by Corrie Wang
Except that’s not true.
Springing forward, she pulls up her balaclava and sinks her teeth into the flesh above my collarbone. I scream in pain even as I know I’m lucky. She was going for my throat.
“Attack,” Reason shouts. “Attack.”
The dogs lunge, snarling and yipping at her. Niraasha cries out, a chunk of my skin falling from her mouth. She tries to curl herself into a ball as the dogs rip at her. Red splatters the slushy snow.
“Stop!” I shriek.
“She was going to kill you,” Reason shouts as the dogs continue to attack.
“Please stop them.”
“Halt!”
Instantly, they stop. Sit. Lick their paws and one another’s faces. I run to her. Help her sit up. Niraasha is shaking, her entire body a mess of puncture wounds and torn flesh. Yet I touch her cheek. The dogs have shredded her mask. But they did not do the majority of damage that is underneath. Niraasha’s face is a mess of scars. Like someone took a sharp knife tip and carved lazy circles over all her features.
“What happened to you?”
“The beasts, you fool.” She spits blood on the ground. “You’ll be sorry for this.”
I can’t tell if she means because I hurt her or because I teamed up with the males. We drag her to the bridge rails, then bind her wrists with zip ties that Reason carries in his pack.
“Did you think this was all over nothing?” she shouts after us.
But I’ve already put her behind us.
With the dog pack swarming around us, Reason and I hop over the parking spikes. At the top of the bridge, we look back at the city. In the distance there is only smoke, but out of that snakes a line of cars. Rage, Breaker, and Comma did well. The males are on their way. When we get to the foot of the bridge on the fee side, Sway and the other males are waiting for us outside the Rinspeed. Sway is pacing. The other males don’t have the energy for it.
They cheer when they see us. Motor and Mouse run forward and throws their arms around me.
“You should have seen her,” Reason calls out as I pick up Mouse. “Glori was incredible.”
“I know.” Sway jogs up. “She’s mesmerizing and terrifying in equal measure. Is that a bite mark?”
“We have a problem,” Comma says. “The Rinspeed’s battery died.”
Suddenly, behind him, there are blue flashing lights. I squint. An ambulance is lurching toward us, as if whoever is driving is still learning the difference between the gas and brake. It stops ten feet from the Rinspeed. A fee hops out. She’s brandishing her hatchet and a police baton. She is either the best thing I’ve seen in hours or the most traitorous.
It’s Su. The daughter of the woman who killed Grand.
“Don’t come any closer, Su,” I shout.
“Glori, it’s me,” she says, stepping forward.
“How did you know we were here? Did the mercenaries send you?”
“I called her,” Comma says.
“Grand was murdered. The fee who killed her used a katana. Our katana.”
“Holy waste.” Su stops walking. Her hatchet drops to the ground. “Glori, I didn’t know.”
“Where is Liyan?” I ask.
I remember Grand and Liyan cackling together when Su and I were younger. Putting on that old Celia Cruz CD while they cooked, dancing. Playing endless rounds of double solitaire. How Liyan protested when we moved to the cul-de-sac. How she protested when we decided to stay. And then how she kind of just gave up protesting. When was the last time I even heard her and Grand speak? Let alone sit out back gossiping over an evening tea?
“Su?” Wiggling out of my arms, Mouse runs to her. “It’s me. I went to a Fortress. And Grand got… And now I have a puppy and a virus. And Glori says we’re all gonna die.”
Su puts a hand against his forehead and notices the dots. “He wasn’t vaccinated?” she asks.
I remember Su staring at those rats in the lab. I thought she was horrified over the dead animals. But she wasn’t seeing those rats. She was envisioning males. She knew about the virus.
“No,” I say. “The opposite. He was injected with the virus, and you’ve known about this all along.”
“I knew about the truce. And the virus. It was supposed to be a worst-case-scenario move. I knew about the labs.” She nods. “I knew everything. Ma told me it all. She wanted to tell you, too. Except Grand wouldn’t let her. But I didn’t know they teamed up with the mob. And my mom never once said that she was plotting against Mati. She loved her.”
Tugging Mouse by the hand, I start walking around her. Toward the labs. We’ve lost too much time already. The males silently follow behind me. Su’s mom killed my grand.
There is no coming back from this.
“Wait,” Su cries out. “I know where the vaccine is. I’ve seen where they keep it. Don’t leave me here, Glori. Please. I can’t lose all my family in one day.”
Sway reaches out and takes my hand.
“This could be a trap,” Reason says. “She could be trying to get us to lower our guard. Lead us exactly where the ivory soldier wants us to go.”
Instinctively, I check my perimeters. All I see are tall grasses and trees and rain.
Sway squeezes my hand and says, “Grudges are what got us here in the first place. You can fight it out later. Right now, we need her.”
“And we really need that ambulance,” Comma adds.
I have told Su my every thought, every worry, every daydream for the entirety of our lives. Yet she knew about everything. Everything. And kept it from me.
“If I find out you’re lying…” I say.
“I’m not,” she says stonily.
“I can’t promise you I’m not going to hurt your mom when I find her.”
“You know I won’t let that happen. All I ask is you at least hear her out.”
We lay Hercules down on the gurney in the back of the ambulance. Saying he can’t bear losing any more people he loves, Reason makes his pack stay with the Rinspeed, then scavenges in the ambulance for something to temporarily bind my back wound. My collarbone will have to wait until later. Sway sits up front with Su, Motor on his lap. I hold on to my Mouse. He holds on to Lucky. Because when Mouse asked if the puppy could stay with us, no one could bear telling him no right now.
“Besides,” Comma says, stroking Hercules’s forehead, “we literally need all the luck we can get.”
“Everyone, buckle up,” Su says from the driver’s seat. “Next stop, the labs.”
A whirring sound comes from the dashboard. The CD screen says it will be playing Track 1 of Classic Mix. Staccato drumbeats come out of the speakers. Then my girl Bee starts singing about girls. Girls running the world. Checking her mirrors one more time, Su flips on the ambulance lights and turns up the volume on the stereo.
“I feel like I’ve come home,” Comma says.
And then Su floors it.
Hardy, cold-weather wildflowers pepper the road as we speed toward the labs on Grand Island Boulevard. The deep maroon-and-purple flowers were one of Matricula’s first planting successes. It is little consolation that they are here and she is not. Benches are set out along the road next to bike-borrowing huts. Faint wonder etches Sway’s expression as he looks out the window.
“It’s so pretty here. And clean.”
I never had anything to compare it to. Without all the vehicles, it’s quieter, too. And it smells crisper. Already, I feel saner. Or at least, as much as circumstances allow.
When we come to the outlaying streets of the neighborhood, Su slows down. I see now what Sway meant about the world seeming fresh when seen through new eyes. Fees are talking over the fences of the houses directly across the street from stores that all have fresh coats of paint. Blue Bicycle. Grow Food. Mighty Taco. Despite all the windows being boarded up, you don’t have to guess that this is where people live. It is full of life and energy, and it feels safe and, I imagine, exactly what neighborhoods felt like before Nuclear Night.
&nb
sp; I’ve come home. Only maybe it isn’t home anymore.
“Solely a suggestion,” Comma says, “but perhaps it’s better not to drive the route saturated with fees.”
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Su replies, checking her mirrors. “This is the only way, Shaka Blue.”
Comma claps his hands. “A Unicorn Warrior reference and put-down? Color me Horned.”
Su drives slowly as if that will call less attention to us. Up ahead, a fee is leaving the co-op, a canvas bag filled with her allotment of weekly groceries. When she sees us, she sets down the tote and takes a crowbar from it.
“Told you we weren’t starving,” I say to Sway.
The PTT network must have begun. The warning has gone out. Around and ahead of us, the street and sidewalk are filling with fees carrying homemade weapons. A car full of beasts has made it over. Wait until they see all the others waiting on the other side. Su rolls down her window.
“It’s okay,” she shouts. “It’s okay.”
Sway waves a white sock out his window. The fees fall in and walk alongside us. I know all these faces and yet I don’t. These faces want to kill six of the eight of us.
“Maybe we should drive faster now,” Reason says.
But Su keeps it steady—lurching yet steady—and we pass through the neighborhood unharmed. Su puts on her blinker. We make a right. She speeds up just as the sky ahead of us abruptly, drastically brightens.
“The lab’s lights,” Su says. “We’re back on the power grid.”
When the fees moved to Grand Island, they co-opted an old car dealership on Alvin Road that had a good number of solar generators. Normally, it was the best-lit spot on the island. But now it positively glows. Our own mini city. Suddenly, Su slams on the brakes.
“Geez, Drivers’ Ed, learn your pedals,” Sway snaps as he and Motor crash into the dashboard.
Unfazed, Su peers through the haze and curses. Ann stands in the middle of the road where Whitehaven meets the I-190. Behind her, about a half mile away, are the lights of the labs. She twirls her lead pipe in front of her, then behind, then tosses it above her head and catches it.
“Annihilation’s battle card says she used to be a cheerleader,” Mouse says. “In something called college, she became something called an Olympic Silver Medalist in karate. She has a one-hundred-percent kill rating.”
“Come along, little one,” Ann calls out. “Let’s get this over with.”
“And she’s always been the chattiest,” he finishes.
Ann taught me to do a double layout flip. She gave me fancy hair braids. (That Grand, without fail, took out later that same night.) Of all the mercenaries, she wore the only balaclava that showed her mouth. Tonight, as ever, her lips are decorated in bright red.
Su revs the engine. “I can try to run her over.”
“Yes,” Comma says. “Do that.”
Mercenaries are holy. You didn’t spar with them lightly, let alone threaten to kill them. I try not to be touched by the offer. I shake my head.
“No. One of you will only get hurt. Are there jumper cables in here?”
Su nods. “Under that bench seat.”
Reason lifts the seat. They’re sitting right on top, perfectly wrapped.
“Su, don’t wait for us,” I say. “Get them that antidote. Sway, you stay with Mouse. There’s no one else I trust more with him. We’ll be right behind you.”
“Jumper cables?” Motor shouts as I hop out of the ambulance. “I mean, why not just attack her with a piece of string and some lint?”
Reason also hops out of the ambulance, spiked crutch in tow.
“Sorry, bruth,” he says to me. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re on a winning streak.” As soon as we walk away from the ambulance he asks, “You sure this is a good idea? You’re hurt and you look like hell.”
Su drives the ambulance around us in a wide berth.
Ann is dancing in the road ahead of us. This is fun for her.
“Good,” I say. “It’ll give her even more confidence.”
Because you know what Ann’s weakness is?
She’s used to winning.
Ann is even stronger and faster than I remember. Maybe because most of our lessons she spent lying on her back, with her feet kicked up on a porch rail or couch, telling me about her old karate wins and all the foods she most missed.
“I am telling you. Sponge candy? Would blow your mind.”
I try to fight her with the cables first, using them as a makeshift lasso. But she literally skips away from them, darts in, and punches me in the chest. Using Misère’s famous sidestep move, I whack her as hard as I can on the back of the neck. It momentarily jostles her equilibrium. It also pisses her off.
I don’t even see the combination of kicks she uses next. I only know they bring me to my knees and give her enough time to step in and break my left arm. My ulna snapping sounds as loud as when Mouse and I jumped on tree branches to break them down for burning. My vision blurs and fills with sparkly lights, like I’m back in the mob’s tunnel.
“That’s for Niraasha,” she whispers, hovering right over me. They must have had eyes on the bridge after all. But then her gaze softens and she whispers, “Your turn.”
I hesitate only a half second before I bring my head up as hard as I can, right into her face. She takes a step back, her nose spewing blood. Her mouth missing teeth. Still she manages a grin before she blinks twice, then falls over like a downed tree. Completely knocked out. With shaking hands, Reason zip-ties her wrists.
“What just happened?” Reason asks.
“I think she let me win,” I reply.
His eyes flick uncertainly to my arm. I hold it gingerly to my body. Even the bullet didn’t hurt this bad.
“I mean, it had to be believable.”
From the labs comes the sound of glass breaking; shouting. We run.
All the cars are still out front of the old dealership and have been for years. But now the lights that have always been strung above them glow merrily. The tractor-trailer truck that Grand used to transport the SymSac fees is still jackknifed out front, just how she left it almost eighteen years ago. We run around it and immediately see what the glass-breaking sound was. Su drove the ambulance straight through the entrance doors.
“What the…” I ask.
Reason and I step over the broken glass.
The labs are like walking into the future and the past all at the same time. The car dealership cubicles are still set up, only behind them are all manner of gleaming stainless-steel and chrome equipment. It is all pre-Night old, but since nothing like it has been manufactured in years, it might as well be cutting-edge new. The room is brightly lit with freshly mopped black laminate floors. Fees’ daughters’ drawings hang along a far back wall. Compared to the university labs across the river, this setup is laughable.
What’s happening in its midst is anything but.
Su and the boys are huddled in front of the ambulance with their arms up in the air. A dozen lab techs have the same number of loaded crossbows aimed at their chests. Half of the crossbows swing toward Reason and me when we enter the room.
“Wow, you’re good,” Comma says, his gaze feverish. “We’ve barely parked. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“So,” Sway says, “they sent a welcoming committee.”
“There isn’t time for this,” I say to the lab techs, clutching my broken arm to my chest. “Su, take us to the vaccine.”
No sooner do I move into the labs than two fees come forward from the rest. Eugenie and Maluhia. They were one of the co-living sets that coupled off years ago. Eugenie has worked alongside Grand from the very beginning. The fact that she wasn’t killed with the other elder fees the day Mouse was taken can only mean she does not agree with my grand. Their daughter, Cinnamon Toast, is a few years ahead of me. Su told me she placed into the labs. Now she towers over her moms, bodyguard-style.
“Hold it right there,” Eugenie says. �
��We’ve had word that you were turned. Working with the mob to liberate the beasts. That you lured Matricula to you. That you’re complicit in her death.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. They’re not all in on it, then.
“I’m not trying to liberate the males,” I say. “I simply need the vaccine that will cure all of them. Wait. Yes. Actually, I guess I am trying to liberate the males. Auntie Eugenie, Auntie Maluhia, this is my brother, Mouse. You haven’t met him before because we’ve been living outside the neighborhood for the last five years so we wouldn’t disrupt anything over here. Say hi, Mouser.”
“Hi, Mouser.” He waves and laughs weakly.
Cinnamon Toast backs away and hurries into the labs.
Su warns, “Glori.”
“I saw her,” I reply. But I keep my focus on my elders. “And these are my friends. They’re boys. Not beasts.”
“I can attest to that,” Su says. “These males are not that terrible.”
“Thanks for the strong vote of confidence,” Sway mutters.
“Say hi, boys.”
“Hi,” they all say with varying levels of enthusiasm.
Maluhia nods at Hercules, then murmurs to Eugenie. My ears distinctly pick up the words the Fortress. But no one else has lowered their crossbow. I don’t know what to do. I scream with frustration.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“I hear that.”
Cinnamon Toast is back. Over six feet tall in the sixth grade, she’s always been magnificently strong with a personality and will to match. Before I left school, she was the only fee who could best me in wrestling. Seeing her loom over me now, I imagine that’s still the case.
“Glori.” She nods to the males. “This your family now?”
I lift my chin. “It is. Mouse has always been.”
“Okay.” Cinnamon glares at the labs techs and barks, “You heard her. Glori said her family’s in trouble. Are we not helping our own anymore? We’ve had safety precautions for the Seventeen Year Truce in place for years, but biological warfare was only ever mentioned as a true last resort. This was not part of the plan. This is not us.”
