Shudder

by V. J. Chambers

  “She said that?” Jason wasn’t looking at me.

  “Yes, she did,” I said.

  He ate some bacon. He chewed.

  “Are you holding back with me? Because if you are, then I’m never going to be enough for you, and there’s always going to be some redhead behind my back—”

  “Stop.” He raised his gaze to mine. “Can we talk about this another time? Sometime when we’re not being filmed?”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “So, it’s true? What I’m saying? I’m hitting too close to home, and now you’re running from the truth?”

  “It’s...” He glared at the cameras. “Personal.”

  “What more can we possibly hold back from these people?” I felt like I was going to start crying. “They’ve seen everything.”

  Jason set down his tray and came to me. He wrapped me in his arms.

  It was his nearness that undid me. I started sobbing, clinging to him.

  “I did a lot of very bad things, Azazel,” he murmured. “I thought I was some kind of king or god in Jasontown. I did... I was horrible.”

  And then I didn’t really care about that. I’d been drugged and manipulated. I’d been imprisoned and treated like a herd animal. I was trapped here, and I was going to lose it. I gave into my sobs. “Are we ever going to get out of here?”

  He held me close.

  But he didn’t answer.

  * * *

  I wanted to escape all of it, but there was nowhere to go. I turned to the books Jude had given me. I read about Zeus and Hera. Their love was extremely complicated. Zeus kept cheating on Hera, having children with other women, and she stayed with him through all of it. But the longer it went on, the more vindictive and awful she got.

  It seemed to hit too close to home, so I put away the Greek mythology book and picked up the next one. It wasn’t a novel either. It was a collection of academic essays on Jewish mythology. My name came from a Jewish demon, so I was a little bit intrigued. Here, too, though, there was a note on the cover page with page numbers. I flipped to them, scouring the underlined passages.

  “The story of the Nephilim is further elaborated in the Book of Enoch. Samyaza, an angel of high rank, is described as leading a rebel sect of angels in a descent to earth to have sexual intercourse with human females.”

  I thought I remembered this. I might have read some book about it too, when I was a teenager. One of those books with some girl in a fancy dress on the cover. There were a bunch of those right before the solar flare. Apparently in the bible, before the flood, angels had come to earth and had sex with humans, creating these sort of human-angel hybrids. My upbringing had lacked much talk about the bible, considering I was raised by Satanists.

  I flipped to a different page, read the underlined bits there.

  “Genesis 6:4 implies that the Nephilim have inhabited the earth in at least two different time periods—in antediluvian times ‘and afterward.’ If the Nephilim were supernatural beings themselves, or at least the progeny of supernatural beings, there is a theory that the ‘giants of Canaan’ in Numbers 13:33 were the direct descendants of the antediluvian Nephilim, or were fathered by the same supernatural parents.”

  There was a note in the margin here, in the same scribbly hand that had written in the Greek mythology book. “Similarity between Greek gods and angels? Nephilim equivalent to demigods?”

  I set the book down. That was true, I supposed. Both mythologies had supernatural beings having sex with humans and producing half-human offspring. But there were all kinds of similarities between different mythologies. It didn’t really matter, did it?

  If Jude had made these notes, what was he trying to tell me?

  I sighed. Jude probably hadn’t made these notes. Someone else certainly had. Who knows where the books in the library here had come from anyway. Maybe they’d gotten donated by some guy who was interested in ancient mythologies or something. And whoever donated them might have made the notes.

  Still. Jude had selected them with such care. He’d given me these specific books. He hadn’t just handed me a stack of random books from his room.

  I set the book aside. This was ridiculous. I was wasting time in here. The important thing wasn’t trying to figure out if Jude was trying to send me messages in books or not. The important thing was to figure out how to get the hell out of here.

  Jason might have thought it was awesome to be drugged and made so out of control that we were on each other like rabid wolves. But I thought it was terrifying. I never wanted it to happen again.

  I went to the library and began searching through the DVDs for the one that Boone had mentioned earlier. The video of the escape attempt.

  It took me awhile, but eventually I found an unmarked disc at the back of the shelf. I put it on.

  The video was very short. It showed an elevator door being pried open and about eight people crawling out of it. The minute they were all free, there was an explosion.

  Bits of blood and skin hit the camera.

  When the smoke cleared, you could see that there was nothing left of them.

  I felt sick. But I also had an idea of where those people had tried to get out. The elevator must be located in Jude’s wing. Because that was where I’d found the seams.

  Which reminded me, I hadn’t told Jason about that. I’d gotten distracted right after I found out.

  Of course, I didn’t know if it really made much difference, considering that even if we found a way up that elevator, we’d probably get blown up too. Still, I needed to let him know. Maybe if we put our heads together, we could get somewhere with the information.

  I got up to go find Jason, but Boone opened the door and strode into the library. “Hey,” he said. “Watch a movie with me.”

  What? Why would I watch a movie with Boone?

  “Just do it,” he said. He picked up a DVD at random from the shelf and popped it in the player. If he noticed what I’d been watching, he didn’t comment on it. He started playing the next movie and jacked up the volume to extremely loud.

  I cringed.

  But Boone grabbed me by the arm and sat me down on the floor, directly in front of the TV. “It will drown us out,” he said.

  I nodded. He wanted to talk to me, and he didn’t want the cameras to hear. I understood.

  “I need out of here,” he said.

  “We all do,” I said.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “That shit they give us is too good. Things used to be okay. I used to be able to hide in my room and do what I had to do until it passed. But now, they’re pulling that crap where they force me out of my wing by screwing with the temperature?” He shook his head. “Jude and I had to tie Grace to her bed and go hide in the gym last night. And I’m not even sure how we managed to stay that strong. I can’t do this anymore.”

  I reeled. “You tied Grace to her bed?”

  He clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I didn’t either. I wanted to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened. But it had. We were stuck here. And it had obviously happened before. I needed information, and Boone had it. “How often do they do that? Roofie us or whatever?”

  He scratched his head. “I don’t know. Once a month or something? I can’t predict it. When there were more people here, it was less of a problem. They didn’t target people. But they’re trying to force me to be with Grace now. And she’s so young.” He shuddered.

  He was right. It was awful and disgusting. What kind of people did something like that? It was like they were stripping away our humanity, turning us into animals. I felt horrified.

  “I’m not going to do it,” he said.

  “Once a month,” I repeated, thinking. “It’s not random.”

  “What?”

  “They must be tracking female cycles,” I said. “And if we’re all in here together for long enough, our cycles would sync up. They do it when the women are fertile. We can anticipate it.”

&nbs
p; “We can?”

  I nodded. I was sometimes amazed at the ignorance of people when it came to human reproduction, but, after society collapsed, I’d spent years of my life with no birth control. One pregnancy scare was all it took for me to figure out how things worked.

  “Okay, well, I guess that’s good, but it doesn’t solve the problem,” he said.

  “If we know it’s coming,” I said, “we can...” What? Lock ourselves up? We couldn’t lock the doors ourselves. They could lock us in or lock us out, but we couldn’t do it. Frankly, I was amazed that Boone had kept himself away from Grace for so long. I knew what that drug had done to me last night. I’d been completely out of control. It was psychotic to do that to a thirteen or fourteen year old girl, when she was just trying to figure out all those urges anyway. To dose an older teenage boy and throw them at each other. Whoever was behind those cameras was sick.

  “I want out,” said Boone.

  “I do too,” I said. “But if I knew a way out of here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d be gone. Why come to me?”

  “Because we can work together,” he said. “Because we have to do something. And I would have gone to your boyfriend, but something about him scares the hell out of me.”

  I smiled a little. Jason could totally be scary. “Work together to do what?”

  “I don’t know. You guys have been going over the place. You’ve been meticulously looking for weaknesses. I’ve seen you. And the way you were when you first showed up, you were about ten times more organized and efficient than anyone else I’ve ever seen come into this place. It usually takes days before some newbie busts a camera. Jason did it the first day. I think you might be able to do it. We might be able to do it.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve got nothing. We don’t even know where we are. Why we’re here. Maybe if we could figure out what they wanted us for, we could find some kind of weakness we could exploit.”

  “No one knows that,” he said.

  “But you think they’re breeding us.”

  “Why else would they pump us full of aphrodisiacs?”

  “Has anyone ever gotten pregnant while you were here?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But Emma...”

  “What about Emma?” I said.

  “Emma was pregnant when I got here,” he said.

  “Where’s her baby?”

  Boone shook his head. “Emma and the baby’s father fought. He wanted to escape. She didn’t. He took the kid without her knowing.”

  I covered my mouth with one hand. “Oh.” Then I thought about the video. “I watched the DVD. I didn’t see any children.”

  “She was there,” Boone said. “He had her strapped to his back.”

  I felt coldness wash through me. “If they’re breeding us, it means they want to make more of us. So, why did they kill the ones who escaped?”

  “I don’t know,” said Boone.

  “And what do they want us for?” I said.

  “I don’t know ,” said Boone.

  “But they want us for something,” I said. I turned to him. “Do they make us do anything? Take anything from us? Anything besides watch us and try to force us to get it on with each other?”

  “Just the blood,” said Boone. “They draw blood from us once a month or so.”

  “Blood?” I said. “How? Do we see them?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “They lock us in our rooms and gas us—knock us out. Sometimes you wake up while they’re doing it. They’ve got you strapped down and there’s a needle in your arm filling up a blood bag.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “They look like doctors. They wear lab coats and surgical masks. They usually have armed guards with them. Guys in all black with big guns.”

  “They wear black?” I said. I swallowed. Jude said it was the Sons. Big guns, all black? It sounded like the Sons. But the Sons were all dead. I’d killed them myself. On the other hand, Jude was supposed to be dead, and he wasn’t. What the hell? The Sons fit the bill, though. They were ruthless and twisted enough to pull this off. But how had they survived?

  “Does that mean something?” said Boone.

  “I... I don’t know. The important thing is that they have guns. If they’ve got guns, no matter how strapped down Jason and I are, we can get those guns. And if we’re armed, maybe we can get out of here.”

  “They shoot to kill,” said Boone. “It doesn’t kill you, not really, but a gunshot to the head tends to slow you down a good bit.”

  I drew in breath. “It’s our best shot, though. Do you have any idea when they’ll come to draw blood?”

  “It could be soon,” he said. “It sometimes seems to happen close to when the aphrodisiacs are in the food.”

  I bit my lip. “We need to talk to everyone. We need to organize. And to do that, we need to be able to talk without the cameras. I’m sure if we bring everyone in here and blare a movie, they’re going to get suspicious.”

  “The cameras are everywhere,” said Boone.

  I told him about Jason’s idea to break a camera in every room. That way, they wouldn’t be able to put us all in our rooms while they fixed things. We figured they’d put us in one room, and that way we could break all those cameras and have some privacy. “But we can’t figure out how to do it. There are too many cameras and not enough of us.”

  Boone raised his eyebrows. “Maybe if we do it at night.”

  “What would that matter?”

  “You might have noticed that I sleep pretty late all the time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s because I stay up late, mostly hanging out and exploring and experimenting,” he said. “Once they turn all the lights out, they don’t pay as much attention. A couple months ago, I broke a camera late at night, just to see what would happen. They didn’t notice it for hours. So if we tried something like that, we might have enough time to get it all done.”

  What did we have to lose? “We can try it.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Okay. You guys help me out. But don’t start breaking anything until lights have been out for at least three hours.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Grace was waiting outside the library, her arms folded over her chest. “What were you doing with Boone?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I saw you two last night,” she said, her eyes narrowing at me.

  “It’s not like that, Grace.” I heaved a sigh.

  Boone came out of the library behind me. He swallowed when he saw Grace. “Hey, you doing okay?”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m fine. No thanks to you, asswipe.” Then she stalked back up the hall.

  Boone buried his face in his hands.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said, going after Grace.

  I caught up to her in her wing. She was crying.

  I grabbed her and hugged her. She struggled for a second, then she went slack in my arms. I let her cry. I knew how she felt. I’d been crying earlier today too. I wondered if the stuff they put in our food had a lot of hormones in it too. That could throw our emotional center out of whack.

  “He hates me,” said Grace.

  I pulled away, cupping her face with my hands. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “He does, he does.” She brushed away tears angrily. “He wouldn’t even look at me last night.”

  That wasn’t exactly how I remembered it. I remembered Boone trying really hard not to look at Grace. “Actually, sweetie, I think he really likes you. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have any problem doing things that might hurt you.”

  “You mean he’d hook up with me,” she said. She thrust her arms onto her hips. “I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, when we get that stuff in our food, it affects me. If I were really a little kid like he thinks, it wouldn’t.”

  I thought about the way Jason and I had gone at each other last night. “Trust me, Grace, you want a little experience under your be
lt before you try having sex under the influence of that drug. Boone’s trying to protect you.”

  “He thinks he’s too old for me,” she said. “He’s not. I’m pretty sure I just had a birthday, so that makes me fourteen. I’m old enough.”

  I considered. I remembered being fourteen. I thought about sex. Sure I did. But I know I wasn’t ready back then. “You’re not.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Look, in a couple of years,” I said. “Then maybe.”

  “ Years ?” She gaped at me.

  Right. I forgot that when you were fourteen, a couple of years sounded synonymous with several millennia. “We’re gonna get out of here. And when we do, things can be normal for you. And you won’t have aphrodisiacs making this decision for you.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” she said. She stomped into her room and slammed the door.

  I stood there, staring at it for a moment. Had I been like this? I remembered pretty clearly the way it felt like no one understood me when I was a teenager, least of all adults. But I did understand what she was going through. But now I had more experience, and I could put that understanding in perspective. What if all adults that I talked to were just trying to tell me the same thing when I was a teenager? What if they actually had understood?

  God. Was I turning into an actual adult if I was having thoughts like that? I guessed I was only a couple years shy of thirty. Actually, my birthday might have happened while I was in that damned coma. Maybe I was twenty-nine now. I gulped. I was old. How the hell had that happened?

  I left Grace’s wing. I needed to find Jason and tell him about our plan for that night.

  But when I got back to the main room, I was intercepted by Jude.

  “I was looking for you,” he said. “Can we talk?”

  I flashed on my body pressed against his last night, and how I’d known it was wrong, but it had felt so good that I didn’t care. I felt a little sick to my stomach. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I tried to stay away from you.”

  “I know,” I said. It wasn’t his fault. Not really. “It’s okay.” I started for the wing I shared with Jason.