by Frankie Rose
“Get up. We’re leaving,” Agatha shouted.
Oliver lifted Tess up as if she weighed nothing and set her on her feet in one swift movement. The three of us followed Agatha without question.
“What’s going on, Aggie?” Nyla called.
“Farley saw a whyte!” Her voice echoed loudly in the quiet. Suddenly Beatty and Otis’ smiles were gone and they were gawping at me. Nyla stopped dead in her tracks, looking scornful.
“That’s ridiculous, girl. There are no whytes.”
Agatha stepped in before I could declare my confusion. “That was my word. She doesn’t know what it means.”
Nyla’s jaw dropped. “How can you know? You didn’t see. It could have been anybody.”
“It was a whyte. If you want to wait here to find out either way, then you’re more than welcome. But don’t you think it makes sense?”
Beatty’s face was creased with a fierce determination when he joined the conversation. “Regardless of whether it makes sense, Aggie, they don’t have the power to do that anymore. The whytes were destroyed before we were born. Even they knew they were wrong.”
Agatha reached the blue Jetta and yanked open the passenger door, gesturing me, Tess and Oliver inside. “Yes, they knew they were wrong, but you also know what these people are like. There’s nothing they won’t do to win this fight. A whyte or two would definitely tip the scales in their favor. Can you think of any other reason why they would have a woman in a white dress tied up out in the desert?”
Beatty swallowed and shrugged his shoulders. “You may be right, Aggie. But Otis and I have to find Brynn. He’ll have made it out and we aren’t leaving him here if there is a whyte stalking us.”
Nyla had been staring at her feet while the two spoke but now her head snapped up. She fixed her eyes on Beatty. “Don’t be a fool! She’s right. We’re leaving. Brynn’s not stupid. He’d tell us to leave right now. We have to get Scout out of here.”
Agatha still had her hand on the passenger door when a shrill scream pierced the air. I stepped forward, suddenly willing to believe that there was something out there in the dark, even if I didn’t know what it was yet. Tess and Oliver were right behind me; we were in the car by the time the second scream resonated off the dune walls. I swallowed back my panic. Had it come from Brynn or Cliff?
“We’ll meet outside the city at the old motel off Route 40, okay?” Agatha instructed the others as she buckled herself into the driver’s seat.
“Okay. We’re right behind you.” Nyla gave Beatty a forceful look. He bowed his head, sighing heavily into his beard, and then nodded.
“Right behind you,” he agreed.
Agatha revved the engine and pulled away from the garage. The wreckage of the silo gave one final crack and a tall pillar of flame jetted into the sky overhead before it died back. I watched it fade into a dull glow in the rearview mirror as we sped away.
I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands in an attempt to warm them. Everyone seemed lost inside themselves. We tore through the night in silence for at least ten miles before Oliver spoke.
“Agatha, please…where are we going? Why were you so worried back there? What’s this whyte?”
Agatha replied in a level voice. “When I grew up in the First Quarter, the elders would always tell us stories from back in the beginning. The whytes were one of their favorite stories when they wanted us to behave. There were only ever three whytes created. They were difficult to control and gloried in the destruction all living things, regardless of whether it was Immortal, Immundus or human. They were the Reavers’ tools but they were dangerous and unpredictable.
“The story of their creation goes back before Aldan. It was Simeon, one of the first Reavers, who made the first whyte, and he did it out of love. He’d taken his rites many years before but refused to destroy the woman who bore his son. She was gentle and sweet, and he loved her. She stayed by his side always, and they raised their child together, but one day she fell sick. They said she burned in a fever so hot the sweat evaporated from her skin before it could bead.
“She died within less than a day. Simeon was distraught and vowed to bring her back, but every last part of her spirit, her life force, was gone. He couldn’t pass his energy into her and return her to health. It destroyed him. The story goes that he held her body in his arms and raged, furious that he was so powerless. His love turned bitter in his chest and it is said that, in the height of his fury, his anger and rage burst forth from him, passing into the body of his love.
“Simeon was overjoyed when he felt her stir in his arms, but his joy soon turned to horror. He looked down upon the woman to find her transformed and hideous. Her skin was deathly pale, the irises of her eyes cloudy and unclear, blending with the whites of her eyes. It was her mouth, though…her mouth was the most hideous thing of all.
“The elders used to tell us that just seeing the mouth of a whyte would kill you. The skin is black and full of decay. For an Immundus or a member of the Quarters, a bite from a whyte is a death sentence in itself, but the madness that it infects you with is much, much worse than death. You’re tormented by a violent insanity, hurting yourself and anyone else who comes near you until you finally die in excruciating pain.
“The Reavers were more scared by the whytes than anyone, and with good reason. They didn’t die, so when they were bitten they just got the insanity and the pain but not the release of death at the end. That’s what happened to Simeon. His wife tore at his chest with her teeth and that black filth mixed with his blood and he was lost forever. The elders used to tell us if we didn’t behave, then Simeon would come and get us in our sleep.
“They created two more after her, two sisters: Margo and Corinne. This time they used women from the Quarters to see if perhaps they would be easier to control. They dressed them in white and chained them down. That’s where the name came from, that and the fact that their eyes went almost totally white.
“It took eight of them to produce the same effects that Simeon had created in his grief. When they eventually succeeded, they were drained of power and the girls were just the same as the one before them: crazed and untameable. They kept all three locked away, fearing them for decades before finally deciding they were unnatural and destroying them. They cut their heads off and burned their bodies.”
A heavy, thick quiet fell over the car when Agatha stopped talking, and I sat there mulling over her story. It was highly unbelievable, but then what else was new? Agatha was no fool. If she suspected the woman I saw was one of these whytes, then I was glad we’d left immediately. I definitely didn’t want to meet one.
I looked back at Oliver in the rearview and gave him a tight-lipped smile. Tess was asleep beside him with her head resting on his shoulder. She probably hadn’t heard a single word Agatha had said, and I was thankful for that. Tess might not handle the thought of another monster trying to kill us very well.
Eventually tires hit asphalt and we had made it to the highway. A look in the side mirror revealed nothing behind us but darkness.
“They’re about a mile back,” Agatha said in hushed tones.
I drew comfort from the fact that Beatty and Otis weren’t far away. I would have felt even safer if Cliff had been with us. Or Daniel. Especially Daniel. A deep pang of sadness welled up inside the hollow of my chest. I had no idea where he was, and I needed him here. Our friends were probably dead, and I needed the strength of his arms around me to deaden that pain.
Grief aside, my exhaustion levels were at an all-time high. It wasn’t long before I drifted into uneasy asleep. Oliver was gentle when he shook me awake, but I still leapt forward, gasping for breath.
We were parked outside a single-story motel off the highway. It bore a weather-faded billboard advertising color TV and a heated pool. A pink neon sign lit the side of the building facing the road, blinking ‘The Queen of Hearts’ at passers by. The driver’s seat was empty.
“Where are we?”
; “Agatha says this is a place she and Daniel arranged as a meeting point if anything ever went wrong. She’s inside getting us a room.”
That made sense. The Queen of Hearts was run down and dilapidated, but it was above ground and it wasn’t on fire. Great selling points. And if there was any chance Daniel was going to show up, I was going to be here, waiting. Ten minutes later Agatha emerged from around the side of the building and jogged back to the Jetta.
“Come on, we should get inside.”
It felt strange having nothing to bring inside but a bag full of water. I didn’t bother collecting it. I got out of the car with Oliver and a very groggy Tess. We waited while Agatha drove the car behind the motel out of sight from the road. She came back for us on foot and led the way around the back, down a metal fire escape and around another corner, which led into a courtyard. The yard was lined with garishly bright pink numbered doors. It looked like the Barbie version of a crack motel.
A layer of debris floated on the surface of the heated pool in the center of the courtyard. Two road traffic cones and a football bobbed on top of the water, along with the occasional plastic bag and a thick layer of leaves.
“Homey,” Tess muttered under her breath. It was the first thing she had said in a while.
“Yep. Every creature comfort,” Agatha agreed. She made her way along the walkway, stopping at the door numbered 7B. “Get comfortable.” She threw open the door and we went inside, taking in the décor—two large double beds dressed with worn, pale pink covers, and a small hot pink sofa in the far corner that bore countless cigarette burns on its arms. As promised, a TV sat silently on a peeling veneer coffee table at the other end of the room. The chances that it worked were pretty low. The air was old and musty, but the bathroom was clean, and there was no sign of anyone lurking in the closets.
Agatha waited until we were settled and then left, saying she needed to make some phone calls and speak to the others when they arrived. “Get some rest. The sun will be up soon and we might have to move on.” She was right. The sky was brightening behind the thin curtains, and it would soon be morning. “Don’t leave the room. Don’t open the door to anyone,” she said. The last we saw of her was her hand, flecked with blood, as it pulled the door closed.
