by Laken Cane
I gave an unintentional sob and ran harder, faster.
I would hear that woman’s voice, her words, in my nightmares for years to come. I had no doubt.
“Just let me make it home,” I begged, and I ran on.
I wasn’t about to abandon my cart. These carts of supplies were my life and I wasn’t leaving it. I had to get something out of today’s horror. I was keeping my damn cart.
No matter that I was sobbing and panting and shaking and moaning. No matter. I would make it up the hill. I would make it home.
I lost her, Robin. I couldn’t save her.
Run. Just run.
So I ran.
My boots slapped the pavement—the sound was too loud though I couldn’t hear very well over the roaring in my head.
Something at my back shoved me along and helped push me up the little hill. Fear, anxiety, the sharp feeling of something watching me. Chasing me.
Dozens of grackles few into the tree and house across the street, but I didn’t look at them long. They reminded me of the mutants with their pale yellow eyes. They sang harshly, grimly, and I ran faster to get away from them.
I’d never seen anything so wonderful in all my life as the door to my house. I’d made sure nothing screamed “survivor inside!” from the exterior—the windows were boarded over, sure, but so were most of the other houses in the area.
From the outside, my house looked like all the others. Abandoned.
I shoved the cart around the house and into the backyard, then pushed it up the wooden ramp and onto the screened porch.
I wrestled the cart into the kitchen, then turned to shut the door and secure the six deadbolts that helped me feel safe. I left the cart standing in the middle of the kitchen floor and rushed to my bed, which was simply a cot in the living room.
I threw myself onto it, yanked the covers around my body and over my head, and I let my fear escape.
It burst from my mouth in agonized howls, from my eyes in rivers of water, and from my brain in little sprays of insanity.
I didn’t want to be here.
And I wanted my mother.
I wasn’t sure which horror had sent me over the edge. Killing the woman? Losing the child? Being informed that the mutants were creating little baby mutants? Or the dark memories I’d desperately smashed down and buried that had burst free with the arrival of the little girl?
Robin?
I’m here.
Don’t leave.
I won’t.
Was it possible to have survivor’s guilt if the tragedy happened when you were only six years old?
I hadn’t forgotten. I would never forget.
I could still feel my sister’s terror when she was dragged away. I could still remember how it felt to fight my way free of the stranger’s grip, and I could still remember the pain I’d felt when my little finger had snapped in the struggle.
I could still see her face and her eyes, could still see her mouth opening in a scream that never came because of the hand that clamped over her face.
And I would never forget the relief I’d felt that I’d escaped.
I’d stopped running after a minute. I’d turned around to watch as the man hauled Robin into his car and sped away.
Leaving me on the street.
Safe.
I’d abandoned her.
Robin.
I’m here.
When the knocking first registered on my consciousness I jerked, then stilled, then leapt from the bed when it came again.
Someone was out there. Someone was at my back door…knocking. Mutants didn’t knock. Baddies knocked.
I crept through the kitchen and to the door, then peered through the tiny peephole. I was unable to suppress a gasp at what I saw waiting. “Holy shit.”
It wasn’t baddies at my door.
It was the girl.
She stood silently, unblinking, solemn, and alone.
“Little girl,” I whispered. I lifted my shirt to scrub my face, and then I began the process of unlocking the door to allow her inside.
Maybe I’d lost her, but that was okay.
Because somehow, she’d found me.
Chapter Four
“Do you need anything?” I asked her, once she was ensconced on the couch. I’d fetch another cot tomorrow, if she wanted, or she could continue sleeping on the couch.
Obviously she’d followed me home. I had no idea why she hadn’t shown herself as I’d walked. Perhaps my crazy run and sporadic sobs had scared her and she’d simply wanted more time to observe me.
She held a bottle of water in one hand and a box of crackers in the other, and seemed uncertain about how to manage to either eat or drink. She stared at the crackers until I took the water bottle from her and set it on the coffee table.
Finally, she reached into the box and pulled out a cracker. The poor thing was hungry—who knew how long it’d been since she’d eaten?
I spread peanut butter on crackers and dropped them onto a plate, then opened a can of juice and poured her a cup. “Here you go,” I said, and put the crackers and juice on the little table. “Eat up.”
She never looked at me, and she never said a word.
She didn’t quite trust me yet. She wanted to. She needed me.
Just as I needed her.
“I’m glad to have company,” I told her. “It does get lonely. I can’t find a dog. Do you like dogs?”
She continued munching, giving no sign that she heard me. She stared straight ahead, her face expressionless.
“I’ll take care of you. Just like your momma took care of you before she died.”
Nothing.
“She was your momma, wasn’t she? Doesn’t matter. I’m your mother now. Well,” I amended, “more like your big sister, I suppose.” I walked to the bar and got a bottle of water. “My name is Teagan Shaw. What’s yours?”
Nothing.
“What were you when the world ended…four or five years old? This all probably seems normal to you, doesn’t it? Do you remember anything from before?”
Finally, she looked at me.
I waved. “Hello.”
After a second, she lifted a hand and returned the wave.
I grinned. “Do you want something else to eat?”
She didn’t smile, just chose another peanut butter cracker and ate it, but she’d slowed down. Her stomach wouldn’t hold much.
“Oh,” I said. “I have a present for you, kiddo. I’m going to have to think of a name for you if you won’t tell me what yours is. I can’t keep calling you kiddo or little girl, right?”
I babbled as I pulled a box from under my bed. When I glanced at her, I was pleased to see her watching me, her gaze a little less blank and a little more interested.
I pulled a doll from the box. “For you.” I carried the doll to her and placed it on her lap. “Do you like her?”
It was one of those heavy, floppy dolls that looked like a real baby—I’d gotten it from one of the houses I’d searched. When I’d first seen it lying there in a tiny crib in what was obviously an adult’s bedroom, I’d thought it was a dead infant.
I’d taken with me, because I was looking ahead. If I got desperate for someone to talk to, a doll that looked real was better than nothing.
You have me.
I know, Robin. Always.
The kid wasn’t impressed.
After a look of horror, she shoved the doll off her lap.
I scooped it up and tossed it back into the box. “That’s okay. I’ll find you something better. I don’t have any toys around here, but I’ll find some the next time I go out.”
She turned her head, her little body stiff with displeasure.
Maybe she associated the baby doll with the one that’d been inside her mother. Maybe she’d seen a baby die. Whatever her reasons, she did not play with dolls.
I caught myself tearing up every few minutes. I never would have believed finding someone to spend my days with would affect me so muc
h, but God, was I happy to have her.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I told her, when we were lying in the darkness trying to sleep. I wouldn’t make a run tomorrow. Not only because I still wasn’t over what had happened that day, but because I didn’t want to leave her alone—and I wasn’t sure I should take her with me.
I’d have to rethink my routine.
She said nothing. The kid was not exactly a talker.
“Everyone dies,” I murmured. “Everyone and everything. The sooner we wrap our brains around that notion, the better off we are.” I wasn’t really talking to her.
That night the sound of her breathing lulled me into a vaguely uneasy sleep, and when I started awake sometime before dawn, I sat up and stared into the shadowy darkness to make sure she was really there. That I hadn’t dreamed her.
I drifted back to sleep, and the next time I opened my eyes I found the child standing beside me, still and silent.
I shrieked and shot up, a hand to my chest. “Don’t do that. You scared the crap out of me!”
“Get up,” she said, unfazed by my dramatics.
“I’m glad you can speak.” I threw my legs over the side of my bunk. “What do you need? The bathroom?”
“Time to go.”
“Go? Go where?” I cleared my throat, ashamed that my voice was hoarse and my heart was beating so rapidly. She freaked me out.
And that was something I needed to get over in a hurry. She was a kid. Just a kid.
She still wore her pants from yesterday, but I saw that she’d donned one of my old shirts. It hung on her small frame—I wasn’t a large girl but she was tiny.
The Johnsons had lived three houses down from this one, and they’d had two small girls. I’d search their house later today for some clothes for her.
She turned away and walked toward the door. “Hurry up.”
I stood. “Hurry up for what?”
She said nothing.
I put my hands on my hips. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me.”
She stopped walking, and her shoulders lifted with the force of her sigh. “To town.”
“Why?” I grabbed a bottle of water and drank half of it in one gulp. I had a bad feeling the little girl thought we should go back and see to her mother. Maybe she had no idea the woman was dead. “We have everything we need here.”
I hoped she hadn’t gone to peer into the dumpster after I’d left. After I’d hacked her mom into chunks and pieces.
“They’re coming.” Her voice was quiet, hollow, and completely certain.
I shivered. “Who is coming?”
“The mutants.”
And then I understood. “You and your mom escaped them, didn’t you? After they…did what they did to her, she took you and ran.”
She nodded.
There was a story in those eyes. Eyes that should have been innocent but were full instead of knowledge and darkness. She didn’t elaborate.
“They’re coming this way?” I whispered.
Again, she nodded.
“A lot of them? And don’t nod. I need words, little girl. A bunch of mutants are coming here?”
She started to nod, then stopped. She looked up at me with her huge, sunken, old eyes. “A cluster of gods. They’re coming.”
My legs weakened and I was sure I was going to piss myself. “A cluster,” I whispered. “Of gods? That’s what they’re called? That’s…a cluster. That’s a group of them?”
A cluster of gods.
Oh, those words.
They sent terror right though me. I leaned against the bar. The mutants were forming…clusters. Were they growing in intelligence, or had the few I’d been up against been particularly stupid?
“I don’t like this.” I rubbed the goose bumps off my arms. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Here.”
She was standing beside me, her hand out. I hadn’t heard her move.
“Here,” she said again, when I made no move to take the crumpled paper in her hand.
I took it, finally, gingerly. It’d been wadded tightly into a ball, and I opened it carefully, then put it on the bar and used my fingers to smooth it out. It was an ordinary piece of notebook paper, its edges tattered and worn. The top left corner was missing.
I read the words aloud, then silently. Over and over, as my mind fought against accepting what my eyes were seeing.
The gods are making more of themselves.
The next words had been smeared so badly they were indecipherable.
--ing women to carry their babies and both for food.
Gods are unkillable.
Run. Hide.
“Shit,” I whispered. I looked down at the little girl. A little girl who’d spent time inside the…the cluster, who’d been exposed to the mutants. “I call them mutants.”
She nodded. “Everyone does. But the big mutants are the gods. The bosses.”
Before everything had shut down and we still got the news on TV and the Internet, the monsters had been called mutants.
No one had called them gods.
No one had mentioned clusters.
But now…
Things had changed.
And we were facing mutants who wanted to rule our world, to rule us, to be gods.
“They’re…intelligent, then,” I said. But really, it was a question.
She nodded. “The gods are.”
“What’s your name, kid?” Because suddenly there was nothing more important than concentrating on something else. Anything else.
“Sage.” She stared up at me, and then tugged my hand. “Let’s go now.”
I shook my head. “No. Hell, no. We’re not going anywhere. If they’re coming, we’ll stay right here until they’ve passed through.”
“They’ll stay for a long time. We have to take everything we can before it’s gone.”
“We should leave. Leave town.”
“They’re too close.”
“How old are you?” Because she no longer sounded six. She no longer looked six, at least not when I peered into her eyes.
“Eight,” she said. “My mother says…” She paused, then straightened her shoulders and continued. “My mother said I was born a hundred.”
“You’re awfully small for an eight-year-old.” I closed my eyes, then blew out a breath and looked at her. I took her bony shoulders and squeezed gently. “I’m sorry. I’m being a baby.”
She’d been through some bad shit, yet there she was, urging me to hurry into town so we could grab supplies before the cluster of gods arrived to steal, eat, or destroy them all.
“Sometimes they search houses for people before they leave.”
“Awesome.” I grabbed a bottle of pain relievers from the shelf beneath the bar and swallowed two of them with a long drink of water. “You’re sure we have time?”
“My mother said we have to get everything before they do. We have to.”
“Okay, hon, calm down. You’re sure there’s time?” I asked, again.
“Yes.”
“All right, then. I believe you.” But I didn’t. How could she know how much time we had? How could she really know?
She couldn’t.
But she was fixated on going to town—her mother had made sure she understood that she should stock up on supplies. Had made it seem like the most important thing in the world.
She was right, though. If the mutants were going to take or destroy everything in their paths, we needed to get what we could before they arrived. Then we’d hide out until they left.
And then…
Mentally, I shrugged.
Then we’d see.
I wanted the mutants to march on and leave me and Crowbridge alone. But life as I knew it had changed. The world had shifted—again—and I had two choices.
I would either learn to live in it…
Or I would die.
Chapter Five
Sage wouldn’t have stayed behind had I tied her to a chair. In the
end we walked back to town, and though she didn’t show it, I could feel her anxiety.
I wondered if she could feel mine.
After what I’d learned about the mutants—the gods—I knew I’d never walk outside the house with as much nerve as I had in the past.
With as much innocence.
I didn’t bother weighing myself down with more weapons. I had my machete, the usual blades, and the emergency pistol.
If it came down to me against a cluster, my only small chance at survival was running. Barring that, I could always shoot myself.
Part of me wished I’d never met the kid and her tormented mother. I’d like to have remained blissfully ignorant a while longer.
We didn’t speak the entire walk.
Sage’s disinclination to talk appeared to be contagious. I had no desire to say a word.
I had let her pick out whatever weapons she wanted, and the first thing she’d taken had been a long, silver chain which held a small but heavy bejeweled dragon.
“Oh,” she’d breathed, her eyes wide. “Can I have it?”
When I’d shown her that its wings and tail were actually tiny, detachable blades, she’d been further enchanted with the hideous piece of jewelry. No dolls for Sage. She wanted dragons and blades.
After she’d dropped the chain over her head, she slid some knives into her pockets, then chose a small, uncomplicated revolver to carry.
“I know how,” she said, tersely, when I looked at her askance.
I’d shrugged. “Whatever makes you feel safe is okay with me. Just remember if you shoot it, they’ll hear.”
She slid the gun into a pocket of the too-large, thin coat I’d given her. The days were still too warm for the bulky, heavy one she’d worn. “I won’t shoot it unless they’re about to take me.”
“It’s good to have a plan,” I told her. I patted my pocket. “I have the same plan. Better dead than captured.” I hesitated. “You know bullets won’t kill them, right?”
“I don’t want it to shoot them.” She made her hand into the shape of a gun and put her outstretched index finger to her temple. “It’s for me.”
We didn’t speak again until we reached town. I scanned the area constantly, moving slowly, checking for sounds, movements, voices.
“Can they talk?” I asked her, once.
