Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  “I hope you’re satisfied with our services,” Lori blurted on autopilot, because this was what she always said, and it was true even, “and if you ever run into any trouble like this in the future, please consider using Angler Consulting again.”

  “I will, dear, I absolutely will,” said Lake, and Lori pulled her earpiece away, turned it off, and began typing furiously into her phone.

  Lori: What is this?

  Handler: No idea! Why can’t you lie?

  Lori: You have no idea?

  Lori: YOU have no idea.

  Handler: Kk, stay calm, don’t freak out.

  Lori: I am not freaking out. I am justifiably concerned.

  Handler: All right, you can lie to me, at least. Good to know!

  Lori: Did the jellyfish thing hit me with truth serum?

  Handler: Nope. That was a sihuanaba. Your basic sexy-lure feeder.

  Handler: Some people say it has a horse head, tho. Kinda makes you wonder.

  Handler: We can figure out what’s going on once you’re out of here.

  Lori left the pit where the feeder had been. She started walking back toward the dock, where the taxi would be waiting. Her wrist was almost back to normal already, with just a few little red bumps to mark where the tentacle had grabbed her.

  She saw the black shipping container.

  There were a lot of things Lori didn’t know. Most of them were things she didn’t want to know, the little blessings still lurking in the shadows next to the pile of horrible awful things she did know.

  Her phone buzzed.

  If she looked down at it, she’d see whatever it was that Handler wanted her to know. An order, for example, like, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t open the container, that’s a terrible idea.

  Handler was always very nice to her. It told jokes and gave her friendly grief and reminded her when Ben needed to take his pills in the morning. It didn’t hurt Lori at all.

  But she bet if she’d asked those shells that had once been security guards, they’d have said that the sihuanaba was very nice to them, too.

  Lori wasn’t entirely sure she could do something Handler had told her not to do. She thought of her mouth working soundlessly, trying to talk to Lake, but nothing coming out, like her lips and tongue and vocal cords weren’t even hers to begin with. Could Handler do that? If it did, would she even remember it later?

  She didn’t look at her phone.

  She ran to the black cargo container, flipped the latch, and slid the bolt loose. The door opened with a low creak.

  A handful of teenagers blinked at Lori from the darkness inside. They were all locked in restraints, more restraints than normal people would ever need, straitjackets and handcuffs and straps that kept them locked into their chairs.

  The nearest one, a boy with light brown skin and dreadlocks and eyes that glittered in the dark of the shipping container, had somehow gotten part of one hand free from his restraints, although the rest of him was still strapped into his chair. The container wall behind him was dented. His fingers twitched as he saw her.

  “Hi!” said the pretty blond girl behind him. “I’m Maya, it’s great to meet you!”

  “I’m not here,” Lori said. She stepped over to dreadlocks boy, grabbed one of the straps, undid the latch, and pulled it free. “I wasn’t here, I’m not here, you never saw me.”

  “Is she hypnotizing us,” the blond girl named Maya asked another girl with a warm tan complexion and bright green hair, “or is she supposed to be invisible?” The girl with the green hair shrugged.

  “Hey, Not-Here, I’m Shawn,” said the white guy to her left with a little grin. He was pulling against his restraints. “If you could maybe undo my strap as well while you’re not here . . . ?” From his voice, she thought he was from the South, maybe Georgia or the little bits of Florida that were still left.

  Lori stepped over and undid the straps on his chair as well. Dreadlocks boy was pulling himself free. She was already regretting this. Five teenagers—Maya, green-haired girl, dreadlocks boy, Shawn-from-Georgia-or-Florida, and a small, dark-skinned boy Lori thought might be Filipino—all in a shipping container at a site that already had a feeder and whatever was going on with Tia Lake.

  “Okay, you can get yourself out the rest of the way,” Lori said, and stepped back. “And help the others.”

  “I’m on it,” Shawn said, still grinning. “Thanks for the not-help. Tapper, you pop Hawk, and I’ll get the girls.”

  “I’m actually good,” said Maya, and slid her fingers out from where the straps crisscrossed under her chin. “I’m flexible.” She waved at Lori.

  “Why did you not do that earlier?” the girl with the green hair demanded.

  “Well, the door was latched shut from the other side, so . . . ?”

  “I was never here, okay?” Lori said again.

  Then she ran to the dock.

  The taxi was already waiting for her when she got there. It was the same driver, and he smiled and helped her into the cab, ma’aming her as he did.

  Lori settled into her seat, smiled, and asked him to go. She didn’t look at her phone. She didn’t look back to the dockyard. She didn’t look at anything.

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s aboard now,” the driver said, and Lori froze.

  The taxi exploded, a big greasy fireball that spat shards of metal and fiberglass into the water and across the dock, leaving only smoke and charred debris floating in the flaming wreckage.

  Cold and clammy from Handler’s pull, Lori watched the flames die on the water, now a hundred meters away, from the safety of the cargo containers.

  Lori: Can she find me

  Handler: Lot of dummy accts. Will take time.

  Lori: She finds me she finds ben

  Lori: How long

  Handler: Hard to say.

  Lori: How long

  Handler: Three-ish days.

  It was Monday morning.

  Lori came around the corner of the black shipping container. The kids inside were still pulling free and helping each other.

  “Hey,” she said. “I have to destroy the Lake Foundation before Thursday, and I need your help.”

  02

  MAYA

  Maya had mostly slid out of the restraints when the pretty girl with the silky dark hair who’d opened the door for them came back, and she waved again. “Oh hi, I’m Maya. I’m introducing myself because you weren’t here before,” she said, and winked. “That’s Tapper helping Hawk, who’s been kind of in and out.”

  “I got electrocuted,” Hawk muttered, groaning. “You all just got drugged.”

  “And Shawn is helping . . .” Maya paused and then took a good run at it. “Eeeyara?”

  “Iara,” said the girl with the dark red skin and the green hair. She’d said she was from Brazil, and Maya, who was from Nebraska, was still having trouble with the name. The accent was cute, though.

  “Right, and that’s Shawn helping Iara.”

  “I need your help,” the girl who’d rescued them said again.

  “And why do we care about what you need?” Tapper asked, tearing the straps free from Hawk. Hawk began to untangle himself, still dizzy. “You were scared to stick your neck out when we needed you, but now we drop everything—”

  “Tapper!” Iara said sharply.

  “I did help you, though,” the girl said. “And now I have three days before the Lake Foundation finds out who I am and comes after me and my brother, so I need to take them down before that.”

  “Okay,” Maya said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Shawn said, still fiddling with Iara’s restraints. “What makes you think the rest of us can help?” He shot Maya a look, which seemed really unfair, because they had all been talking ever since they woke up, and they had all agreed that they were in this together.

  “Because Lake locked you up,” the girl said, looking at all of them. “She got suspicious when I asked about the container, and she asked if I’d opened it. I took down
a feeder out there, and if Lake wanted you enough to kidnap you and lock you in a shipping container . . .” She swallowed and her hands tightened into fists. “I’m guessing you’re not completely human.”

  “And you wouldn’t be bringing it up if you were completely human yourself,” Tapper said, glaring at the girl. Now that they weren’t sitting in complete darkness like they had been ever since they woke up, Maya realized that Tapper’s default state seemed to be glaring.

  “Guys,” said Hawk, and Tapper looked away from the girl and grabbed hold of Hawk as he stumbled. “She’s on our side. We probably wanna chill and hug this out later.”

  “Deal.” Shawn finished with Iara’s restraints and slid them free. “ ’Sides, taking down the Lake Foundation works for me.”

  “And me as well,” Iara said, pushing the restraints aside and flipping her wavy green hair back out of her face. “Let us escape, and then destroy our enemies!” She slammed her hands down fiercely on the armrests of her chair.

  The chair slid forward, and as the fabric of the straitjacket fell away, Maya realized it was a wheelchair.

  “Oh, shoot,” Maya said, “that is going to make it super hard for us to get away. Um, no offense.”

  “None taken,” Iara said, and smiled, her lips curving wickedly on her heart-shaped face. “Get me to the water before their boats arrive, and I will show you my world.”

  “Boats?” Hawk asked, looking around.

  “Wait,” Maya said, “what does showing me your world mean? Was that like flirty or threatening or . . . because I’m okay with either, I mean obviously the first more—”

  “Seriously?” Tapper said. “We’re doing this right now?”

  “Sadly, alemã, I only like men,” Iara said.

  “Someone said something about boats?” Hawk asked.

  “See, that’s perfect,” Maya said, “because I only go for girls.”

  “Excellent!” Iara slapped the arm of her chair. “Divide and conquer. The women are yours, the men are mine, and the world falls before us!”

  “What was it you said about boats?” Hawk asked, and then turned, stepped away from Tapper, and squinted out to the open water visible through the row of shipping containers. “Wait, hang on, I see ’em.”

  He took a couple of steps toward the water, and then stopped.

  A moment later, a sharp whistling sound like a steaming teakettle zoomed in.

  Then an explosion slammed Maya to the floor of the cargo container.

  Amid the terrible cacophony of blinding light and roaring noise that shook the metal around them, Maya looked up, blinking. The girl who’d freed them was gone—not dead or anything, just gone— and most of the others were on the ground like Maya. Iara’s chair was on its side, and Iara lay beside it, her green hair covering her face.

  The only one still on his feet was the little guy, who stood in the middle of a bunch of scorched concrete. Little bits of flaming debris were scattered around him.

  He looked back over his shoulder, completely unharmed as far as Maya could tell. “Dudes,” he said, “I think maybe they know we’re free.”

  HAWK

  “Boat’s coming in,” Hawk called, and started walking toward the water. He was finally feeling steady again. Being electrocuted had messed up his balance.

  It was a small speedboat, dark and unmarked, like a corporation would have. The pretty girl with the dark eyes had said they were after her. They’d gotten Hawk and the others, so that stood to reason.

  Something flashed in the corner of his vision, and he blinked, and then looked down to see that the guys on the boat had arrived at the dock, and now they were shooting at him. Little bullets or casings or whatever it was that actually came out of guns? Bullets, right. Bullets were sprinkling on the ground around him. They were all messed up and flattened, and he almost bent down to check them out, but then he realized that if he did that, the bullets might zip past him and hit somebody.

  “Oh yeah, they’re shooting at us too,” he added over his shoulder, “so if you’ve got, like, any powers that help with that . . .”

  More bullets bipp ed off him. A couple dinged his head and made him flinch. He wondered what’d happen if they caught him in the eye. He probably didn’t have, like, supereyes. That didn’t make sense.

  Of course, it wasn’t like his throat was reinforced by a lot of muscle or bone either, and as a shot dinged his Adam’s apple, all that happened was he started hiccupping, so maybe he should stop trying to make it all work by science.

  He squinted, though. For safety.

  There were three guys, all grown-ups and all white and wearing dark suits with ties. They were all pretty big and ripped, and they looked like when the guys on the football team dressed up for a game, big shoulders poured into business wear. Their guns were assault rifles, and apparently they held a lot of ammo in each clip, because they were still firing as Hawk came out into the main docking area.

  “Dudes, be cool!” he yelled. The guys kept firing. He hiccupped again as bullets bounced off his throat.

  “They’re puppets!” yelled a girl’s voice off to Hawk’s right, and he turned to see the girl who’d freed them crouched on top of a stack of containers.

  “Puppets?” Hawk looked back at them, hiccupped yet again. “Where are the strings?”

  “Probably inside them!” she shouted back, and then ducked down as a bullet plinked off the container where she was crouched. Then she sucked in on herself really fast and was gone, and Hawk looked back at the guys with the guns, and there she was, unfolding out of nothing superfast behind one of them and slamming her elbow into the back of his head.

  The guy fell, and the other two spun toward the girl, and then something whooshed past Hawk, and another guy fell with a sudden crack and a flash of light, and Tapper was standing over him with one fist extended, the air around him shimmering like hot pavement.

  By now Hawk had finally reached the third guy, who turned toward Tapper. Hawk grabbed the gun, reached up, and punched the guy in the jaw.

  The guy’s head came off.

  Hawk stumbled back. “Oh, dude, I didn’t . . .”

  There was a lot less blood than in the anime Hawk watched. Hardly any at all, in fact, which seemed unlikely. The head bounced back into the boat like a lopsided football, and something wriggled at the top of the headless corpse, and at first Hawk thought it was some kind of automatic movement of the spine or something like in the French Revolution when people got guillotined, and Hawk’s stomach lurched like he was going to be sick.

  It wasn’t the spine, though. It was some kind of worm-snake thing, yellow and slick with slime, slithering out of the man’s torso, and as Hawk tried not to throw up in front of Tapper and the cute girl, the thing slid into the water and vanished.

  “S’messed up,” Hawk said instead of puking, and he thought of when he was a little boy, and Nanay had told him and his brothers and sisters stories about the aswang, the ghouls that changed their shape and ate people, and she had always finished by hugging them all and telling them that monsters weren’t real, and he really wanted his nanay right now.

  “Puppets,” the cute girl said, stomping hard on the throat of the guy she’d taken down. The guy didn’t make any noise, but the thing inside him did, and then the guy’s head split open like a chopped watermelon, and another worm-snake thing slipped out and flopped into the water. “They work the body from inside. Like the hand inside Kermit the Frog.”

  “That’s . . .” Hawk hiccupped, almost lost it, and then finished with, “Those are Muppets, that’s totally different.”

  “That’s what bothers you about this?” Tapper glared at Hawk. “Pull yourself together. We aren’t all bulletproof.”

  The guy Tapper had taken down shifted, and Hawk saw a worm-snake split the guy’s head open. Then Tapper was there, a blur of motion striking down, and the worm-snake was crushed under his work boots, its head exploding in a spray of green slime.

  “These w
eren’t from the feeder that was here,” said the girl who’d rescued them, whose name Hawk realized he still didn’t know. “Those were shells, with no living human left. These are—”

  “Stop! Shut up!” Tapper yelled. “What do I even call you? What are you?”

  “Boat,” she said, and pointed. “They knew they couldn’t stop us with just one.” Her voice was dead calm, as it had been since the fight started. It wasn’t calm like she was a cool badass who fought sick monsters all the time, and this was no big deal. It was calm like she wasn’t even paying attention, like she was an action figure and someone had pressed a button to make her say one of seven prerecorded phrases. “How did they catch you before?”

  “Drugged my drink,” Tapper said, “and I woke up tied too tight to get free.”

  “Oh yeah, I thought that tasted funny,” Hawk said. “Didn’t knock me out, though. I don’t think I do poisons anymore.” The water was bubbling near the dock.

  “So that’s when they electrocuted you?” Tapper asked.

  “Yeah. Ran the current through a big fishing net,” Hawk said as a big metal tube rose out of the bubbling water. “Hey, what do you think—”

  The net exploded from the tube and covered them with a giant wave of black.

  SHAWN

  The giant net sprang out of the water and fwomp ed down over Hawk and Tapper and whoever the girl who’d rescued them was, and Shawn shook the last of the dizziness away and stumbled to his feet. It was time to tag in.

  Wheelchair Girl—wait, no, Iara; Shawn felt like a jerk, because now he was just gonna think of her as Wheelchair Girl, and that sucked, because the accent had been hot for the hours they’d been sitting there talking before they’d gotten free, and she had been superhot before he had seen the wheelchair, and Shawn knew he shouldn’t make it a thing—was crawling back toward her chair. She crawled in a weird way, hunching her legs together and sort of sliding.

  “We gotta help!” Shawn yelled, and scooped her up. She was warm and soft and smelled good even after being stuck in a straitjacket for a long time, and her arms slid up and over his shoulders as he lifted her.