by Katie French
“Back I see.”
“Who's there?” I whirl around, my bound hands held out in front of me. They're weaponless, useless and all I have. “Who are you?” The voice sounds like—
“Lavan,” the voice says. One of Andrew's Brotherhood guard. He hiccups. Is he…drunk?
“Where are you?” I step toward the voice. In the entryway of an empty storefront, Lavan lies slumped over, his head lolling against the cracked concrete wall. In one hand is an empty drinking bowl. A liquor smell wafts from him. As I step closer I see a rifle gripped in his other hand.
“Whoa!” I say, shuffling back.
“Can't run,” he slurs. He makes no move to lift the rifle. Instead, he laughs darkly. “None of us can.”
That something-isn't-right-feeling steals over me again. “What d’you mean?”
He hiccups and chuckles. “Might as well go out with liquor in my belly.” He pats his stomach and a dull, sloshy sound echoes from inside. “Might as well go out feelin' good.”
I step closer. “What do you mean 'go out'? Where are you going?”
He draws his bloodshot eyes up to my face with some effort. “Home.”
“Home?” I ask, my heart pounding harder.
“Yeah,” he says, smacking his hand on the concrete floor. He points toward the heavens. “Tonight we're all going home.”
I back away, my hands shaking. It's the end. With the death of the Messiah, they must've decided it was time to… I don’t want to think about the end to that sentence.
I run back to the hole, my heart tearing around my chest. I skid down the decline and almost bump into the speaker. “They don't want to barter,” I pant. “The end is here. They're going to kill everyone.” The words spill out of my mouth in one long, unpunctuated strand. Everyone stares at me. I bang my hands against my knee. “We have to get outta here!”
Slowly, the mutants come unstuck and start murmuring. The speaker skirts past me, hugging the wall as she slips back to discuss this with her people. Clay, Mama, and Rayburn scuttle up to me. I can't see Ethan.
“W-w-what's going on up there?” Rayburn nods up toward the mall. “Th-they dead?”
I shake my head. “Only one guard is up there, but he's a mess. Drunk. He told me all the Believers are going home. Rayburn, the barrel of poison we saw. They must be planning on using it tonight. We have to warn the people and get the hell out.”
In the dark, Clay's face wrinkles with concern. “We're still tied up and they got Ethan. We need to talk these freaks into freein' us.”
I nod. “The speaker's the one. She has more heart than any of the others.”
Clay nods. “I'll talk to her.”
I frown. “Maybe I should.”
Clay glowers. “You always think you should be the one. You never trust me. The only thing I ever did right was shoot and now I can't even do that.” Even in the dark, his blue eyes flash like jagged pieces of glass.
I drop my chin. “You help a lot.”
“Not one damn thing I done so far has helped!” He leans in, wrapping one of his bound hands around my wrist. “Let me do this. You gotta try trustin' me at least once to know it ain't a good idea.”
I shut my mouth. Nod once. He stands a little taller as he faces the speaker who's pushing through the mutants toward us. She does not look happy.
“We don't believe you,” the speaker says, forming her ruined hands into fists. “You're lying. If you lie again, one of you goesss over the ssside.” She points at the dark drop below.
“No,” I say, but Clay's hand on my arm silences me.
“She's not lyin'.” He stares hard at the speaker. “And you know it.”
“We do not kno—”
“No, not we,” Clay points at the speaker's chest. “You. You know this ain't right.” He holds up his bound hands. “We ain't cattle and y'all are not like these monsters up here.” Clay nods up toward the mall and where the Believers live. “If you was, you'd still be up there.”
The speaker pauses, mouth open, her swollen tongue showing. Some of the mutants grasp at her sack clothing, but she waves them away.
Clay continues. “You know you should let us go. That together, we,” he circles his bound arms around to indicate us and the mutants, “should take these bastards down.”
For once the crowd is silent. The speaker stares at Clay as if she's just seeing him for the first time. She rubs her hand through her remaining hair. “I...” she says the word slowly, testing it out. “I hear you. I agree,” she says more boldly. She faces the mob of questioning faces on the incline below.
“We will ssset thessse people free,” she says, arms wide. There are murmurs of dissent, but some heads nod. “We will follow them up.” More murmurs. Many of the mutant's faces looked scared, but others look enraged. One woman with warts on her cheeks shakes her fist in the air.
The speaker licks her cracked lips. “We will go up and reclaim our placcce.” Now they are nodding, smiling. The speaker nods with them. “We will do it when they are weakessst. We will take over and we will kill those that have sssentenccced usss to death.”
“Wait, only the Brotherhood, right?” I ask her. When I get no response, I turn to Clay.
Clay calls after the mutants. “You don't want to hurt everyone.”
But it is too late. The throng of mutants surges forward, a wave of stinking flesh. They brush past us and I cringe as their bodies touch mine. Zombies, my brain thinks. They look undead.
The speaker slips out a rock dagger, grabs my wrists, and yanks them up. I pull back, but she's sawing at my bonds. When the rope splinters and my hands fall free, she thrusts the rock-knife and Clay’s gun in my hands. I hold them delicately, my jaw slack.
“Free the othersss,” she pants, her yellow eyes following her people. “Then join usss. We will avenge all who've fallen.”
“Wait,” I say, thinking of Mage. “You don't have to kill all of them. They aren’t all guilty!”
But she's gone, lurching up the steps with a vigor that sends shivers over me. Ethan, free of his leather leash, runs up and wraps his arms around my waist. I hug him. For a moment, the five of us stare at each other.
“What did we do?” I whisper to Clay. He doesn't answer, just looks up at the trickle of light.
Then the screaming begins.
My hands tighten around Ethan as cries of terror cascades down the hole. Who's screaming? Clay tugs on my arm. “Go,” he says, his eyes wide. “Run to the closest exit.” He looks at Rayburn. “We need a truck.”
“The garage,” I say, remembering. “They got trucks.”
Rayburn nods vigorously.
“What about Mage?” Ethan asks, pulling away from me. “We just can't leave her.”
I stare up at Clay, searching his face for answers. He nods slowly. “We'll look,” he says. His tone of voice says we'll look for a minute and then we're outta here.
As we crest the floor surface, I see who's screaming. A few of the mob have fallen on Lavan. One of the mutants bites his arm. Another beats on him with a small hunk of concrete. She rears back and smashes the concrete into Lavan's knee. He screams.
“They'll kill him,” I whisper under my breath. Do I care? The Brotherhood have been awful to us, but he's drunk and the fight is totally unfair.
“Riley, we can't,” Clay's eyes are sad. “We gotta go.”
But if Lavan dies it'll be our fault. I can't take his screams. I run at the mutant who's about to smash the concrete into Lavan's head. “Get off him!”
Clay grabs the mutant's hand and stops the blow in mid-air. “Go find Andrew,” Clay shouts. “He's the one who put you out.” The mutants snarl, but back away, rotten teeth flashing.
We stare down at Lavan, moaning in a bloody mess on the floor. None of the cuts look life threatening. What's more life threatening is whatever the Believers have planned.
“We, uh, we should question him,” Rayburn says, pointing a shaking finger at Lavan.
Clay kneels down
, grabs Lavan's shirt collar, and draws him into a sitting position. His head lolls back, a trickle of blood dribbling into his dark hair. “I know yer busted to hell,” Clay says, “but we need to know what you meant by it being the end? Is there poison? Are you gonna force people to drink it?”
Lavan's eyes roll back in his head and he murmurs something.
“Speak up!” Clay says, shaking him a little.
Lavan opens his mouth and vomits down his shirt. It falls with a wet splat onto the floor.
Clay let's go of Lavan and wipes his hand on the guard’s soiled shirt. “Well, he ain't gonna be much help.”
“You’re right,” I say. “We gotta find Mage.”
“Where do we look?” Mama asks. Her mouth tightens, a sure sign of the pain she's trying to hide.
“We start with the girl's hallway,” Clay says, heading that way with Ethan in tow. “At least some of the mutants went the other way.”
He's right. Shouts and smashing sounds come from the men's hallway. There's the pop of a single gunshot. We all jump. Clay waves us in the opposite direction.
We peel out into twilight streaming down from the food court ceiling. Some of the boards and canvas sheets they nailed up have fallen down. Sand still lurks in the corners and collects on the foam play fruit. My eyes trail over the giant oranges and apples and sadness sinks my heart. Will they try to kill everyone? The carousel is empty. The Messiah's body is gone, but his blood remains in dark puddles. I've watched him die at least a dozen times in my mind and seeing the blood brings those images flooding back. I focus on running through the food court without drawing attention. Everyone in this mall is our enemy now.
Running down the women's corridor, I see clumps of Believers huddled together. One woman sits alone in the middle of an empty shoe store staring out at us. Her clothes are torn and something black, ash maybe, covers her face. Her hollow eyes follow us as silent tears plow through the dark smudges.
They don't need to be warned the end is coming. They already know.
We slip silently past several more empty stores until we come across the Willow Room. Inside Prema, my cranky boss from my days as washerwoman, and Yusuf, the middle-aged Willow Room teacher, hover around half a dozen frightened children. A crown of golden hair appears behind the crowd.
“Mage!” I yell. A few of the children duck behind the adults as I barrel into the room. I hold my hands up apologetically. “We're here to help.”
Mage's eyes fall on us. “Help?” she says slowly.
“Lavan said…” I look down and see two pairs of little eyes staring at me from behind Yusuf's pant leg. I lean in close and whisper to Mage. “He said it was the end.”
There's a flicker on her face, almost imperceptible, then it's gone. “Lavan's drunk. He took my papa's death real hard.”
Didn't she take her dad's death real hard? I stare into her face, but it's stone. I put my hand on her arm. “The Forgotten are here. The people Andrew put out.” How long until they descend on this room? Would there be enough human being left inside them to keep them from harming these children? I think of Ethan wearing a dog leash around his neck. “We gotta get you out of here.”
Mage's face tightens and a frown creases the corners of her mouth. “That's gonna be a problem.”
She walks us out of the Willow Room and down the hall to the exit. It's the door leading out to the garage. There are two giant, armed Brotherhood guards at the door. They point the rifle barrels at us as we approach.
“Turn around!” The guard waves his rifle toward where we came from. “Go back to your rooms and stay there like you were instructed. Our new leader will tell you when it is safe to come out.”
Somewhere down the hallway there is a crash. A scream. The mutants are tearing the place to pieces and these men do nothing to stop it.
I step forward and one of them points his rifle at me.
“Step back!” he shouts. They're dressed plainly with thick boots and tough denim pants. Like they’re ready for battle. Who are they going to battle with? “Go back to your rooms,” he says again.
I spread my hands out in a show of surrender. “Why are you doing this? You have to let us out.”
“By order of the Messiah and our new sovereign leader, Andrew, no one is to leave this building until instructed. It's been foreseen.”
Mage is as stiff as a statue beside me. “The Messiah is dead.”
“His spirit lives on,” says the one to the right. His voice is robotic. “We must follow him home.”
“What about the children?” I ask, unable to keep the disgust out of my voice. “Are they to follow him home, too?” How can these men sentence their own children to death? I swallow hard and lock eyes with one of them. He won't look at me, but there’s worry in his face. The other sets his rifle into his shoulder socket and raises it at me.
“I'm gonna count to ten,” he growls. “Ten. Nine.” His finger curls around the trigger. “Eight.”
“Fine!” I yell. “Let's go.”
“Seven. Six.”
We run back to the Willow Room. When we get there, all eyes turn on us. My gaze falls on the children, their round cheeks and giant pleading eyes. Mama holds a little boy in her lap and gently strokes his straight brown hair. All the children are boys, now that I think about it. A three-year-old boy with golden hair like Mage clings to Prema's knee. Two preteen boys sit with their backs to the wall, their eyes downcast. It's odd that they're all boys. And the Forgotten are all women. It feels like I'm missing something. Something important.
Prema waddles over to us, her brown face puckered like a raisin. “What did those cowards say?” Her frown is the same, etched into her skin, but her eyes look different somehow. Like she really sees me this time. The last time we spoke she was scolding me about my plunge and scrub technique. Now she peers at me like she really wants to know what I have to say.
Mage shakes her head, her shoulders slumping.
“Why are they doing this?” I ask no one and everyone.
Mage's gaze drifts off in the distance. “It's what we've always feared. The evil ones are coming.”
Her words strike my chest like a hammer. “The evil ones?”
“Yes,” Mage says, large eyes meeting mine. “The people from the hospital. The Breeders.”
I gasp. Beside me, Clay whirls at her words. “The Breeders? They're coming here?”
So many thoughts whirl through my head: poison, suicides, the Breeders. I can't catch my breath. My hand circles the ankh brand on my wrist over and over. What will they do to us if they catch us? I can't begin to imagine.
“We have to run.” The desperation in Clay's voice is immediate and frightening. He leans down and levels Mage with a serious look. “How long 'til they're here?”
Mage nods. “Tomorrow. That's all I know.”
I think about Dr. Nessa Vandewater's cruel blue eyes and awful images flash through my mind. We can't be here when they arrive. None of them should be either.
“We need a way out and fast.” I start to pace back and forth across the room. We could go for weapons, but they’re all in the hands of the Brotherhood. We could try to break out of the mall, but that would take more time than we got. No one knows when the Brotherhood plans to poison us. And the Forgotten are on a rampage.
Clay steps in front of me, breaking my thoughts. “We fight,” he says, punching a fist into his palm. “We don't roll over and die.”
I place my hand on his. “We got one gun.”
He frowns. “Then we find a way to bust out.”
I look from him to Mage. She's standing with her back to the wall, furiously folding a paper animal, though it’s a sloppy mess. I walk to her. “Mage,” I say quietly, touching her frantic hands, “We need you. You're the one who knows your dad's mind.”
She crumples the paper animal in her fist.
“You might not want to think about him, but it's the only way we can save the children.” I point to the wide-eyed kids in the b
ack. One is sobbing into Prema’s large chest.
Mage looks up at me, her eyes growing round. Is she thinking of her dad? How he looked as he pulled the trigger on Clay's gun? I want to spare her this, but I can't.
“What does your dad have planned? How would he have them take out the whole Citadel in one swoop?”
She shakes her head and points to the corner. “Ask Lavan.”
Lavan? The last we saw him he was being attacked by the Forgotten. A body lies slumped in a heap, facing the wall.
I walk over, Clay at my back. Lavan lies curled in a fetal position, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs. There's dried blood on a gash in his hair and vomit on his shirt. We tried questioning him before and got nothing. I look up at Clay. “How did he get here?”
Yusuf rubs a hand over his wrinkled forehead. “He limped in here while you were out negotiating with the guards.” Yusuf scrunches up his piggy nose. “He's a bloody mess and smells terrible. We put him in the corner.”
I look at Clay. “You think it's worth trying again?”
Clay screws his mouth down and sighs big. “What choice we got?”
I kneel beside Lavan. Yusuf is right, he smells awful. I breathe through my mouth and try not to look at the vomit on his shirt. “Lavan.” I shake his shoulder. “Lavan!”
He moans and his dark eyelashes flutter. I shake him again. This time when the lashes flutter they slowly reveal bloodshot eyes.
“Hi there,” I say as kindly as I can. “It's me, Riley. Remember?”
Confusion fills his face. His swollen lips work over some word that never makes it out of his throat. Instead, an awful-smelling burp escapes.
“Wish you hadn't drank all that wine,” I mumble as I bat the smell away. I shake his shoulder again. “We need you to sit up, okay?”
He frowns, but I give him no time to protest. I pull him up by his soiled shirt collar and get him into a sitting position against the wall. His eyes roll back in his head.
“Lavan, we need to know about the Messiah's plan.” I lean closer, my tone not so nice anymore. “Look at me!”
