The Other Side

by Joshua McCune

  I try various name and birthday-death day combinations for the tablet password. I try simple variations—0000, 1234. Random ones. Alphanumeric words. Nothing works.

  “You’re starting to piss me off,” I say, looking at him. Blood spatters his face and the square of paper is still lodged in his bandanna. I tug it free, check it over again to see if I missed anything.

  Useless. But maybe the little squirrel’s got something else in there.

  I jerk the bandanna free.

  Red hair.

  I shudder.

  I don’t want to look, but I can’t help it.

  Beneath drooped lids, the green eyes are slack.

  “You know who I am. Dammit, look at me! Would you do it?” I scream at him.

  In a heartbeat. Is what he’s supposed to say, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Because he’s dead.

  I crash to my knees.

  He threatened to kill me, but I killed him.

  I killed him.

  I killed him.

  I killed him.

  I hug him and cry into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry.”

  29

  The explosions end, the walls stop rattling.

  Real?

  I approach the heap of crimson-soaked blankets in the corner, lift the edge of one enough to see the body. Still there. Still dead. I study the face a second longer, just to be sure. Not Sam.

  A Diocletian. That’s who I killed. An evil dragon rider. A bad guy.

  Why couldn’t you have been a bad guy?

  Fuck.

  At least he’s not Sam.

  Fuck.

  I wait until the crank lamp fades, crank it back up, check again. Real. But not Sam.

  Fuck.

  Fade, crank, check.

  There. Always there. Never Sam. But always there.

  I should close his eyes. At least I should do that. Say a prayer for him. Something.

  But I can’t.

  Why can’t I?

  Fuck.

  I throw the sheet back over his face. “Why couldn’t you have been—”

  “Don’t feel bad.”

  I spin around. A man watches me from the doorway. He looks one part king, one part gangster, one part psychiatric patient. Dressed in white scrubs, he’s got a brownish-red beard that belongs on a lumberjack and a devilish grin that belongs on the Cheshire cat. He’s wearing a CENSIR. A gold-plated Beretta protrudes from his shoulder holster.

  I quickly wipe at my eyes.

  “I’m O.J. Double T the first dandelion you . . .” He makes a tsking noise and slashes a finger across his throat.

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t be shy. We were all quite impressed.”

  He walks over, still with that grin. From his pants, he pulls a key, which he uses to unlock my handcuffs. He taps my CENSIR. “This stays on. I’m sure you’re fine with that.”

  I nod.

  He heads for the exit. “You coming?”

  I glance over my shoulder. “What about . . . ?”

  “Double T? We’ll get somebody in here to clean up that dandelion. Not your problem anymore.”

  “But . . .”

  The grin falters. “You coming or not?”

  Coming.

  Beyond the thick steel door is an underground highway. Flickering lights run the length of the arched ceiling, illuminating four lanes that extend into darkness in both directions. Doors are recessed into the tunnel walls every couple hundred of feet. Stenciled letters indicate their purpose. Directly across from us is Prayer Center U5-372. The room in which I spent the last several days is Shelter U5-2153.

  This is an understate. We took a field trip to a prototype my freshman year, built deep beneath the streets of D.C. A relic. Our guide told us it was the only one in existence, a quarter complete before construction got scrapped.

  “Thought there was only U1,” I say as O.J. directs me to an armored SUV—military, I think, but painted white and with #1 inscribed all over the hood and doors—idling in the access lane.

  “Learn that in your history books?” His voice goes theatrically gruff, his face dramatically stern. “Last defense against the dragons? Worst-case scenario?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Yep. And they wouldn’t tell you differently.” He pulls onto the road with a smirk. “A devil they don’t want you to know.”

  I give him a questioning look.

  He laughs. “It’s like when we armed the Afghans against the Russians. That’s what my G-Pop said. Yep.” He adopts an old-man voice. “‘A circle of screw-you gratitude.’”

  I glance at him. He’s back to the grin, his eyes fixed on the empty road ahead. Fixed, but half glazed, like he’s reminiscing. Or batshit. Completely.

  Wish I’d brought a ravioli lid with me. Or ten.

  We speed past more blast doors with faded markings and numbers on the adjacent walls. Dragon Shelter U5-2149. Supply Depot U5-371. Mess Hall U5-148 . . . there’s nothing to indicate where we are, no signs of Allie anywhere. Or anybody, for that matter.

  “Where exactly are we?” I ask.

  “Down below.”

  Double T said something about bombing mountains. “The Rockies?”

  “Could be.”

  A few minutes later, we pass a prayer center with the words Klyv’s Klan written beside it in hand and a graffiti picture of a cartoonish Green hugging some smiling white-cloaked teenagers. The next prayer center belongs to Praxus’s Posse. Praxus looks meaner than Klyv.

  O.J. makes a left turn down an access road. The tunnel presses in around us. The flickering decreases, the lighting brightens. Restricted Zone is written in large red letters every hundred or so feet.

  “You good at anything?” he asks.

  “I can shoot.”

  “That’s what all the dandelions say.”

  I force a smirk, mimic the throat-slashing gesture O.J. made. “I can kill.”

  He touches his nose, points at me. “Got me there.” His grin widens. “We’ll see how that works when you’re not surfing scales.”

  We approach a guard station. A metal gate lies crumpled off to the side. White-cloaked soldiers lurk behind sandbags. Half have their machine guns and rocket launchers aimed in the direction we’re headed, the rest have them trained on us.

  O.J. slows, flashes his lights in a sporadic pattern. The soldiers lower their weapons. He flips them off as we pass.

  The tunnel terminates at a pair of blast doors, each as big as a Blue. They appear to be jammed, open wide enough for a couple of people to fit through. A faint green glow comes from the other side. A dozen armored SUVs are haphazardly parked near the opening.

  As we get out, a guard emerges from the shadows on our right. Young face. Sane eyes. “This her?”

  O.J. nods.

  “Thought she was taller.”

  “Thought she was cuter,” another voice calls from the left.

  “Where’s Double T?” somebody else calls from the darkness.

  O.J. inclines his head at me, makes that slashing gesture again. I feel sick. “Ravioli lids. Turned him into jerky.”

  They offer compliments.

  I ignore them and follow O.J. through the blast doors into another tunnel that’s clearly been widened by dragons. Broken concrete and shredded mannequins clutter the sides. On a fragment of wall still intact, I discern what appears to be a three-pronged propeller inside a yellow triangle. Up ahead, mixing with the sporadic growls of Greens, I hear something similar to gunfire, but it doesn’t sound quite right. More of a soft hiss than a metallic purr.

  Around a bend, the tunnel splits in two. A pair of Diocletians guard the one to the left. Behind them, the tunnel narrows to its original size, unrenovated by dragons. I spot more of those yellow signs. These have words beneath. DANGER: RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS.

  We go right, toward the Green glow, the growls, and that strange gunfire. The broken walls and broken floor shift to solid stone. I smell somethin
g unpleasant, but it’s too faint to place. A breeze swirls. Cold, but I refrain from hugging myself, because O.J. keeps glancing at me with that stupid grin.

  The tunnel opens into a cavern stockpiled with weaponry and split in two by a gargantuan wall. White and lumpy, as if made of giant interconnected seashells, it’s covered in graffiti. The wall stops a few feet short of the ceiling. The green glow emanating from the other side illuminates overhead sprinklers that cast a mist of fine spray in the dragons’ direction.

  On this side, beyond pallets of machine guns and rocket launchers, two dozen or so teens in white scrubs and bandannas are shooting up mannequins. A spindly man paces back and forth behind them, shouting instructions about breath control and muscle relaxation.

  “Welcome to the arena, dandelion.” O.J. says, ushering me toward the shooting range.

  Their guns resembles pistols, but blockier. With one shot, heads explode, limbs sever. With two, torsos crumble. A conveyor system brings up the next mannequin while the shooter reloads. A digital scoreboard that hangs from the ceiling tallies each kill.

  I do a quick survey of faces, but don’t recognize anybody except James. He’s near the far end, no longer in his sling. He fires with rhythmic precision, every shot a head shot. His name’s at the top of the kill list.

  He is a killer, I remind myself.

  Just like me.

  A couple of people notice our arrival. James glances my way. It’s the briefest thing.

  But his next shot doesn’t hit the head. It doesn’t hit the mannequin at all. It pulverizes a chunk of the cave wall behind the conveyor system.

  “Cock bait crawls in here, and you skipped right over the rusted rails, pretty boy,” the instructor says. “Get your mind right!”

  James nods once and resumes decapitating dummies.

  “Ready for some fun?” O.J. grabs one of the blocky guns from a pallet and tosses it to me.

  It’s got two switches. I recognize the safety, but not the bottom one. I eject the clip. The bullets resemble sharpened rectangles. Thin. The clip probably holds forty rounds.

  “New scale-chaser joy toy we ransacked in a raid a couple weeks back,” O.J. says. “They call it a railshot. Meant to penetrate dragon hide. They come with toxins and stuff you dandelions played with in Georgietown. Our engineers modified it for our purposes.” He indicates the switch beneath the safety. “Adds a plasma burst. A miniature chain reaction that liquefies your target from the inside. Only thing it won’t melt is the sun.”

  I start for the nearest open mannequin. O.J. grabs me. “Where you going?”

  “To have some fun.”

  “Shooting stuffed dolls doesn’t mean anything. You said you can kill. We’ll see.” He points toward that seashell wall that separates us from the dragons.

  “Are you taking her riding, O.J.?” James asks.

  “Back in line, pretty boy,” the instructor says.

  O.J. holds up a hand, spins around.

  Everybody stops shooting, and I’d swear the dragon growls quiet a notch, that the glow in the cavern brightens a couple of notches.

  I look over my shoulder. This time James’s eyes do linger before shifting to O.J. “You can’t do this. She’s not ready.”

  O.J. smiles at him. “You said something, dandelion?”

  “She just got out of detox. You can’t send her out.”

  I switch off the safety, wheel around, and blow the head off the mannequin behind him. A couple of people whistle. Others laugh. I grin at James. “I’ll do just fine, thank you very much.”

  He ignores me. “You know I’m right, O.J. Praxus could berserk her if you restore any part of the connection this soon.”

  “I don’t plan on restoring it. I need to know how well she flies.”

  “You can’t be serious. The sky’s crawling with DJs.”

  “Good talk. Get back in the line before I berserk you. Vincent, I expect this from the dragons, but not these little dandelions.”

  The instructor’s features tauten as he gives a curt nod.

  He looks at me. “Come on, let’s see if you can shoot anything besides dolls.”

  We head for the seashell wall. Closer, I see it’s made of armor plating—a mishmash of destroyed vehicle hulls fused together.

  That unpleasant smell intensifies. My nose wrinkles. “Roses?”

  O.J. indicates the misters above the wall. “Helps mask our odor. You allergic or something?”

  “No. Just don’t like them.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” he says, like it’s not unfortunate at all. “Why do you think we wear white?”

  I’d never thought about it before. “Because they wear black.”

  “Yin and yang, huh? That’s how your government sells it.”

  “Not my government.”

  He shrugs. “Greens are a feisty bunch. White soothes them.”

  I imagine a Green basking lazily in a field of white roses and can’t help laughing. O.J. looks at me like I’m the crazy one, which gets me laughing more.

  We pass a stairwell that drops into a causeway beneath the wall and come to a U-shaped bank of lockers. Each has initials taped to it.

  I follow O.J. to a locker marked D.T. It contains a white cloak, body armor, a helmet, some goggles, an oxygen mask attached to a breath pack, several Confederate-flag bandannas, and a perfume bottle.

  Affixed to the inside of the door is a palm-sized mirror with the word You written in black marker. Pictures cover the rest of the space. They show Double T and his family, their names written on each one. He’s the only one smiling in any of them.

  O.J. uses a black magic marker to cross out D.T. Beside it he writes 25.

  I grit my teeth and pull out the body armor.

  “Not your size,” he says as I screw with the buckles, “but we’ll get that worked out . . . if necessary.”

  Too big, the heavy vest digs into my shoulders. “It’s fine.” The helmet’s got a couple of dragon-jet stickers affixed to it. They’re scored down the middle. Kill tokens, I assume. I put it on, tighten the straps. Smells like Double T. I think of Allie. In nae.

  I slide the goggles over my eyes, tug on the white cloak and breath pack, then head for the stairwell. I glance over my shoulder at O.J., who seems slightly bemused. I push out a grin. “You coming?”

  “You forgot this,” he says, tossing me the perfume bottle.

  I sniff it and blanch. But it’s better than Double T’s scent.

  “Don’t be shy now,” he says.

  I douse myself in the rose stench.

  We pass under the wall and ascend the stairs at the opposite end of the causeway. “Getting scared, dandelion?”

  I ignore him.

  This part of the arena is larger. Can’t see the ceiling, not even with the glow of four Greens providing generous amounts of light. Each dragon is contained in a cage of forearm-thick steel grating that disappears into the darkness overhead. They prowl close to the bars, snarling and smoking and growling at each other nonstop.

  A dragon zoo. Or rodeo, given the harness and saddles mounted on each one. And I’m the cowgirl up next. I take small comfort in the bulky collars that encircle their necks. Similar to the ones the military used on the dragons in the battle room to control their fire and punish them when they got out of line.

  “They’re your prisoners?” I ask, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.

  “God, no. They’re ascetics. This is but a means to an end.”

  A Green in the right front cage spins around and locks in on me. They are indistinguishable save for slight variations in size, but I know this one’s Praxus. He opens his mouth wide to roar, but it’s choked off almost immediately as veins of lightning erupt from the collar and ripple through his body. Baring his teeth, he half stumbles, half charges us. Out of the corner of my vision, I see O.J. smiling at me. I hold my ground, though I can’t help tensing.

  Praxus plows into the grating. It bows with his weight. Electricity explodes f
rom his collar, races through him. His glow flickers, and he crashes to the ground.

  “I think he likes you,” O.J. says. “You didn’t answer me. Scared?”

  “No.”

  “What would your CENSIR say?”

  “We gonna sit here all day chatting?”

  A bioprint scanner controls access to each cage. Digital placards along the top identify the occupants. Praxus appears knocked out. On the other side of the cave, Klyv puffs smoke at me between ululating growls. The two in the back cages stalk back and forth, convicts sizing up their next victim. Or meal.

  So much for roses and white—

  Somebody touches my shoulder, and I flinch.

  “You know what smells worse than anything, dandelion?” O.J. asks, and presses his hand to Praxus’s scanner. The cage door swings open. “Fear.”

  I roll my eyes, squirm free of his touch, and step inside.

  He closes the door. The deep echo of metal shoots a shiver through me.

  “Alone?” The question’s out before I can stop it.

  “This is your party. I’ve decided I halfway like you,” he says. “Try not to wilt out there.”

  “You gonna at least open up communication?”

  “We never shut it down,” O.J. says. “He just can’t shade your brain with dragon love.”

  “He’s not talking to me.”

  “Greens aren’t known for . . . chatting. You should appreciate that.”

  The insurgents of Loki’s Grunts used ladders to mount their dragons. There are no ladders here. Which means I’m gonna have to climb up Praxus. Even lying down, his knees tower over me. Scrabble up his tail? Not sure if dragons are like horses, but coming up on a Green from behind seems ludicrous at best, even if he is comatose. But it’s the only option.

  I take a deep breath, pictures O.J.’s asshole smirk in my mind, and push forward with zeal.

  Then Praxus decides to wake up, and my zeal vanishes.

  He lumbers to his feet. The chill in the air is long gone, and the oven’s ramping up faster than the Green’s glow.

  He cranes his head forward until it hovers a foot over mine, growls in a way that evokes memories that made me quiver with ecstasy a few days ago and now remind me how easily he can rip me in half.