“Just for a few days, just in case there’s some kind of chemical weapon—”
In the background, my dad is yelling, “—should’ve moved back out of this goddamn hellhole after the university shut down, and now there’s aliens—”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Mom finishes.
“I have to stay. Ron’ll get herself killed if I don’t.”
She makes a disapproving sound, then sighs. “Your dad keeps telling me, ‘she knows how to take care of herself’.”
“He’s right.”
“Just . . . Keep in touch, alright?”
“If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I’m staying low.” The lie stings, but I figure it’ll buy her a few days of mental peace.
We say good-byes and I set my phone down on the desk. I look at the questions on my white board and realize that I can’t possibly refuse Ron’s invitation. Even laying aside moral obligations, I’ll never find the answers to half these questions unless I observe the monsters and figure out where they’re coming from. I’ve learned the hard way that going by myself is too dangerous. Besides, maybe I can gain some insight on Tedrin, earn his trust — if he truly has any to give — and cultivate future opportunities to kill him.
So it’s settled: I’m going out tonight. It feels weird to have social plans, and on a Monday, too.
I need to prepare.
I park in the alley beside the old Circuit City and get out quietly. Sirens blare in the distance, and the streets are deserted. Of course, the highways out of town are clogged with escaping refugees, and more power to them. We’re about an hour from sunset, and God knows how things will escalate once it gets dark.
I’m fresh from the gun shop; there was a bit of a wait, but I was able to get my shotgun professionally cleaned and inspected. I bought an over-the-shoulder sling; having the shotgun across my back and poking up over my shoulder makes me look like the guy from The Postman, but I’m sure I’ll eventually need both hands and not be able to set the gun down. I’ve added my kludged-together flashlight attachment to the barrel, and a nine-round shell holder on the stock.
I’m wearing sneakers, a dark green t-shirt, and thick black jeans. I contemplated buying a Kevlar vest but decided that free movement is more important than protection. Besides, the monster I’m most worried about doesn’t carry a gun or knife.
. . . well, neither do the actual monsters, but . . . bah.
Finally, I have a small shoulder-pack with a water bottle — I’ve taken to heart what Tedrin told Ron about keeping these needles hydrated — a box of ammo, a baggie of dried fruit, and a length of paracord. I tell myself I’m bringing rope in case I need to rappel down a building or we find a baby monster I think I can adopt.
My hair is tied back and braided; I don’t need it getting in my eyes. I thought about buying the old SWAT helmet they keep in the case, but decided I was already sufficiently goofy-looking.
I take a deep breath and walk down the alley.
Ron and Tedrin are lounging by an old dumpster, sharing a cigarette; they look up when I turn the corner, and he bursts out laughing. I just let it roll over me. Secretly, I’m kind of glad he’s let his guard down. It’ll make killing him easier.
Even Ron is smirking. “I knew you’d Rambo yourself out, but wow.”
“At least I left the spandex and cape at home,” I mutter as I reach them, and Tedrin laughs even harder.
To be fair, they’re not exactly dressed for the ball. Ron’s wearing camo pants and a black shirt; she looks like she just walked out of a militia meeting. And Tedrin’s wearing a goddamn black trenchcoat over a fresh set of jeans and white t-shirt; he looks like he’s about to shoot up a high school.
I hurriedly shake that mental image. “The laughing is not productive.”
Tedrin straightens up, but he’s still smirking into the back of his hand. “That’s how I’ll describe this scene to my grandchildren: ‘So there we were, humanity’s last hope . . . and then we were joined by The Postman’.”
I bare my teeth at him. “Not productive.”
Ron sighs, still smiling. “Lighten up. We’ve got our own local version of 9/11 going on fifteen miles away. Laughter will do us good.” She punches Tedrin lightly in the shoulder. “But quit being a jerk.”
He smiles indulgently at her, then looks up into the dimming sky. Wisps of cloud slide overhead. “It’ll be dark soon, which will make hunting more dangerous and confusing. We need to stay close.” He looks from her to me. “I’ll make it my job to watch Veronica’s back. Veronica, you can watch our Postman’s. Postwoman’s? And as I’m sure she’s already itching to, she can watch mine.” There’s a glint in his eyes.
“Sounds grand,” I agree, giving him a tight-lipped smile. The sniping back and forth feels good, honestly; it’s a welcome distraction from the memory of him kissing my temple and breaking my neck. Actually, maybe getting distracted isn’t such a good idea.
A roaring sound starts to the south, and then screams overhead as a squadron of fighter jets. Shudders claw their way down my back.
Ron shields her eyes against the sunset light and watches them until they pass out of sight to the north. “Must have come from the Air Force base.”
Tedrin’s shaking his head. “What do they plan to do with those? None of these monsters fly—”
“Thank God,” Ron mutters.
“—and I doubt things on the north side have gotten extreme enough to flatten entire blocks with Hellfire missiles.”
“Reconnaissance?” Ron suggests, jokingly stepping into the shadow of the Dumpster. “Or do they use drones for that now?”
Tedrin snaps his fingers. “It’s PR. Most people will hear jets overhead and think, ‘oh, the military’s here, everything’s under control, stop panicking and looting’.” He adds in a mutter, “Your tax dollars at work.”
I try to picture him filling out a tax return, then shake my head. We’re all adjusting our clothes, making ready to head out. Ron asks, “Do we have an area in mind, or will we just wander in a spiral until we find trouble?”
Tedrin squints at me. “This is your part of town; I’ve mostly hunted on the north side. What’s a good vantage point? A tall building, preferably abandoned.”
I give that some thought. “There’s an old hotel, was a retirement home for a while, then they shut it down. It’s like twenty stories; I hear you can see for miles around from the roof.” I squint in the direction of sunset. “If we want to get there before dark, I can drive.”
Ron pumps her fist. “I knew having a friend with a car would come in handy eventually!”
“Hey, I have one, too,” Tedrin jokes. “I just can’t remember where I parked it.”
There’s a childish, useless question burning its way out of my mouth, and I can’t hold it back any longer. “Am I going to be bouncing off the walls and leaping tall buildings?” It comes out skeptical, but with a note of excitement I can’t suppress no matter how much I hate it.
To my surprise, Ron laughs. “That’s gonna take a while. You can only do unusual things with parts of your body that the needles have already taken over.” She holds up her hands, and her fingers begin to elongate. “That’s why I was punching sheet metal.” She frowns at her hands. “Plus it takes practice, meditation, and concentration.”
Tedrin smiles proudly and rests a hand on her shoulder. “You are learning quickly, grasshopper.”
I feel like a hand of ice is clenching around my chest. Who knows what other parts of Ron’s body she’s willingly destroyed, how little of her remains human. And judging from Tedrin’s speed and body-manipulation abilities, his entire body has become needles. My timid fantasies — mostly of wall-running and punching monsters directly in the face — suddenly don’t sound worth it.
Ron must be reading my thoughts — or maybe I look as nauseated as I feel — because she steps closer and puts a comforting arm around my shoulders. “I was willing to let it spread so I could join in the figh
t.” She squeezes my shoulder a little. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You have your gun.”
“But it’ll still spread when I’m hurt.”
Tedrin shrugs. “Better than losing a limb.”
I want to debate that point, but we’re literally losing daylight. I shrug out of Ron’s grip and lead the way back up the alley, fishing in my pockets for my keys. “Do you think those military guys are going to start—”
“Wait!” Ron cries out, and grabs a handful of my shirt. “Look!”
I look up the alley at my car, only a few feet away, then beyond it. The mouth of the alley is fifty feet away, and standing in it is a—
I stumble to a stop.
It’s a big ‘X’.
I assume at first that it’s two black sticks tied together as an ‘X’. It’s so out of place, so stark against the otherwise mundane landscape of this abandoned neighborhood.
Ron gulps loudly. “Ted, what is that?”
He pushes past her and stops beside me; I glance up and find him squinting at the mouth of the alley. “I haven’t seen anything like that,” he mutters. “It looks . . .” He glances at me. “You’re the wordy one.”
“Like it doesn’t belong,” I finish for him, and he gives a quick little nod of agreement. “Maybe it’s not one of yours,” I add in a whisper. “Maybe it’s . . . I dunno, a metal gate, or something. Or a prank. Or . . . Is it watching us?”
Tedrin draws a deep breath, and I notice his fingers have gone long and pointed. “Get your gun ready,” he whispers to me, and then he starts walking slowly toward it.
Goosebumps prickle on my arms and side, even as I remind myself that we’re all freaking out over what might turn out to be a . . . I have no idea what it might be, but not everything has to be a horrific monster, right? I reach back and carefully draw my shotgun down over my shoulder, glance down to check the safety. When I look up, Tedrin is a third of the way to the black ‘X’, and it hasn’t moved. He’s walking as if he’s approaching a skittish horse — hands at his sides, slow steps. Now I can see that it’s about his height, six feet or so.
I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry. “Get in the car,” I whisper.
Ron is beside me now, and she tears her eyes from the scene long enough to stare at me. “What?”
“I’ll drive us away from here.”
“We’re not leaving him.”
I was planning on driving over him. “Fine.”
She’s watching Tedrin again. “I don’t understand you two.”
“I don’t like people who kill me.”
“Not this bullshit again.”
“So it’s no longer ‘might be true’, it’s officially been downgr—”
One of the ex’ ‘bottom’ legs collapses — no, it hinges about a third of the way from the tip — and it drops down drunkenly to the side. The movement continues as it rolls, and its clumsiness becomes fluid and natural, even graceful. One of its ‘top’ legs hinges just as it hits the ground. When in motion, it looks like a spinning swastika.
It rolls away from Tedrin for a second, then uses its momentum to swing forward at unbelievable speed. It crosses the alley in a flash and—
Ron screams beside me and starts forward, but I slam her against the alley wall with my body weight as I bring up the shotgun and switch off the safety.
The thing is embedded in Tedrin, one of its inch-thick legs impaled through his chest. He’s caught it with his hands and is fighting hard to rip it from him, but it’s doing something we can’t see, either subtle or molecular, that’s causing him to let out shriek after spine-shatteringly freakish shr—
Let it kill him. Maybe it actually can. Just let it.
I point the gun into the air.
BLAM
Neither Tedrin nor the monster notice the sound. Ron finally backs off; I start forward.
But once it’s done with him, it’ll come after us. No way Ron will get in the car and drive away with me. And anyway, if we don’t kill it now, it might go on to hurt someone innocent, someone who doesn’t deserve this horseshit.
Not that I do, either. But anyway.
I’m ten feet from the pair of them. As I take position and chamber a round, I can see that the ex is vibrating hard enough to whirr, and it’s coated in fine, sharp thorns. Tedrin is having his entrails turned into milkshake; no wonder he can’t stop bellowing in pain. His hands are ripped open where he’s tried to grab at the thing. A pool of blood is spreading out from him across the alley floor. The thing’s legs are so thin, they look as breakable as branches, but apparently even his wrenching can’t snap them.
He sees me and grins in a rictus, baring teeth sharpened into points. His eyes are tiny dots. He’s in survival mode — but then a wave of agony sweeps up over his face, and some human impulse within his head reaches out, stretches open his mouth, whispers raggedly, “Sh-Shhhhhhoot it. Ssssss-Center.”
I raise the gun. I start to ask if he minds having his hands blown off, and then remember that I don’t care.
BLAM
The ex blows apart like matchsticks. So, too, do Tedrin’s wrists. He slams backward against the alley wall, lets out a shuddering moan, and sinks to the ground.
Ron is at his side in an instant, and reaches for the leg still sticking out of his abdomen. He wards off her hands with one of his ragged wrist-stumps and sucks in a deep breath. “Don’t. Sharp.”
“We have to get this out of you!” she pleads.
While they argue about how to make him feel better — a topic I obviously have no investment in — I inspect the scattered limbs of the monster. Their thorny texture sends a shiver down my spine; I barely want to touch my shoe to them, let alone pick one up. I watch carefully, but they show no sign of healing. I’ve killed it.
And that’s weird.
When I turn back to them, Ron has wrapped a flap of Tedrin’s trenchcoat around the limb and is slowly pulling it out. His face is deathly-pale and would be beaded with sweat if he weren’t so supernaturally dry. His eyes are unfocused; he has the look of a trapped, wounded animal.
His agony sends something hot and pleasant surging up my throat. A moment later, a wave of guilt follows it, but I don’t look away.
He bares his teeth and endures for as long as he can, but when he can take it no more, he screams at her, “JUST PULL IT OUT, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”
She wrenches on the leg with all her weight and it pulls free. He lets out a bellowing cry, slumps back against the wall, and, to my shock, passes out.
My hand tightens a little on the shotgun barrel. This is my chance.
. . . and then I have to laugh at myself internally. To do what? Blow his brains out? That’s a good way to waste a round, needlessly piss off Ron, and accomplish nothing. No, I don’t have my Magical Needle-Killing Bullet yet, and until I do, this is just a missed opportunity.
Ron sits down beside him and sucks in a few deep breaths. “And I thought the big things were scary,” she moans, and then bursts into tears.
A good friend would get down there with her and comfort her until her boyfriend wakes up from what should be mortal wounds . . . but there’s still something bugging me.
“It died too easily,” I tell her.
She looks up at me with tears streaming down her face. “W-What?”
I indicate the legs scattered at our feet. “The giraffe took a lot of work to take down, and the spider was adapted to hide, but this . . . It attacked mindlessly and was easy to kill.”
“So?” she demands, wiping tears from her face.
“Creatures don’t evolve to be easy to kill. They have coping mechanisms. They hide, or they get big, or they poison, or . . .”
“You think he’s poisoned?”
Hairs are starting to stand up on the back of my neck, surrounding that needle-plague entry-point. I look out into the street.
Ron goes quiet, and then whispers, “What is it?”
Memory travels up my spine like a cold wind:
My uncle lived on a few acres outside the city, surrounded by woods and pastures. Back in the trees, he kept the little trailer he’d lived in before he built his house. He promised me that when I turned eighteen, if I would help him clean out the old trailer, I could have it. Land was already cheap out there, even before the recession; I could buy my own little plot and move the trailer to it, and live like a country queen.
We did an initial exploration, and the old trailer was a mess. Water had gotten in and ruined all the carpets. Half the windows were broken. The appliances were outdated, and the main wiring was fried.
Just as I closed the empty ice box, we heard a soft rustling coming from underneath the old, stained mattress in the bedroom. Before I could stop him, he lifted one corner, and our flashlights illuminated thousands of shiny black cockroaches, all swarming away from the light.
I hear a hissing breeze, but the air doesn’t move.
Tedrin coughs, then blinks a few times. “Nnnh.”
My throat is tight. “The car. Now.”
She starts trying to pull Tedrin to his feet.
“I mean now!” I snap at her, and reach for her arm.
“I’m not leaving him!”
He blinks at her. “Wh’s going on?”
“Get him to the car, now,” I order, and shove my keys into Ron’s free hand. Then I turn to the mouth of the alley, level my shotgun, and make sure the safety is off, wishing I’d spent this time loading extra rounds.
Tedrin’s on his feet but leaning heavily against Ron; she manages to pull him, step by agonizing step, toward my car. Too late, I realize it would have been faster for me to run ahead of them, throw the car in reverse, and drive to them. Instead I follow, walking backward, gun trained on the mouth of the alley.
We’re ten feet from the car when a stampede of exes round the corner and start rolling toward us, and if I thought the movements of one were overwhelmingly surreal, I’m not prepared for a few dozen.
Ron screams, and I hear Tedrin make a frenzied effort to dive forward. They’re on the driver’s side. I back against the taillight, start to go around, then change my mind and climb up onto the trunk. “Get in!” I shout redundantly, and take aim.
Eden Green Page 9
