City of Beasts

by Corrie Wang

  As if it was their very consciences shouting at them, all the fees jump into action.

  Maluhia drops her crossbow and comes forward first. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, give me that little one. She doesn’t have time for the vaccine. She needs CRISPR antiviral fluids.”

  “This is a boy,” Comma says, rocking Hercules side to side. Hercules’s eyes flutter briefly open. He registers Maluhia. Smiles. Then closes his eyes again as if to better focus on his labored breathing.

  “You take her from the Fortress?” Maluhia asks, taking Hercules from Comma. “Then it’s her life. All the little ones there are girls. First ones made by the fees that went across six years ago. I can’t believe they let her get that virus. Don’t worry, beast. I’ll give her back. Maybe.”

  Mouse tugs on my tank top. “Told you. She.”

  That was why they kept them separate at the Fortress; why they had a better existence. I’m about to ask why they were sent there at all, but I know all the answers. Chia’s cameras. Never mind trying to get multiple infants from the heart of Buffalo to the bridge unnoticed.

  Around us, all the other fees get to work. One takes the tray that Cinnamon is holding. Another swabs down the boys’ arms. As Reason gets his shot he tells Eugenie about all the males that are lining up at the bridge and convinces her to organize a triage. Only once it’s decided that Sway, Comma, and I will stay back with the younger boys and get medical attention does Su offer to go with Reason.

  “Cinnamon, you’ll take good care of Glori?” Su asks.

  “I won’t let her out of my sight,” Cinnamon Toast says.

  Su nods, relieved, and begins packing the ambulance as Cinnamon kneels and hands Motor a lollipop.

  “What’s this?” He looks at me skeptically.

  “The best thing you’ve ever tasted,” I reply.

  Motor grunts, then sticks the whole thing in his mouth. Wrapper and all. Mouse finds it hysterical, though his laughter is weak. Cinnamon shakes her head, bemused but also worried. She’s just saved males. Everything is going to change now. And she helped make that happen.

  “Thanks, Cinn. And here I thought you never liked me.”

  “You kidding? I was intimidated as waste by you. A fee not made by beasts? We were awed. I always knew you’d do big things. Respect, little fee.”

  “Wait. You mean everyone knew my background? I only found out today.”

  “They never told you?” Cinnamon’s eyes cut accusingly to Su.

  I kneel next to Cinnamon as I take the wrapper off Motor’s sucker. Mouse is playing with Lucky, throwing a ruler for him to retrieve. Multiple fees stand around watching him with expressions of awe.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I murmur, then ask, “Where is Liyan?”

  Cinnamon quietly replies, “Amusement park.”

  It only takes a few minutes to load everything. Everyone is told to stay safe. Be on watch. No one in Buffalo has time for long goodbyes, so we keep them short. Su hangs out the passenger-side window. “Glori, maybe I should stay back with you.”

  “No. Go be of use and help administer the vaccine. The males need someone that is at least partially sympathetic to their side. Besides, what will you do here? Watch me get a cast?”

  “And my mom? You aren’t…”

  Before she can continue, I hug her tightly. Then hold her face in my hands.

  “I love you. We’ll sort this all out when you get back. Nothing is bigger than us, right?”

  She nods, smiling like that time Liyan surprised her with a trampoline on her ninth birthday. As I always do whenever Su smiles, I can’t help thinking how right Liyan was when she named her. (Regardless of how much Su hated it.) Sunshine. Her smile lights up the world. Yet it does little to deter me from what I’m about to do.

  As Su, Reason, Eugenie, and a handful of other fees drive away, Comma slips a sling over my forehead. As he gently settles my broken arm into it, he tells me it’s fashioned from his favorite unity scarf. Not so that I’ll be careful with it, more so that I know it will take care of me.

  “We aren’t staying in the labs and recuperating, are we?” he asks.

  Out front, Sway pulls up in a bright yellow, freshly hot-wired Mustang. A car dealership price tag still in the window. Cinnamon tosses me a billy club. Motor calls shotgun.

  “Bump no, we aren’t.”

  FANTASY ISLAND

  NIAGARA’S AMUSEMENT & WATER PARK

  “Y’all had an amusement park over here and you didn’t invite us?” Comma asks.

  “It’s not like it was open for business. We’ve never had the electricity to spare.”

  “Apparently you do now,” Sway says.

  We park the Mustang right against the front gates. Leave Lucky in the car. The entrance to Fantasy Island is styled after an old red barn. Behind it, the park literally gleams, a happy glow of fat yellow, red, and white lights against the wintry black sky. All the turnstiles are locked, but the gate on the end is open.

  “What’s a water park?” Motor asks.

  “Water parks were like swimming pools but even better,” I say.

  I’m carrying him piggyback-style and really, really wishing I’d forced him to shower. Sway has Mouse. Maluhia tried insisting we leave the boys at the lab with Hercules. But we felt safer together, even if where we were headed was undeniably more dangerous.

  “Water parks had these slides filled with water that you went down in your bathing suit. And a lazy river that you floated on in a circle raft. Or at least that’s what the brochures in the ticket office showed. Before we burned them.”

  “Pre-Night was so weird,” Sway says.

  “What’s a slide?” Motor asks. “And a raft? And what’s a bathing suit?”

  “Oh, this is going to be fun,” Comma says. “He’s worse than a fee.”

  Carnival lights blink haphazardly from every ride and game booth. A few rides still blare music. Bass-heavy tunes that do little to enliven the desolate park, kind of like putting perfume on a corpse. Something called a Tilt-A-Whirl spins and dips its empty cars on a circular platform. I catch a flash of red in one of them, but when I wait and really look at all the carriages, they’re empty.

  I try to imagine the amusement park when it was a happy place, with fees eating popcorn and whatever kielbasa was, drinking something called slushies. The air filled with squeals of joy and not the tinny sound of the rides’ ancient sound systems. But the emptiness is too much. Maybe there are no bodies here, but this is absolutely a graveyard. We pass a giant ship that makes loud gears-crushing-against-other-gears noises and shudders in place.

  “Can we agree to never ever come here again?” Sway asks as the wind picks up.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Comma shivers. “It kind of has that quaint someone’s-gonna-stab-you vibe.”

  Sway’s portable chirps.

  Reason says, “We’re at the bridge. About a hundred males are waiting. The mercenary is gone. Be careful.”

  We pass the swings ride. I half expect to see my mother on it, like I have so many times in recent years, spinning and spinning, but they all sway empty in the breeze. Then it is around the bend, and we are at the slide. It is nine lanes across, with three large bumps. Each lane is a bright purple, teal, or pink plastic that remains remarkably vibrant. They used to have burlap sacks for fees to sit on, but we repurposed those a long time ago. The times I brought Mouse here, we used old sweaters to slide on.

  At the top of the slide is a little wood house that used to maintain rider lines but now is headquarters for the movement to wipe out males. It is the perfect defensive spot. There is no getting up there without being attacked. I know this because that’s what Itami said the countless times Mouse and I tagged along with her during her lesson shift, which always fell on the EMS staff meeting day.

  “Your mercenaries had staff meetings?” Comma asks when I tell the males this.

  “Well, what else should they have called them?” I reply. />
  After setting Motor and Mouse down in a hot-dog stand, where they curl into each other for warmth, we approach the foot of the slide. This time neither male wastes his breath telling me not to fight.

  “Stay put, males,” I say, then walk up the first hill of the slide.

  “Not on your life,” Sway replies, and tries to follow me only to immediately slip back down the incline. “No fair. You’ve had practice.”

  He moves instead to the stairs off to the right of the slide.

  “Knock, knock,” I shout, tapping Cinnamon’s billy club against the slide.

  Immediately, Misère, Muerte, and Itami step out from the cabin. They simultaneously draw their weapons.

  “I am here to speak with the ivory mercenary.”

  “But she does not wish to speak with you.”

  Itami takes the center lane and slides down the first hill, then waits for me with her double fighting knives drawn. Muerte with her bow and arrow and Misère with her bat each take an outside lane but remain at the top.

  “Please, don’t do this,” I say, slowly climbing up the slide. “You’ve killed off almost all the males. You killed Grand. There are no more enemies for you to fight.”

  And what I think but don’t say is that even more than wanting revenge, my males and I will never be safe unless we come to a resolution.

  Or I kill all the mercenaries.

  “Sorry, Glori,” Muerte says. “But we swore. We swore we would bring about this world no matter what. Even if it meant hurting ones we loved. For the future of everyone.”

  “I know you don’t believe that or you wouldn’t have let me run away back at the transport. And happy futures don’t start with murder, Muerte.”

  “No more talking,” Itami says.

  Leaping over the second hill entirely, she comes straight for me, knives flashing. She’s only a few feet away when her name rings out.

  “Itami!” Then even happier. “Itami! Itami! Itami!”

  Mouse scampers up the slide, faster at it even than me. He meets Itami as she skids to a stop in front of me. Throwing himself at her legs, he stands on tiptoes and barely manages to kiss her belly.

  “Otokonoku,” she says.

  All the other mercenaries kept their distance from Mouse but not Itami. She made him origami cranes and sailboats. She swung him through the air by his arms until they were both dizzy from laughter and velocity. She carried him on her shoulders and let him pluck leaves from trees, then made crowns out of them.

  Not feeling well despite his newest shot, Mouse is not his usual chatty self but simply stands there holding on to Itami. Or maybe he is too afraid for words.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Itami looks to the other mercenaries.

  “I will take it from here, sisters. You have done enough.”

  It’s Liyan. She no longer wears the ivory mercenary suit. The clothes she changed into are disheveled and bloody. Bruises mar her face and she looks like she’s been crying. Yet she stands straight with her arms clasped behind her back, her head held high.

  “Leave or we will kill you. Keep your mouth shut and we will let you live.”

  There is so much I want to say, and yet I can’t speak.

  “How do we know you’ll keep your word?” Sway asks from his position on the stairs.

  Her eyes move to him. She frowns. Then does a double take.

  “Shui?” she asks, simultaneously stunned and hopeful.

  Sway’s hand goes to his necklace. “Mama?”

  She nods once, definitively. This is probably not the heartfelt reunion Sway had hoped for, but he didn’t know Liyan. And yet, he does not look the least bit disappointed. Despite the tremendous height difference, it is almost laughable how similar they look. How did I not notice this before? But also, why would I? Liyan had told me countless times about her flight from Beijing to the States. I knew the wealthy businessman let her bring her family. I knew she flew over with both of her parents, but I never knew that family included a son.

  Comma stage-whispers, “Why is she saying his name wrong?”

  “In Mandarin shui means water,” I say. “We’ve been saying it wrong.”

  “Because in a time of death,” Liyan says, “he gave me life.”

  Pulled forward by her longing, Liyan turns ever so slightly. She’s not clasping her hands behind her back, they’re bound there. Hearing my surprised breath, Liyan’s eyes cut to me.

  “Glori,” she hisses. “Get them out of here. Now.”

  The next second, she is sprawled flat on the ground, blood coming from a wound at the back of her head. Sway shouts and runs out onto the slide just as the ivory mercenary steps from the hut. Unsheathing the katana from her back, she holds it to Liyan’s neck. Sway immediately stops where he is, a few feet away from me.

  “That’s better,” the mercenary says.

  Stepping over Liyan’s body, she takes off her ivory-white balaclava and shakes out her wild hair. She laughs at my expression.

  “Hello, Glori,” she says. “I’d hoped you were dead.”

  It’s my mom.

  “You… talk” is all I can think to say.

  I glance back at Mouse. Itami has a hand on his chest, holding him to her leg. He notices Majesty but continues playing with Itami’s short knife. There will be no scampering up the slide to greet her.

  “Yes, well. Thanks to your grand, you and I both have IQs higher than the average norm, so I learned talking pretty early on in this voyage we call life.”

  Twice Majesty has suffered atrocities at the hands of males that were so vicious we never spoke of them. She was our most ferocious fighter. Our most temperamental fee. I am and am not shocked that she did this. And yet, in this moment, what I truly can’t get over is her voice. It’s as clear as day. And the longer I stand there, so is the truth.

  “You took my brother?”

  The morning they came for him, Majesty spoke to me for the first time in months. I see now that she was keeping me inside, preventing me from helping him. And it worked.

  “The mercenaries took it, yes. We’ve had this plan in mind for some years now, without an idea of when to put it in motion. But then I saw you bike away with it that night and I knew the beasts would eventually see footage of you two, and I knew my moment had come. So I placed a PTT to Jackal. I believe you two met. Jackal enlisted two of the mob’s more unsavory affiliates to do a necessary job I had been dreading for some time.”

  “You mean murdering LaVaughn, Josie Baker, Ruth—”

  She cuts me off. “Your Grand’s biggest supporters. Yes.”

  “Fees that would never let you get away with this.”

  “Fees that would have had qualms, yes.”

  “Like Rauha.”

  “Believe me, I took no joy in it. Not when there are so few of us left and we’ll all be so vital to the rebuilding, but it was your Grand who always said fees never played dirty enough. With her council dead, I knew Matricula would finally feel the necessary rage to enact the measures she’d been vacillating on for years. And the beauty of it was, those fees wouldn’t be here to dissuade her from it. They were her conscience all those years, and I took them from her.”

  “Then why take Two Five?”

  “Because I wanted Matricula to think everything she’d worked so hard for was at risk. Her labs. Her family. Every fee’s future. I wanted her to see how ridiculous it was to lose everything she’d worked toward because she felt attached to one single beast. I took it because I wanted her to stop making concessions and go forward with what she originally conceived—a beastless existence—without it clouding her vision. What I hadn’t expected was that taking it would drive you out. Thanks be for small miracles, I guess. I found the note you left her, by the way. Got rid of it. Couldn’t have her going right after you and the little beast.”

  “His name is Mouse.”

  “And it is supposed to be dead.” She glares at Itami. “You volunteered to do it.”

  “The Fo
rtress seemed like the more humane option,” Itami says, glaring back at Majesty. “I thought we could raise him with the other little fees.”

  Majesty snorts. “You know that would never have worked.”

  Itami shrugs and says simply, “I couldn’t do it.”

  “But all these years,” I say to Majesty, “you’ve been acting so…”

  “Comatose?” She nods. “If you haven’t yet tried it, I highly recommend the sedative we use in the Fortress’s milk. It’s the only thing that makes living on this moldy, isolated speck of the earth bearable. And what better way to convince your Grand to follow the morally taxing path she’d chosen than to have her daily see evidence of how beasts break us. It was a blessing when those beasts jumped me on the other side. Not only because Rage found me, but because it confirmed everything your Grand already knew about what beasts have at their heart.”

  There’s a manic brightness in Majesty’s eyes and words. She keeps worrying her lip with her fingers. Only a few hours ago, she killed her own mother. Even if you were completely insane, that had to take some kind of toll. Except I don’t think Majesty is insane.

  “But then you killed her anyway.” It comes out a whisper.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” she replies equally faintly. “But it was necessary. If you had only stopped eluding us along the way, your grand wouldn’t have had to die. Right now, she’d be waging a furious war against the beasts. You could have been the spark that ignited our cause.” My eyes go to Muerte, but she won’t return my gaze. She had been ordered to kill me back at that transport. “I’ve been saying it ever since the Night. The only way for fees to have the fresh start we all keep bandying about is for all the beasts to die.”

  And then something weird happens. I start laughing. It’s not a healthy laugh, but I can’t help it. Sway takes a step toward me.

  “The tea party ain’t over yet, Mad Hatter,” he murmurs. “Keep it together.”