by Katie French
“The skilled trades,” Nada says, reaching out and picking up a ball-point pen husk. Her eyes scan the desks and welding equipment. “Aha!” she cries, coming up with a pair of rusty shears. After a few attempts, we saw the zip-tie apart and we’re separated. For a moment we’re quiet, thinking about what this means. Then Nada speaks. “They said we can’t win without each other, so there’s no sense in running off.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I try to sound light, but the comment falls flat. “We’re in this together.” I mean it, too. As much as I hate to admit it, I really like the little hard-ass.
“So, what kind of booby trap are we looking at?” I ask, staring hard at the long rows of decaying workstations.
Nada shrugs and then chucks the ballpoint pen out into the debris. We watch as it pings into a pile of old papers with no result. “Maybe nothing.”
“It has to be something,” I say, my anxiety building. The corners here are dark. The spaces for hiding are everywhere. “Lord Merek expects a show.”
Nada shrugs. “Maybe his show is out there.” She nods up toward the window and the road below.
“We can’t just sit here,” I say, standing. “Let’s go. Carefully.”
Nada rolls her eyes. There’s that sass she’s always giving Doc. For a moment, I wonder what Doc’s doing right now. Sitting in the cafeteria, praying to whatever God he believes in to save Nada? Praying for me?
We tiptoe down the length of the room, hugging the walls. My heart is in my throat and my legs are gelatinous. At least Nada is beside me.
“What’s that?” She stiffens, turning.
I freeze. “What?” My eyes flit to every shadow. Is something moving under that desk? Did I hear a slither in the dry paper along the wall?
“Over there,” Nada says, turning.
To our right, the hallway branches off into a long arm of darkness. We stop and stare into the blackness.
A noise, there in the darkness. I hear it.
“We should—”
A snarling cry cuts out from the shadows. A dozen voices answer. Human or animal I can’t tell, but they are loud and angry.
“Run!” I scream.
We run, but there’s no exit, no windows to climb out of. No escape. I whirl back toward the mob of horrible figures tearing out of the darkness.
Chapter 17
Ethan
When I see Clay’s face after the operation, I almost cry, but I push the sad and mad deep down inside. Clay would want me to be a man. That is, if he remembers me.
The bandages around his shaved head make him look like a mummy in the picture book Miss Nessa gave me to keep me quiet. Miss Nessa is always worried about me being quiet even though I don’t even say boo. She scares the pants offa me. But how Clay looks scares me even more.
The recovery room, as Betsy calls it, is dark, like a nightmare. I shrink down in the chair by the bed and try to focus on Clay. I put my eyes on him and send get-well signals with my brain. Get well. Get well. Get well.
And remember me.
“Why do you look so sad?” Betsy says behind me. I like Betsy but she scares me, too. Her brain is broken. Just like Clay’s.
“He’s going to be fine,” she says through clenched teeth. One of her eyes is twitching.
I nod like a robot. I’m a robot a lot lately. Move. Talk. Eat. Sleep. Look at Clay and don’t cry.
I give Betsy a robot’s thumbs up.
She waddles around the chair and leans onto Clay’s bed. Her sausage fingers trail over Clay’s cheeks and chin. The mad comes up in me again. My sister gets to touch Clay like that. Not weird Betsy who farts at dinner and sometimes wets the bed in her sleep and I have to help her change our sheets in the morning before Miss Nessa comes in. And sometimes she blames it on me. Poor boy peed the bed in his sleep, she’ll say, her hands twitching something fierce. And what can I say? Betsy’s crazy robots don’t tattle.
“All better. All better.” Betsy sings this like a nursery rhyme. Her fingers do loops on Clay’s face, fast and weird like she’s racing little cars there. Then she leans down and kisses his mouth.
I push back in my chair.
Betsy bolts up and whirls on me. Embarrassment makes her face tomato red. Her hands bounce over herself like jumpy frogs as she mutters, “No, no, no.”
“When will he wake up?” I ask when she’s calmed down. Not that I expect a real answer.
“Today, tomorrow, some day.” She walks to the bag of liquid on a pole by his bed and pokes it. “Nobody knows.”
“Miss Nessa knows,” I mutter.
“Call her Mother.” Betsy wags a finger at me. She’s always harping on me to follow the rules, but then she breaks them all the time. Like kissing Clay. Miss Nessa told her to keep her disgusting fingers off him.
“He’ll probably wake up later this afternoon,” she says, coming to sit beside me in the stiff chair. It creaks as she settles into it and I think of the chair getting mad ’cause her bottom is too big. Big, fat, bubble butt. I picture the chair kicking her off and smile.
The air feels heavy. A big spider stares at me from one corner.
I ask the heavy question, the one I can’t hold any more. “Will he remember me when he wakes up?”
“Miss Nessa said he’ll remember things from before…” She trails off. What she wants to say is, Before your sister and you ruined his life. Before you were Ethan.
“So he’ll remember me as Cole?”
Betsy shrugs and picks at a scab on her arm. “That’s what Miss Nessa said.”
I drop my head and stare at my pants. “I’m not Cole,” I mutter to myself.
Before I see it coming, a slap bites hard on my cheek. I clutch my face and glare at her.
“Don’t ever say that!” she says, her face almost purple. Her chin trembles as she scowls at me. “She might kill you if you say that!”
I drop my head, still holding my cheek. Sometimes I hate Betsy. Sometimes I feel bad because Miss Nessa put her brain in a blender. At least that’s what Betsy says late at night when it’s just the two of us in the bed.
“So, what if she kills me?” I whisper. The mad and sad is bubbling up. I picture water on the stove in our old house. I’m coming to a boil. Just plop some taters in me.
“What if she kills you?” Betsy says with shock in her voice. “You don’t want to be dead.”
“I don’t want to be Cole,” I mouth. My eyes flick to the camera in the corner of the room. Does it work?
Betsy sighs. “I don’t want to be crazy, but here we both are.”
Clay wakes up screaming.
I hear him all the way down the hall. I sit upright in bed, my heart trying to jump outta my chest.
He screams again. It’s the scream of a nightmare. One where you wake up and realize it’s true.
In the dark, my hand finds the lump that is Betsy. She’s clammy like a fish. I shake her. She moans and rolls away from me. “Betsy.”
Clay screams again. Footsteps pound down the hall. A door opens and shuts.
I shake Betsy some more. My heart is gonna break my ribcage. “Betsy!”
“What?” She rolls over. In the moonlight from the little, barred window, I can see the gross scars on her scalp. Sometimes I wish she’d sleep with her wig on, but she says it’s itchy.
“Clay’s screaming,” I whisper.
We both stop and listen. At first, nothing. Then the ah, ah, ahhhh echoes through the house. It sounds like people are cutting up his insides. I fist my hands and bring them to my mouth.
Betsy sits up. Side-by-side, we listen. Down the hall, a voice talks calmly. Miss Nessa’s voice. Then a male voice speaks. It’s the guard, not Clay. When Clay talks, it comes out in screams.
I inch closer to Betsy. She throws an arm around my trembling body. Then we lie in bed and listen to Clay scream for hours.
The next morning there’s a very bandaged person at the table when I walk into the kitchen. I tiptoe across the polished tile, past the stove a
nd refrigerator that Miss Nessa says we can’t use because it’s too old and the seals have cracked or something. I tiptoe toward the bandaged person sitting at the little table, his face toward the window. He’s wearing loose black pants and a plain white T-shirt. His arms, resting on the table, tremble.
I’m scared, but I have to see his face.
His face looks…hollow. It’s like an empty mask, no expression when he sees me. Or does he see me? His eyes are like a doll’s. They don’t track with me when I lean my face toward his.
He blinks and I jump back. Slowly his neck bobs forward then back, like a baby who hasn’t figured out his muscles yet. But at least he’s moving.
“Clay?” I whisper. I touch one shaky fingertip to his arm.
He says nothing, but keeps following me with his eyes. Slowly his lips twitch into a smile. I smile, too.
But his smile falls and tears well up in his eyes. He lowers his head and begins weeping.
I stand still as a statue. I’ve never seen Clay cry like this. It’s more scary than the bandages.
Finally, I put my hand on his shaking shoulder. I pat him. I used to pat Riley like this when she cried. What would Riley think if she saw Clay like this? She’d cry, too. Tears spill over my cheeks and wet my shirt collar. Now I’m crying like a big baby.
Clay lifts his head, still crying. He covers my hand with his.
“Cole,” he whispers. “I missed you.”
Chapter 18
Riley
Hands and arms and teeth and eyes. All around us, our attackers grab and claw. Nada is yanked away. I stumble after her even as a hand pulls me the other way. Sharp fingernails trail down my arm as I yank it back. Another dark figure reaches out to grab.
“Nada!” I scream, whirling toward where I know her to be.
She swings an elbow and connects with a jaw. I get flashes of distorted grimaces, hairy manes, snarling mouths. I think of the Forgotten in the depths of the Citadel. There’s no such thing as zombies or monsters.
A hand claws against my cheek, dragging my head to the side. I punch wildly, my hand smashing into something hard. The figure cries out and falls away. I turn toward another. God, how many are there?!
Another dark shape lunges into a pool of light, and I realize why these people look so grotesque. They’re wearing old Halloween masks. Werewolves, aliens, and monsters. It’s terrifying as one comes at me, hands hooked like claws. I duck and ram an elbow into his rib cage. He doubles over and staggers back.
“Riley!” Nada screams as one drags her backward. Her hands reach for me.
I dive between a gorilla and a scary clown, and reach for Nada. She’s in the grip of a bald alien, kicking and punching like her life depends on it. And maybe it does. I don’t know who these people are or what they’ve been promised, but I can bet whatever they want is not good. The alien carrying Nada turns left and disappears through an open doorway. I follow, the others clambering behind me.
When I turn the corner and run into the room, my eyes find Nada on the floor. Above her, the alien stands, hands fisted, ready for me. Without thinking, I yank the door behind me closed, slamming it with a thud and turning the lock. Fists thud against the door. Better one attacker at a time I think, as I square off with the masked man. He’s taller than me, but frail. His skeletal arms protrude from his oversized coat and his collar bones jut out from the top of his tattered shirt.
He’s not a guard, so who is he? Now that he’s trapped in here with us, he seems wary, nervous. He keeps watching me from the dark holes in his mask, but makes no move to fight.
I don’t have much time to survey the room, but what I do find is disheartening. The space is small—an office or big closet littered with junk and fallen plaster. Half the ceiling is caving in on the far side. At the back, a big desk is cluttered with stacks of yellow paper.
More fists thud on the door behind me, then something bigger. They must be ramming against the door to break it down. What was I thinking, locking us in here? We’re sitting ducks in this room. And the alien is still here, watching me warily, the way a wolf might watch prey from the edge of the forest.
“Whatever they’re offering you, is it enough to die for?” I ask him, trying to sound tough as I scan the room for weapons. Nada seems to have the same idea. From the floor, her eyes rove the piles.
A raged wheeze comes from inside the big pale mask, but he chuckles and straightens his thin shoulders. “You hurt me? Funny, bender. Real funny.”
From the side of my eye, I see Nada inch toward an object in the back. Following her lead, I stalk to the left so the alien will focus on me.
“We’re fierce warriors,” I say to the alien. “Why do you think they sent us to compete in these games?”
A pause. “You don’t look like fierce warriors.”
I smile. “Looks can be deceiving.”
The alien laughs, but his chuckle is cut short as an object smashes into his skull. An awful crack echoes through the room. He topples into a mound of clumpy plaster.
Nada stands behind the alien, holding a metal table leg like a club. My jaw drops. “Wow.”
Her eyes flick up to me, but then back at the moaning alien. His mask has come up in the back and blood coats his hair. If he doesn’t die, he’s going to have a rough go from now on.
He twitches and Nada leans down, lifting the table leg with a murderous expression on her face.
“Don’t!” I say. “He was probably starving and they promised him food.” She looks up at me, chest heaving, the table leg still raised like a club. I put my hand on her trembling shoulder. “He can’t hurt us anymore.”
She blinks once, twice. Finally, she lowers the table leg.
I look down at the unconscious man. “Bet they’ve been paid to flush us into the street so Merek can shoot us.”
Behind us, they ram the door again with thuds that shake the wall.
“What now?” Nada stares at the thudding door.
I scan the room. There’s no other exit. My eyes fall on the large pile of plaster and then travel up to the caved-in ceiling.
When I point up, Nada’s eyes circle the hole and she nods. With the door rattling on its hinges, we shove the desk under the hole. It isn’t easy, getting Nada up into a place where the drooping plaster will hold her, but she manages to find purchase. Then she lies on her belly and reaches for my hands.
But it’s no good. The ceiling’s too saggy and Nada can’t get close enough to grab me. I try a few flying leaps off the desk that send me falling in rough piles of debris.
“What do we do?” I ask. The door shakes with another awful thud that makes my skin crawl. They could be through in seconds. Then I’m toast.
Nada looks down, shaking her head. “Is there anything else to stand on?”
I look around, frantic. The rest of the room is unusable trash. “Nothing.” I look up at her. “What’s up there?”
Nada glances over her shoulder and then pushes up, disappearing. Long seconds pass. Is she leaving me? I don’t think she’d do that, but as the door begins to buckle under the constant battering, my nerves take over. She’ll leave me here. I’ll die, clawed to death by masked mutants, and she’ll live.
An object falls through the ceiling and smashes into the desk. I cringe at the awful noise, but then Nada’s face appears in the hole again. She points to the object she threw down. “Hurry!”
She’s thrown down a rusty stepladder. Quickly, I open it up and stack it on top of the desk. It’s wobbly and I almost slip off, but Nada’s hand steadies me. It takes us three tries and a lot of fallen plaster, but with me kicking off and her hauling up, she manages to drag my body up over the crumbling plaster and onto the third floor.
We lie for a moment on the solid part of the ceiling, coughing and spitting out plaster dust. Below, the door shutters. They must be nearly through. Quietly, Nada and I slink out of the room and run into the third floor hallway. My relief drains away. Who knows what fresh horrors await us.
>
The layout here is the same as below—more debris-filled work spaces and adjoining offices. We have to hope that there are no roving bands of attackers, but we take no chances. As quietly as we can, we trek to the end of the warehouse. When we get to the far side, a big open window, glass all gone, looks out on the street below. Nada and I slink down and look out.
A figure is sprinting out of a building on the other side. It’s Crete. Alone. At first I figure he’s cut the zip-ties like Nada and I, but then I see a severed forearm still attached to Crete’s wrist. It swings back and forth as he runs. The end of the arm is charred like a hunk of overdone beef.
How did Crete’s partner die? Or…he wouldn’t have cut the arm off, would he? It’s too awful to think about.
Nada jabs my shoulder and I look where she’s pointing. Two four-wheelers turn out of an alley and make a bee-line for Crete. Lord Merek rides the first. On the second vehicle, a guard drives with Merek’s new wife on the back, looking like she’ll faint or throw up any moment.
Crete sprints, but it’s no use. The four-wheeler catches up in seconds. Merek reaches out, grabs Crete’s shirt, and sends him tilting into the pavement. Crete cries out, but in seconds he’s up and running again, this time with a bad limp.
I cover my mouth with both hands. This is awful to watch, but I can’t look away.
Merek doesn’t tear after Crete like I think he will. Is mercy possible? Then I see Merek raise his rifle to his shoulder socket.
I squeeze my eyes shut as the bang echoes down the corridor. Four-wheeler engines roar and someone gives a whoop of triumph from the street below.
“Is he dead?” I look at Nada, not the street.
Her eyes are locked on the events below. “Yup.”
This is insane. They’re hunting benders for sport. And we gladly do what they want just for the chance—the fleeting, miniscule chance to be rid of them.
