by Laken Cane
“The real mutants are the humans turned by these motherfuckers.” He nodded, quickly, and pointed at me. Unintentionally, I hoped. “That’s the truth of it. The gods are not the mutants. Their underlings are not the mutants. The turned humans are.”
Caleb put his fist to his mouth and tried unsuccessfully to stifle his glee.
“Shit,” I whispered. Slowly, carefully, I began to slide from my chair. I needed to get away from the group of crazy surrounding me before it was too late.
But Richard turned his back and sighed. “I apologize. Caleb, shut up.”
Caleb hushed immediately.
Lila looked at me, but when I met her stare, she looked away.
“We don’t know what they are, really,” Richard said. Once again, he was calm, cold, and dark. “All we have are guesses, as Teagan said.”
I tried to wet my lips but my mouth was too dry.
He shrugged. “I guess they’re close to how we think of vampires. But where’d they go? Where’d they come from? Were they hiding all this time, waiting for the world to end so they could come up from hell and have this shitty place all to themselves?”
“What about how they…turn people?” I had to ask. I could be one of the turned. “You’re saying you think some people can’t be turned, and they use those people as food sources? That’s why they gather the men?”
“What about the women?” Lila asked.
“We know what they’re using the women for,” I told her. “Maybe they don’t want turned humans. Maybe they kill…” Oh God, how close I came to saying, “Us.” “Them,” I finished. “Maybe they immediately kill those humans who can be turned, because those humans are somehow dangerous to them.”
My hands were icy. I stuck them under my shirt and tried to warm them against my skin, but all that did was make me colder.
I was right. I knew I was right.
And in the end, who knew what I’d become?
A mutant, maybe. I’d become a mutant.
“I don’t think the lesser mutants are able to tell the difference,” Caleb said. “They don’t know the difference between a food source and a human they might turn with their bite. When they’re out, if they bite a human, they have to eat him so he can’t turn.”
“And that takes food from the gods,” Richard said. He sighed. “So it’s forbidden for scouts to bite humans. They bring them to the cluster for testing.”
“Sage told me the gods tested the humans,” I murmured. “Now I know why.”
Caleb nodded. “That’s why the mutant was skinned. He disobeyed and ate some humans.”
“So the mutants can’t survive without us,” Lila said. “That’s why they don’t shoot us or cut our heads off. They want to keep us so they can drink our blood. They really are vampires.”
The children they fathered were them.
The turned humans were their enemies.
And the rest of the humans were just food.
I gave a sudden, quick sob, then stood. “I don’t feel well. I need to lie down.”
They all stared at me.
Lila, with a spark of fear in her eyes, Caleb, with his head tilted, a half smile on his swollen lips, and Richard, soberly.
Did he suspect that I’d been bitten by something much worse than a dog? I didn’t know. The look in his eyes wasn’t really suspicious. It was solemn and tired.
I wanted to scream at them that I was still me, that it was not my fault, that I would not hurt them.
All I could do was whimper and scamper from the room, terrified. Not of them. Of me. Of what was happening to me.
And I hated the mutants—the vampires, the aliens, whatever the fuck they were—with everything I had been, was now, and would ever be.
Hatred consumed me.
But that was better than the terror.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two nights later, I was beginning to feel a little more optimistic. Nothing horrible was happening to me. I hadn’t begun to grow fangs or crave blood or anything else that would suggest I was turning into a…mutant.
What was left of the cluster had disappeared by the time Richard went back to check. He’d informed me that the back room of the supermarket was full of dead pregnant women, but that he saw only three dead men in the wagon. The others had escaped. At least, that’s what I told myself.
Maybe the remaining gods had gone on to join another cluster and reevaluate how they could let a few humans destroy them. Maybe they lurked still, waiting for the right time to strike us.
The air was still not free of mutants or the impact they’d had upon it. Some of the shops and homes still burned—several homes on my old street had succumbed to the spreading fire set by the mutants—and I doubted Crowbridge would ever stop smelling of smoke.
“Why is the town suddenly so full of mutants?” I’d asked.
“The gods seem to send some sort of SOS,” Richard told me. “Groups and stragglers may wander in for months to come.”
“Do you still want to set up a base here?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe I’ll keep searching a while longer. Keep hunting mutants.” He hadn’t looked at me. “Supplies in this town have dwindled to nothing. We’ve spent the last two days searching homes and you saw what we found.”
I nodded. Not a lot. Some canned food, some oil, first aid, batteries.
But now the homes were empty and Richard wanted to move on.
What a way to spend a life. Killing sleeping mutants. Destroying gods.
The thought depressed me.
By dinnertime the next evening, I was ready to eat. More than ready. But I was not really ready to leave.
It was my town.
Richard and Caleb and Lila were my new family. If they didn’t kill me, I’d stick with them. I had nothing else.
If I kept the secret of my bite, everything would be okay.
“You seem different,” Caleb said, handing me a bowl of stew. “How are you feeling?”
I inhaled deeply, uncaring that the bowl was nearly hot enough to put blisters on my palms. “I’ve never smelled anything this good,” I said, then took another long sniff.
“I said, you seem different,” Caleb repeated. “How are—”
“I heard you.”
He flashed a grin, then shrugged.
“She’s not talking about it,” Lila said. Then she frowned. “How are you feeling?”
I sighed. “Can I just eat, please?”
She crossed her arms and stared at me.
“Fine.” I placed the bowl on the table with exaggerated care. Richard spooned hot food into his mouth and never once looked up from his bowl.
“In the last couple of weeks, I’ve learned all sorts of new things—you know, like how mutants make human women pregnant—and I sliced and diced a woman who was suffering too much to live.
“I lost a little girl. I found new friends. I snuck into town and walked away from tortured humans without doing a whole lot to help them. I was attacked by mutants, chomped on by a frigging dog…”
I took a deep breath, then thumped my chest. “I’ve lost the little bubble of relative safety that I had here for two years. I’m just now healing from the attack, and I’m weak and still a bit confused. I have no idea what I’m doing. At all.” I lifted my chin. “So if you really want to know, I feel like shit. A big pile of shit. Now will you both please shut up and let me eat my dinner?”
Lila pursed her lips. “You talk too much.”
Caleb laughed. “Leave her alone, Lila.”
I pulled my bowl to me and began eating with as much gusto as Richard. “God, this is good.”
“Richard’s a great cook,” Lila said. “Doesn’t matter what you hand him, he can make something good out of it.” And there was just the tiniest bit of hero worship in her tone.
She believed Richard had made her into something good.
I paused with my fourth spoonful halfway to my mouth. I sat it down, gently, and touched my belly.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked.
“Funny feeling. It hit me all at once. I guess I’m just full.”
Richard hooked a finger in the rim of my bowl and dragged it across the table. “Don’t want it to go to waste.” And he proceeded to eat the rest of my stew as he fell back into his silence.
Then Caleb said the very thing that I’d been obsessing over. The thing that scared me almost more than losing Sage had scared me.
“The bite of the mutant. We need to talk about that.”
They all looked at me.
I shivered and rubbed my arms. “I wasn’t bitten by a mutant! I was bitten by a dog.”
Richard lifted an eyebrow. “He wasn’t accusing you, Teagan.”
I put my cold hands against my hot cheeks. “I thought…”
He blew a tired breath out and ran his hands over his face. “The bite.”
My stomach tightened and my head began to ache and I was pretty sure I didn’t really want them to tell me. I didn’t want to know.
“You seem different.”
I felt different.
And not just because my beloved sister no longer lived inside my mind. There was something else.
“I’m scared,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to, but what I was thinking slipped through my lips.
“It’s a scary world,” Caleb said. He moved his hand across the table to take my cold fingers in his.
“Have you ever seen a human bitten by a mutant, Teagan?” Richard asked.
“How could she see anything?” Lila asked. “She’s never left this godforsaken town.”
I ignored her and shook my head.
“I have,” he said.
I took a drink of water. “And?”
“Before we found out that alcohol would kill them,” Caleb said, picking up the story, “we came upon a group of scouts—armed—attacking a small camp of humans. We couldn’t do much. If we used our guns and there were other mutants in the area, we’d all die. If we did nothing…” He dropped his gaze to the table.
“We did nothing,” Richard said, “for a while. We waited and watched as the mutants dragged the humans from their tents and…” He glanced at Lila, who remained strangely silent. “And began to slaughter them. In the end, neither of us could stay hidden. We rushed them, guns in one hand and blades in the other. You know guns don’t kill them. Guns only bring more mutants.”
He fell silent for a few unbearably heavy moments, his gaze distant.
Finally, I could stand the silence no longer. “What happened?”
He met my stare. “One of the victims was alive. Before the mutants could recover from their wounds, I threw him over my shoulder and we got the hell out of there.”
“What happened to the man? He died?”
Richard nodded. “Eventually.”
“How?”
“Richard killed him,” Lila said. She rose from her chair, carried her bowl to the sink, and walked out the back door.
“Why?” I asked them, mystified. “Why did you kill him?”
“Because he was bitten, Teagan, and he lived.” Richard’s voice was soft, but his stare was hard. Very hard. “He was becoming one of them. Worse than one of them.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said, nodding. “He was changing.”
I swallowed. “He attacked you?”
“No,” Richard said. “But it was a matter of time. We could see him changing.”
I looked at the door through which Lila had just disappeared. “Why’d she leave?”
“She doesn’t like to relive it,” Caleb said. “The man we killed…”
“Yes?”
“He was her father.”
“Oh, my God.” I put my hand over my chest. “How awful.”
I understood then why Lila had kept my secret.
I knew about guilt. I knew about redemption.
By saving me, she was making up for what had happened to her dad. Yeah, I understood that.
“Lila,” Caleb said. “She’d run away from her camp two days earlier. That’s what saved her. When we found her, she was injured and—”
“Not our story to tell,” Richard interrupted.
Caleb’s cheeks reddened. “Sorry.”
“Anyway,” Richard continued, “you want to know about the man who was bitten. What the bite did to him. What it changed him into.”
“Yes.”
“He started getting stronger. Hungrier. Meaner.” Richard kept his stony stare pinned to mine as he spoke, and I wondered if he could see the truth in my eyes. “Darker.”
“He got faster, too,” Caleb added.
“Like the mutants?” I asked.
“No,” Richard said. “Like the gods.”
I swallowed, trying to dislodge the cold lump of fear in my throat. “How are the gods different from regular vampires?”
“Mutants,” Caleb said.
I tore my stare from Richard to look at him. “What?”
“You called them vampires.”
I frowned at him and turned back to Richard. “So? How are they different?”
“You realize I’m figuring this out as I go along,” Richard said. “Don’t you? The only way to find out the truth about them is to ask them.”
I sighed. “Yes, I guess so.”
“The gods are more powerful,” Richard said. “That’s all I know for sure. And I think that as the months march on, they’re going to adapt and…find themselves. Then they’ll be forces to fear.”
“You don’t think they’ve accessed their full power yet.”
“No,” he said. “I do not.”
So many questions. And we had the answers to almost none of them.
I realized that Caleb still held my hand, so I pulled away from his grasp and twisted my fingers together.
“In the beginning,” Richard said, his voice low, almost hypnotic, “they were not nearly as bad as they are now. They were nearly human in their confusion.”
“Oh,” I murmured, my eyes wide. “You were their prisoner, weren’t you?”
Caleb looked at the tabletop.
Rage like lightning flashed through Richard’s eyes and for a second, I was terrified of him. Terrified.
There was something in his eyes so awful I couldn’t bear to look at him.
I shoved my chair back and stood, reaching automatically for weapons I wasn’t wearing.
He calmed almost immediately—soothed, perhaps, by my fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
But I had no trouble hearing the lie in his voice.
Richard would hurt whoever he needed to hurt.
I could barely breathe. Not just because of what I might be or what I might become, but because they—my friends—might kill me because of it.
They were not really my friends.
And I was not safe.
I slid my fingers to the bandage around my neck, but dropped them when I looked up to find Richard watching me.
I’d been told more than once that my face was an open book, and anyone could read it.
I hadn’t yet learned to wear a mask of impassivity. I hadn’t yet learned to hide behind cold, blank eyes.
Not yet. But I would.
I backed away from them. “I’m going to bed.”
“Goodnight,” Richard said.
Caleb stood as well. “I’ll come with you.”
I frowned. “No. I’m going to sleep.”
He tossed me a grin. “I read a mean bedtime story.”
I hesitated.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s a hard, cold world. There’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure when it’s there for the taking.”
If he’d been someone else, I might have agreed. I’d have taken his hand and led him to my bed. But he was not someone else—and he scared me a little too much.
I shook my head. “No.”
I could feel him watching me as I crawled into my sleeping bag.
When I got a chance, I decided, I wo
uld slip away.
Because I had been bitten by a mutant.
And I was different because of that bite.
When they found out, they’d kill me just as they killed the mutants.
Just as they’d killed Lila’s father.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When I woke up, Lila was sitting in the chair beside my sleeping bag, watching me.
I sat up and slid my hand under the cover, feeling for the sheathed blade I’d stashed there. “What time is it?”
She tapped her baseball bat against the bed. “Just past dawn. Let’s go search for Sage.”
“What?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “I found tracks last night, on the edge of town. Whoever has her is moving slow, but they’re moving. I’m sure this town’s mutant infestation slowed them down.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and placed the blade on my lap. “Humans? Humans have her?”
She stared at the blade before meeting my eyes. “Yeah.” She nodded toward the blade. “You thinking I’m going to murder you in your sleep?”
“I was thinking you might try,” I said, calmly.
“You’re like an infant, Teagan. I wouldn’t have to try very hard.”
My whole body tensed. I said nothing.
“Are you coming or what?”
I stood. “Let me get dressed.”
She nodded.
As I walked toward the bathroom, I heard Caleb and Richard in the kitchen, their voices low, and the comforting clink of silverware as they ate their breakfasts.
When I returned, washed, dressed, and a little more cheerful, I brought with me a bottle of lotion. “Moisturizer,” I told Lila. “Want some?”
She snorted. “God, you’re such a fucking girl.”
I shrugged and put the lotion on a table, then followed her into the kitchen. “And you’re such a bitch.”
She laughed. “Grab a protein bar and let’s get out there. We’re wasting daylight. You’re like a turtle, you’re so slow.”
“I’m too much of a girl, I’m too slow…is there anything about me you actually like?” I grabbed a protein bar and ripped open the package. Surely there was. She’d saved my life. And every moment that she kept her mouth shut, she continued to save it.
Her smile slipped, and she ran her stare over my face. “No.” But her voice was soft.
