Tyler found it odd that it was on now, when no one was playing.
“We were about to start up a game when Avery saw you guys on the monitor,” Ray said, as if reading his thoughts, then he picked up a basketball from a rack full of them.
They were all shining, not having been broken in yet. Tyler knew the type well. When they were fresh out of the box, they had a tendency to either be overinflated, or grossly under-inflated, and you couldn’t get a grip on them. The slightest bit of moisture made them about as easy to grip as a wet bar of soap.
Ray dribbled a couple of times between his legs, moving with fluidity and grace. With his height and strength, he was probably a hell of a player, Tyler surmised.
“Wait, you have monitors?” May asked.
Ray passed her the ball gently. She caught it in her good hand and dribbled a couple of times on the faux hardwood the half court was made out of. Tyler noted how she had used her bad arm a couple of times, even with it still in the sling. It hadn’t healed right and looked pretty worse for the wear, all crooked and stuck at an angle, but it was healing, and that was all that mattered.
“Well, they’re not technically our monitors. They came with the mall, I guess, but Avery and Flo got them running again once they hooked the generators up. Some of them were wiped out completely by the air blast coming from downtown, the EMP or whatever, but most are still good. They’ve saved our lives more than a few times.”
“Saved ours, too, I guess,” Tyler said.
Ray raised his eyebrows, smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
The ball slipped from May’s grip, rolling over to Tyler. He picked it up and shot at the basket from maybe two feet behind the three point arc, which was more or less the correct distance. The ball went through the hoop with a snap of the net.
Ray whooped. “We are so going to kick Avery’s and Kurt’s asses!” The good cheer went out of his face almost immediately, realizing his mistake. “I mean, well, I guess not. Kurt’s a dick. I understand if you don’t wanna play with him.”
Tyler grinned. “We’ll see. Maybe I could throw a few elbows his way.”
“That’s not nice, Tyler,” May said.
“I promise I won’t knock too many of his teeth out…” he qualified.
“That’s the spirit!” Ray whooped again. “But actually, you’d probably be doing him a favor by knocking his teeth out. Not too many of them are in good health, judging by his breath.” He said this in all seriousness, but Tyler thought it was quite a clever insult.
He laughed raucously, which felt good. May didn’t find any of it amusing.
For the next few minutes, Tyler and Ray shot baskets. Tyler barely missed any, and when he did, it wasn’t by much. May watched and cheered them on as shot after shot went through the net. It was relaxing, and it felt good to work up a sweat while not running from monsters for once. By the time they were done, Tyler was winded and gasping for breath.
“Not as young as I once was, that’s for sure,” he said.
“You look like you’re in pretty good shape to me,” Ray replied. He went over and unplugged the scoreboard and turned off the overhead lights. In his hand, he held a gas lantern, which turned on with a hiss, bathing the dark sporting goods store in warm light. “Just make sure you stretch. Don’t want you to pull something or get a cramp.”
They left the store and walked as a trio back to Macy’s.
“So, you related to Avery and Florence?” Tyler asked.
“Nope,” Ray answered. “None of us are related—not by blood, at least. I met Avery in a camp in Baltimore. Things went south there, as they tend to do when the government intervenes, and we struck out on the road. We picked up Flo in D.C. maybe a few months back. Her and Avery have gotten pretty sweet on each other since. Kurt and Skylar, well, they found us.”
“You like him?” May asked.
Ray didn’t answer immediately. “Well…let’s just say I tolerate him. He’s been a problem before, but short of committing murder, we have no reason to kick them out. That would be crueler than cruel, I think. I mean, you two have seen firsthand what’s out there.”
Tyler nodded, but didn’t respond. His muscles were already aching, protesting the physical exertion he’d put them through with the constant jump shots. If he felt this bad now, he dreaded the thought of how he’d feel after a few hours’ worth of sleep, waking up stiff and sore. There was no way he’d be able to hang in a game of two-on-two…but the opportunity to elbow Kurt in the face a few times was pretty enticing, if he was being totally honest with himself.
“It’s getting worse and worse by the day,” Ray continued. “The monsters were gone for a while, but they must be breeding or something. Unless, of course, whoever sent those bombs our way just had really shit aim.”
Both May and Tyler laughed.
Not long after, they went to the second floor of Macy’s, to the mattress section, which featured rows and rows of overpriced beds. Tyler and May fell asleep with the distant snores of Avery, Flo, and Ray somewhere behind them.
Exhausted, Tyler slept well for the first time in a long while.
8
Beneath the City
Unbeknownst to the seven survivors currently sleeping the deepest dark of the night away, one of the monsters that had chased Tyler and May toward Amsterdam Mall had been carrying an egg sac. This monster, female in the most basic sense, was a few weeks out from hatching her offspring.
However, in the fight that took place outside of one of Amsterdam Mall’s loading platforms, she had taken a bullet to the hard carapace of the egg sac, and the amniotic fluid cushioning her offspring had leaked from the wound.
If the sun—or even a hint of the moon—had been shining, you would be able to see the trail of liquid the monster left behind in her mad scramble to get away from the mall, to die in peace.
She was slightly human in appearance. Her name, before the transformation, had been Sidney Lewiston. Though there was not much human left in her, if one took a flashlight and shined it into the pulsing flesh of where her face had once been, they would see a single floating blue eye—a human eye.
This single blue eye was not functional, and had scabbed over with the scaly flesh that comprised the rest of her body. In place of the two arms she would have had if she were still human, she had six. Each was thick and facing downward, bending at a single joint, much like a crab’s or some other crustacean. Above these scrabbly legs was a midsection, made up of a jelly-like substance, where the pulsing, leaking egg sac was. From this midsection came four tentacles, each riddled with small suckers. Above the single blue eye was a score of deep black eyes. They never closed, never blinked, but right now, those eyes were squinted in pain.
The creature scrabbled toward a blasted drainage ditch. She tried lowering herself down into the bowels of the city gently, but already her energy was too depleted. She had emerged on the surface with the intention of feeding. She had never been so hungry until the twisted seed was implanted in her and the babies began to grow. Beneath her flesh, she could feel them gnawing at her, their tiny teeth and pincers pinching, prodding, nibbling.
A foreign part of her animalistic brain thought a word that made no sense.
SCREAM
SCREAM
SCREAMMM
But what was a scream?
Her legs weakened and, on her descent, slipped. She fell through the opening, landing in the sour, gray water that coursed through the bowels of D.C. Her mass took her to the bottom of the stream, where her body shuddered to a stop against the concrete sluiceways. A horrible barking shriek escaped her mouth, which was full of crooked, jagged teeth.
SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
But she could not. She was no longer human, despite her brain holding on to a semblance of that retired humanity.
The egg sac in her middle opened wider. She felt the rush of gray water inside of her. It burned…oh, it burned.
Human bones were carried past on the current,
picked clean of any and all flesh, muscle, and blood.
Legs weak and shaking, she shot one of her tentacles out toward the stone wall, where it burrowed. She lashed out with another. In this way, she pulled herself up. She pulled herself along the channel. Her nest wasn’t far. She could smell the odor of home, the old bones, the blood smeared on the ground, the stench of human corpses.
A screeching now came from the hole in the egg sac, high-pitched, almost a whining, like a tea kettle over flame.
She felt a stabbing.
In her peripheral vision, she saw a long, black leg jutting from her side. It was covered in little hairs slicked down by thick fluid. The leg moved back and forth, back and forth, widening the gap within her.
She screeched herself; the pain was too much.
All because she had been shot, all because the humans had fought back. Hatred, hot and complete, filled her.
Though she didn’t remember it, because her infected brain had burned away most of her humanity, Sidney Lewiston had wanted children of her own. She had once been married to a great man, but her inability to reproduce had put a wedge in their marriage. They had tried for a year before seeing a doctor. After a series of tests, it was discovered she had endometriosis. The doctors recommended surgery, which would’ve increased her chances of conceiving, but her marriage had already been fractured long before.
Sidney divorced only a few months before the Ravaging. She’d intended to get the surgery—because no matter what, she wanted a family of her own… if it couldn’t be with Will Lewiston, then so be it—but then the voids came, and the monsters shortly after that. Then she found herself barricaded in her apartment while people were mutating all around her, while gunshots exploded on the streets, while concussive blasts rocked the windows in their frames and shook plaster dust from the ceiling. A monster found its way into her apartment, and she died not long after that, reborn as an inhuman abomination, all of her past memories wiped away.
SCREAAAAM—
The sac ripped wider. Up ahead, she could see her nest. She had roosted inside a large culvert pipe, ripping the grate away easily, driving the rats and roaches back into their shadows.
Now instead of one black leg jutting from her middle, there were three. And what was that? Sharp pincers, chewing around the edges.
SCREAAAM SCREAAAAM
Pain like never before rocked her. She was so close to the nest, the place where she was supposed to birth her children. Perhaps her old human maternal instinct was kicking in, because she found a new reserve of strength and made it the last few feet, settling into the pipe with a sickening squelch.
She knew she was dying. She had done it before, and that lingered in her subconscious mind still. But if she had to die, she would do so while doing something great; she would die giving life.
Her tentacles found their way into the cracked egg sac. The pain was like fire, like being ripped apart—which was exactly what was happening. She pulled with all of her might, with her mental tenacity. A creature such as herself was strong, strong enough to rip stone walls in half with her flailing, alien limbs…but self-mutilation, ripping open the egg sac that had been growing on her for months, that was almost too much.
Almost.
The first mewling cry from her offspring reached the canals of her ears, loud and shrill. Gently, gently, now. She pulled the baby forth from her womb. To a human’s eyes, this creature resembled an overgrown flea. Its legs were curled under its body, the color of its hide was dark brown, and feelers hung from its mouth like loose string. Yet as the baby grew, its feelers would get stronger and deadlier, would grow dagger-like barbs on them.
The creature’s mouth opened again in a cry. Sharp teeth, as big as those of a large canine, jutted from the raw black gums. They would only get bigger and bigger, too. The monster formerly known as Sidney Lewiston would make sure of it.
From the opening in the sac spilled out one more creature, smaller than the first. Sidney’s dead blue eye looked on blindly as the legion of black eyes saw her children for the first and the last time.
When the sac was emptied, the monster lay down, her long crab legs coiled beneath her. She felt the zapping of energy that this early birthing had done to her. The gray, dank walls of the sewer began to blacken.
She was dying.
Her two offspring squirmed around her, chirruping, growling low. They were hungry, oh so hungry, but they had come early and were not strong enough to strike out on their own. Not yet.
She reached down and wiped the fluid from her babies’ eyes. They opened, looked up at her with something like realization. Then, she shoved the tip of a different tentacle into her empty egg sac. The pain caused her to—
SCREAMMMM
—shriek.
Still, these were her children. They needed sustenance, and she was in no condition to go out and hunt for them. Besides, she was dying. The Great Blackness of the Beyond was coming for her; she accepted that with her animalistic brain.
She drove the tentacle deeper, deeper.
SCREAMING SCREAMING
Shrieking.
Then, with a great rip, using all the strength she had left in her body—which was not much, but enough—she sliced herself open.
The stinking, hot organs, so resembling human intestines, a spleen, a liver, a bladder, a heart, poured out of her. The blackness of the world was complete, but before it took her for good, the last thing she saw was her children moving closer, tongues lolling, mouths watering.
She felt nothing as they lapped at her innards and dark blood, as they got their sustenance, and grew bigger, bigger…
Bigger.
9
Basketball
As the flea-like monsters began their growth beneath the roads leading up to Amsterdam Mall, Tyler woke up to the smell of toast. He thought he was still dreaming. Then, as he opened his eyes, he thought he was suffering from a stroke. Isn’t that a symptom? Smelling phantom smells? He thought so, but he couldn’t remember. Already, the old-world knowledge was leaving him.
He sat up in the bed. The fact that he wasn’t crippled with soreness was a miracle. The soft mattress probably had a lot to do with that; so did all the sleeping he’d done on hard garage floors and in cramped backseats, because he was used to much worse conditions. Walking helped, too.
The apocalypse had hardened him in more ways than one.
May was sitting at the end of his bed. She looked well rested, and she was smiling. In her hands—yes, both hands, he noticed—was a plate stacked high with slices of toasted bread. Tyler blinked slowly, then his eyes widened, growing almost as big as his empty stomach felt.
“Toast?” he found himself asking.
It seemed like a long time since he’d had a hot meal in the Falls, which, even then, he had only picked at after it was no longer hot.
“Dammit,” May said. “I was hoping you’d keep sleeping so I could eat it all.”
She passed him the plate. It was still warm. On top of the slices, which were a brilliant bronze color—just how he liked it—was melting butter. He was practically drooling by the time he picked up the first piece.
Around a mouthful of toast, he asked, “Why didn’t you just eat somewhere else, if you didn’t want me to have any?”
May rolled her eyes. “Geez, Tyler, I’m not a complete monster.” She winked at him.
He laughed, spraying breadcrumbs all over the pure whiteness of the display mattress. After his second piece, he asked, “To what do I owe the occasion?”
“Ray said it was for energy. He showed me their stores. They’ve got a bunch of food in a big freezer: bread, meats, pizza, Hot Pockets—you name it.”
“Energy? For what?” Tyler asked, reaching out for his third piece of toast.
“Ah.” She bent down and, with her bad arm, she pulled up a pair of shoes.
They were black and white Nikes.
There was another logo on the tongue that Tyler had never seen before, but he recognize
d the shoes for what they were almost instantly. The logo belonged to a once famous professional basketball player, no doubt, because these were basketball shoes. Brand spanking new. If Tyler’d had these as a kid growing up in the slums of Atlanta, someone would’ve easily robbed him for them, perhaps even killed him.
He took a deep breath. There was nothing quite like the smell of new sneakers; it was, to him, like the new car smell was to some people.
“I told him you were an eleven,” May continued. “That about right?”
Tyler shrugged. “More like a ten and a half.”
“Well, Nikes run small. Everyone knows that.”
“They do?”
May shrugged this time.
Tyler reached for the last piece of toast, then hesitated and offered it to May like a gentlemen. She shook her head.
“I’m stuffed,” she said. “But, geez, I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”
“The arm doing well?”
She raised it up above her head. In the dim light coming from above, Tyler could just make out the crookedness of the bone. But she flicked and bent her wrist, flexed her arm up and down. It seemed to work fine, though there was a noticeable size difference.
Tyler had ripped his calf muscle in his twenties and couldn’t do much physical activity for nearly a year. By the time he was able to again, his good calf was about two times larger than the bad one. It took a while before the bad one caught up.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be that bad for May, but who knew?
Tyler smiled, set the plate down on the mattress, and stood up.
“I’m glad,” he said, leaning back and cracking his spine.
May was right. He, too, hadn’t felt this good in a long time. Ever since they’d come to Amsterdam Mall, Tyler had barely thought about his mom and grandma. Seeing their house empty, all their belongings still there—the clothes in the drawers, Nana’s favorite books on the shelves, and even Mom’s cellphone—was not exactly the closure he’d wanted, but it was closure nonetheless.
Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4) Page 4