by Shade Owens
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, and a sharp prod jabbed me in between the shoulder blades.
“You see,” the leader said, leaning her weight on her knees, “there’s only room for one leader on this island.”
Trim’s vengeful eyes rolled up toward the Norther and she spat a glob of dark blood at the ground. “And what?” she said, blood filling the gaps of her teeth. “You’re it? You’re the almighty leader? You fucking piece of sh—”
Crack—the leader kicked her thick boot at the side of Trim’s head, knocking her back down.
“Stop it!” someone shouted.
It was impossible to tell whose voice was coming from where anymore. My adrenaline was through the roof, and it felt like I was dreaming again.
I couldn’t let Trim do this.
“I’m the one you want!” I said, or at least, I think I did. It hadn’t sounded like my voice.
But the leader threw her head back and laughed, the bun on her head wiggling. “How noble… Your little sheep are trying to take your place.”
The other Northers joined in on the laughter, but all it sounded like were demons speaking in tongues. And then, the leader bent down and wrapped her fingers in Trim’s hair and pulled up as hard as she could, exposing her neck.
Trim’s teeth were sealed tight and she breathed rapidly through her nose, her pink nostrils moving quickly.
“This is what happens when you try to be a hero!” the leader shouted, her voice carrying above our shouts.
And in one swift movement, she swung her arm in front of Trim’s face and everything went silent. I didn’t understand what had happened. When the Norther’s arm moved out of the way, Trim’s eyes rolled back in her head and she made a choking sound.
And then I saw it—the red gap. There was a small a slit in Trim’s throat, but it grew wider and wider, until finally, it burst open, resembling a bucket of gooey red paint being poured out.
This wasn’t happening.
It couldn’t be.
Trim gurgled, and bubbles of blood splashed from her throat and into the air. Then, almost as if the volume of a muted TV had been turned on, everyone started screaming.
I let out a shout as loud as my lungs would allow and lunged straight toward the leader, my hands swinging from side to side behind me. I’d tear out her jugular with my fucking teeth if I had to.
I’d kill her.
I’d fucking kill her and then I’d kill all of them.
That’s when something hard hit me against the head, and everything around me went black.
EPISODE 7
PROLOGUE
His eyes rolled from side to side as he puffed on his cherry-flavored cigar. It filled the room with a sweet smell I’d come to hate. He ran his thick oil-stained hand through his curly brown hair and coughed out a cloud of smoke.
I despised him.
What did my mother see in him?
He was a complete drunken waste of skin who was good for one thing: helping my mom pay her bills. Even then, he only did it when it suited him, although he was always at my mom’s place, leeching off her electricity and stuffing his face with the little bit of food she had. What kind of man leeched off a woman who received less than $2,000 per month through disability insurance? I averaged $3,000 per month working minimum wage.
Some days, I wondered if maybe she was scared of him—terrified to talk back to him or to make any demands. I’d asked her time and time again if she felt afraid, and all she’d say was, “Sweetheart, Gary’s a little rough around the edges… But you don’t know him like I do.”
A little rough around the edges… That was one way of putting it.
He was a piece of shit, that’s what he was.
I stared at him, wondering if he’d forgotten that it was the first of the month, and my mom hadn’t been able to pay her cable bill last month because he’d gone ahead and rented a dozen specialty programs—wrestling or something.
He got up with a loud grunt and a swing in his upper body, stomped his way into the kitchen, and went digging inside the fridge. The sound of beer bottles clanging against each other filled the apartment, and my eyes rolled toward my mother’s.
She smiled at me, almost apologetically, but all I saw was cowardice. I loved her, but it was so hard not to be mad at her. I glanced toward the kitchen at the pile of dirty dishes and a dozen empty beer bottles against the wall.
That was the other thing I hated about him—he never helped my mom or gave her any emotional support. She suffered from fibromyalgia, a chronic pain illness often referred to as a suicide disease. Some days—because there were good days, and bad days—getting up to do the dishes was excruciating for her. Yet there he was, piling it all up.
I tried to visit her as often as possible to help out around the apartment. On her bad days, though, she couldn’t even get out of bed. She’d described her pain to me: like venom slithering through her body and eating through her muscles, bones, and tendons, or like being prodded with thousands of knives over and over again.
She’d even asked me if I thought the hospital would amputate her legs so the pain would stop. If the hospital couldn’t even give her pain medication when she came in by ambulance—because she was on opioid medication and they viewed her as a junkie—they sure as heck wouldn’t waste their time with any surgical procedure to ease the pain that was in her head.
Gary was never sympathetic to her pain, either. When she’d moan or rub her legs, he’d roll his eyes and tell her to have a beer or take one of her pills, if he hadn’t already gone through the bottle.
He dropped back down into his spot, took a chug of cold beer, and let out a bubbly burp.
I watched my mom as she rubbed her inflamed fingers together, obviously trying to figure out how to ask him for money. She shifted from side to side, her brown eyes bouncing between Gary and me.
I wanted to speak up, but I knew if I did, I’d probably upset my mom more than him.
“What’s up with you?” he asked, more annoyed than anything.
His bottom lip was slobbery, and his eyes couldn’t stay straight. He’d gone through half a bottle of vodka and a dozen beers already. There was no use talking to him when he was this drunk.
“It’s… it’s the cable bill,” my mom said, playing with the tips of her chestnut hair.
“Ca-cable bill?” he blurted. He leaned forward and smashed his beer bottle onto the coffee table, causing my mom’s shoulders to jerk forward. “Is that—is that all I am to you?” he slurred. “Money?”
“No, of course not, sweetheart,” my mom said quickly. She was trying too hard to be sweet to him. “It’s just that—”
“It’s just, it’s just, it’s just,” he sneered, his lips drooping down into the shape of a horseshoe. “If you have somethin’ to say, spit it out!”
His voice, now a growl, shook the apartment walls and my mom slouched her shoulders forward in an attempt to make herself look smaller.
“I-I was just. Gary, please. I can’t afford—”
“Can’t afford?” he roared. He swung his hand at his beer bottle, and it flew across the living room and shattered against the television’s entertainment unit. This time, I was the one who flinched.
“Is that all I am to you?” he repeated, his eyes now narrowing on my mom. “A d-dollar sign? I love you, Janet, I love you. And this is how—this is…”
“Gary, please…”
He swung the back of his heavy hand against her face and a loud crack resonated across the apartment. “D-don’t you talk back to me.”
I lunged to my feet, but his dark eyes rolled up at me. “You stay out… Stay out of this.”
I couldn’t waste any time trying to argue with him. I rushed down the hallway and into my mom’s room, where I pulled out my phone with shaky hands and dialed 9-1-1. My mom would hate me for this, but there was no other choice. I couldn’t stand around and watch him beat her.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“It’s my mom’s boyfriend,” I said, my voice muffled with my hand. “Forty-five Victoria Street, apartment 305. He’s drunk and he’s”—my voice cracked—“he’s beating her.”
“Is he armed?” the woman asked, her voice calm and reassuring.
“Not that I know of,” I said.”
“We’ll send police escorts right away,” she said.
I’d been about to thank her when I heard glass shattering in the kitchen, followed by a scream.
“Mom!” I shouted, blasting my way out of her room and down the hallway.
But what I saw first wasn’t my mom—it was him. He was facing the wall, his massive back rounded and the curly hairs on his head dancing from side to side as he struggled with something.
“I love you,” he slurred. “I’ve done everything… Everything for you. You don’t. You. I can’t believe…”
That’s when I saw her white socks. Her feet were dangling in between his legs, kicking back and forth. He had her pinned up against the wall by her throat.
“Mom!” I shouted again, this time running straight for him.
I jumped on his back, blasting my fists against him, but it was like hitting a stone wall. He wasn’t even reacting. I wrapped my arm around his thick neck and squeezed as hard as I could—nothing. His massive hands were around my mom’s throat, and her bulging eyes rolled in the back of her head.
“Stop it!” I yelled.
Her face was dark red, almost purple, and her lips were going blue. She slapped a frail, veiny hand over his to stop him, but it didn’t do anything. He wasn’t letting go.
I needed something—something hard. I considered picking up the television and throwing it at his back, but my eyes caught sight of something in the kitchen. I ran toward the cast iron frying pan, picked up the handle with both hands, and came charging at him with it over my head.
I let out the loudest scream I’d ever released and swung down as hard as I could. A loud clunk filled the space around us, and he took a step back, before dropping to his knees and onto his side, shaking the entire apartment. My mom fell to the ground, her bony hands clasped around her red and inflamed throat.
Her wild eyes shot from me to him as I stood there with the frying pan dangling at my side for what seemed like hours. As if being shaken from a trance, panic surged through my mom. She started shaking and muttering things I couldn’t understand. She crawled toward Gary, cupping his big bearlike face in her hands.
“Gary?” Her wet eyes rolled up at me. “What did you do? What did you do? He’s… he’s not breathing. Lydia, what did you do?”
I stared at his motionless body, trying to understand what had happened. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk.
What had I done?
A loud knock blasted against the front door, and I dropped the frying pan.
“Police, open up!”
CHAPTER 1
Was I even alive?
Maybe the Northers had killed me, too, and this was an alternate reality. Maybe my wrists weren’t actually tied up with rope behind my back, and maybe, just maybe, we weren’t being led toward the Northers’ territory like cattle to the slaughterhouse.
This couldn’t be happening.
I stared straight ahead, my eyes wide open, but all I could see were Trim’s hollow black eyes staring at me from atop a pool of blood over unevenly shaped river stones. I remembered screaming until my voice became hoarse, but after that, everything faded away.
There was a throbbing pain in the back of my head, and I could only assume someone had hit me from behind to stop me from charging after Trim’s killer.
“Where are you taking us?” Johnson asked, her voice like nails on a chalkboard.
But the Norther who was leading the way—the one at the front with short, choppy brown hair and pointy shoulders—tugged on the rope that connected us all as a way of telling Johnson to shut up.
Coin’s chin jabbed me in between my shoulder blades, and I fell forward, my chest hitting Johnson—who was at the front of the line—in the back. She almost fell flat on her face.
“Stupid bitch,” Johnson muttered.
“What’d you say?” the choppy-haired Norther asked. She whipped a knife out from her belt and stared at Johnson with eyes too big for her face.
God, she was so ugly without her skull mask. Dirt stained her face, paint—which had assumedly once been a straight line—smeared underneath her eyes, a missing front tooth stood out amid all her decaying ones, and a scar ran from her chin all the way up to the eyebrow, deforming her nose.
Johnson didn’t respond. She stared back, most likely contemplating whether running her mouth again was worth her life.
“That’s enough, Rebel,” the leader of the Northers said.
Rebel, which I assumed was the ugly one’s name, pulled her nose up in a piggish way and raised two arched eyebrows.
“You heard Rainer,” the leader went on. “She wants these ones alive.” She stepped forward, the sound of her heavy gear chafing, and yanked the rope out of Rebel’s hand.
Rebel slid her mask back on and looked either dumbfounded or pissed off—I couldn’t tell which—as she stood still and stared at her leader.
“Go!” the leader snapped, her bright eyes popping out and the little blond bun on her head wiggling like an old bobblehead doll.
Rebel short-stepped her way past us, nearly blinding us with her hateful glare, and joined the other three Northers at the back of the line. They followed us closely, whacking sticks in their palms as a form of intimidation, as a way of saying, ‘One wrong move, and I’ll break you.’
“Keep moving,” the leader ordered.
How far is this place? I wanted to ask. But I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t suicidal. Besides, I didn’t want to reach our destination. With every step I took, I prayed that Biggie or Flander or anyone I knew—even young Elektra, for crying out loud—would come swinging down from a vine like Tarzan to save the day.
Or, better yet, that we’d be ambushed by Ogres or saved by a Rogue. We’d been saved by a Rogue before—the image of a huge tiger swinging its massive paw at me automatically flashed through my mind. Maybe Rogues were decent human beings. If a Rogue could face a tiger to save a group of strangers, a Rogue could definitely be our knight in shining armor—well, leather—and save us.
I glanced up at the trees overhead, noticing for the first time how beautiful every break of sunlight truly was. There were all sorts of shapes… triangles, squares, rectangles. And each of these shapes shone a different hue of the sun’s yellow light.
Why hadn’t I ever taken the time to appreciate its beauty?
And why was I noticing it now? Was I having an end-of-life moment? Deep down, did I believe I was going to die?
I swallowed and my heart thumped so hard, I could barely breathe.
That’s exactly what I believed, even though I didn’t want to believe it. After everything I’d seen from the Northers (the attacks, the massacre, the fire), I knew there was no way I was coming out of this one whole.
I was either going to be strung up naked like a goddamn piece of meat and slaughtered in front of every Norther, or I was going to be tortured by Rainer’s finest. I thought of the tools they’d probably use—shards of bones, rocks, rope capable of stretching one’s limbs out of their sockets—and my stomach sank.
Remembering the metal arrowhead Coin found, I was instantly nauseous. How advanced were they?
My vision became fuzzy and every sound around me was amplified. Every leaf that ruffled sounded like a plastic bag flapping in the wind; every insect that crawled sounded like nails falling on a concrete floor; and every twig that snapped underneath our feet sounded like a bolt of lightning striking the earth beside me.
“You!”
I wanted to cover my ears at the sound of the leader’s voice, but my hands were tied. I cringed and turned my head to the side, hoping that the angle of my head might reduce the amount of noise my ears were tak
ing in.
Footsteps became louder, shaking the ground under me, and a strong hand gripped my arm.
“Get it together before I send you along with that Bigfoot frizzy-haired friend of yours.”
Frizzy… Bigfoot… What was she talking about?
Trim. I saw her face—her pointed nose, her acne-scarred skin, and her dark eyes that stared into me before she’d died as if she’d planned the whole thing, as if she knew she was going to die.
Why had she done that? Why had she announced herself the leader to save me? Trim should have been standing here. Maybe if Trim were alive, she’d find a way out of this mess.
But Trim was dead.
My throat swelled, and my vision slowly returned along with my sense of reality.
The leader’s frighteningly beautiful eyes darted from me to the back of the line, assumedly at her people.
“If this one collapses, cut her loose and kill her,” she said.
My heart skipped before returning to a rhythmic pace.
I had to pull myself together. If not for me, then for Trim. Her death had to mean something. The moment the leader turned away, something hard kicked me on my heel. I swiftly turned around and found Coin’s glossy brown eyes staring into mine. They were completely bloodshot and sitting in the middle of dark circles.
But she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were wide as if telling me that everything was going to be okay. I didn’t believe her, but I’d have to lie to myself until I did. I glanced past her and up at Franklin, who looked as terrified as the rest of us, if not more.
I’d never seen her like this. For the first time, I didn’t hate her. I felt sorry for her. Despite her having been a complete pain in everyone’s ass over the last few days, she was still one of ours, and she was still a human being.
Her eyes appeared over Hammer’s short-haired head, her stare lingering in a pleading way. If I’d been a mind reader, I’d have concluded she was begging me to save her life. So, I mustered the bit of strength Coin had shared with me and forced a reassuring smile, even though all I could picture were our five lifeless bodies lying in a pile of dirt, our limbs crisscrossing overtop one another.