by Laken Cane
Though I couldn’t really see his eyes or his expression, I felt the coldness in his stare. I felt the hatred.
I wondered if he could feel mine. Probably not. Probably all he felt was my terror.
I went for the gun in my belt.
There wasn’t a chance in hell I would go down without a fight. Not only because it didn’t occur to me, but because I was in a dark, mad place, and I was going to make sure I killed him, escaped, or died.
Those were my choices.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I acknowledged that the world was on fire. That the craziness was really happening.
Everything that happened then was reflexive. My brain was on autopilot, but that was okay. It knew what to do despite the screaming madness of my mind.
I grabbed for the squirt gun with one hand and a blade with the other. I knew exactly where they were. There was no searching or scrabbling about—I simply reached down and yanked free both weapons.
I imagined his eyes widening when I stuck the knife blade through the fabric of his shirt and through the plastic beneath it, and further still into the vulnerable flesh hidden beneath the layers.
Seconds, that’s all it took. I stuffed the gun through the rent fabric, and I pumped the trigger hard and fast.
And finally, he dropped his hand from my throat.
I could breathe again.
He drew in a quick, sharp breath as he began to burn beneath his clothing, as the plastic began to melt into his flesh.
It was that exact moment a bullet whizzed by my face and pierced his skull.
“Shit,” he murmured, and it was such a human thing to say that I paused.
I fell from the horse and landed on my ass so hard I was sure something broke. My teeth clacked together and I tasted blood from the bite I took from my tongue. But I was alive.
Then Lila was there, yanking me up, screaming at me to “move, move!” and I was running into the darkness, free.
Free.
Free of the god.
Richard sprayed the mutants who dared linger, then followed us out of hell.
I turned to look back only once, but the god was gone.
“I won, you bastard,” I whispered.
And I was a little less afraid.
Lila led me through yard after yard, down alleys lit not with fire but with dawn, and finally, she pushed open the door to a small one-story and we rushed inside, then fell to the floor, exhausted, injured, but alive.
We’d faced the gods, and we’d survived to talk about it.
Three of us had, anyway.
“Oh no,” I murmured. “Lila, where’s Caleb?”
She took a deep, hitching breath, then put her fingers to her mouth.
“Lila?” I crawled to her and grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand away from her lips. “Where is he?”
“Taken,” she whispered, finally. “The gods took Caleb.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I’m getting used to their screams.” I yanked open the cupboards, searching for something we needed more than food at the moment. Water. “They hurt, but they don’t disable me anymore.”
Lila picked glass from the back of her hand with a pair of tweezers and ignored me.
I’d lost my bag somewhere in the night—I couldn’t remember losing it, but when the urgency of the previous hours lessened, I realized my bag was gone.
There’d been two bottles of water in the bag. My mouth was so dry it felt like I was chewing on a pile of wool. My throat hurt when I swallowed, which wasn’t surprising considering I’d been choked by a god.
“We’ll have to find water,” I said.
Richard walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” Lila asked.
“To find water.”
“We have to go after him, Richard,” Lila said.
“We’ll discuss it when I get back.”
“We’ll get both of them,” I told her, when Richard was gone. “Sage and Caleb. We’ll get them back.”
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Mentally.”
I paced, though I was so exhausted I could barely breathe. “Good. I feel good. I’m not so afraid anymore.”
“Because you faced them. You were captured, and you escaped.” Her grin was white and wide through the soot on her face. “Now you can start your journey into badassery.”
I laughed, then flinched and touched my throat. “Ouch.”
“I bet that’s what he said when I blew his head half off,” she said. “How was that for a good shot?”
I smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, Lila.”
“Well, yeah, I bet you are. You’re going to owe me big time.”
“I already do.”
“True.”
I laughed, then grabbed my throat again. “Ouch! Stop making me laugh.”
“Gah. You are such a girl.”
I went to peer out the window. “Did you see my dog out there?”
“Nope.” She slapped a bandage on her hand, stuffed her tiny first aid kit back into her bag, then stood. “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll need to rest before we go get our friends back.”
“The mutants are not going to give up, are they?” I said, walking with her into the living room. “As long as we’re here, they’re going to try to take us.”
“Yes. Good news is, they don’t want us dead. They just want us.”
“For food and breeding. What lovely things to aspire to.” I threw my hands up and twirled around on the living room floor. “Oh I so want to live with the mutants.”
She didn’t smile. “You’ll probably end up getting that wish sooner or later.”
“If I do,” I said, marveling at my giddiness, “promise to come rescue me again, will you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “If I’m alive, girlie, I’ll rescue you every time.”
“Then you can have the couch. I’ll take this rather uncomfortable looking chair.”
She threw herself onto the couch, turned over, and was snoring in sixty seconds. It took me a little longer. I wanted a blanket, but didn’t want to go upstairs to find one. I was thirsty. I was full of nervous energy.
But finally, I managed to quiet my mind and drifted off into an uneasy sleep. I was awakened what seemed like five minutes later by the back door slamming.
“Water,” Richard called.
“Food?” I asked hopefully, when my stomach growled. I was already beginning to understand why Richard and the others had been so awestruck when they’d walked into my stocked house.
“Yes,” he answered, when Lila and I walked into the kitchen. “This town still holds a few surprises.”
“Not for long,” Lila said. “The mutants will take what they can. They have to feed their prisoners to keep them alive.”
I rubbed the grit from my eyes and took the bottle of water Richard offered me. He looked worse than ever—he hadn’t bothered washing his face, his hair was stringy, and blood from a cut on his cheek painted the lines of his face.
He caught me staring at him and met my gaze calmly. “Eat something. You’ll need your strength for tonight.”
“Two o’clock,” I said. “When the gods sleep.”
“We don’t have enough weapons to go after them,” he continued. “We’ve lost the alcohol. We’ll have to spend the day searching the houses for more. If we can’t gather enough today, we’ll push the attack back to tomorrow night.”
Lila opened a box of crackers and began spreading peanut butter on them. “Eat, Teagan.”
After we ate, we split up and began searching the houses. The gods had burned some of the houses on my old street, but the others were untouched. For now.
Nearly every house I entered netted me at least one bottle of alcohol. If the others were doing as well, we’d have enough.
We hadn’t discussed the fact that the mutants—at least the gods—were protecting themselves.
The important thing, at least to me, was getting our people back. If we killed some mutan
ts along the way, awesome. If not, there’d be other opportunities to fight.
I just wanted Sage safe.
And Caleb, of course.
I cast the heavy dread and fear aside. There was no room for it.
But that night, as we prepared to leave the house, it came sneaking back.
“Scared?” Lila asked, as she weighed herself down with alcohol tanks, blades, and guns.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m going to do what I have to do, afraid or not.”
“That’s called courage.” Her eyes shone when she smiled, and excitement made her face glow.
“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”
Richard had become more taciturn than usual, and barely said two words. Lila told me he was always that way before a big fight.
He was also depressed over losing the supplies.
Maybe later I’d tell him about the containers of supplies I’d buried out behind the mall. Maybe.
We jogged down the street, with only the stars and moon lighting our way, and then we cut off into the woods.
The woods were like us. Silent, grim, and dark.
Hushed, as though they held their breath, waiting to see if we’d bring the fight into their sheltering arms. To see if we’d survive the night.
My stomach was tight, my breathing harsh, and my chest seemed too small to contain my swelling, thudding heart. Fear and anxiety were heavy burdens that took up residence in my mind and refused to budge.
Robin was with me as I ran. I felt her in the back of my mind, and in my heart, though I’d heard her less since the new people had found me.
Robin?
“I’ll protect you, Teagan.”
Then we were there. Too soon. Much too soon.
The mutants’ cluster loomed before us like a tiny, sinister town, and we crept into it like the intruders we were.
I pulled Robin’s memory around me, and with Sage’s little face in my mind, I crept into the gods’ camp, my gun out.
The crackers and peanut butter I’d eaten sat on my stomach, thick and sour. I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything else.
It seemed like the town was on fire, but it was only the huge bonfires the mutants had built at intervals along the street and in the parking lots. The place was lit up like a carnival.
Smoke, black and gray, rose into the sky. It smelled like they were burning plastic along with wood, and it burned my nose.
I prayed I wouldn’t cough, but as I crept into the edge of camp, the smoke almost got the best of me.
Richard and Lila veered off—they had a different job to do.
And I was alone.
The camp sprawled across the street, spread out in chaotic disorder. But not far from me, the dark outline of the wagons stood tall and unmoving beneath the brightness of the crescent moon.
Richard had drawn a map of the layout of the camp, and I knew where to go and what to do. But there were mutants everywhere, and a singsong voice in my mind told me they were going to see me, catch me, and eat me as I screamed.
Luckily, most of them were asleep.
It was safer for them to lie in as many different places as possible—Richard had said they didn’t sleep in big piles or even close to each other, to make killing them more difficult.
The awake mutants gathered around campfires, some of them speaking words I understood, interspersed with clicks and sounds I was sure had never come from a human mouth.
They laughed uproariously, talked, yelled…just like humans at an overly crowded bar on a Saturday night.
I counted at least four gods in the mix, though most of the mutants were the regular scouts and a few of the skinny orphans. The gods were without their armor, and why wouldn’t they be? They’d never believe we were stupid enough—three small, puny humans—to attack them on their own turf.
One of them, standing impossibly close to the fire, lifted what looked like a gallon jug and began gulping the contents. When he finished, he belched, which caused more outbursts of laughter.
I put my hand to my mouth, reeling with the thought that the mutants were not only learning from us, they were becoming us.
I clenched my gun so tightly it cracked.
It sure seemed like there were more than twenty of them awake. More like forty. Maybe there’d been more of them in the cluster than I’d realized.
Richard would have known, though.
He and Lila had made alcohol bombs, and they’d use those intermittently placed bonfires to their advantage.
“We’ll fight, you’ll rescue.”
That was fine with me.
I pressed my back against a tree, waiting. I kept darting looks around the tree from the mutants to the wagons—it wasn’t hard to see the one that contained the prisoners.
The sides had been built high, but the back was protected only by a tailgate type door. The mutants were secure in their belief that the prisoners would not try to escape. I wasn’t sure why.
Sage and her mother had escaped, after all.
There were also two mutants guarding the prison wagon.
I heard a horse whinny, and close by, someone cleared his throat.
And I heard moans.
The smell of human and animal waste was strong. Not even the burning plastic scent could mask it.
“God,” I whispered, and my hands began to shake as the reality of the situation hit me.
One of the mutants stiffened suddenly, and held up a hand to halt the conversation. They fell immediately silent, and in the next second they all began sniffing the air.
They smelled the bodies melting. Burning.
They smelled mutant death.
And then, the death screams began.
I hadn’t planned to wear the earplugs, but when the screams started, I changed my mind. I dug them from my pocket, then almost immediately dropped one.
“Shit fuck!” I leaned forward, trying to catch sight of the earplug. I screwed the one I had into my ear, then squatted and ran my hand over the ground.
It was lost forever. One would have to do. I stood, my legs as weak and fluttery as paper.
The two mutants watching the wagons finally rushed away, and that was my cue.
I darted out from behind the tree, cradling my big gun across my chest—it wasn’t attached to tanks on my back, but I had two water bottles full of alcohol in case I emptied my gun. I sprinted for the prison wagon.
I reached the wagon in seconds, but it took me at least a minute to unhook and drop the tailgate.
I leapt into the wagon, then understood why the mutants didn’t mind leaving the prisoners in an unenclosed wagon.
They were roped together and couldn’t move. The ropes were thick and short, and some of the humans were bound so close they couldn’t even turn their heads to look at me.
Their wrists were tied behind their backs.
Eight of them, all bound together. Bleeding, beaten, and one man, I saw, who appeared to be dead. The smell from the pitiful group rose up to surround me in a cloud of horror, and I just stood there, frozen, staring.
I saw neither Sage nor Caleb.
“Where are the pregnant women kept?” I knelt beside the first man, put my gun in the straw covering the wagon floor, then yanked a sharp blade from a sheath at my side.
The rope was twisted around his neck so tightly it sank into his flesh, and even in the darkness I could see blood on the rope. Still, I had to try.
I pulled a different knife—one with a serrated blade—and began to saw at the rope.
He cried out, and I could see there was nothing behind his eyes but fear.
“Shit,” I cried. “Shit!”
If I got him free, I’d give him the blades and let him free the others. I had to hurry. I had to find Sage.
“Please,” someone whispered. The voice was as raw and rusty as a death rattle, and it slithered down my spine with cold fingers of something so bad that it had no name. “Please.”
I grabbed my gun and jumped to my feet.
My boots sank into something thick and mushy, but any revulsion I felt was buried quickly beneath the awfulness of those poor people and their situation.
“Where are you?” I asked, softly. “Hello?”
“Here.”
I pulled my tiny flashlight from my pocket and clicked it on. Sounds began to penetrate the shocked haze in my mind—thumps, bullets spraying, and finally, screaming.
Death screams.
I burst into sobs, then hurriedly shut my mind to the screams. I couldn’t allow myself to hear them.
“Here,” he said, again.
I worked my way through the bodies, stepping carefully, shining my light over each person until…
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
The person who’d spoken wasn’t a man. He was a boy. A boy maybe twelve years old—it wasn’t easy to tell beneath the grime and blood covering his face.
His hair was short and dark, his eyes huge and sunken. His cheekbones were almost sharp enough to cut my finger when I touched his face.
I tried to put my fingers between the rope and his throat, but the rope was wrapped too tightly.
“Oh, no,” I said, again. “Oh, God.”
“Get me loose,” he said. His lips were cracked and bloodstained, but almost as pale as his face. “Get me loose.”
I tugged at his rope. “Okay, honey. I’ll try.”
Someone behind him wheezed suddenly. A laugh, maybe. “You can’t.”
We had one hour. One hour to kill the mutants and get out of there before the others woke up. I knew Richard would kill every sleeping mutant he could find, but he would never be able to find or kill them all.
And if they woke up while we were still in their camp, it would go badly for us.
“In and out,” Richard had said. “We fight and kill the awake ones, then find and kill as many of the sleepers as possible before the hour is up. Then we get the hell out before they come after us.”
“Help us,” someone else begged, and suddenly the wagon was full of pleading voices.
Time was running out.
“Please don’t let me cut him,” I whispered, and began to saw at the rope around the child’s neck.
“Cut me loose first,” the man next to him said.
But I ignored him and holding the flashlight in my mouth, I sawed, and hacked, and held my breath.
