by S. J. West
I didn’t tell her what I knew about the future, just hoped she would listen to my suggestion.
Lux shrugged. “South it is then. We’ll just have to keep our eyes open for trouble. You know, I’ve never seen the Florida panhandle. Maybe we should head that way. I’ve heard the beaches are as white as sugar, and the water is so clear you can see fish swim between your feet.”
“I say we go find out,” I encouraged her.
Lux smiled at me, but there was a sadness in it. We both knew we would never make it that far. We would never see the beaches. We would be lucky to make it halfway there before we were caught. But sometimes you need a dream to help you make it through the day. Just the simple hope of seeing the beaches might make the difference between life and death at some point.
We headed south toward Buffalo, NY.
“Who controls Buffalo?” I asked.
“Humans last I heard. That was about a week ago. Hopefully we’re still in control of it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll put us on a plane to go south so we don’t have to drive all the way there.”
“You never know what might happen,” I said, not wanting to dash the little hope Lux had with my own pessimism.
The motion of the car gliding across the open road lulled Rose into a peaceful slumber. I envied her ability to just be and not have a care in the world. The innocence of childhood had been shortened by the war, and I felt an intense desire to give Rose a world in which she didn’t have to grow up as fast as I did. There were only a few precious years where you could live without fear because you knew your parents would protect you from all harm. I felt sure Zoe understood that when she asked Jace and me to be Rose and Simon’s parents. I just hoped Ash would come to the same conclusion in the not too distant future and see the wisdom of her plan.
About thirty minutes later, we made it to Buffalo.
There was a roadblock set up on the interstate, but I sighed in relief when I saw it was occupied by humans. You could always tell when it was a human roadblock because they always had a line of tanks present.
When we drove up to the roadblock, Lux rolled down the window to speak with the soldier dressed in a khaki colored uniform holding a clipboard between his hands.
“Origin?” the man asked.
“Rochester, New York,” Lux told him. “Harvesters invaded, and we were able to escape in a boat.”
The man jotted this information down on his clipboard.
“Names?”
“Louise, Susan, and baby Jane Lowe. We’re sisters.”
The man wrote the information down and handed Lux a key card.
“If you will follow Corporal Dax,” the man said, pointing to another similarly dressed soldier sitting on a motorcycle just past the line of tanks, “he will take you to the hotel we are placing all the new arrivals in for now.”
“We don’t plan on staying,” Lux told him. “We’re heading south.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait on doing that, Miss Lowe. The Harvesters have pretty much taken control of everything south of this point. We’re one of the few free cities left. For your safety and that of your sister’s, I would urge you to cool your heels here for a while until we’re able to put an end to them once and for all.”
Lux sighed and rolled her window back up. Corporal Dax started his motorcycle, and we followed him into the city.
“Why did you lie about our names?” I asked Lux.
“I don’t trust anyone,” Lux answered, unapologetic. “They don’t need to know our real names anyway. What’s the point?”
She was right, of course. What was the point? Lux’s family was dead, and Rose and I didn’t even belong here. No one would be looking for us. No one would truly care who we were in a world running out of time.
Corporal Dax veered us off of the interstate and into the heart of the city. We passed a hospital and came to a stop in front of an eight story hotel with a white stucco exterior and a steel and glass awning covering the entrance.
Two soldiers holding machine guns were stationed out in front of the hotel, standing on either side of the sliding glass doors leading into the lobby.
Lux and I grabbed our backpacks from the backseat.
Corporal Dax got off his motorcycle and walked over to us.
“If you ladies would follow me into the hotel,” he said, “I’ll escort you to your room.”
The corporal eyed the bow and arrows Lux had in her hands with concern.
“We don’t allow weapons inside the hotel,” he told her. “You’ll have to leave those things in your car.”
“No,” Lux said.
Corporal Dax crossed his arms over his chest and took a defensive stance.
“You will either leave your weapon in the car or be escorted outside the city.”
“I’ll leave the arrows,” Lux said, tossing her quiver full of arrows onto the backseat. “But the bow comes with me. It was a gift.”
Corporal Dax didn’t seem too sure about this compromise.
“Listen,” Lux said, cocking her hip to the side, “what am I gonna shoot with it? Paperclips? I won’t start World War III with just a bow. Oh wait … we’re already in that war, so chill out soldier. A bow without arrows isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
The corporal just shook his head but headed toward the hotel without another word. Lux held on tightly to her bow, and we all followed him inside the hotel.
Milling about the lobby were more men dressed in uniform. They didn’t pay much attention to us as we passed them and made our way toward a set of elevators. After we stepped into one of the elevators, I turned around and saw a face I thought I would never see again.
I never knew his name, but his face was etched into one of my worst memories. He looked just the same in this time line as he did in mine: freckled, pointy face like a ferret, and small dark beady eyes. Only his red hair was styled differently, slicked down instead of standing on his head like needle sharp spikes.
My breath caught in my throat as his eyes met mine in a fleeting glance when he passed us by.
As the doors of the elevator closed, I knew we were in trouble because the man I recognized was the same Harvester who, once upon a time, tortured Jace, threw Ash against a wall almost killing him, and threatened me inside a dusty old library in West Virginia.
I tightened my hold on Rose as I suddenly realized the danger we were in. This wasn’t a city controlled by humans.
It was a city controlled by Harvesters.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I tried to remain calm, even though I felt like my heart was about to beat out of my chest. Maybe I was just being paranoid. Ferret-face could have been in the army before he chose to be a Harvester. Perhaps this was his life preconversion.
But I doubted it.
Corporal Dax turned to look at me.
“Are you all right, miss?” he asked me.
I nodded, not trusting my voice and avoiding making direct eye contact with him.
If my suspicions were correct, Corporal Dax could have heard the increase in my heart rate with his Harvester hearing. Did he suspect I somehow knew the truth of the situation we found ourselves in?
When the elevator doors opened, Corporal Dax walked us down the carpeted hallway and stopped in front of room 817.
He turned to Lux and said, “Your key card is for this room. If you need anything like food or any other supplies, please feel free to call down to the front desk. We’ll send up whatever you might need. There is a curfew in effect from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Please don’t leave the building between those hours.”
“What happens if we do?” Lux asked.
“You will simply be escorted back here to the hotel,” Corporal Dax said. “But by doing so, you would be wasting the precious time of a soldier and drawing his attention away from protecting the city. I don’t think we’re asking much of you to ensure your safety.”
Corporal Dax bowed to us. “Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I will leave you to get settl
ed for the evening.”
As he walked away, Lux used the key card in the door, changing the small light in the lock from red to green. We walked in and found two queen size beds, a mini kitchen, a small table, and a dresser. The nightstand between the beds had a cordless phone positioned on top of it.
I immediately went to the windows and looked outside while Lux shrugged out of her backpack and threw that and her bow on one of the beds. The window faced the street we came in on, and there were soldiers looking inside the Toyota Matrix we had arrived in.
“We need to get out of here,” I told Lux, watching all but one of the soldiers walk away from the Matrix with what little they found inside it. The remaining one got into the driver’s seat and drove it off, effectively taking away our only means of transportation.
“Why?” Lux asked.
“These soldiers aren’t human. They’re Harvesters,” I told her.
Complete silence settled over the room.
I closed the curtain and turned to look back at Lux. She was completely motionless. Her eyes wide in shock.
“Are you sure?” she finally asked.
“I’m positive,” I told her. “We need to get out of this city. Now.”
“Shit,” Lux said, picking her backpack and bow up from the bed she had laid them on. “I thought we might at least get one night of rest here before having to leave.”
“We’re going to need a new car too,” I told her. “They just drove ours off.”
“Don’t suppose it was just valet parking?” Lux joked before growling in frustration. “Ok, let’s just get out of here first and then …”
But Lux never got the chance to finish her statement.
A billow of white gas descended from the air vents in the ceiling. We both dropped to our knees, and I had enough sense left to lie down so I wouldn’t crush Rose in my fall before the gas completely knocked me out. I closed my eyes, unable to keep them open.
The door to our room slammed inward, and I heard the shuffle of footsteps.
“Grab the baby and take it to the nursery,” I heard Corporal Dax tell someone. “Then take these two to the harvesting facility. We don’t need any more breeders.”
I felt myself being lifted by a pair of strong arms right before I completely passed out.
When I regained consciousness, I quickly opened my eyes only to immediately close them again against the glare of the bright white lights in the room. On my second attempt to open my eyes, I went slower to allow them time to adjust to the glare.
The room was about the size of a walk-in closet. Everything from the paint to the door to the ceiling was blindingly white. The only furniture in the room was the cot I was laying on. I sat up straight and ended up having to close my eyes again because the room began to spin out of control. I knew it was just the after effects of the knockout gas but that logic didn’t help the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It took me a few minutes to anchor my thoughts and feel strength reenter my muscles. The gas may have clouded my mind, but not to the point I didn’t know I needed to find Lux and Rose and get us the hell out of here as quickly as possible.
I felt something press hard against my hip in the front pocket of my jeans and reached in to pull out the pink heart-shaped stone Jace had given me once upon a time. I held it in the palm of my right hand and wrapped my fingers around it. I squeezed it tightly, focusing my mind on a picture of Jace to help clear the fog clouding my thoughts and gaining strength from my desire to find my way back to him.
The small peephole opening near the top of the door in the room was opened, and a rather austere woman with platinum blond hair pulled back into a bun that sat on top of her head like a donut looked in on me.
“I see you’re awake,” she said, eyeing me like I was a specimen under the cover of a glass petri dish.
“Your powers of deduction are astounding,” I said sarcastically as I slowly stood from the cot. I put my reminder of Jace back in my front pocket and approached the door.
“I would watch your tongue if I were you,” the woman said snidely, confident in her superiority. “I’ll be the one yanking out your organs in just a few minutes. I can do it with you awake or asleep, the choice is mine. So I would be nice to me if I were you.”
“Thanks for telling me that,” I replied. “I don’t feel nearly as bad now for what’s about to happen next.”
The woman cocked her head to the side and looked at me like I had completely lost my mind. I knew she thought herself untouchable when she was anything but.
“And just what do you think you can accomplish from in there?”
“You might want to stand back,” I warned her.
“Stand back from what?”
“From the door,” I said.
She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “And why should I do that?”
I just shook my head at her. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you afterwards.”
“After what?”
My annoyance level with the woman reached a peak. I put my hands out, palms forward, and thrust them against the door causing a cry of metal as I tore it off its hinges, sending it flying across the hallway. The door slammed the blond woman so hard up against the opposite wall I heard the crack of bones breaking and saw her body fall unconscious to the white tiled floor underneath the bent-out-of-shape door.
When I stepped out of my room, I looked down to each end of the hallway and realized I was in a hospital. Two male Harvester guards, one from each end of the corridor, ran toward me. The blare of an alarm began to echo against the walls, generating a deafening cacophony of sound. I made a snap decision and turned to the right, running pell-mell for the guard coming for me in that direction.
He didn’t seem to consider me much of a threat, which was something I was counting on. I had the element of surprise on my side as I ran up to him, grabbed his head, and easily broke his neck. Just as he fell to the floor, the other Harvester wrapped his arms around me, trapping my arms against my sides. With only my feet free, I ran him back against a wall of the hallway and rammed my head backwards against his until he grunted in pain and loosened his hold long enough for me to reach behind me, grab his head, and twist his neck, breaking it.
I looked back down both ends of the hallway and didn’t see anyone else coming, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I was overrun.
All along the length of the hallway, I could hear fists banging against the metal doors where other humans were trapped. Unfortunately, the reality was I didn’t have time to save them all. I closed my eyes and blocked out the sound of the alarm to try and concentrate my enhanced hearing to search for one voice in particular.
I heard Lux screaming my name and ran down to the opposite end of the hallway, breaking the lock on her door and opening it.
“I figured it had to be you causing trouble,” she said to me with a smile.
“Come on,” I told her. “We need to find Rose.”
We ran for the exit sign leading to the stairwell and ran down them heading for the first floor.
“Where do you think she is?” Lux asked me, doing her best to keep up with my quick pace.
“We have to figure out where the nursery is,” I said over my shoulder.
“Do you think she’s here in the hospital nursery?”
I stopped mid-stride, causing Lux to inadvertently run into my back.
“I didn’t think about that,” I admitted. “We need to find out.”
I stopped on the second floor and peeked through the window of the door to see how many people were in the hallway. I saw one guard beside the door we were standing behind and two other guards walking around in a patrol pattern.
I waited until the two other guards were walking away from our location before I turned the knob of the door to open it slightly and then backed away. The guard took the bait and stuck his head through to check out the stairwell. As soon as he did that, I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him fully into
the stairwell, slamming his back up against the wall so hard he lost the air in his lungs. He tried to move, but I rammed my knee into his groin, which immediately made him take in a sharp breath and stop struggling against me.
“Where is the nursery?” I asked him. “Where do you keep the babies?”
“Why the hell would I tell you that?” he asked through clenched teeth, trying to fight against the pain he was in.
I pressed him harder against the wall with one arm and reached down between us to grab his already sour manly pride.
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to rip this off of you,” I said, squeezing him roughly. “Good luck regenerating a new one.”
The man looked me in the eyes as if he were trying to judge if I was bluffing or not. Apparently, he saw that I wasn’t.
“They’re on the fifth floor.”
I broke the man’s neck, and he slumped to the floor.
Lux and I made a mad dash up the stairs toward the fifth floor.
A group of three Harvesters came out of the door on the fourth floor just as we reached it. I took care of the guards fairly easily by sending the first one over the railing and down the middle of the stairwell to the ground floor, the second one got a fist to the face and crushed nose into the skull, and the third fell to the floor with broken kneecaps and a broken neck. They would all survive, but I knew it would take a while for them to regenerate from their wounds.
“You’re like a one-woman army,” Lux commented, staring in awe at the carnage I had just wreaked. I retrieved the stun batons the two guards were carrying and handed one to Lux.
“They have my daughter,” I said, feeling something inside me ignite with grim determination. “I swear I’ll kill every last one of them if I find a hair on her little head missing.”
“Go for it, Momma Bear,” Lux encouraged with a smile. “I’m right behind you.”
Once we got to the door leading to the fifth floor, I didn’t even bother to look to see if the coast was clear. Harvesters were arrogant in their own sense of superiority. Considering there had only been two to three guards on the floors I had already been on, I doubted there was more than three on this floor.
