Calico Descending

by Keri Lake

  Ones they must’ve stabbed into Titus, because he wavers on his knees, until he collapses in the dirt.

  My heart is slamming against my ribs, as there’s no sign of Valdys. “Where is he! What did you bastards do with him?”

  Stepping between the soldiers is a smaller man, the sight of whom thrums panic through my muscles. Donned in the same black uniform as the soldiers, Doctor Tims is almost unrecognizable, if not for his snake-like smile. “Good evening.” He glances around the camp, and his beady eyes behind those thin glasses fall on me again. “Beautiful spot you’ve chosen to make camp.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who, Valdys? He’s on his way back to Calico.”

  Dread churns and twists in my gut. Tears well in my eyes, as the world grows heavy around me, and I sink to my knees. “No.” The whole universe feels as if it’s caved in on me, and I wonder if it’s best that I don’t fight them. That I let them take me back to that place, as well, because at least I’d be near him. Even if they take joy in tormenting the two of us, keeping us apart, I’ll be near him.

  “Where’s Neela?”

  I don’t answer him right away, with my head swirling around the many scenarios laid out before me: turn myself over, force them to kill me and take the memories of Valdys to my grave, or run.

  “Where is she!” The thunder in his voice echoes through the canyon, and delirious with shock, I lift my gaze to his.

  “Dead.”

  “Dead,” he echoes, and turns to the officers, giving a nod.

  They lurch into motion, and as they near, Cadmus swings out, knocking one of the soldiers to the ground. Four others charge forward, jabbing their spears, as he backs me to the wall behind us.

  “Stop! Stop! Okay! I won’t fight!” Cadmus holds his hands up, twitching again.

  Oh, God, no. I can’t afford to lose him to this. I won’t have the strength to fight alone.

  He lowers his head, turning away from the soldiers in the same submissive stance as when we were back at the marauders camp, but this time, he whispers, “Verisimilitude.”

  A wave of relief crashes over me, quickly doused by the soldiers who lead him away from me.

  Doctor Tims steps forward, and with my back pressed against the wall, there’s nowhere for me to go. Blackness flies toward my face, and a hard smack against my cheek sends me tumbling to the ground.

  Through the dizzying ache of my jaw, I look up to see Doctor Tims glance back toward Cadmus, who stands flanked by the other soldiers, twitching and trembling.

  His cold eyes turn to me once more. “He’s certainly not the soldier he was before, is he?”

  “He never was,” I correct, pushing to my feet again. “That’s the problem, wasn’t it? You couldn’t control them yourselves.”

  “He looks fairly controlled to me now.”

  “Because you’ve destroyed his mind. You tricked him with hallucinations.”

  “Whatever works.” Hands crossed behind his back, Doctor Tims paces in front of me. “You, on the other hand, are weak. Nothing like Neela. Or your sister, for that matter.”

  “What would you know of my sister? She’s dead.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you sure you want to open that box, Cali? The truth is a little unsettling.”

  Thoughts swirl inside my head, taking me back to the night when Medusa confessed Bryani had died that day. “A gunshot wound killed her.”

  “A gunshot wounded her. She was basically braindead after, so in some ways, I guess you’re not totally wrong.”

  A cold, sick feeling settles in my stomach and crawls up the back of my spine, as his words begin to unravel inside my head. He’s as deranged as any of the doctors at Calico, but the only one who has offered some truths. And something tells me this one will haunt me more than the lies. “What did you do?”

  “You see, when a normal female becomes impregnated by an Alpha, it’s inevitable that she dies. We watched it time and time again, with countless female subjects. Your sister cared for those women. And she became quite attached to them. She believed in our quest for the cure. So, as an ode to her, we thought we’d try a different approach, by impregnating an unconscious female. One whose brain couldn’t produce the same proteins.”

  The first tremble of rage snakes beneath my skin, boiling inside my veins, while I watch him pace again.

  “To our surprise, she was the first subject to deliver late in the third trimester. Unfortunately, the baby was stillborn, and she perished soon after.”

  “She’s was a child! You monsters! You fucking murderers!” The kettled rage explodes inside of me, and I rush toward him. Breath explodes from my throat, where his palm slams into my gullet, and rigid stone crashes into my spine, as I fall back against the wall of rock behind me.

  “That’s the difference between you two. She didn’t behave like a savage.” Fingers digging into my throat, he squeezes harder, and head woozy with the lack of oxygen, I watch objects float before my eyes.

  “Go to hell,” I say past clenched teeth.

  Knuckles crack against my cheekbone, sending pain up through my sinuses in a smack I didn’t see coming. “You’re nothing but a weak girl. Pathetic. Should’ve been you who took that bullet, and the world would be a better place for it.”

  An ache throbs in my jaw, and I blink away the blur of tears. “Maybe so. But you’ve forgotten something, Doctor. I’m protected by three of the most powerful Alphas in the world.”

  Grin stretched across his face, he glances over his shoulder, prompting laughter from the soldiers behind him, before returning his gaze to me. “You’re protected by nothing now.”

  Slow and subtle, I nod toward Cadmus, who stands behind him in false allegiance, and in the next breath, the doctor’s arm is torn from its socket with the wet sound of meat ripping from bones. As easily as plucking the stem from a rotted piece of fruit.

  On a wail of agony, the doctor’s body crumples to the ground before me, where he writhes in a pool of his own blood. His arm lies off to the side of him, mocking his futile attempt to reach out for it.

  “Tell me again how weak I am.”

  By the time I set my attention back on Cadmus, he’s already killed three of the five Legion soldiers--some stabbed with their spears, some whose heads lie discarded on the ground. I watch as he drives the spear up into the belly of one of the soldiers. The man stands still for a moment, teetering on his feet, before organs spill out onto the dirt below him, and he collapses.

  As Cadmus approaches the last, I lurch toward them. “Wait.” Stepping over Doctor Tims, still moaning and squirming like a worm trapped beneath the hook, I pad toward the soldier. I catch the tremble of his body, and the terror in his eyes, the quick pants of breath that tell me he fears death as much as all of us. “He’ll take us to Valdys. He’ll get us inside. And if he fails, he will suffer more than anyone.”

  Thoughts of Valdys, and the tortures he’ll inevitably face when he returns there, springs new tears to my eyes. A hole as vacuous as my hopes while trapped in that place burns inside my chest, as I reach down for the knife clipped to the soldier’s belt. I imagine the blades tearing into Valdys without mercy. The chains biting into his skin to hold him down.

  I make my way over to where Doctor Tims crawls on one good arm, as if he has any chance of getting away. Setting my foot on his bloody stump, I watch him fall to his back, his cries bouncing through the canyons. “I remember one thing during my suffering. How the pain felt like knives digging into my stomach. It’s hard to believe Neela endured days of it. Perhaps, if you knew how it felt, you wouldn’t stand to watch it, either.”

  I kneel down beside him and shove the blade into his stomach.

  Another scream follows.

  With a crank of my wrist, I twist the blade inside his gut, and he curls into himself, helpless to stop the pain. As helpless as Neela must’ve felt while strapped to that bed.

  “I c
an see why you were so cruel.” My lips twitch with a tearful smile, as it occurs to me, staring down at his gaping lips and shocked expression, how one can take pleasure from watching another suffer. “I understand now.”

  Chapter 35

  I sit between the two Alphas, as Titus drives through the desert, along the same, familiar route we took to get to paradise. I should’ve known better. Paradise is an illusion in our world, a mirage, one in which only fools and the truly delirious trust. How ridiculous to think something so beautiful, so untouched, would be safe from the hands that seek to destroy. The same hands that tore children from mothers. Husbands from wives. Life from the living. I know now what it feels like, to fear something so much that you need to destroy it.

  The truck jars us over rough terrain, and I glance toward the back, where we’ve stored the Legion soldier inside one of the silver boxes. Beside me, Cadmus rubs his knuckles, still stained in blood, as he stares out the broken window beside him.

  The idea of being so close to freedom, so close to bliss, is unsettling as we drive in the opposite direction to it. Perhaps we’ve come the closest of anyone in this world. And maybe God saw fit to intervene for our sins.

  I wish I could believe in something so righteous, but then I’d have to believe that the place from which we escaped was created by God’s will. That our disease-infected world is nothing more than the scope of his wrath.

  And I can’t think of any reason, God, or man, that one could be so cruel and unforgiving.

  I think about Valdys being sent down to those tunnels, in a barbarous attempt to punish him for escaping, and I know I would follow him. I couldn’t leave him there alone. I’d walk through hell to find him.

  Dusk settles over the desert, as Titus turns the truck into the lot of a dilapidated building.

  “We need to conserve some of the gas,” he says, turning the engine off. “For after.”

  “And if there is no after?” I ask.

  He sits thoughtful for a moment then tugs the key from the ignition. “Its an hour by foot. We’ll meet back here,” he says, ignoring my question.

  The three of us climb out of the truck and open the silver cage in the back, where the soldier is still trembling. From the supply box, I nab binoculars, water, and one of the few guns we swiped from the fallen soldiers, while Titus prods the soldier out of the back of the vehicle.

  With fresh provisions, we begin our trek back toward Calico.

  Back to the mouth of hell.

  A tall slope of a hill provides cover, as we lie in the sand, binoculars directed toward the entrance of the hospital, where soldiers bustle about in a frenzy.

  I pass the binoculars to Cadmus. “What’s going on?”

  There’s no sign of Valdys, and my guess is, they’ve already dragged him back inside, but the commotion of movement below suggests the soldiers are preparing for something. I turn toward the soldier, who sits tied and gagged next to Titus.

  “Do you know what’s going on down there?”

  He gives a frantic shake of his head, and I remove the fabric that’s stuffed inside his mouth, pointing toward what looks like an anthill on fire.

  “An attack, maybe? W-w-we’ve had … word of attack. From the r-r-rebels.”

  Taking the binoculars once more, I scan over the soldiers who appear to be gathering supplies, carrying guns and ammunition, as if what he’s said is true.

  Relief pulses through me on a burst of laughter. “They’re nervous. Look at them. Scampering around. They’re afraid of something.” And if they are, they’ll undoubtedly use whatever means of protection they can. Including Valdys. “We have to get him out of there.”

  “They’ll capture you and throw you in the cells, the moment you get close.” There’s a somber tone to Titus’s voice, as he stares off toward the unrest going on below. “It’s better to wait.”

  “The longer we wait, the faster they throw him in those tunnels to die!” The urgency beating through my muscles fails to hide the tears I fought to hold back the entire trek here. “I won’t let him die down there alone. I won’t leave him.” A sob tugs at my throat, itching to break free, but I swallow it back. “I will die a thousand times.”

  Titus lowers his gaze, remorse etched into his frown. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

  A siren that reminds me of the silver boxes opening, but louder, snaps my attention back toward the entrance of the hospital. From this distance, I can hear the robotic voice of the woman, blaring through the grounds below us, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.

  “What’s happening?” I turn toward the soldier, who looks on without the binoculars, his face growing pale. “What’s going on?”

  “My brother … my brother is in there.”

  The look in his eyes, wide with horror, and the rapid rise and fall of this chest shoots a stab of dread through the pit of my stomach.

  “What. Is. Happening?” My voice cracks, as my attention flits from his face to the commotion.

  “Security breach. I have to … I have to go. I have to go help him.” He lurches forward, but Cadmus pushes him back.

  “What does that mean? What’s happening?”

  “The doors will be sealed shut. Nothing will get in, or out, when they do.”

  “We can get in through another entrance. On the dock.”

  His attention breaks, and when he stares back at me, his eyes are brimming with tears. “All doors will be sealed. It’s a security measure to keep the mutations from getting out.”

  I swing my gaze back toward the hospital, and the moment I wordlessly scramble forward, I’m yanked back. “Let me go!” I kick out at Titus, who reaches for my other ankle. My foot makes contact, but to no avail.

  The Alpha wrangles my leg and pulls me backward. “Calithea! Look!” he growls, handing me the binoculars, while holding me against the sand.

  Hands trembling, I direct the binoculars toward the entrance, where mutations and Alphas pour out of the silver doors. The dark sky lights up with flashes of gunfire and whatever larger ammunition they’ve resorted to, as soldiers scramble to keep the creatures contained. The door begins to slide together, and panic rises to my throat, pounding inside my ears.

  The soldier beside me screams, but it’s all muted for the view in front of me. The flames reflecting off the silver door. The chaos. The unsettling feeling that I may never look into those stormy gray eyes again. That I may never run my fingers over his warm, scarred skin. Or hear his heart beating in time to mine.

  Sobs rip through my chest, as I watch two figures emerge, a man carrying a woman draped in his arms, but it’s not Valdys. The moment they step through the doors, it closes.

  A foreign sound tears through my body, the kind of agonizing pitch I’ve never heard before, and Titus gathers me into his arms, holding me against him as I expel this wretched misery.

  “Valdys!” I claw and punch at the Alpha, fighting to break free of him. “Let me go to him! Let me go!”

  The moment he releases me, I run toward the chaos, the arid desert heat burning in my chest.

  An explosion sends me crashing into the dirt, rattling the ground beneath me. Gusts of flames climb the darkness toward the sky, over the screams of the men below. Weak with defeat and anguish, I push to my knees and watch through tears, as my world burns down around me.

  Off in the distance, the couple from below run through a minefield of explosions, with Ragers and Alphas on their heels.

  Toward an awaiting truck.

  The tarp flies back as they climb onto the bed of it, and I catch sight of familiar faces. Two of the girls from my barracks. And Kenny, Roz’s Kenny, escaping with them.

  They drive off from the Ragers, who chase behind their truck, and my gaze falls on the entrance once more. In my periphery I watch the Ragers turn their attention on me, but I don’t move. I don’t run. Instead, I keep my eyes ahead and wait for them to tear the rest of me apart.

  The infected only get within a few feet of me
, swiping out their mangled hands and gnashing their teeth, but fail to breach the protective halo of Cadmus and Titus. I’m too exhausted to understand why they don’t attack with the two of them at either side of me, but as more of them circle around us, keeping their distance from where I sit beside the soldier, I begin to care less for what might happen if they manage to break through and drag me away.

  Nothing could be more painful than watching those doors seal shut.

  Nothing could be more agonizing than hearing the sound of my heart dying inside my chest.

  Chapter 36

  I step through the rubble and ash scattered in front of the silver doors, which seem to grow bigger as I approach. Aside from a few Ragers that feed on the bodies of the dead, there is no other sign of life in these ruins.

  Smoke rises, where fires burned and blazed through the night, while I mindlessly watched through the growls and clicks of the surrounding, angry Ragers, until Titus and Cadmus fought them off. The scent of burned flesh and gunfire clings to the air, as I step over halfeaten carcasses and debris. When I finally reach the doors, my whole body is trembling, and I stare up the length of the impossible barrier, where not a single crack allows me any hope of breaking through.

  Reaching out a hand, I feel the heat of the morning sun blazing off the steel, and the moment my fingertips make contact, I let the burn remind me that it isn’t only a nightmare. I rest my cheek against the back of my palm. Against the tomb wherein my beloved Valdys lies trapped. “Versimilitude,” I whisper, and close my eyes to the tears. In the quiet that follows, I listen for Valdys on the other side, as if I might hear him calling to me from in there. As if there’s any chance he might know I’m here.

  I’m here!

  There’s nothing.

  No evidence that there’s any more life on the other side than here, like two empty halves divided by one barrier.