by Laken Cane
“Good morning,” Richard said, putting his plate in the sink. “Lila tells me you’re tracking Sage today.”
“Morning,” I mumbled.
“Lila has been busy,” Caleb said. “Do you want some help?”
Lila shoved a blade into her belt, looking at no one. “We’ve got it covered.”
“I don’t mind,” Caleb told her.
She straightened and turned to glare at him. “I told you—”
“I need you today, Caleb,” Richard interrupted. “I want to do a run on the other side of town.”
Caleb shrugged, but his disappointed gaze lingered on me. “Okay.”
I took an enormous bite of my protein bar, then shrugged into my protective vest. The vests were as plentiful as candles. When the world had begun to go bad, everyone had started stocking up on them.
Lila watched me quietly as I buckled on my belts. I pushed a water gun into the holster at my side, then slid my arms into the straps of the bag holding extra alcohol.
Lastly, I began loading up on blades, flashlights, and other things I might need while on the road. I shouldn’t have made it so obvious that I wasn’t coming back, but the supplies were worth the risk.
If Richard had been telling the truth, there weren’t a lot of supplies left out in the world.
“Jesus, Teagan. We’re not leaving the country,” Lila said.
“You never know what might happen out there.”
I pulled another bag off a hook on the wall and began filling it from the pile of supplies on the table we’d shoved against the wall. Packages of food, a couple bottles of water, extra weapons, first aid kit, whatever else I could fit in there without weighing it down too much.
“For fuck’s sake!” Lila put her hands on her hips and shook her head.
“You act like you’re never coming back,” Caleb said.
I laughed. “I like to be prepared.”
“If you have to fight,” Richard said, “you’ll be at a disadvantage with too many weapons and supplies. Leave the bag.”
It sounded more like an order than a request, but when I looked at him, he smiled. “Think of me as your teacher.”
“And her keeper,” Lila muttered. “God knows she needs one.”
I paused with a bottle of aspirin halfway to the bag. “No supplies? We may have to track her for miles. And what if we find her in a camp of baddies? We’re going to need some things.”
“If we find her in a camp,” Lila said, “we’re coming back here to get Richard and Caleb to help. We can’t attack a camp by ourselves. I’m not looking to get us killed.”
Dammit. I did not want to leave without a bag of supplies. If I had my way, I was going to get as far away from Crowbridge as possible.
Start over.
Start over with people who didn’t know that I’d been bitten by a mutant and think that meant they should automatically kill me.
I sighed and reluctantly left the bag behind as I followed Lila out the back door. I was glad Richard hadn’t made me empty my belt and pockets. I was halfway afraid to grab a machete from beside the door, but when I did, he said nothing.
I was just being paranoid. If Richard wanted me dead, he’d have killed me himself already.
“Come on, boy,” I called, but when the dog got up from his bed in the corner and walked toward me, Richard held him back.
“He’s not well enough to track,” he said. “We’ll take care of him.”
There was nothing I could do about that, either. Richard would keep the dog, and they really would take care of it. Not even Caleb, in his insanity, would hurt a dog.
So I left him there.
“Thanks for doing this, Lila,” I said, once we were outside. The air was crisp, almost cold. A fresh carpet of colorful leaves covered the ground. Overnight the trees’ branches had become a little barer.
Soon winter would come and the moon would crash the party a lot earlier in the day. I was not looking forward to early darkness.
Lila pursed her lips, shrugging. “I liked that kid. I want her safe.”
“Wow.” I grinned, but I was touched that she cared. “I didn’t think you had a heart.”
She lifted her chin and blanked her eyes immediately. “I don’t.”
I noticed she had a long, thin scar along her jawline.
Without thinking, I reached out to touch it.
She flinched, but held still as I traced the scar with my fingertips. “How’d you get it?”
“Doesn’t matter. It happened long before the world ended.” She looked away. “It doesn’t matter now.”
She stepped back and snatched off her cap—a red one—then ran her hand over her close cropped hair. Without another word, she rested her baseball bat on her shoulder and jogged through the yard.
I didn’t want to think about mutant saliva running through my bloodstream, wreaking havoc on my system, but as we strode down the street, I realized my body wanted to run. To fight.
I had so much energy I could barely contain it, and I was jumping out of my skin. Regardless of Lila’s assessment that I was a slowpoke, my insides were shaking like jelly, and I would have liked nothing more than to release that excess energy.
It seemed like the very air had woken what was inside of me.
I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. I was me, simple as that.
Teagan Shaw.
Whatever happened, whatever came, I was not going to become someone else.
Right, Robin?
“Richard and Caleb,” I said. “They’re afraid I’ll…”
“Turn.”
“Yes.”
And the mutant’s face flashed into my mind. His mouth opening, his fangs, his eyes, his lack of any sort of humanity. The pain, the memories, the screaming…
I slapped a hand to my throat and stumbled as the memory became too vivid. I felt his teeth digging into my throat. I felt his rage. I felt his hatred, his…jealousy. I felt his hunger.
“Teagan! You’re okay. You’re fine.”
When the memory receded, I came back to reality crouched on the ground, my machete beside me. Lila bent over me, frowning, her hand on my shoulder.
“I will never be fine again,” I told her. “None of us will.”
Maybe they weren’t like the vampires of fiction. Maybe they weren’t like the vampires on TV, handsome and sexy and romantic, but yes.
They were vampires.
Sort of.
And I’d been bitten.
“Thing is,” she said, “the rest of us realized that two years ago.”
I stared up at her. “Do you think it’s true what the guys said? That a bitten person becomes the mutant?”
She sighed and knelt beside me. “I think it means you’ll become…modified. Not human, not mutant, but something more. Something just as dangerous as the gods.”
“The gods…”
She looked into my eyes, and hers bore no judgment. “You feel it, don’t you?”
I didn’t want to admit it, but I needed someone to know. I needed someone to tell me what to do.
I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “I feel different. I feel…” I tapped my chest. “I feel it growing inside me.” I burst into tears.
She pulled me into her arms. “Teagan…”
I buried my face against the warmth of her throat, wishing I could stay there forever. Wishing I could forget what had happened to me.
“You have to go,” she said. “Richard will figure it out, and he’ll kill you. His hatred of the mutants consumes him. He’s not exactly himself anymore.”
“Was he their prisoner?”
I felt her shrug. “Richard doesn’t tell me what he was or wasn’t.” She pushed me away from her. “I couldn’t get much, but when I went out this morning I stashed some supplies in a bag for you.” As I wiped my eyes, she stood, then pointed. “At the base of the third tree. Now get going.”
“Come with me.” I didn’t want to wander the world alone. I didn’t wa
nt to face what was happening inside me alone. I just…
I didn’t want to be alone.
She hesitated. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I owe him. Richard isn’t a bad person. He saved my life. Twice. And I fucking owe him. I belong in his group, hunting for him, helping him build. I’m being a traitorous fucking bitch right now and if you don’t go, I’ll...just go, Teagan. Fucking go.”
I backed away, nodding. Shivering. Alone.
Always alone.
“If you find Sage before I do,” I said, my teeth clacking together, “tell her I looked for her. Will you?”
“Yeah.” She turned away, her stare on the ground. “I’ll tell her.”
I straightened my spine. “Goodbye, Lila.”
She strode to me, hooked a hand around my neck, and slammed her mouth against mine. She softened the kiss as I stood there, unmoving, surprised.
Finally, I leaned into her kiss. I lay my fingers on her cheek, then slid them around to grip her neck. It’d been so long.
So long since the world had ended and there was no one to touch, no one to kiss, no one to care. And now…
There would be no one again.
She pulled away, finally, and rested her forehead against mine. For a long, long moment we just breathed.
“Go,” she said, finally. “Go make the world a better place, Teagan.”
I turned around and started toward the tree she’d indicated, my eyes full of tears I really didn’t want to shed in front of her.
I’d only taken a few steps when her voice stopped me.
But she wasn’t calling me back.
“No,” she screamed. “Teagan, run!”
Richard and Caleb loped toward us. Richard pulled a sword from the sheath at his side, and Caleb held a machete in each hand.
Caleb ran around behind me as Richard took the front.
They’d come to kill me.
“Take off, Lila,” Caleb called. “One chance.”
I thought I heard her sigh, and then, she lifted her bat.
She stood alone, her and a fucking bat against two men with blades.
No. Not alone.
I hefted my machete and ran to stand at her side.
“The girls against the boys,” I whispered, and tried to smile. I was unsuccessful. I had no gun, or I would have shot them, mutants or no mutants.
Richard sprayed me with alcohol, but when I didn’t burn, he threw his gun to the ground and ran at me, his sword in both hands.
“Richard, don’t,” Lila screamed.
“You betrayed us, Lila,” he said, and finally, there was emotion in Richard’s voice. “You broke the rules.”
She spread her feet and held her baseball bat like she was getting ready to hit a homerun. “Match me,” she said. “At least do that, motherfucker.”
I had no idea what she was talking about until Richard stopped, dropped his sword, and drew a club from a sheath on his back. I’d never seen it before, and wished I hadn’t seen it then.
It was polished mahogany in some places, worn dull and colorless in others. He’d used it a lot—or someone else had. Metal bits gleamed from the bulbous business end.
He gave her a nod. “I did promise.”
Caleb crept closer. I hadn’t seen him drop his blades, but he held a club similar to Richard’s in his grip. His was black and as grim as his face.
He hadn’t made it out of his teens yet, but he was not a boy. He’d grown up when the world ended.
But I didn’t really know him. Maybe he’d grown up before the world ended.
“Lila,” he called. “You don’t have to die. No sense in both of you going down. It’s not going to help her. Get the fuck out of here.” His voice broke halfway through his words, but he continued on. “Please, Lila. Don’t make me.”
“If you kill me,” she said, gently, “that’s on you.”
“I can’t live with that,” he cried, but he took another step toward us, his club up. Ready to kill us—her—despite his reluctance. Despite his pain.
Despite his love for her.
“Rules are rules, Caleb,” Richard called. “We can’t keep people we can’t trust. She was dead the minute she tried to help a turned one escape.” He smiled, and there was a gleam of admiration in his eyes. “And she knew that.”
“Good luck, Teagan,” Lila said. “If you see your chance, run like the wind. And don’t look back.”
“I will if you will,” I said.
“Okay,” she agreed. “Run.”
Without hesitation I kicked off, running as fast as I could toward the tree line.
And I was faster, there was no doubt.
But I heard a sound, and I turned back.
A crack, loud and sudden in the crisp fall quiet, like a tree branch breaking. Like a gunshot.
Like a club meeting someone’s skull.
I turned back.
Richard swung his bludgeon again, and it hit Lila’s bat, but she never made a sound as the shock of that hit would surely have jarred her all the way to her brain.
She stumbled back, then swung her baseball bat, and her blow hit Richard on his mauled shoulder.
I’d forgotten Caleb in my concern for Lila.
“Lila,” I yelled.
She jerked her head around to look at me, her eyes widening one second before something hit the back of my head with enough force to crack my skull.
I hit the ground hard, my brains scrambled, and for one second I could neither see nor hear anything.
Then I heard screaming—not mine, but Lila’s, her voice high, angry, and desperate.
I turned sluggishly to my back, my vision returning with my hearing. Caleb stood a couple of yards away, his face blank. His eyes, though, they were filled with hatred.
“You’ve killed her,” he said.
I scrambled backward, then stood, and realized I’d dropped my machete. I couldn’t take my gaze off Caleb long enough to look for it. Perhaps if I kept him locked in my stare, he couldn’t get near me.
But he could.
Despite all the energy I’d felt inside me earlier, my dull, stunned mind refused to let me move.
He lifted his club again and swung at my head.
I cried out as the bat connected. The world tilted, changed colors, and briefly darkened so much I couldn’t see anything at all.
“Wait,” I said, or tried to say.
Blood was in my eyes, and maybe my ears. For a while, all I could hear was a roaring, rushing sound, like a waterfall. Like death running to greet me.
I crawled away, a few yards away, before I felt the baseball connect with the back of my skull. I didn’t know why I was still alive.
Except I did.
The blow drove me forward and I landed face first on the hard ground. My blood mixed with the earth, and I swear I saw smoke rising from where my blood sank into the ground.
“God,” Caleb screamed. “Why don’t you die?”
I saw Richard drive Lila back with his superior strength, with his greater experience. I saw her glance at me, and I saw Richard’s club hit the side of her head so hard her face caved in.
Blood hung in the air as she flew backward.
Her bat flew from her grip, spinning through the air to land with a solid thud on the hard ground. Almost close enough for me to touch.
She lay motionless.
Richard stood over her for a long moment, his head bowed, and then, he started toward me.
But I was turned. Changed.
Different.
And I would not die.
All it took was for me to accept it. To embrace it.
To realize that yes, I was something more. I had been bitten, I had been turned, and I was going to live, no matter how many times he slammed the bat into my head.
I didn’t know how they’d killed Lila’s father. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d wrapped him in barbed wire and buried him deep in the ground. Maybe he lived even now, awake and awa
re, buried alive in darkness forever.
That was the thought that got me moving.
I rose in a seamless, smooth move, and my body hummed with strength. With power. Would I now be sensitive to the alcohol, now that I was…changed? If Richard tried again, would I burn? Would my flesh melt over my bones as I died in agony?
Maybe.
But I would not find out that day.
I wiped the blood from my eyes and faced them, and we stood like that, staring at each other, for an eternity.
Richard had his sword, and Caleb had tossed his club away and reclaimed his machetes.
I couldn’t move my face. If I could have, I would have smiled.
Maybe they saw death in my eyes, or the mutant blood, because Caleb stumbled back a few steps, and Richard flinched as he looked at me.
And I was no longer afraid. I was numb, but I was not afraid.
I leapt toward Lila’s bat, scooped it from the ground, then turned just in time to block Richard’s sword.
I was changed, true, but whatever I was, I was new. I didn’t know, really, what to do. What I could do.
But I was full of wrath.
Still, I was only one girl with a baseball bat and they were two men with blades. I stayed and fought for one reason.
I could not leave Lila there.
I could not leave her for the animals, or for Caleb and Richard to touch or bury or cry over.
Fuck them.
I would get her justice.
Or maybe I just wanted revenge.
Richard swung his sword as I was trying to block Caleb’s machete, and that time, he had better luck.
The sword cut through my upper left arm, sinking in like a knife through butter, coming up hard against bone.
I screamed.
Somehow, I blocked Caleb with the bat, though I had the use of only one arm. Richard stood still for a long moment, just watching me. He knew I was caught. He knew I was dead.
By the time I decided to run, it was too late.
They lifted their blades.
I turned anyway—at least I’d try.
But as I turned, a blade bit into my back. I felt it like a hard shove, and then pain. Burning. Another blade slid through my right leg, and I went down.
I turned to my back to face them, unwilling to let them chop me into pieces when they couldn’t see my face. Let them look at me.
