by Corrie Wang
There is no hiding.
There is no her not seeing us.
And even though her face is always, always covered, she recognizes mine immediately.
“Glori?” she asks, and steps forward.
I almost run to her. Pre-Night, Muerte wanted to be a history teacher. Which meant once a week, when it was her day to watch me and Twofer, she taught us all about the wars fees used to fight in the battlefields and in the courtrooms. But also how to expand the kelp beds in the river to help decontaminate it and all the bad Spanish phrases that weren’t in my language learning books. Hearing the surprise in her voice, I know she didn’t come here for me. Which meant that she was sent solely to kill Rauha.
Now, as she unsheathes her bow, pulls an arrow, and aims it at Sway, all I can think to say is one little word.
“Please.”
I’m not sure if I’m begging for my life, or Sway’s, or Twofer’s, or simply one more chance. Because now that Death literally stands in front of me, I don’t care so much what rules I live by or if I wake up happy or not, so long as I get to wake up even one more time.
“He’s helping me find Twofer.”
Her breath catches. “Glori, Two Five is dead.”
The pain is the same as if she shot an arrow straight through my heart. “No.”
“Yes.” She nods curtly. “Itami found his body on the beasts’ shore.”
“When?” Sway asks. “When did she find his body?”
Even under the balaclava I can see Muerte’s snarl. She doesn’t owe a beast any answers.
Yet she growls, “Right after he was snatched.”
Quietly Sway says, “Can’t be. Reason’s footage was from after that. You hear me?”
He grips my arm, shakes me. No wonder Grand made no move to save him. No wonder Chia offered no reward. Everyone thought Two Five was dead. But why would Itami lie?
“Please,” I say again. “I at least have to know for sure.”
Muerte looks back between the transport cars as sounds of a struggle come from the other side.
“Go!” she whispers, lowering her bow. “But take my advice, little fee. If your brother is alive and if you manage to find him, keep running and do not stop. Whatever else you encounter out there will be better than what is waiting for you back here.”
“Just a little moment… just a little moment… just a little moment.”
Instead of going straight to look for Twofer, we decide to stop at Comma’s father’s house to stitch up Sway and find either weapons or bribes to use at the Fortress. We run. Then jog. Then walk, and I would have looped Grand Island twice by now, but we still haven’t gotten to Rugged’s house. Yet the whole time Sway follows behind me, panting and murmuring, “Just a little moment.”
Finally, weary of dead cornstalks hitting us in the face, with the transport long behind us, I suggest we move out onto the road only to discover an exodus of snow-covered, stranded cars. Telling by the silhouettes in the ones closest to us, none of them have been cleared of bodies. I can make out skeletal heads in every car for the next half mile. On and on until the foggy darkness takes them.
“Back home, we used to call this a grave road,” I say.
“Here we say corpse road.”
Sway looks near dead himself. His eyes are hollow and ringed with gray. His lips colorless. And his fingers keep trailing up to his claw wounds. They’re not life-threatening, but they’re bleeding nonetheless, and the extra shirt Comma gave me that he’s pressing against them might be helping to contain the blood loss, but it’s doing nothing for the pain. He’s on the constant brink of tears. So am I, for that matter. Sway says he is 100,095 percent certain that Two Five is still alive. That we have videographic proof.
I wish I had even 1 percent of his confidence.
Yet he laughs as I walk cozied up to the guardrail. “If you get any farther away from these cars, you’ll be in another state. You can take out two soldiers and a demon dog, but you’ll let some dead bodies get you down? Nah. You know what I do in scary situations?”
“You repeat, ‘Just a little moment,’ over and over and over again?”
He nods seriously, ignoring my gibe. “I say it to remind myself that no matter how awful my life or a certain situation is? It doesn’t last forever. I read that pre-Night, suicides were higher than in the entire history of the world. Everyone’s always had things they were stressed about or lost sleep over or that made them hate their life. Now they’re all dead anyway. None of it lasts forever. Not the fear or pain or anger. Definitely not the life.”
Maybe it’s the painful chest wound, but it’s the grimmest I’ve ever heard Sway be.
“Well, you know what Su says,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “She says if you do ridiculous things in terrifying situations, it makes the terrifying ridiculous.”
“All right, let’s name them,” Sway says as we pass a car that has a family of four in it. “Then you can’t call them scary anymore. Look. That one’s name is Clyde, because he’s as big as a horse and laughs like one, too. Now you do one. Who’s that next to him in the passenger’s seat? What’s she like?”
She. Right, because old families had fees and males.
“That’s Sky. She’s in health care, and she likes to eat people, and she’s a dead body.”
Sway laughs. “Maybe it takes a little practice.”
I hold out my hand. “Do you mind?”
“Never.”
We link hands, our fingers entwining as tightly as our fates, then walk in silence as farmland switches to tree-covered streets and suburbs around us.
Finally, Sway asks, “Did you know that fee who died?”
“You mean the one Muerte murdered?” I nod. I know every fee. “That was Rauha. She was one of our original founders and very close with Matricula. Their families spent Chriskwannukah with each other every year.”
“Chriskw… never mind. Now’s not the time. You said the fees who were murdered on the island were also founders. Seems like Matricula’s losing her inner circle pretty fast.”
In my head, I replay the scene right before they murdered Rauha. She said something to Misère, almost like a command or like she was goading her. We’re missing something.
“Unless Rauha wasn’t part of Matricula’s inner circle anymore. Mercenaries would never kill an innocent fee. But maybe she wasn’t innocent. Maybe they found out that she was helping the males make babies.”
“But then why would the patrol be helping the mercenaries hunt her down?”
“But they weren’t patrol, were they? You saw their faces. They were mob. But the mob killed our island fees and our mercenaries killed those mobsters.”
Sway considers this. “Think about when you first came here. You didn’t know the mob mutilated themselves. Maybe the mercenaries thought they were working with the patrol. It seems like the mob is working lots of sides all at the same time.”
I stop walking. Next to us is a car with two adult bodies in the front and two little bodies in the back. Another family. Males and fees. Suitcases are piled on the roof. There shouldn’t be traffic like this in such a faraway suburb. Yet the street is clogged worse than a shower drain in a ten-fee household.
“Where were all these people going?” I ask.
“To the very place built to survive mass extinction.”
“The Fortress,” I say with awe. “We’re actually almost there?”
I wonder what Twofer is doing right at this moment. I close my eyes and send out a little wish that he is sleeping. That his bed is comfortable and he’s warm. I wish that his dreams are sweet and his belly is full. When I open my eyes, I catch the tail end of Sway’s gaze as he studies me. It looks fevered and sad.
“Yes, Glori. Almost there.”
The clapboard house is a few hundred years old and has managed to maintain every ounce of its rustic charm. When no one answers our progressively louder knocks, Sway kicks around in the leaf and plastic-bag debris on the porch unti
l he finds a Coke can. The idea that I might actually have a pop, as he’d earlier suggested, is squashed when he twists off the lid and shakes out a key that’s hidden inside.
“That’s the most amazing invention I’ve ever seen,” I say.
“Says the fee who knows how Symbiotic Sacs work,” Sway replies, opening the door.
I cover my nose as a funk comes out of the house, like an anti–scented candle.
“Hello?” Sway shouts. “Anybody home? Rugged?”
Silence.
Contrary to the moldering smell, the inside is well maintained, with woodsy, dark paneling, braided rugs, and printed ducks everywhere. Curtains. Blankets. Upholstered dining room chairs. Grand would love it here. Kitschy, she’d call it.
“Maybe he’s out hunting,” Sway suggests.
“At dawn?”
“Yeah. That’s kinda when you go.”
“I wouldn’t know. Fees don’t make a habit of killing endangered species.”
“You are the literal worst.”
Our bickering is halfhearted. I don’t care why Rugged’s not here. Though I’d love a peek at the man responsible for Comma, the sooner we stitch up Sway, the sooner we get to my brother. I only wish Rugged had composted his garbage before he left.
We drop our packs by the door. After turning on Rugged’s flashlights and electric lanterns, I grab my mending kit. Sway roots around in a dining room cabinet and cheers when he pulls out a fresh, completely unopened bottle of clear alcohol. He joins me at the dining room table.
“Rugged’s been saving this for a momentous occasion.” Using his teeth, Sway twists open the top, spits the cap away, then holds the bottle aloft. “To Two Five and chest wounds.”
“Off with that shirt,” I say, threading my needle.
He takes a healthy drink, but his shirt stays on.
“What?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you’re shy. Would it make you feel better if I took my shirt off?”
“Yes, but not for the reasons you’re imagining.”
Still looking like he’d rather not, he lifts his shirt over his head. I can’t help but stare. His chest and stomach are flat but concave. His nipples are small and pink. He smells lightly like pickles and some kind of pre-Night manufactured scent. The small opaque green necklace on the red thread practically glows against his pale chest.
“You look like one of Two Five’s stick drawings.”
“Ha!” Sway takes another drink and crosses his arms so his chest is covered. “Never mind. I don’t want the stitches. May I have my shirt back, please?”
“Stop being a baby and hold still.”
I flatten the skin of his chest to inspect the claw marks. He sucks air through his teeth.
“I didn’t even start yet.”
“It’s not that. It’s the touching.”
Turning bright pink, he drinks from the bottle. Suddenly, I get that sparkly feeling again, but now it’s more than sparkly. Hovering over Sway’s scrawny chest, with my face inches from his bare skin, and his breath on my neck, it’s like the entire precious canister of gold glitter that Twofer and I hoarded was poured into my bloodstream and is coursing about, running through each and every one of my internal organs.
“Oh.” I squirm a little in my chair. “I see what you mean.”
We stare at each other. Breathing. Swallowing hard, I pour a little of the vodka on a scrap of my shirt, dab it on his skin. He tries, and fails, to stifle another gasp. It comes out sounding more like a groan.
“Bottle,” he rasps.
Before I hand it to him, I drink from it, too.
“This is ridiculous,” I say. “You’re only a little naked. I’m around naked fees all the time.”
“Not helping.”
To change the subject, I finger his necklace. “What’s this?”
“It’s jade. I looked it up with Rugged a bunch of years back. Jade’s a protective stone. It’s supposed to bring peace, harmony, and luck. This one’s meant to look like a money bag. It’s big in Chinese culture. Or was, I guess. I think my mom gave it to me.”
“Su’s mom is Chinese,” I say, brightening. “She was a flight attendant on one of the last flights out of Beijing when the Night happened. It was on this private jet. She insists the Night was a global conspiracy, because this billionaire had her and the entire crew on retainer under something called a doomsday clause. Everyone was allowed to bring their families, because they knew they would never get back home. But since there wouldn’t be a home to go back to, Liyan said she was okay with it. Plus, she got paid a million dollars. Apparently, my Grand said lots of billionaires had contingency plans like that.
“Anyway, they were in the air when the Night hit. They were destined for a compound in Canada but made an emergency landing in Buffalo. We don’t talk about it, but Su’s not actually a Miracle. Liyan was pregnant with her when the divide happened. The birth almost killed her.”
“She was pregnant at the divide? And she left Su’s father for Grand Island?”
“I don’t think father is exactly the right word. No one hates males more than Liyan.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
After she moved to Grand Island, Liyan learned wing chung from old videos she found while scavenging. She proudly said (every chance she got) that it was a perfect fighting style for fees since it relied on dexterity, speed, and quick thinking. That it was, in fact, based on techniques created by fees for self-defense. She made sure we all excelled.
Maybe it was Reason telling me not to trust anyone, but I can’t help wondering if Liyan hated males enough to turn in Twofer. Enough to send the mercenaries to kill fees that helped the males make babies. If I could slap myself, I would. Liyan is like a surrogate mother to me. She isn’t capable of either of those things.
Guiltily, I clear my throat. “If I ever get home, I’ll ask Liyan and my Grand if they know of a fee who has a story like your mom’s. Who knows, stranger things have happened.”
We finish in silence after that. There’s not a whole lot else to say.
After I finish stitching up Sway, I go in search of food while he hobbles to the study to look for bribable goods that might help us at the Fortress. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen is neat and well maintained, yet the decaying stench is so much worse in here. The sink holds a dirty cup and plate that, telling from the crusted sauce, looks at least a week old. It’s out of line, given how spotless the rest of the house is. My arm hairs prickle. The garbage is empty. The cupboards bare. Something must have died in the walls.
I hurry back into the study. It’s a cozy space with a worn plaid sofa and four full walls of books. Sway has a small fire going in the fireplace and is taking books off the shelves, then putting them back, displeased. He looks like he was dragged by a bus.
“Hope you like air,” I say. “The kitchen’s empty.”
“Oh, the pantry’s in the basement. I’ll check it before we leave.”
He drops another book on the floor, titled Doom. Like we don’t have enough of that.
“You really think a few books will be worth the price of a boy?” I ask.
This is Sway’s plan. To walk into the Fortress and try to bribe the first male we meet.
He shrugs. “It’s a lot easier and less dangerous to sell multiple books than it is to sell one boy. Besides, whoever is guarding the entrance is most likely a lackey that gets no cut for whatever Two Five brings in. Maybe he’ll have always wanted a box set of the Game of Thrones books.”
Though I won’t be much help knowing what’s valuable, I inspect the books with him. They’re crammed onto the shelves. Some are leather bound, others flimsy paperback. It all looks like fiction and it might be dumb to say, but I’d never realized there was so much of it. My hand rests on a beautiful copy of something called Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. I only understand what three of those words mean and they’re the short boring ones.
“Staring,” I say over my shoulder but smile. “What?”
“I
t’s fun to watch you see things for the first time. It’s like it wipes a film off my own lenses. Makes the world new again for me, too.”
Clearing his throat, he eyes the half-empty vodka bottle, veers toward it, but then thumbs through a shelf of records instead.
“Let’s have a little music. Have you ever heard Prince? He will blow your mind.”
“Prince is a he?” I ask.
“Ha!”
“Sway, how many bodies do you think it takes to keep a medium-size pyre burning for a week straight?”
As if this is a normal question that normal people discuss all the normal time, he says, “I dunno. Maybe a few hundred? When they’re dried out they burn fast, like kindling. Why?”
“When we first moved out to the cul-de-sac, my grand and Su’s mom said they went around removing all the bodies from the surrounding houses. They said we couldn’t help because a virus related to the bodies had been going around. Mochi almost died.
“But I don’t think they were only burning bodies. The bonfire they built was massive and fees already went through those houses right after the divide. I think they were burning anything that had to do with males. I knew they did this when fees first fled to the island. But I was eleven when we moved to the cul-de-sac…. I mean, I know they couldn’t risk anything disproving that you were all beasts, but seeing evidence of how we used to interact wouldn’t erase all the newer history we had. It seems like such a waste.”
Surrounded by all these books, I felt shortchanged.
And lied to.
“Or maybe it wasn’t about that at all,” Sway says. “Maybe they thought it was a waste to always be living in the past. Look at us. Males are all addicted to things that won’t ever be manufactured again. We could be creating, pioneering, instead we’re… clinging. Yes!” He suddenly exclaims. “He still has it.”
Ever so gently, Sway blows off a record, then delicately puts it on the turntable. I’ve never seen another being have so much respect or awareness that we’re in a world of finite antiques. After turning on a desk-size solar generator, he plugs in the phonograph. When the needle touches the record, there is a slight thrum, and then a piano plays, rich and melancholy. And then a fee starts singing about rain blowing in her face and the whole world being on her case.
