about. Remember what I told you, little fee. Embrace your femininity. It’s the only thing that will make you seem like a male.”

  Getting down from the roof of a seven-story power plant on a motorcycle involves a series of not very sturdy, homemade ramps and bridges.

  “This is like Chutes and Ladders but instead of sliding back ten squares there’s death,” I say as we coast through a rickety coal chute on an even more rickety conveyor belt.

  “I’m surprised you’re allowed to play that game. Aren’t there pictures of boys on it?”

  “You mean the ones wearing dresses?”

  “Ha!”

  Angry shouts come from the street below. Suddenly, a deep amplified voice rises above them and booms into the frigid dark air.

  “Sway, we know you have the fees. Tank recognized your orange coat. This is too big a task for a small-time dog breeder. Give them to me and in exchange, I’ll trade you two new dogs to grow your pack and you will live to see many more days. Keep them, you will die.”

  “Small-time?” Sway curses. “Bumping Rage.”

  “Boring clothing choices must look pretty good right about now.”

  “Must you always state the obvious?”

  Before I can reply, another amplified voice lisps, “If you hand them over now, I promise to only hurt you in ways you’ll enjoy.”

  Jackal.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sway says. “It’s all talk. You’re too valuable to damage.”

  “Right. Good.”

  “They’ll sell you to someone else and they’ll damage you.”

  When we come to the edge of the power plant, Sway cuts the engine. We’re still two floors up and apparently all out of bridges and chutes. We dismount and he pushes the motorcycle out onto a four-by-six plank of wood that has a pulley system attached to it. The whole contraption swings wildly when Sway steps on.

  “How much weight does this hold?”

  “So far? Comma’s massive bed frame plus me. I think we’re under that.”

  There’s no way that’s true. But I don’t debate him on his math. Two trips isn’t an option. Sway grunts and, hand over hand, begins to lower us down the side of the building. It takes all of his body weight hanging from the chains to get us to drop an inch. Though we’re at the back of the building, we’re not well hidden. If anyone drives beneath us and looks up, we’re made.

  “Can you hurry this up, please?”

  “You think you can do this faster?”

  “My grand could do this faster.” He glares at me. “What? I’m only being honest.”

  “Bruth, sometimes you make it really difficult to be pleasant.”

  But I’ve already taken the chains. Soon we’re dropping at triple the speed, the pallet cracking beneath our weight. Motorcycles rumble, too close for my liking. A bomb goes off only a block away. From my pack comes a pathetic puppy whimper.

  “They’re only frustrated by all the smoke,” Sway says, then, “Hold your breath.”

  We’ve reached the first-floor windows. Thick black smoke pours out of them. Sway said the roof was reinforced, and I hope his math is better concerning those physics, because once all the fires go out, there’s not going to be much steam station left to his steam station. Sway starts the bike. I give a few more tugs on the pulley. We both put helmets on. Just as the wood we’re standing on gives, we launch off the platform.

  I barely have time to flip my visor closed.

  Leaving the headlight off, we race along a back road in the growing darkness. Every second I expect Jackal to turn a corner and be there with his split smile. Yet we’re still all clear a half mile away when we cut down a path that leads to a hole in a chain-link fence.

  “Glori?” a mini Sway voice in my ear says.

  My hands go to my ears as if I can trap his voice.

  What magic is this? Our helmets can communicate?

  “You okay back there? It sounds like you’re trying to blow up an air mattress.”

  “Scared” is all I can manage.

  “Me too.”
>
  Behind us, the warehouses are lit up like the pyres fees built to burn all the bodies. I search the upper windows, hoping to see a light or flicker that somehow indicates Su and Comma are okay, but something else catches my eye. About a thousand yards behind us, coming along the same path we took, is a lone headlight.

  “Oh waste. Sway, I think we have company.”

  Sway checks his mirror, speeds up, and swerves onto an on-ramp to the highway.

  They’d begun to build a proper highway on Grand Island when Nuclear Night hit. It had one exit, and I never went on it. Partly—no, entirely, because the side streets were faster to bike on, plus weren’t littered with abandoned, rusted cars that used to be filled with dead bodies.

  This highway is different.

  All the old vehicles have been cleared or pushed to the side of the road and it’s lit. Roughly a third of the streetlights work. That feels like thousands compared to the dimness we traveled in back home at this hour. Scooters and mopeds race along with us. A giant E-SUV speeds past. There are too many cars on the road to count and almost all of them have single drivers inside. Never mind that the highway is actually plowed.

  “Have you males learned nothing about pollution?” I ask.

  “Oh sure, we’ve learned that at this point, a little more’s not gonna matter. Just because Matricula made y’all go cavemen doesn’t mean all of the pre-Night tech is bad. Half of these vehicles are electric and we have a working power plant, so why not use them? We’re a dying species, we might as well go out in style.”

  “Fees have very different views on this.”

  “And that surprises no one.”

  As if to be further wasteful, Sway revs the bike and drives faster than everyone else. Every now and then he checks his rearview mirror. I look back, too. There are so many headlights, it’s hard to tell if the one tailing us is still back there. A four-wheeler flies past us, then drops back. Two norms are on it. Unwisely, neither wears a helmet. Even worse, the passenger is aiming a gun at me.

  “Sway!”

  “Stay calm. It’s fine.”

  Sway flicks up his visor. “Problem, mate?” he shouts.

  “No problem,” the male with the gun yells back. “Spot-checking for that boy or those sweet nags. Your little passenger mind giving a visual hello?”

  “Not at all,” Sway calls. To me he quietly says, “Glori, you’re up.”

  “You want me to stab him?” I ask.

  “No! I want you to flirt with him.”

  I hear the worry in his voice. He doesn’t think I can do it. I remember the blond fee in the film. Maybe I’m as different from her as the planet was pre- and post-Night, but she’s still my ancestor. If she could do it way back then, and Comma can do it now, why can’t I?

  Whipping my helmet off, I shake my hair into the wind and blow the bikers a kiss just like I’d seen her do. The four-wheeler swerves into oncoming traffic and misses colliding with a Prius Solar by an inch. Its horn toots plaintively. When the ATV pulls up next to us again, rider and passenger are both laughing, gun lowered.

  “Bump me,” the passenger calls. “He’s dynamite.”

  “Actually, my name’s Commander,” I shout back. “Because I know how to command my way in and out of the dark.”

  “Nope,” Sway mumbles. “That’s not what that means.”

  “Huh?” the passenger shouts, confused.

  “I mean,” I quickly add, “now you know who to call if you do find that little one.”

  He laughs. “Sorry. We’re turning him in for a reward.”

  “Oh, well.” I falter, trying to imagine what Comma would say. “What reward is bigger than me?”

  The driver whistles loudly. “You got a point there, bruth.”

  The passenger salutes us. I flit my fingers in goodbye and put my helmet back on. The bikers speed away. Up ahead they level their gun on another motorcycle.

  “Glori, that was terrible and excellent. Points for having them hit up Comma.”

  My breath is coming fast and shallow. I try to muffle it so Sway can’t hear it through his microphone. Meanwhile, he is totally unflustered, like it’s a daily occurrence to have a gun pointed in his face. Thank goodness Su isn’t here. The beasts’ population would have shrunk by two if she were.

  “I’d like to never see another male again, please.”

  “This might not be your favorite, then,” Sway says.

  Taking the next exit, he drives us right into the heart of a habitation zone.

  They’re everywhere.

  Bundled-up older males sit in front of a café clutching chipped mugs of steaming tea. Despite the snow, right in the middle of the street, males are engaging in a game of throw-the-ball sport that I don’t recognize. Other males gather on the sidewalks tossing down coins at every play. This isn’t mob territory. Not one of these males looks mutilated. These are regular males, going about their regular evening activities. On Grand Island, we’d almost be at curfew. Everyone would have to be inside. But I guess unlike us, the males’ night isn’t consumed by darkness. Nor do they have anything to hide inside from.

  I try to picture my Grand Mati here. She lived in Buffalo for ten years before the Night. Telling from the magnificent dead trees that line the streets, it must have been beautiful at some point. Quaint three-story brick buildings butt up against the buckling sidewalks, while newer steel and solar high-rises reach into the sky like fingers behind them. (Do not calculate the dead, I tell myself.) Across the street, a handwritten sign is tacked to the porch of a Victorian home. Warmly dressed males line up, waiting to get in.

  “What’s Hope’s Home?” I ask.

  “It’s this new experience that this norm, Exemplar, came up with. For an hour, you sit in this completely pre-Night room while a house-cleaning AI vacuums and asks you about your day. Near the end, Exemplar sends in a meal. Ratloaf, or, like, tamales. And you get to watch twenty minutes of uninterrupted television. It costs the equivalent of two days’ work. I’ve never done it, but older norms are way into it. Exemplar will be set for life with that idea. The goit.”

  I have no words.

  But I don’t need them. There is plenty of other sound here. Everywhere, on almost every building no matter the age, screens play pre-Night advertisements. They all must run off solar batteries, because they function about as well as our solar tech does, blipping on and off every few seconds. But regardless of the reception, almost every screen that isn’t showing the blurred photograph of the three of us in the tunnel is playing a video of a pre-Night fee.

  There is a hum in the air. The kind fees get when the clouds build up, meaning a big storm is rolling in. Anticipation. Worry. Excitement. Sway lets the bike idle in the middle of the street as a group of males crosses right behind us. I hear the words nags and children and sixty thousand dollars. And then I hear, quite clearly, “Kid’s probably dead already.”

  “Maybe we should keep moving,” I say.

  “You want me to draw more attention? The light’s red.”

  “That’s what those things are for?”

  “Ha!”

  Graffiti on the building next to us reads: CHIA SAYS ABSOLUTION, BUT WE WANT RESTITUTION. Apparently, not everyone looks so kindly on the mayor’s mob leniency.

  A screen underneath the graffiti flickers and shows fees walking along a narrow stage. Two midthirties males, both smoking, stop to watch. Although they’re all varied in skin tone, the fees are almost identical in size, shape, and hairstyles. They’re also all wearing similar skimpy undergarments and—oddly—enormous wings on their backs. They are completely unlike any fee I have ever met.

  “You said the Influencer is in charge of these screens?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For someone that hates fees, he sure shows a lot of them.”

  “He never used to. He must be following the mayor’s orders. This is probably part of Chia’s last-minute effort at reverse desensitization. Naturally, because he’s against the whole thing
, the Influencer’s picked exactly the kind of footage the mayor wouldn’t want shown.”

  “Last minute until what?”

  But then the light turns green. As we drive away, one of the smoking males begins pressing his genitals against the screen. They both laugh. So much for desensitization.

  “I think I hate it here,” I say.

  “Join the club,” Sway replies.

  Moments after the surrounding buildings turn from brick commercial to stately colonial, we drive around a traffic circle. Sway nods at a massive white marble building on our right.

  “Chia’s official headquarters.”

  Ten patrol soldiers dressed all in dark blue with BPD on their chests stand out on the steps holding machine guns. Sway slows the bike.

  “I will break your neck if you turn me in.”

  “Good to know,” Sway says, and keeps driving.

  Shortly thereafter, we stop in front of a building that used to be solar-panel-coated but is now all rusted bolts and facing.

  MAIN PLACE LUXURY APARTMENTS.

  “What’s luxury?” I ask.

  “It means fancy.”

  “Then I’d hate to see plain. This is Euphoria?”

  Sway laughs. “This is a building. Euphoria is what happens inside.”

  I stare at him blankly. His nonsensical words don’t matter. This building is the best thing I’ve seen since I arrived. Maybe Two Five isn’t in here, but someone who knows how to find him is. I’m getting closer.

  The front doors are plastered with more anti-mob posters that read I’LL TAKE MY CITY THE WAY I TAKE MY PEAS AND CARROTS—PERFECTLY SEPARATED so that it’s impossible to see inside. Sway knocks five times rapidly, then makes a series of loud sounds that can best be described as yawps. After a brief pause, a male the size of a tree trunk answers, a cigarette dangling from between his lips. He has thick, ropy locs and is wearing Band-Aids horizontally—frivolously—under each of his eyes. Back home, only a major health emergency would necessitate use of such precious medical supplies. He’s also sheathed in an enormous blue tarp. When I step inside, I see why.