by Kyla Stone
“No talking above a whisper,” Jericho had instructed. “Communicate through gestures when you can. This is hostile territory. The sooner we make it through, the better. Look alive, people.”
“You hear that?” She squeezed her brother’s hand.
Benjie nodded and tugged on her arm, pointing at something above them. Thirty feet over their heads, the AirRail track arced gracefully, winding between skyscrapers and hovering on slim columns over the congested streets. Constructed a decade ago, it was a sleek white hyper-speed maglev train that levitated over magnetized aluminum tracks.
The holoscreens attached to every building stared silent and empty, like giant blind eyes somehow still watching their every move. The scanners wouldn’t read any SmartFlexes now. They wouldn’t instantly glean a lifetime of purchasing history or social media data or tailor ads specifically to your unique preferences, no annoying advertisements directed at you every time you traveled down the street.
Her stomach lurched. She never thought she’d actually miss a holo ad.
The further they walked into the city, the heavier and thicker the smoke grew. The stench burned their nostrils and stung their watering eyes. Ahead of them, smoke poured from an Italian deli. On their left, only a burned-out husk remained of the Metropolitan Historican Artifacts Museum. Windows and doors were broken or boarded up. Spray-painted graffiti marked the walls.
There were bodies crumpled on the sidewalks. Bodies lying half-inside doorways. Bodies slumped inside cars. All of them in various states of decomposition. For most of them, the tell-tale blood stains rimming the eyes, nose, and mouth told the same story—the ravages of the Hydra virus.
Acid burned the back of Willow’s throat. She tried not to gag. The N95 masks they wore did nothing to filter out the stench of rotting flesh mingled with burnt metal and wood and charred plastic.
Hawks and other carrion birds squawked over the bodies. A coyote with red on its muzzle growled at them, but scurried down an alley when Silas hurled a rock at it.
Crashed drones littered the streets, sidewalks, and roofs of shorter shops and cafes. Most were food and product-delivery drones, but there were plenty of surveillance and patrol drones. Many of them looked like they’d been blown out of the air, their metal bodies torn and mangled.
When she’d first learned of the billions of dead, her brain couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t comprehend the astronomical numbers, the sheer staggering mathematical figures. She still couldn’t. But here in a massive city constructed of steel and glass and concrete, everything designed by people, for people, the silence was deafening.
They trudged past a dozen bodies slumped over each other next to a stoplight. The Hydra virus hadn’t taken them. Bullet holes were drilled into the back of their heads.
She turned Benjie’s face away. He didn’t need to see that.
“What happened here?” Finn asked grimly.
“What didn’t happen? Maybe that’s the better question.” She took a closer look at the buildings. Bullet holes punctured the brick facade of a posh college prep academy, the tuition probably more than Willow’s mother had made in two years on the Grand Voyager. A massive infotainment center sported craters a car could drive through.
Evidently, something had happened, some sort of uprising or gang turf war fought right in downtown Atlanta. The question was: when?
“This place gives me the creeps,” she said softly.
“Tell me about it.” Finn gazed up at the skyline, the crowns of skyscrapers a thousand feet above them disappearing into the smoky haze. “Makes me more nervous than a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”
“It’s eerily quiet…where are all the people?”
Jericho paused, holding up his hand. “Don’t shoot your gun unless you have to. Even with a suppressor, it might be heard by the wrong people.”
Everyone nodded. No one spoke. Benjie kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. Horne kept clearing his throat. Amelia hummed to herself under her breath, the same classical song she’d been repeating all week, her hands skimming over an invisible violin.
Several city blocks later, a shattered skyscraper jutted into the sky like the shards of a broken bottle. A small granite memorial stood in front of it. She remembered the shaky videos from the newsfeeds. The terrorist group Right Hand of God had bombed it two years ago. No one bothered to rebuild it. Why put money into a crumbling city already choked with violence and hopelessness?
“Today is my birthday,” she said suddenly. She needed to tell someone. She needed to untangle the anxious knot twisting in her gut. She needed to talk, to laugh about something. Otherwise, this empty, gutted city was going to break her heart. “Happy eighteenth to me.”
“Congratulations!” Finn’s face broke into a delighted, lopsided grin. She couldn’t see it beneath his mask, but she knew it was there. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because…it didn’t seem right. With everything.” She gestured with both hands, encompassing the whole damn screwed-up world.
“Hogwash. Fiddlesticks. Balderdash!” Finn said.
Benjie giggled.
At 6’6”, Finn towered above her, his meaty arms and legs like tree trunks. He was huge, an imposing, intimidating giant—until he grinned mischievously, flashing his gap-toothed smile. In reality, Finn was gentle as a teddy bear.
He peered down at her, his brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
She sighed. For such a giant goofball, Finn was perceptive when he wanted to be. Too perceptive. The truth was, Zia was on her mind.
Instead of fading like one of those pre-digital photos, she grew even more vibrant in Willow’s memory with each passing day. Her turquoise pixie hair framing her heart-shaped face, her nose always wrinkling up like a puppy, her exuberant laughter filling every corner of Willow’s mind.
She never wanted to forget her sister, but she didn’t know how much longer she could endure the pain and guilt. Today was yet another reminder that Zia would never have a chance to grow up, to graduate from high school, to transform from girl to woman. She would forever be stuck at thirteen, frozen in Willow’s memories.
Zia would never turn eighteen, and it was Willow’s fault.
How could she explain any of that? Besides, if she started to talk about Zia, she’d cry, and once she started crying, she might never stop. She had to be strong. For herself, and for Benjie. It was what her mother would want.
She was Ate, the big sister in her Filipino family, the one responsible for her siblings. She’d failed with Zia. She couldn’t fail with Benjie.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said with forced brightness. “Other than the obvious end-of-the-world angst. I’m fine.”
Finn grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze, letting go before anything got awkward.
Her cheeks flushed for no damn reason. She ducked her head, letting her thick black hair fall across her face.
Finn didn’t seem to notice. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Now, what kind of cake would you like? I’m partial to red velvet, but I know not everyone’s tastes are as refined as mine.”
“Anything but chocolate,” Benjie chimed from between them.
“What?” Finn said, aghast. “What could anyone possibly have against chocolate?”
“Lo Lo hates chocolate.”
She managed a smile for Benjie’s sake. “That’s not true.”
Benjie grinned sheepishly. “Okay, it’s me. I don’t like chocolate. But Lo Lo only wants a cake flavor that I want too, right?”
Finn shook his head in mock-horror. “How little I know thee. Obviously, you’ve never had the right kind of chocolate. We must remedy this, Sir Benjie.” Lately he’d been calling Benjie “sir,” telling him they were knights on a magnificent quest, to distract him from their harsh new reality. Benjie ate it up like a half-starved puppy.
“We both like white chocolate.” Even though she hadn’t had any since last Christmas. Her lola, her Filipina grandmother, had made faux c
andy canes with white-chocolate-dipped pretzels to go with nilagang baka and pancit. It had been a very special treat.
“White chocolate isn’t real chocolate,” Finn scoffed. “Everyone knows that.”
A noise came from somewhere ahead of them, a clanking sound like a can being kicked across the road. Willow caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of her eye.
She seized Finn’s arm with one hand and tightened her grip on Benjie with the other. “Shhh.”
Jericho raised his right fist. Willow, Finn, Benjie, and Jericho ducked behind a bus parked crookedly across two lanes in the middle of the road. Celeste, Amelia, Horne, and Micah found cover in a narrow alley between a shoe store and a coffee shop. Gabriel was behind them, covering the rear. Silas was scouting somewhere ahead of them.
Willow slipped her gun out of its holster. Jericho raised his finger to his lips and gestured for her to creep around the left side of the bus, while he checked out the right. She nodded and glanced back at Benjie and Finn. Finn gripped his hand and drew him close, dwarfing the small boy beside his bulk.
Satisfied Benjie was safe with Finn, she dropped into a crouch and inched around the side of the bus. There were too many cars ahead of her to see clearly. Keeping her gun up and her back pressed against the bus, she made her way forward.
Anxiety swirled in her stomach, but not fear or panic. She’d trained with Silas and Jericho daily—sometimes hours a day—for weeks. She was no expert fighter or marksman, but she felt more capable than she ever had. With every lesson, she was stronger, smarter, and better able to protect herself and Benjie.
There was another sound, like tin cans clanging against each other. Someone coughed and swore violently.
Her heart beating against her ribs, she knelt and raised her head over the nose of the bus. Less than twenty yards ahead of them, an old man stumbled out of a SmartFlex repair shop. He was frail, with a fringe of white hair rimming a bald scalp. He wore only a flimsy T-shirt and hospital scrubs.
But it was his face that drew her focus and stopped her heart. Blood streaked his mouth, stained his ears, and rimmed his eye sockets. His eyes bulged blood-red. His skin was gray as a filthy rag, the veins all over his body a reddish-black, standing out like a grotesque roadmap.
The man was infected.
He turned and looked straight at Willow.
Willow didn’t move, didn’t breathe. If they drew his attention, he’d charge them, coughing contagious blood and spittle. He was an innocent, suffering victim. She didn’t want to shoot him, but she would if she had to.
He didn’t see her. He doubled over and vomited a pink-tinged yellow sludge. He straightened, gripping his stomach with frail, trembling arms, and looked both ways, as if this were an ordinary day in an ordinary world.
He staggered into the street, weaving between cars, half-falling against a sedan, pushing himself up, then bumped into a rust-orange minivan and toppled to his hands and knees.
For a minute, Willow lost sight of him. She tracked his faltering movements through his groans. The old man appeared again as he crawled onto the sidewalk and into an office building across the street with a missing front door.
No one moved until the man’s anguished sounds faded into silence. When the group gathered again at the rear of the bus, their faces were drawn, their expressions tense. They hadn’t seen anyone infected with the Hydra virus so close in a few weeks.
Willow had thought the horror was seared into her mind. She was wrong. It was as shocking now as the first time.
“We should help him,” Micah said in a low voice.
Jericho shook his head. “The only thing that will help him now is death. Is that what you want to do?”
Micah’s bronze skin paled. “No.”
Willow squeezed his arm. She knew how he felt, but there was nothing they could do. They needed to move on, and quickly.
A few blocks later, they came across several bodies lying in the doorway of a sleek, black-glassed, twenty-story building. They were piled on top of each other, almost as if they had been stacked there on purpose.
The top body moved.
“Lo Lo,” Benjie gasped.
Willow saw it. Her gun was already in her hands.
But the movement wasn’t human. Not this time. A dozen rats scurried over the bodies. Chewing. Feeding.
Willow’s gut curdled. “Oh, gross.”
“Stay away from them,” Finn warned. “Or things will go from pudding to poop real fast.”
Willow nudged the safety off her gun. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
But it was too late. Three of the rats raised their brown, furry heads. They sniffed the air, their nostrils quivering. Dread gripped her as the creatures turned as one toward them. Red stained the fur around their tiny jutting teeth.
The biggest rat scrabbled off the bodies and skittered a few feet toward them. The thing bristled with black fur, its tiny eyes beady, jagged incisors gnashing against each other.
It sat back on its haunches and sniffed, whiskers trembling. Sensing what? Their warm blood? Their beating hearts?
“We need to go.” Several vehicles parked bumper to bumper blocked their immediate exit to the left. They could retreat or move on. Willow edged forward to pass the nasty vermin. “Benjie, come on.”
But Benjie stood frozen, staring at the largest rat as it abruptly dropped to all fours and scurried straight toward him.
Willow aimed her gun, about to send the sucker to kingdom come.
“Don’t shoot unless you have to!” Jericho warned. “A gunshot might bring even more trouble.”
Willow grunted in frustration as she aimed a kick at the rat instead. It dodged but changed direction, coming at her and making a line drive for her ankle.
Willow jerked her foot free as the little beast clung to her ankle, its claws digging into her pant leg. It squeaked as it bounced to the concrete, found its footing, and charged her again. She nailed the thing with a vicious stomp. This time, it didn’t get up. “What the hell!” Rats shouldn’t act like this. They ran from larger predators. They stalked the corners and alleys and sewers of the night. They didn’t attack aggressively during the day.
A second rat scurried for Micah. He batted it aside with the butt of his semi-automatic rifle. The other rats squealed, darting from the dead bodies and forming a disgusting little pack on the sidewalk—a dozen of them, skulking and twitching, their pink, scaly tails slithering behind them.
“They’re like the dogs.” She backed away in horror. “They’re infected.”
“Don’t let them bite you!” Celeste cried.
Jericho slid the pulse stick from his belt, activated it, and swung it in a wide arc. One of the rats lunged at him. He danced back, narrowly missing the rat as it leapt for his left ankle. He stabbed the stick into the rat. The rat’s body slumped—two brown, twitching chunks of meat instead of one.
“Gross,” Willow said.
“Wicked!” Benjie breathed.
“Watch out!” Amelia flung a small brown rat off her shoe with a hard kick. The thing skittered toward the next closest person, Celeste, who barely suppressed a scream.
Hearing their cries, Silas raced back from wherever he’d been scouting. He plunged forward and swung his nail-spiked bat at the pack of rats. He took out three of them immediately.
Jericho took out another two, the plasma crackling and sizzling as it sliced through warm flesh. The remaining four scattered, skittering back through the gaping office door with a furious chattering.
“I suggest we all get bats,” Silas said, hefting his.
“Those things are almost worse than the dogs,” Amelia said, her face even paler than usual. “They’re so fast and hard to actually hit.”
Gabriel nudged at a limp brown body with his boot. “They’re wily little bastards.”
“Keep away from them,” Willow said. “They carry the infection. A bite could be deadly.”
No wonder Raven refused to ente
r the city. It was a maze of dangerous traps and dangerous people. And now this. Aggressive, infected killer rats.
Some birthday.
4
Micah
The hairs rose on nineteen-year-old Micah’s arms. Everything was eerily silent. A metropolis built for millions, now a mausoleum for the dead and dying. It looked like the world had just pressed pause, like any minute, some supernatural being would lean down, press the “play” button, and the noise and chaos and millions of insanely busy lives would start up again, just like clockwork. It was all here, just waiting for them.
Of course, when you looked closer, the cracks in the veneer appeared. The slumped forms in the cars weren’t stuck in traffic. The small bent head in the backseat of the yellow SUV wasn’t looking down at a doll or latest holo game on her SmartFlex. She was stuck there for all eternity.
The city was empty. Empty shops, empty offices, empty apartments and condos, empty streets—but for the dead bodies, the scurrying rats. The broken windows, the shattered storefronts, the boarded-up entrances and bullet-riddled holoscreen signs all spoke of violence, destruction, and catastrophe.
Last night, they’d tried nine different condo and apartment buildings in search of shelter, driven away each time by the massive numbers of bloated, decomposing bodies. The fetid, overwhelming stench churned his stomach and sent shock-waves of dizziness through his system.
Finally, with darkness hovering over their heads, they’d found shelter in a home goods store, padding the floor with chenille throw blankets and decorative frilly pillows embroidered with ‘No place like home.’ Benjie discovered a stash of Nerds and Finn’s favorite sour-explosion Skittles beneath a checkout scanner. Celeste and Micah joined the two of them in a game of poker.
