by Kody Boye
Was she better off than me, I wondered? Was she, despite everything she’d lost, stronger and more determined than even I was?
I didn’t want to dwell on it—at least, not in that moment—so I pushed the package aside and started anew, careful to note that this one would be for a girl and not for yet another boy. With nearly equal numbers of the thirteen children, it wasn’t hard to keep track, but I didn’t want to accidentally give a little girl something she might not like. Life was hard enough without feeling shunted for your sex—which, unfortunately in this world, was something you either learned to deal with or begrudgingly accepted.
“You okay?” Mary-Anne asked.
“Yeah,” I said, sliding one of the pink toothbrushes in its plastic packaging into the basket. “I was just… thinking.”
“About?”
“About these kids and how their lives are going to be in the next few years.”
“Hopefully they’ll recover,” Mary-Anne offered, “and have as normal of lives as they possibly can after… well… Them.”
Hopefully they would, but I didn’t count on it. Life under Them—it was unlike anything I could’ve ever imagined. I couldn’t even begin to wonder at how it would be moving forward.
“Mary-Anne,” I said, raising my head to look at the girl once more. “Can I… ask you something? Something personal?”
“Oh… kay,” the girl said, her eyes wary and her features cautious.
“When we first met, you… you shook my hand, and… well… I noticed that your grip—”
“Was kinda weak?” Mary-Anne replied, which both baffled and stunned me into submission. She nodded as she cling-wrapped her next basket and pushed it aside. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit… coddled, I guess you could say—not just by my mother, but, well… everyone in the facility.”
“Why is that?” I frowned.
“When this all started—when They came and all—I had just fought and won my battle against cancer. This—” she tugged at her hair “—was all gone. I was just skin and bones. My mother was convinced that it would come back even though I was in remission. My immune system took the worst of it though. It’s… well… never been the same.”
“So that day you came to my room—”
“Was one of my bad days,” Mary-Anne nodded. She exhaled, as if releasing steam from an overflowing pipe, and waited until the breath diminished before lifting her blue eyes to look at me. “I’m okay, though. Really. The cancer hasn’t come back, and if it does, well…”
“What?” I asked.
The girl shook her head. “It’s not something I like to think about.”
“But you obviously do.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t have a death wish, but after everything I went through—after all the pain, suffering and chemotherapy… I don’t think I’d want to go through it again. Not in a world like this.”
“The Grays said that They’ll be able to cure most of our incurable diseases,” I offered. “So even if you do get cancer, They might be able to help.”
“Honestly?” the girl asked. “I don’t know if I’d want Them to help me. Maybe a person, sure, but… Them?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
I could understand that. Really, I could. After everything she’d been through—after all the pain she’d endured—it was only natural that she would be afraid of Them. Even I, as callous as I’d been in the recent past, was still afraid of Them—still angry over everything They’d done—but I knew that I had to let that anger go, especially if I wanted to fully recover.
Mama, Xiomara, my father—They wouldn’t want me to live life regretting everything that had happened. I’d come so far, had done so much, had seen so many beautiful and terrifying things.
If I were to do anything with my experience—if I, Ana Mia Sofia Berrios, were to live long and prosper—I wanted to make a difference in the world, as big or as small as that could possibly be.
In the end, was that so wrong?
I didn’t think so.
I continued to work on the Halloween baskets with the knowledge that these gifts, as simple as They happened to be, would do wonders for these kids’ consciences.
Feeling normal for one night wouldn’t do anyone harm. Would it?
I returned to my room that afternoon feeling exhausted. Emotionally drained from the events that had transpired and the work that had been performed, I collapsed into bed and almost immediately fell asleep.
Come time that night came, I was awoken by the sound of Asha rising and dressing for guard duty.
“Hey,” she said as I rolled over to look at her. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” I said, pushing myself into a sitting position. “I am.”
She and I stared at each other for several long moments, during which time she shuffled into new pants, tied her boot laces, and shrugged a plain denim jacket over her shoulders. As we stared at each other, I considered her features in the light and realized that, even though it had only been a short amount of time since Fort Hope had fallen, she’d changed. Her cheeks were hollow, her features gaunt, and the spark in her eyes there burdened by the duty she upheld. I forced a smile in order to inspire one of her own, but found mine fading shortly after I did so.
“You okay?” Asha asked.
“It was a long morning and afternoon,” I replied, sliding my feet over the side of the bed before reaching for the bottled water on the bedside table. “Me and Mary-Anne were working on the Halloween baskets for the kids.”
“How is she doing?”
“Fine.”
“Did she say anything about your face?”
She hadn’t, but now that had Asha mentioned it, I couldn’t help but look. My jawline resembled a piece of artwork—mottled with purples and blacks and various shades of red from where Dubois’ fist had struck me. I was the Mona Lisa, a Van Gough, a Picasso painted exquisitely in but a moment. Even grimacing at my reflection hurt—which, in hindsight, made sense, considering how hard she’d hit me.
“Do you want me to go see if I can find you some painkillers before I go on guard duty?” Asha asked.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I don’t really need them anyway.”
“Your face looks like it hurts.”
It did, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
Nodding, Asha reached up, ran her hands across her peach-fuzzed skull, then turned toward the window to consider the night before shifting and grimacing.
“Are you sure you should be going?” I asked.
“We have to earn our keep,” Asha replied. “It really only hurts when I sit down.”
“That’s the biggest load of bull I’ve heard from you in a long time.”
“Ana!” Asha laughed. “Seriously. I’m fine. And besides—I don’t want Dubois thinking we’re freeloading. You already pissed her off enough as it is.”
“I know,” I sighed.
Asha stepped forward, set her hands on my shoulders, and drew me close. “Look,” she said. “It’s the night before Halloween. Everyone’s all superstitious about it being ‘Devil’s Night’ and all. The guards think something bad’s going to happen, but I think they’re just on edge because of what happened the other day.”
“We did lose a lot of people.”
“I know, but still.” Asha shrugged and took a few steps back. “Anyhow… I should probably get going. I don’t want Dubois coming in here and seeing me all dressed up without any place to go. Goodbye.”
“Bye,” I said, then watched as she walked out the door and left me to my own devices.
I sighed as I listened to her footsteps receding down the hallway and wished, at that moment, that I could go in her place—that Dubois, so filled with rage, hadn’t instructed me to remain inside unless absolutely necessary. Asha had a broken tailbone, was high on pain medication, and didn’t need to worry about injuring herself further out on the ramparts or in the fields. At least I could’ve stood out there for hou
rs on end without having to deal with never-ending pain.
With a shake of my head, I turned and made my way to the window, intent on doing my own form of watching while waiting for night to take me into its sweet arms.
Devil’s Night was dark.
After the sun had fallen, and after the residual traces of blue had faded from the sky, the world had succumbed to darkness. With nearly no light to speak of except that from the stars, the world appeared completely ominous—and, in a way, eerily fitting for the night that had fallen. There’d be no ghosts, I knew, except those of the dead, but there would be monsters afoot. That much was already for certain.
Though I’d yet to see any Feral Coyotes, I knew They were there—stalking the streets, attempting to find prey in the night which They’d so rightfully claimed. The one thing I hoped was that They wouldn’t get too close to the hospital—because if They did, shots would ring out. And if shots rang out, it could potentially draw the Reapers.
The Reapers—
That begged me to question: Had the elite tactical unit of Gray marksmen taken out the crowd with Their advanced weaponry? They’d seemed more than capable of doing so—had, without fear, descended into the crowd and began shooting—so it seemed as though we wouldn’t have to deal with Them, at least not in such a large force. But just because something seemed to be didn’t mean that it actually was, and for that reason, I trembled.
I shivered as the temperature continued to plummet within the small room and contemplated going to bed—to at least try and sleep away the unease I was feeling. At that moment, though, I felt like I had a mission: to wait, and watch for, anything that could potentially endanger my best friend.
At first I didn’t think I would see anything—such was the darkness upon the horizon.
Then, slowly, I began to see a multitude of yellow lights.
At first I thought They were merely Coyotes standing close together, as from my distance and height it was almost impossible to comprehend shapes for what They truly were. After a moment, however, I began to realize it was not a multitude of shapes moving, but a singular body—gliding, effortlessly, along the barren street across from the hospital, as if it were a creature made of air and not flesh. The sight alone was enough to mesmerize me, and in the moments after first seeing it, I watched as They paused, then as They lifted to reveal six yellow points which I could assume were only eyes.
Eyes—
Those eyes—
I realized, then, that I was just not seeing things—that these lights, or at least what I thought were just lights, were not an apparition, but something truly physical.
My heart skipped.
My breath ceased to flow.
My brain refused to process the sight before me.
For one brief moment, I was frozen.
Then, slowly, I began to uncover what I was truly seeing.
The Serpentine being—which was still shrouded by shadow—was moving toward the hospital, and at an alarming speed.
I bolted from me and Asha’s room, not bothering to push my feet into shoes and skidding on the floor when the studs in my socks wouldn’t find purchase. I slipped, nearly fell, and landed against the wall, only to use it to propel myself toward the nearby threshold that led up to the roof.
I bounded up the concrete stairs, shivering for the biting cold that attempted to assault my being.
Then I was outside—and breathing, faintly, the world of danger.
“Do you see it?” I hissed into the darkness, unable to see anything save for a glimmer of a cigarette butt nearby.
“I see it,” Joshua Banks said.
Someone near him—whom I could only assume was Tasha—adjusted something nearby, then flipped what sounded like a switch.
A floodlight came on.
The creature was revealed.
A screech lit the air.
The monster—if it could even be called that, for it was as beautiful as it was deadly—was at least twenty feet long, and bore along its head six glowing yellow eyes that branched out from the center to just below the red crest upon its skull. Its white body was distinct in that it was clear of markings, but as it lifted itself upright, it revealed along its sides two flaps of reddish skin which appeared to be wings of some kind. It swiveled its head to look at us, calculating in its approach, and opened its mouth to reveal several dagger-like fangs which, when revealed, resembled that of a python—retractable and able to snare prey in a grip that it would not be able to get away from.
“Are you going to shoot it?” I asked.
“No,” Joshua said. “Even if I hit it from here, it likely wouldn’t kill it.”
“How could you—”
“It’s scouting,” Tasha Stooges said. “Likely trying to get an idea of what the territory the humans are in is like.”
“Why would They be using Serpents to scout when Coyotes were Their primary forces before?” I asked.
“Maybe the Serpents don’t become Feral,” Josh proposed. “Maybe They’re easier to work with.”
Found the girllll, I heard it whisper, its voice as serpentine as its appearance.
Go away, I thought to it. You’re not wanted here.
We are looking for the oneeeee, it said, setting its six glowing yellow eyes directly upon me. The one who calls herself Duboisssssssss.
She’s here, I replied. Why? What do you want with Dubois?
Tomorowwww.
Tomorrow what? I thought, then watched as the creature began to slither around the corner, down the street that was not lit by the floodlight. “Tomorrow what?” I cried after it.
“It spoke to you?” Tasha asked.
“What did it say?” Josh asked.
“It said it was looking for Dubois,” I replied, “and that… tomorrow…”
“Tomorrow… what?”
I shook my head.
I couldn’t reply, for there was nothing to give a reply for.
“I need to tell the commander about this,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “Watch the roads. And tell everyone to get inside.”
“But you,” Tasha started.
I didn’t bother to let her finish. I simply started back into the hospital.
Mary-Anne was the one who answered when I knocked on the Dubois’ door. “Ana Mia?” she whispered, then blinked, as if attempting to clear her eyes to see whether or not I was real or imagined. “What’re you doing here?”
“I need to speak to your mother,” I replied.
“Now?” she asked. “Do you know what time it is?”
I couldn’t fathom why she was asking such a question. I was too panicked, too scared to even begin to think rationally about the matter. I was just about to start to argue with her when I looked down—and realized, in that moment, that she was wearing a nightgown, and had her hair pulled back and ready for sleep.
“I need to speak to her now,” I replied. “It’s important.”
Mary-Anne sighed, then, and reached up to run a hand over her face. “Okay,” she said. “Give me one second.”
She closed the door to a mere crack. I watched, through that thin sliver of space, as she walked into the deepest parts of the office, which had been converted into an office-slash-home, and awaited the commander’s arrival, all the while trembling.
The monster I’d seen, the things it’d said—it’d all been so vague.
I wondered: did it mean to attack the hospital? And if so, would we be able to withstand a creature of its size, its strength? Joshua had said that a sniper’s rifle wouldn’t kill the creature. If that were the case, then what would happen if it drew alongside the barricades? Would the machineguns kill it, or would we be forced to slaughter it with explosives or in other unconventional ways?
I didn’t have time to dwell on the matter, as soon, the door opened and out stepped Dubois, her tired and annoyed face indicative of how she currently felt about me. “Ana Mia,” she said, then yawned. “What’re you doing—”
“The
re was a Serpent outside the hospital,” I said, cutting the woman off before she could finish.
Dubois paled. “What?” she asked.
“There was a Serpent,” I repeated, “right across the street from Burgundy Hospital.”
“I heard that!” the woman snapped. “What was it doing?”
“I… don’t know,” I said, at a loss for words. “I only saw it briefly.”
“Then why are you here?” the woman asked. “I mean, a Serpent is obviously cause for concern, but if it was simply surveying the area and did not attempt to approach the hospital, I cannot see why you would wake me up in the middle of the night just to tell me—”
“It said your name, ma’am.”
The woman paused.
Her face—which was once portraiture of annoyance and anger—immediately darkened upon hearing my words. “My… name?” she asked.
I nodded, unsure how to continue further. The woman was so calm, so reserved. Seeing her like that was enough to put me on edge.
“It… reached out to you,” the commander then replied, tentatively approaching, as if unsure how to take the news and the situation at hand. “Or… you to it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “All I know was that I heard it say it was looking for you. The one. Then it said ‘tomorrow’ and—”
“And… what?” the commander asked.
I shook my head. “It left before I could ask it,” I said. “I think it got spooked by the spotlight.”
“Tasha Stooges and Joshua Banks shined a spotlight on a Serpent?” the woman balked.
“Yes ma’am. They did.”
Sighing, Dubois reached up to press a hand to her face and considered me through the spaces between her fingers. She did this for several long moments before she lowered her hand and said, “Thank you for alerting me to this matter, Ana Mia. I will be sure to increase the security around the perimeter tomorrow afternoon and well into the evening.”
“Ma’am,” I said, clearing my throat. “If I may…”
The woman blinked, obviously awaiting me to speak further.
