The Warrior

by Rebecca Royce

  “Um.” There weren’t words, at least not ones that I knew, to describe how tremendously sorry I felt to hear that Liberty had fallen. I hadn’t been a Warrior very long but I understood the responsibility of it. I knew the sheer dependency people had on us for their very survival felt overwhelming at times and, yet, it was also an honor to be allowed to serve them.

  The last part was not something I’d understood before I’d had the chance to take my spot as a Warrior. It had felt, well to be honest still sometimes felt, like a tremendous burden. Now, it was something I did gladly because I was lucky to be able to do it at all.

  Rosa touched my arm. “There’s nothing to say. I can see in your eyes you know what it means.”

  I nodded. “Was it fast?”

  I hoped it was fast, that there hadn’t been a long time for people to suffer, that the agony hadn’t been endless.

  Dave answered. “Not fast enough and, as for us, we’d rather be dead.” He shifted from foot to foot and I wondered if he was in pain when he winced.

  “Are they all dead?”

  Rosa nodded again. “All the non-Warriors perished in the first assault.”

  My mind moved a thousand miles a minute as I tried to process what she told me. “And this happened six months ago?”

  She raised an eyebrow at my question. “Where are you from?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She was right, I had never said. “Genesis. I’m actually here because we were coming down to beg help from you guys.”

  She sighed. “Sorry, we’re not going to be much help to you guys. We’re probably going to die and leave you alone here. Unless you don’t make it a day in the mine.”

  Now that was a harrowing thought. I quickly pushed it out of my mind. “I have no intention of getting stuck here. Surely, between the four of us we can figure out a way out of this hell-hole.”

  A thought struck me that I kept to myself. I knew a way we could get out of here. It wouldn’t be easy but I knew I could manage to get away if I could end up in on the human cages I had found Deacon in six months earlier. I knew how to get out of that situation. The trick, I supposed, was convincing a member of the Undead they wanted to stick me into it.

  I never thought I’d be hoping to be Vampire food.

  “We thought the same things at first but it’s impossible.” She shrugged as she walked over to one of the cage walls. “Trust me, it’s all futile.”

  “Nothing is futile until we’re dead.”

  I even surprised myself with the ferocity with which I felt the words that came out of my mouth. I’m not a leader. I make bad decisions. Frequently, I’m totally wrong about everything I think and feel but right at that moment I could have stood up on cliff and led troops to battle. Or at least that’s how I felt.

  The three Warriors looking at me with doubt in their eyes probably thought I was a lunatic.

  “Look.” Dave rubbed at his face like he wanted to rip his skin off his body. I wondered just how exhausted you had to be want to be out of your skin that much. “You’re welcome to try. I hope you do. But, as for me, I’m done.”

  “How can you be done?” I took a step toward him. “How old are you?”

  Dave looked at the floor. “I’m nineteen, but I feel like I’m fifty.”

  “Well.” I scratched my head. “I think there was a time when fifty wasn’t that old. When people lived a long time. I want to go back to that time.”

  “I don’t know how they did things in Genesis.” Rosa’s voice held a hint of laughter, which I preferred to the earlier despondence. “But in my world things don’t happen just because I want them to.”

  I nodded. “I know, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if they did?”

  “Sure. It would be great if I suddenly sprouted wings and could fly us out of here but thinking about things that would be great doesn’t do any of us any good.”

  “That’s true. But in this case, I don’t know how to explain it to you; I’ve always believed we could win. I know we can start over. We can beat these monsters. We can come out from Underground. We can win.”

  “No.” Rosa stomped her foot. “That’s propaganda. That’s what they tell us to make us go Upwards into hell every day; to do things no one should ever have to do.”

  I looked her square in the eyes. “In Genesis, we’ve been living above ground for six months. We threw Isaac Icahn out. We beat him.”

  They were all silent as they regarded me and then they all spoke at once.

  Dave sputtered. “Above ground? How?”

  Ken’s voice was low pitched. “You threw Icahn out?”

  Rosa sounded fierce. “Then why were you looking for help from Liberty?”

  I decided to tackle Rosa’s question first. I needed her on my side. “Because the Undead were going to break through the walls of Genesis and we wanted to save it. But we’re above ground. If we had to, and they may have already done so by now, they’ll blow the elevator and trap them in there.”

  I hated to think of that, but I knew the Warriors would do what they had to. Even if it meant we could never go down into the warmth of the underground lair that had housed us for forty-six years.

  I turned to Dave. “We protect them, that’s how we live above ground. It’s not always easy. We’re on during the day too, instead of just at night. The Wolves are a constant threat. They love to taunt us.”

  I made myself not think about my Wolf, who I had sent away to confront his father. He’d have no idea what happened to me. It was probably better that way; it could never work out between us. We had always been a near impossibility even before his father had betrayed me. Jason had let me down, that’s all there was to it. And now there was Chad to consider. He could be lying dead somewhere drained of his lifeblood by the Undead I had foolishly trusted. My eyes filled at the thought but I pushed away the tears.

  I continued. “But we make it work. It’s a hard life. Things I never could have imagined have happened. We survived a blizzard. My father opened some kind of bar. Every day something happens.”

  I couldn’t help the emotion in my voice and I found I didn’t want to. I felt passionate about this. I needed to get home. I wanted to bring them—these fallen Warriors from Liberty—home with me. It could be their home now, too.

  I thought of Deacon, my friend who I’d left back in Genesis. He’d never know what happened to me. I’d brought him home with me once. It was funny, in a sick sort of way, that we’d changed locations. I was down in hell and he was up there fighting for Genesis. I supposed there had to be some kind of irony to it, but I’d never learned exactly what that meant.

  Finally, I answered Ken’s question about Isaac Icahn. “Yes, we threw him out. We would have tried him for every imaginable crime if we could have. You know he’s responsible for all of this?”

  Ken nodded. “We know. His picture is on the walls in almost every room. He lords over us like he’s some kind of god. I couldn’t believe it when I first spotted him. We had him on the walls in Liberty. We thought he was a great man.”

  “Yeah, well.” There wasn’t much to comment on. We’d all thought the same thing. “Since he told all of us he was a great man, and apparently humanity believed him, we were all duped the same way. At least we were all mutually stupid.”

  Rosa looked at me hard. She’d been quiet while I’d been talking with the guys. I knew she had something to say but I wasn’t going to rush her to tell me. She was their leader. I didn’t know if she had been before the fall of Liberty but she was now. I knew how Keith led. Sometimes he had to come to things in his own time. I wasn’t going to push her. Not if I wanted her to listen to what I had to say.

  “What do you suggest we do that we haven’t already done?”

  That was exactly the question I’d wanted her to ask me although I wouldn’t tell her that. “I want us to get moved.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Why?”

  “Because the Undead are lazy with how they handle the humans in their c
ages. I’ve gotten out of one of those rooms before. Between the four of us, I have to believe we could do it again.”

  Rosa looked at Ken. “Maybe that’s where we went wrong. We kept trying to escape from here. It’s too well guarded and Payne runs it with an iron fist.”

  I shuddered at the thought of him. There was no other word for it, the man was pure evil. I bet he had been that way even before whatever Icahn had done to make all the Wolves become bad. As much as I hated Jason’s father, Andon Kenwood, for what he’d done to me, I couldn’t believe he would have ever hauled a girl into a pit to basically die a horrible death while he laughed about it.

  I’d have to give Andon that much credit, at least.

  Ken nodded. “How do you think we should get moved, Rachel?”

  “We don’t try to escape. We simply become really, really annoying.”

  I thought of all the time Deacon and I had spent together while I’d trained him. I must have asked him a million questions about his life before I’d rescued him. He loved to talk about himself. The thought made me smile. Deacon Evans had an ego, that much was clear, but he was a good friend even if sometimes I wanted to whack him over the head.

  He’d annoyed the Vampires every chance he’d gotten. It had earned him a death sentence years before most of the humans got one. I was going to have to do double time if I wanted to be out of here in a matter of days instead of months.

  “See the thing is, not all of the non-Warriors are down here with us. Some of them are above doing other things and some are waiting in cages waiting to be eaten by very lazy Vampires.”

  Rosa took a step in my direction. “We need to get to those cages.”

  “When they take you back, cause as much trouble as possible without getting killed.”

  Dave sighed. “That might be easier said than done. They love to kill us.”

  That was important information that gave me momentary pause. “Who does? The Vampires or the Werewolves?”

  Dave sank to the floor like his legs simply couldn’t support him anymore. “The Werewolves. It’s like a game or something to the sick Canine bastards.”

  “Is it possible to stay near the Undead?”

  Rosa answered. “It’s hard but I suppose it’s possible. They move about the mines supervising everything. The Wolves come and taunt us, beat us to get us moving. The Undead are kind of just always there.”

  “It might take me a little time to figure out how to do it, but I’m going to try to imitate a friend of mine. He found a way to drive them crazy. Maybe we can, too.”

  Rosa smiled. “All right, Rachel. We’ll give it a try. I suppose we can all work a few more days to see if you turn out to be some kind of guardian angel for all of us.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t like that one bit. I wasn’t anyone’s ‘guardian angel’. If anything, all I was turning out to be was a mixed up teenager who had maybe gotten her boyfriend killed after getting dumped by a Werewolf. If you thought about it, I was pretty pathetic.

  I sank to the floor next to Dave, doing what I’d seen Keith do with so many people when they’d just had enough. He called it ‘sharing their space’. Sometimes it just took giving physical contact to another person when they’d run out of momentum. Keith had a weird theory that people—especially Warriors—could somehow share energy with each other.

  I’d never needed him to do it with me and I had no idea if it worked, but it was worth a try if for no other reason than it gave me something to do.

  “How long until they come for us?”

  Rosa smiled. “A few hours, at least. They want us rested a little bit. We’re more productive pulling the coal out of the mines.”

  So that was what we were going to be doing. Rosa came and sat on my other side with Ken taking a spot on the other side of Dave. We sat in silence. I didn’t know any of them well enough to guess at their thoughts. As for me, mine kept going where they didn’t belong, considering the circumstances.

  Much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I wanted to know what Jason had said to his father. Had Andon lied again? Had Jason believed him? I was pathetic. I knew it. But it mattered to me. Jason had mattered to me. I wanted to believe there would be some sort of retribution for what Andon did. I needed to hold on to the idea that I had been important enough for him that he would do something about it.

  Even if I never knew what he did. I suppose I’m selfish. I closed my eyes and tried not to listen to the screams. My monster alerts had ceased to bother me. They were a constant now.

  Chad would have been proud. He always told me I was going to have to find a way to do better controlling them. I hadn’t managed to do that, but I was surviving their onslaught. That had to count for something.

  At the thought of Chad, possibly dead on the ground in the forest where he’d never be found, I shuddered. Outwardly silent, I let myself scream on the inside for the fact that my own stupidity, my own need to turn and face the Vamps had probably ended his life. Chad could run forever. He was strong, capable. If I’d just pushed on, who knows what could have happened? He might have found us a place to hide.

  Now I was inside this terrible place talking to people about survival who had been through a hell I’d not yet endured. I knew the second I got out of here I was going to be crying myself to sleep for the rest of my life.

  Chad Lyons had been the best out of all of us. If he was dead—it was my fault. If he wasn’t dead, chances are he’d never want to see me again. And I couldn’t blame him for feeling that way.

  Rosa might have thought of me as a ‘guardian angel’, but I knew what I was and it could be summed up easily: I was a fraud.

  Chapter Eleven

  It proved to be really, really easy to annoy the Vampires. They simply didn’t like disobedience. I guess most people are so concerned with not getting eaten by the Undead, they tend to do everything the fang-filled creatures told them to do. They had no idea what to make out of the four of us—Rosa, Dave, Ken, and myself—getting into so much trouble. For the record, a Vampire grumble sounds like a snake hissing. More and more I was becoming convinced that the transition from Living Human to Undead Vampire inserts snake genes into the person’s DNA.

  I might have thought the situation humorous if the mines themselves were not such a horrifying experience. Dark, with little to no ventilation, we worked endlessly digging for coal and trying not to get hit by parts of the ceiling coming down on us. The screams I had heard earlier seemed to have to do with the cave-ins.

  In Genesis, I had seen people in tremendous pain. Still, I had not known the true horror of destruction until I came to the mines. This place, this nameless, timeless place where people forgot who they were before they arrived, taught me about true agony. It seemed to me that by the end of each day, only a portion of the people we started with could even look me in the eye. Humans—the non-Warrior variety—got sent down when they'd done something wrong. Apparently, it was work in the mines or get eaten, which was why it was crucial that I not screw up my plan. I wasn't going to end my days in the heat or the darkness that was all-consuming. I was not going to die in this place that Dr. Icahn had created to torture his own people.

  I couldn’t forget Dr. Icahn either. His face, a constant presence in my mind, had begun to represent something bigger than just a man. He was the Apocalypse itself. For all I knew, he’d masterminded the whole thing.

  I’d never lived in the Before Time, but Jason had, and I was more than just a little jealous.

  Rosa shook my arm. “Are you asleep on your feet?”

  I blinked twice and looked around the holding cell. “When did we get back here?”

  “Exactly.”

  I smiled. She and I had developed an easy camaraderie. Rosa was tough on all of us, never letting anyone veer off the path. To my amazement, I’d watched her poke an Undead guard with her shovel thirty times in an hour earlier in the day.

  I sat down on the floor. “This place is Hell on Earth.”

  Sh
e nodded before she sat down next to me. Ken and Dave were already out cold and snoring in the corner. “We’re technically not on Earth, we’re below it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be funny; my brain can’t handle the subtleties at the moment.”

  “It is mind-numbing down here.” She sniffed and I hoped she wasn’t getting sick. According to the others, you didn’t last here very long, even with a cold. One second you were well, the next you were feverish, and then you were dead. “Makes you really appreciate your habitat, huh?”

  My body ached so much I wasn’t sure it would ever stop. “It makes me appreciate my cold, uncomfortable tent above the habitat.”

  “I still can’t believe you guys are successfully living above ground.”

  I shrugged. “It’s pretty cool, I guess.”

  Rosa leaned back against the wall. “Did you leave a boyfriend in one of those tents?”

  “My boyfriend was with me on the way to Liberty. I tried to save his life by sacrificing myself. It was dumb. They probably killed him anyway.”

  I closed my eyes. Every time I thought of Chad, visions of his cold, lifeless body being eaten by buzzards assaulted me. Talking about it made it even worse.

  “It’s basically my fault. I had a moment of craziness.”

  And I would have to live with it for the rest of my life.

  “If there is one thing I have learned,” Rosa interrupted my self-pity, “It’s that we have very little control over what happens to us. None of us could have predicted any of this would happen. How could we? And it seems to me highly unlikely that you caused his death. Did you personally feed him to the Vampires?”

  “No.” My voice sounded low, even to my own ears.

  “I didn’t think so.” When she looked me square in the eyes I could see tears in hers. I caught my breath. Rosa didn’t strike me as the kind of person who cried very often. “Almost everyone I loved is dead. Ken and Dave are it. I keep telling myself it’s not entirely my fault.”

  I reached out to hold her hand. “Were you chief Warrior? Were you in charge the night Freedom fell?”