by Logan Keys
He punches through the remaining walls, meeting me outside.
In the moonlight, Bradford’s monster is horrific. Hands by each side in a bicep curl of power, he howls at the moon, an eerie scruffy sound of impending doom. Thankfully, no one answers. If there were more of him, I think I’d be finished before I began.
The sound echoes inside of me and I feel a rage I’ve never felt before.
Shade follows his leader at a distance and he stops and crosses his arms. His eyebrow is up in question.
I stand and roll my neck, inviting her in. Come on you wanted to take over completely before, well there you go. My soul steps out of the way of the thing that resides in the corners of my mind.
Once she has firm control, her reflexes are far better than my own, I stroll without caution toward the beast. This time when he swipes at me, I duck and move much more quickly. I’m able to strike him once in the chest. It’s like hitting concrete.
No heart in hand trick this time, he’s made of steel that looks like skin.
I bare my teeth at him, and Bradford latches onto me before I can get away. The wolf thing squeezes me in the ugliest bear hug ever. I cry out as my back feels close to breaking. But my feet are free of his embrace and he’s still a man.
Sorta.
I kick him between the legs and am satisfied at the yelp as he lets me go. So, it’s not just the heart I need to remove. Interesting.
We run a strange circle while I try to decide what tactic is best. He’s too fast in the open space, where his brute strength is going to win.
With the beast firmly in chase, I take off for the city parts. Bradford bays his excitement, dropping onto all fours, where he begins to run so fast that I realize my mistake in underestimating him.
I keep ahead, but I have to push myself.
Taking to the shadows, I hide, but the wolf has the scent of me. I don’t hide to get away, I hide to make a trap.
The wolf is near, but Shade slides into my spot, breathing hard. “You better think of something quick, Dallas.”
“Shhhh,” I hiss when I see the beast turn down the street.
“Do you need my help?” Shade asks.
“Hell no,” I say, but bite my lip. “Ask me again later, okay?”
Shade pushes me further into the darkness, and he tries to say something, but instead, I silence him with my lips. It’s not a sweet kiss, it’s an angry one. He’d been getting information from me and giving it to Bradford. I punish him for that.
But Shade is no beta male. He pushes me back and gives as good as he gets. The second taste of night is as good as the first.
I’m furious at him being a spy for his side. But I had been doing the same.
A growl pries me away.
The wolf closes in and I flee again, searching for a side street, before diving into what I had thought was another way toward the main road, but it’s not. It’s an alleyway and one with solid structures on all sides. The windows are too high to climb into.
I’m a vampire, not spider man.
The wolf finds where I turned. He follows me into my trap.
But I’m the trapped one now.
“Think, Dallas, think,” I tell myself.
There are some trashcans on this end chained together. I could lift them and throw them perhaps but it’s not like…
The wolf rises on his hind legs making a sound that I suppose is victory. Bradford’s got me cornered.
My pride won’t let me ask Shade for help.
A noise above me draws my attention. The men. They’re up on the roofs watching us.
There is a group that is separate from the rest. These seem set apart. They each host enough firepower to take out an entire army. These must be the Raiders Shade had mentioned. Their leader is going to tear this vampire apart, and I’m surprised I don’t see popcorn being passed around.
“Enjoying the show?” I yell.
A few say, “Hell yeah!” And I don’t have time to flip them off. I need my hands. He’s close now.
It’s a stupid idea, but I grab the trash cans, anyway. That only makes the beast laugh.
When he gets close enough, I throw them at him, and instead of hitting my target, they explode. Brittle and unable to keep together having rotted over time, they shatter into shards of plastic that rains down on our heads like the most disgusting type of confetti.
While blinded by my own bad idea, Bradford grabs hold of me. He’s wise enough to keep his legs closed this round, so I can’t make sure he never has children.
With one hand free, I slice a hole in his neck. Not big enough to bleed him dry, but big enough that he’s slower to crush me to compact size.
All he has to do is get me broken enough to burn me and I know he’s not as dumb as he looks. He has an actual plan. If he knows the legend even vaguely, he knows how to kill me.
I feel my trapped arm break and I don’t cry out. It doesn’t hurt like it would a normal person, to but it’s a sign that this is getting serious. And now my leg. One has cracked at the thigh.
He walks with me a step or two still squeezing.
What is that sound?
A rattle?
The chain.
He’s got the chain from the trash cans tangled around us.
I dig more at the hole I’ve made in his neck with vigor. I get it open wide, and that makes him relax his hold enough so I can reach for the links. And then I grab hold of the chain. Now, it’s me who does the hugging.
Wrapping my arms around the wolf, I crawl right up his body, chain pulled tight, until I can wind it around his neck. With leverage, I swing around and up onto his back, the slack of the chain in my hand.
Bradford drops to all fours, violently shaking his body side to side.
I straddle him while he swings me around trying to get me off. I manage to stay stuck. Like the ugliest bull ever created, I ride him through more than eight seconds. I keep the chain tight while he makes choked sounds and slows.
Finally, the beast collapses, but I don’t let up. Not yet. I didn’t come here simply to teach him a lesson.
It takes long minutes before he finally stills beneath me, completely.
I move off the giant dog to land on my feet with a thud.
Leashed, he’s not quite as intimidating. His body transforms back into a man, one who’s growing cold.
My arm and leg have healed already. I suppose he could heal too, but he seems dead as dead can get.
Without further ado, and just in case, I pull Bradford’s giant heart from his chest. It takes some doing. Once I have the organ in hand, I drop kick it down the alleyway.
“Someone burn that,” I say.
And the men on the roofs watch me in silence.
Chapter 37
Crystal
Goodman meets me on the train. The others left on the one before so it’s just me and him.
“You okay?” he asks focusing on my eyes too closely.
I shove his shoulder good naturedly. “Shut up. Let’s just go.”
No one is on this train. It’s all driven by AI. It will run above the water on a rail for Anthem, there and back several times a day and night. Mostly it runs empty. But then there are the times it brings a bunch of new kids for “treatment” AKA imprisonment.
We get to walk the train freely because no guards are manning it when there should be no passengers. Dawn is breaking, and it’s nice not to think for once. Instead, I watch the quiet water pass us by.
“Look!” I point.
Goodman chuckles and comes to my side. “Cool. Dolphins. Haven’t seen anything like that in a long while.”
I’ve never seen anything like that.
We steal snacks from the cabin after breaking the lock. Goodman talks me into playing a drinking game with tiny bottles of alcohol. I suppose it’s for the nurses and doctors who travel often to visit family.
We do play.
And I lose.
Get drunk.
I can’t remember th
e last time I was drunk.
Phillip’s face flashes in my mind and I rub my eyes. He and I’d shared a bottle of Chianti on top of the wall that surrounds Anthem. We’d thrown it into the wilds, and from way up high, watched it disappear without a sound as it fell into dense jungle.
He’d then kissed me so hard that it had nearly pushed me off the edge. It had pushed me over the edge mentally though.
I’d been ready to stay stuck on Jeremy for the rest of my life until that kiss. It opened a whole new can of worms.
He was all that mattered for that moment and it felt good.
Goodman says something interrupting my thoughts, and I mutter a noncommittal sound and shake my head.
Goodman figures I need some space and leaves me be.
I close my eyes and see the anger after the kiss that came much later. It’s like a fresh wound, thinking about that night. He’d started to hate me after a while I think. Lovesick is a real thing. I know it because I am it as well.
It had proven I could care for another. It had proven that never the less, I am Jeremy’s through and through. I’m starting to hate myself for it too.
I’m his and I’m Anthem’s.
And both are sick.
Maybe both don’t want me. And it’s breaking my damn heart.
It’s a sad pity party where I sit by the window, knees tucked up under my chin. I can relax like this with Goodman. My new number two. Phillip was number two before. But he’d wanted missions far away. Can’t say I blame him.
“You know you’re crazy, right, Crystal?” Phillip had said, while packing his things in a small duffle bag. “Can’t see the forest for the trees.”
“Are you forest or the trees?” I’d asked, arms crossed so hard it had hurt.
He knew my reaching for him wasn’t a real thing, it was just to pass the time until Jeremy was around again. So, I had stopped that empty gesture. It wasn’t right.
But he was right. I am crazy.
That wasn’t even the worst moment.
“What about the other night?” he’d yelled, not meaning that damn kiss, on that damn wall, on the edge of that damn city.
He’d meant the one where I’d slept with him after we got free. A man who I barely knew, and after so many of the bad dreams, I’d stumbled into his room, fresh tattoo on my back, after having mooned over Jeremy all night. After our trip to the black-market Jeremy had come home, euphoric, ready to write about our new sign. The spider, look for the spiders he’d tell Anthem, and me, a forgotten thing no longer his focus, I’d wandered away, rejection fresh, feelings old, and I’d found Phillip’s open door.
I’d only wanted to ask him to rub my tattoo with salve. But when he had, I’d leaned into him. It was a desperate act, I knew that even as I did it. And when he’d kissed my neck, I’d known a million wrongs that couldn’t make a right, but I’d wanted to feel someone want me for once.
After the purge “Life is short” had been drilled into me, like a hammer had struck at my core saying over and over: You only live once.
I’d turned, and I’d pulled Phillip to me, and I’d kissed him like I would have kissed Jeremy after watching him get his own matching tattoo to mine. It was a tarantula, and we’d both had one in the exact same spot now.
It should have meant something.
To most it would have. But to Jeremy it meant solidarity where I’d wanted more… so much more.
Phillip hadn’t known any of that. He’d only seen that I’d gotten a tattoo, and that I wanted his hands on my body. He couldn’t have known the stand-in he was that night.
But I’d been at the end of my rope
Always.
And Phillip had his own desperation. It was in every jerky movement that removed each article of my clothing, and then his own. It was in every tug of my hips lower onto the bed. It was in every kiss, and grab, and squeeze.
It was in every long stare deeply into my eyes.
Loneliness quadrupled after the purge. They’d rewired our brains, preyed on our fears and insecurities, reminded us that we were finite things--- but a vapor---and that the world would be nothing but ash in our mouths, everything craved would eventually burn.
And if I should burn, I wanted the wolf to burn with me.
I flinch as the train suctions into its tube. The tunnel is darker than I remember. The lights flicker on and I blink. Now it’s too bright.
We exit the tube after not too long, flying high above the water again.
Both Goodman and I stand to try to see ahead of the train, like kids on a field trip. It’s the two faces of the Cromwell’s carved into the walls of Anthem. Giant bodices keeping supposed guard, facing the ocean.
I sneer at the letters RIP newly carved into the bottom of Reginald’s. Liza killed the bastard. Good. I wish I could see her and thank her. Even if she has Jeremy’s heart, that’s not her fault.
Goodman shakes his head and crosses his arms at the memorial as well.
The city comes into view, and we go between the only opening in the wall that’s miles out in the ocean, bisecting the two statues.
“You ready for this?” he asks me and it comes rushing back. All of it.
I’ve been away for so long, but this---this is home.
I nod.
We fly onto the platform, and before the train stops, Goodman crowbars a door open. The alarms go off as we leap out, falling the one-story drop, preparing for the jolting landing. I hit hard and roll, and Goodman does, too.
He wipes his mouth clean of dirt, grinning at me, blood on his lip.
My elbows have a nice amount of road rash. I grin back.
We run from there to the hill that rises above most of Anthem. From here you can see section, the lower classes, the roads across to the upper northern parts, and if you squint hard, you can see the where the Cromwell’s mansion sets.
There are only the two hills. This one near the exit out into the ocean, and the one the Cromwell’s live on.
Goodman gives me a leg up over the small fence they’ve put up to ward off people from getting this close to the wall on the ocean side. I get on top of it and reach over to pull Goodman up.
“Lay off the home cooking, man,” I grunt.
He laughs as we land on the other side. “Wait until you see what Layla’s made for dinner.”
I realize I’m starved. I need to eat something.
He laughs harder when my stomach growls. “She’s nervous,” Goodman says leading the way down the others side and around toward section.
“Nervous?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck.
We pause and take in the city below. It’s sobering. Anthem’s citizens are unaware that the two most hunted have arrived. That someone hears their cry.
The city is still as gray as ash, and it’s offset by the orange sun setting making the skies afire more than usual. I take a deep breath looking down at the people I want to save.
Do I loathe them yet?
Nah. They don’t know any better. I lift my chin and let the wind dust me off.
It’s time to return to my first love.
From here, we watch the kids and parents in their gray smocks. Life goes on, a colorless life, still. Not much has changed. They look more slumped, more tired, but the same otherwise. Have they always been so weary? It seems worse now for some reason.
I remember the first time I crawled up here to hide after taking a beating from the guards. I’d cried my eyes out over this city. I’d loved it that much already.
“I still love it,” I say and Goodman smiles.
“I know you do.”
“Come on, man.” I pat his shoulder. “Let’s go eat.”
He grins then spins around too and runs down the hill on the other side. We race one another and then climb the first building’s fire escape. From above we jump from roof to roof.
We cover the distance to section, the lower, poorer part of Anthem in record time.
“Getting tired in
your old age!” I call back to Goodman.
It’s not fair. He’s only been purged the one time. As a kid, he was scrawny too. I remember him even then, half the muscle. But he won’t be able to keep up with me on a good day.
Not like this.
I’m a beast.
Chapter 38
Crystal
Layla acts like I’m royalty. I try to eat with my mouth closed, elbows off the table, because her kid stares at me like I’m a superhero come to visit. I keep from checking to see if I’ve got a cape on.
I reach out to touch the little girl’s cheek, and she pales like she’s going to pass out from excitement, touching the spot where I rubbed my finger.
I glance at Goodman who shrugs in between voracious bites of chicken leg.
This is a huge expense in section. Actual chicken.
I want to give them money, but I don’t want to be rude.
I realize my manners are terrible now, I never know what to say, how to act, I’ve been chasing the Authority so long, I’ve forgotten how to be a real person anymore.
Goodman’s wife is as gorgeous as I’d imagined. She doesn’t have callouses on her hands. She doesn’t have scars on her face. But she doesn’t stare at me like I thought she might, in horror, or fascination. She’d instead teared up the moment she saw me, brought me into a lengthy hug and profusely thanked me.
I had been embarrassed by it.
Layla says now, “Go ahead, Elsa.” And the little girl brings me a present.
I take the delicate package. My ripped leather gloves are making the tissue paper dirty. I take them off and then wipe my sweaty palms on my pants. I realize I’m covered in grime.
My voice is gruff. “Sorry, I’m dirtying your clean house.”
Layla’s holding her throat, her eyes wide in anticipation. Goodman puts an arm around her, and rubs her shoulders.
What I want to say is stuck in my throat. I open the present instead. It’s a little heart. I look up, confused.
“It’s, um, a ruby,” Layla says.
“A ruby,” I echo. And then I lift the large gem in wonder. The light shines through. “I can’t accept this,” I whisper.
