My lungs are about ready to burst from my chest with the need to breathe. I blow out a breath with a gust that sounds more like a wail, and bend over, hands on my knees, panting deep. After a moment, I’m aware that a certain sense of calm is settling over my nerves. Oxygen good, I get that, but it’s more than just a few calming breaths. It’s the flavor of the air here.
I open my mouth and taste the air around me, letting the particles and dust motes dance across my tastebuds. It’s the strangest sensation, but there’s also something about it that feels natural.
The flavor is earthy, rich, floral. Familiar and comforting. It only takes me a moment to realize what it is and to reach the doorway. The door is locked with the power outage, the power grid rerouting the backup generators to things like air supply over security, but what used to stop me is nothing more than a mild annoyance now.
I put one palm against the door and push. Okay, so I may be oversimplifying it. I push really freaking hard. I put my new strength to the test. My muscles tense and flex, but it feels limitless, like I’m tapping into a well of power. I wonder how far I can go…
There’s a metallic groan, and I feel the solid door begin to buckle under my touch. I add my shoulder, and the door pops open with a creak, swinging wide on its hinges.
“Open sesame,” I whisper into the room ahead of me.
The garden. What was once a football stadium was commandeered by the military when the proverbial shit hit the fan. The stadium seating was transitioned into tiered gardens to conserve water usage. There’s a stocked pond, a barn with a small number of livestock, chickens to provide eggs. And there’s an orchard. It wasn’t nearly large enough to feed the entire compound, obviously. That’s just ridiculous, but it was enough to supplement the chosen elite with the essential nutrients needed to keep them at peak performance.
Ugh. Not even the end of the world can bring balance to privilege.
I’ve been locked in this room during a power outage before, and I considered the darkness claustrophobic, the silence complete. This, however, is no longer how I remember it.
“Wow.” The smell is the same, organic and complex, but now I’m being hit with the undertones I’ve never noticed before. I swear I can smell the honey from the hive on the other side of the stadium. And it’s not dark, not even a little. I can feel my pupils dilate, bathing the room in that same silvery sheen that I’m quickly becoming used to. I can see even the smallest details, the veins on the leaves, the spots on a ladybug ten yards away.
I was starting to worry that anything that made me human was gone. But this… it’s a piece of me that I haven’t lost. I crouch down into the soft earth and place my hands against the soil. It’s like the softest satin against my skin. It is the epitome of life, balanced against all the death that now surrounds me.
Maybe, I can… I begin to think, to hope. I look up into the overhanging branches. The apples glisten, perched on their delicate stems. I reach between the boughs and pluck one. I swear I try to be gentle, but my claws pierce the thin skin, juice dripping down my outstretched arm. The smell pricks at my dull human recollections. The memory of its taste makes my mouth water. I bring it to my lips…
Sawdust. It’s like sawdust on my tongue. I spit it out onto the ground, a sob caught in my throat.
“You beat us to it,” a voice says. I’m not startled by the sudden appearance of people. I realize a part of me was distantly aware of their approach, but it was easy enough to ignore because they aren’t a threat to me. Not anymore.
I turn around to watch them file in, six in all. I recognize a couple of them as Trey’s team members—missing, presumed dead—along with one from a backup team that had been sent in their wake. “What do you want?” I ask. I resent their presence in the garden, they don’t belong here.
“Same thing as you, I’d say,” the apparent leader answers, gesturing to the half-masticated apple on the ground. “We’re just a bit more efficient than you are.”
I watch, eyebrow raised, as they brush past me. They move in formation, like some kind of military unit, which I realize they still are. They may be monsters first, but they can’t seem to get past their years of training.
“What are you doing?” I follow them through the orchard and around the pond. A sense of foreboding is building in me. And as much as the food in the garden may now be useless to me, this is still something worth protecting.
One guy throws a look over his shoulder at me, a sneer on his lips.
“Hey, you guys don’t belong in here,” I shout, jogging ahead.
“Who’s going to stop us? You?”
I don’t even know what I’m trying to stop them from doing, but my gut says it’s nothing good. And while I know I’m stronger now, I’m pretty sure I’m not strong enough to take on six military-trained Rippers. My mouth, however, doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. “Yeah, me. I’m gonna… stop you.”
They just chuckle at me and continue on their way. God, the least they could do is pretend I’m a threat. This is insulting.
“Hey! Wait!” Wow. Even with my gravelly voice, a whine is still super degrading. I wonder what my embarrassed blush looks like with this skin of mine. I almost wish I had a mirror… almost. But that would mean looking myself in the eye and facing my future head-on.
It becomes obvious where they’re headed. There’s nothing at the back of the garden except the barn and fenced-in animal enclosure, but even without the visual cues, my other senses are filling in the blanks. Now that I’m closer to the animals, I wonder how my attention was anywhere else. I can feel their body heat, which seems impossible. Their scent, not exactly appetizing, but not altogether unpleasant either. It’s like I can smell the artificial sunshine absorbed in their skin, the grass they ate still digesting. It’s like they’re everything my human body used to need… but second-hand. Used.
Something tells me their blood wouldn’t turn to sawdust on my tongue as the apple did.
Saliva pools in my mouth, and I swallow it down. “No,” I say softly, but obviously the soldiers hear me.
“No?” the leader mocks, rounding on me. “What are you going to do, princess, become a vegetarian? I hate to tell you this, but not everyone is cut out to be a Shredder. It’s eat or be eaten. If you don’t hunt, you starve.”
Shredder? Is that what they call themselves? Pfft. Now it’s my turn to sneer at him. “Is that what this is? Hunting? Because to me it looks a lot like walking into a barn and stealing someone else’s food.”
“I don’t see anyone else here, do you? Finders, keepers.” Geez, this guy is about as mature as a toddler. Who decided he was a good choice for Ripper strength?
But as I watch him leap over the fence and descend on the goat, I have no choice but to admit that he might be cut out for this life. And I… might not.
Blood sprays in all directions, a bit of a waste if it’s what we need to survive, and it sends the other Rippers into a feeding frenzy.
The animals who were unnaturally quiet only moments ago are now screaming and running blind. Their bodies jostle in a pathetic attempt to hide. They can’t see where they’re going, and in their panic, they bounce off each other, pinballing around the enclosure. A few of them make it into the barn, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no saving them.
I try to be disgusted. I try to be frustrated with the soldiers’ lack of respect. I search for any human emotion that makes sense in this moment. Anything to distract myself from the thirst.
In the end, I clamp a hand over my nose and mouth and run. I’m not a coward by any means, but I know when I’ve met my match.
Apparently, it’s me. I am my own match.
4
Lori
I’m quickly running out of space in this compound, what with all the avoiding I’m doing. I refuse to be anywhere near Kenzo, since I can’t guarantee I won’t rip his head off, and my mother is a whole bunch of “not happening.” And now my garden has been tainted with the stench of blood.
I would say I’m left without a leg to stand on, if I weren’t so hyperaware of these two very unfamiliar legs attached to my foreign body.
Even though the body is foreign, it still seems to know me better than I know myself. In fact, it seems to know what I need even when my own brain doesn’t. The auto garage opens before me, all grease and metal and memories too fresh to stare straight at. Oh wait, that’s the sun that’s making me avert my eyes.
“Ugh, who left the door open?” The rolling car door has been raised straight to the roof. There’s a long overhang shading the ramp to keep the worst of the sun’s rays from penetrating into the garage, but the bright light is still enough to bake my sensitive eyeballs. The wide-open entrance seems too deliberate to be the Rippers’ destruction. They didn’t exactly knock politely when they put a hole through the wall. No, this was opened from the inside, somebody on the way out.
A thought pops into my mind unbidden. Maybe… just maybe somebody escaped before the Rippers got in. Before Kenzo… released the virus into the vents. Trey told me Kenzo had done it, that he doomed everyone to be like this, but it’s still hard to wrap my head around the thought. Kenzo wouldn’t do something like that. Would he? He’s good and kind and—I swallow it back and wrap my anger back around myself. It’s easier to handle that way. Pissed off and focused.
I hold up a hand to shield my eyes from the glare and inspect the open door. The possibility that someone made it out triggers two very distinct reactions in me. The first being a trickle of hope; life will go on, humanity will find a way to survive this. I try my best to feed this hope so that maybe it can buoy my spirits, to save me from drowning in my misery.
Except, there’s another reaction tapping at my brain—and I hate that this inner voice is speaking just slightly louder and getting more insistent with each passing second—knowing there could be a human running away, their heart pounding in their fragile chest… it brings a call to hunt, to chase. To kill. Honestly, I’m lucky the sun is shining out there, or I could very well have been driven to run straight through that door, and not stop until the urge was satisfied.
Considering I drank my fill just this morning, something tells me that this urge to kill might never be quelled. There’s no such thing as satisfaction.
I choke down the bile coating the back of my throat. It’ll be best for everyone involved if I just learn to live with this thirst. Acknowledge it, give it a pat on the head, and then shove it right back into the pits of hell where it came from.
Tap, tap goes the thirst.
Shh! That’s enough out of you.
A soft skittering sound sets my senses on high alert. Without conscious thought, I find myself in a crouch, claws extended and teeth bared.
Not human, the thirst informs me as it analyzes the taste of the air, and I raise up from my hunched posture. As if not human translates to not edible.
I cast out my senses and come back with a slowly beating heart, a snuffling exhale, the taste of salt. It doesn’t take me long to pinpoint the exact location of the creature.
As I round the corner into the small office, I’m not at all surprised to see who it is. Jose. Of course he would be here. This is his space, after all. His presence here fits perfectly with my memories. Except… “Jose?” I try to whisper, but I misjudge the volume of my new voice and the small size of the room, and instead it comes out as a raspy growl.
Jose flinches and tries to fold in on himself, which is made nearly impossible by his long limbs and claws getting in the way. Not human, I remind myself. His tears leave a salty tang to the air. I do my best to bring myself down to his level.
“Jose? It’s me, it’s Lori.” Since I started working in the garage, he was like a father to me, sometimes even more than the father I already had. And now that my dad is dead, Brent missing, and my mother willingly becoming a monster, it seems that Jose and I have more in common than anyone else. We have a connection.
I slowly place a hand against his arm. I expect him to pull away, but he barely acknowledges my presence. After a long moment, his shoulders heaving, he brings his head up to look me in the eye. I can see myself reflected in his black irises.
“I’m a monster,” he blows out in a breath. For a moment, his words mirror my own internal reflection. We’re all monsters now.
I do the only thing I can: I shrug. “So am I.” It’s the truth, because I can’t handle any more lies in this moment. Lies are what landed us all in the situation in the first place, and if Jose deserves anything, it’s for me to be honest.
“No, mija, I can still see your beautiful soul.” He reaches out a knobby finger and catches one of my tears. I didn’t even know I was crying. “I was a monster even before I was no longer human.”
“No, Jose. You could never—”
“Hush, Lori. Listen to me.” He leans forward and I catch a whiff of something astringent coming off his skin. It smells like… grief. Can I seriously smell his emotions right now?
He doesn’t give me time to process this new reality before he says, “I killed them.”
His words are like a stone in my gut. “Killed who?” I ask, even though I really, really don’t want to know.
“My wife, my daughter,” he gasps out. Then he closes his arms back over his head, his claws tearing at his scalp.
“No!” I shout. “That’s… not possible.” His words are like dropping a penny into a well and waiting for the splash. Except I’m so empty right now, I’m nothing more than a bottomless pit, falling and falling. I think of his wife’s smiling face, his daughter’s dimpled knees and tinkling laugh. I can’t imagine a world where those things no longer exist.
The guilt weighs heavy on my shoulders. Not once did I wonder about where they were, about what they had become since the virus was released. I mean, I know we had children in the compound.
“But—” I sputter. “Wait… you said you killed them? Before you—”
Jose gets to his feet suddenly. He grabs my arm and drags me with him. Down the hall. I barely register where we’re going, it’s like some kind of bad dream. There are Rippers wandering the halls looking abandoned, staring into the distance in a confused trance. Monsters wearing the tattered remains of military uniforms trying to get a handle on the situation. But honestly, most of them don’t seem to care about anything anymore. We’re all lost in our own little horror shows.
I slowly become more aware of the doors we pass. These are the family units. Small apartments, two bedrooms, kitchen, and dining room. My family lived in one of these units until my mom died… or rather… well. I guess it’s just one more thing I can add to the list of things I blame my mom for.
Faking your death so your daughter gets kicked out of her home and separated from her family, forced to live in a dormitory with strangers. Check.
Even seen through new eyes, the familiarity of the hall hits me like a punch to the chest. I struggle to pull in a breath beneath the pressure, and quickly wish I hadn’t. Death. God, I hate that I can identify that taste so quickly.
Jose’s door is ajar, the knob hanging loose from its setting as if someone wrenched so hard on it that the screws snapped clean off. Jose comes to a stop before the door, his hand frozen from where he raised it to push the door open. “I can’t do it,” he says, the words snagging on his dry throat.
I don’t blame him for not wanting to go in there. Hell, I only have the vaguest clue about what awaits me on the other side of this door, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go in there. In the end, however, it looks like I’ll be doing it for free. Jose turns those pleading eyes to me. For whatever reason, he needs for me to bear witness to what he’s done. I wonder if he needs for me to forgive him… or lay the full blame at his feet.
Maybe he needs for me to punish him.
I gently usher Jose to the side where he won’t be able to see the whole room. Then I open the door.
There isn’t much to see at first glance. The same generic furniture as can be found i
n all the apartments, the same linoleum and thinning carpet. But then I reluctantly cast out my senses. There’s something not right about the room. As my pupils dilate, the details begin to come into sharper focus. Someone has torn apart a stuffed animal, a pink elephant if I had to guess. The polyester fibers from its stuffing offer a silvery gleam, almost beautiful if it didn’t speak of such unfettered rage. A pattern of four gouges cuts through the linoleum. But really, it’s the smell that says it all.
I take a reluctant step into the room. I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to be here. Why is this happening? Why? Whywhywhywhy…
The bedroom is at the back. I close my eyes, clench my fists. I’m hit with wave after wave of regret, fear, shame, guilt. Pounding into me like the surf beating against the shore, powerless to stop it. I’m drowning.
I throw open my eyes and gasp for breath. With one quick movement, I push open the door. There are two human shapes beneath the sheet on the bed. No matter how many times I told myself this couldn’t possibly be true, that Jose was wrong, I knew… deep down, I knew.
“I’m sorry,” Jose wails from his position by the door. I’m not sure who he’s apologizing to. Me. His family, now long gone. Or maybe himself, for destroying everything that mattered.
I don’t want to ask him what happened, I don’t need to know, but he just starts talking. It’s his confession, and I have no choice but to listen.
“They were coming… the monsters… they were coming for us all. We knew it was only a matter of time before they broke down our walls. There was no escape. And the death they offered was not something my wife could face. Maria, she… she begged for me to do it. She did not want to think of our sweet precious daughter having those awful things done to her.”
He was whispering, forcing the words past his lips, but I heard them all the same. And I knew I would never be able to unhear them. “Maria had pills, she… ground them up and hid them in some kool-aid. Rosa was so excited that we were letting her have something so special. Heaven help me, she was excited.”
The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator Page 3
