by Laken Cane
Richard smashed through the glass with a hammer, then motioned us through. “Let’s get out of here.” His voice was cold, but even so, I could hear his despair.
The supplies. The kitchen, the cellar.
We’d lose them all.
And that was almost more than Richard could bear.
I breathed past the sudden lightheadedness. “The alcohol on the back porch?”
“It’ll burn. It’s lost. Everything is lost.”
“They’ll be out there, waiting,” Lila said.
He nodded. “Yes.”
I buried my fingers in the now quiet dog’s fur. “Let’s go, boy.”
Caleb went through first, then stood outside the window with his gun up, waiting for the attack that was coming.
“Go, Teagan,” Richard said.
I kicked the shards of glass from the bottom of the old window, then picked up the dog and sent him through before following him out.
The street was on fire. Smoke poured from two of the homes directly across from my house, as well as the ones on either side of us. Flames shot into the sky from houses farther down the street. The night was painted orange and gray and black, and sounds I hadn’t heard in two years—crashes, bangs, explosions—added to the confusion. It was too loud. All of it. The sights, the sounds, the smells…
The fear…
It was all too loud and my brain wasn’t quite sure how to process it. Over the last two years, I’d been exposed to quiet sounds and the same everyday scenes. The vividness of my surroundings at that moment was extreme and overloaded my senses.
Richard, Lila, and Caleb jumped off the porch, ready to fight, watching for the enemy we knew was lurking.
Waiting.
And then, almost before I could bring my gun up, the mutants attacked.
But not just the scouts or the orphans.
It was much worse than that.
The gods had come.
Chapter Sixteen
The enormous gods emerged suddenly from the gray smoke, visions of doom atop wild, screaming horses. They shouted their wrath with thunderous voices, their faces hidden behind silver masks, long hair flying.
The huge mounts seemed to exhale smoke when they raced toward us, and the ground shook beneath my feet as I stood there, filled with dread, shock, and wonder.
I’d never in my life seen or imagined anything so beautiful.
The gods were not like the scouts or orphans, and they had come prepared. What seemed like dozens of them was, in reality, six—some part of my mind registered their numbers, even as I noted their armor.
Streams and sprays of alcohol would not hurt them.
“Run,” Lila screamed, her cry louder, even, than the shrieks of the horses. The gods had leveled the playing field.
We scattered, and I thought I heard Caleb yell as I raced down the street, intent only upon escape.
I held my gun. There would be vulnerable spots in the recently created armor.
There had to be.
The dog stayed at my side for a moment as we ran, then he swerved off, raced through a yard, and was gone. I hoped he’d stay safe.
I hoped I’d see him again.
One of the gods crossed the street in front of me, and as I stumbled to a halt, his horse reared, pawing the air.
I turned around to run but found my way blocked by a dozen scouts—they spilled over the yards and then stood on the street, jumping with excitement.
Clicking, whispering.
Unlike the gods, they wore no armor, and without a second’s hesitation I began shooting. I had no earplugs to help muffle their agony.
I could barely pump the trigger—it was like a thousand pound weight I had to move with one cold, slow finger. But alcohol shot from the barrel and the mutants fell back, some of them screaming, some of them running away.
One of them—a female; a tiny part of my mind fixated on the fact that she was female because female mutants weren’t as numerous as males—stared over my shoulder, her stare wide and questioning. Not of me, though.
She was asking the god if it was okay to run from me.
I realized that fact a millisecond before the god grabbed the back of my shirt and plucked me from the ground.
I didn’t drop my gun. I might have, such was my fear, but my fingers were locked in a death grip on the toy, and I couldn’t have opened my hand had it saved my life.
A god had me.
I shot him. Alcohol ran in rivulets down his mask, but he didn’t so much as flinch. I couldn’t even shoot him in the eye—he was simply too fast.
They had learned.
Absorbed.
And they were protected.
I, however, was not.
He twisted the gun, almost breaking my wrist before he wrenched it from my grip. He tossed it to a scout, then turned his attention back to me.
He held me with one massive arm, easily, almost gently. To him, I was a puny, weak human, and he had my kind for breakfast.
Literally.
At that thought, I went a little crazy.
Screaming, I began to struggle. Biting, kicking, punching, I did everything I could to fight him. To break his hold.
If I didn’t escape him, I would die, or I would become one of his pregnant, tormented prisoners.
I had to escape.
He held me with one hand and with the other, he grabbed my throat. Hard.
“Stop struggling or I will kill you,” he said. Then, as I redoubled my efforts, despite him tightening his grip on my throat, he muttered, “Butcher.”
I raked my nails down his hand, then grabbed his fingers and tried to pry them loose. I had a squirt gun in my belt—it was tiny, but it was full. If I could yank it out, I could at least spray his bare hands.
Every other part of his body was covered. I heard the crackle of plastic when I hit his arm. The gods had either sewn plastic—thick contractor bags, maybe—into their clothing or had simply taped the plastic around their bodies before donning their clothes.
My fingertips slid through the warm slickness of his blood as I continued to desperately claw his hand, but he seemed not to notice.
Facing him wasn’t like facing a mutant—it was like facing a strange, unfeeling machine that would slowly squeeze the life from me as I struggled.
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 mutants 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.
