“How do you know you haven’t always been able to run like that?” I ask. I hope that doesn’t come across as unkind. He doesn’t seem to care.
“I don’t know. I feel like I was different before. More like a normal human.”
“So you remember normal humans. Do you remember your family or your friends? Anything?”
He gazes at me for a long time, innocently at first, but then after a few seconds there’s a flash of something and he looks me up and down, like he’s checking me out at a party. He smirks a little.
“You do look kind of familiar. Did we know each other?”
I nod, but I have to turn away. I suppose in a way it’s better, simpler. At least I won’t have to explain how we loved each other and how he betrayed me and how I buried him alive. Where would I even start?
Before we can discuss this further the door dematerializes again. Tucker and I leap to our feet as the sneering Nahx, the Fifth, steps into the cell. He points something at us, there’s a blinding flash of light, and everything burns.
When I shake back to my senses I’m being dragged in shackles across a wide-open landing bay. Through blurred vision Nahx transports appear, one after another, landing, taking off, being boarded or loaded with God knows what.
“Wh-wh—” My face feels numb. It’s hard to get the words out. “Where’s Tucker? Where are you taking me?” I try to struggle, swinging my legs up, but I see they are bound too, so I’m immobilized. “Tucker!” I twist my head around, but it seems it’s just the sneering Nahx and me.
The landing bay is huge. Thousands of Nahx march around, boarding or disembarking from transports. There are huge racks of Nahx rifles and other weapons. And tiny pinpoints of light float everywhere, some in clouds and some by themselves.
“August…” It comes out slurred. I think I might have gotten punched in the mouth at some point. “AUGUST!” None of the Nahx reacts.
The sneering Nahx drags me too close to a weapons rack, slamming me into it painfully as he pulls me onto a transport. He locks my wrist shackles onto a row of metal rings in the cargo bay.
The transport launches so abruptly, I slip to the floor, the gravity of our ascent yanking my arms painfully. As our climb accelerates, my shoulders feel like they they’re being torn open. I struggle to gain my footing, and get into a position where my arms aren’t being wrenched.
The transport banks, jostling me against the wall. I pull myself up with one of the other rings and lean over as far as I can to see into the cockpit. Sneerface clings to a handhold above the archway while two other Nahx pilot. He turns to me, the blades in his face flicking out menacingly.
I tense as the transport straightens out and he steps back into the hold toward me. Despite his obvious dislike, he reminds me of August, who I’ll probably never see again.
I want to close my eyes, but I don’t trust this sneering Nahx.
He hisses at me and turns back to the cockpit, signing. I catch the word open and what I think are some numbers, but the rest is too fast for me to interpret. A few minutes later I can feel the transport decelerate. The engine whines as we begin to descend. Sneerface returns to the hold, activating a control panel by the door. It swooshes open, filling the hold with gusts of freezing air.
One of the tiny lights from the hangar hovers near the ceiling of the transport, being buffeted in the wind, before dipping down to buzz around my face. I wonder if they meant to join this journey or got trapped in here by accident; they seem to be on their own. The way they float in front of me makes me feel like they are studying me, sizing me up somehow, but they zip away when Sneerface approaches me again.
He releases my wrists and feet and drags me to the door. The air blowing in is frigid, and all I can see outside is white. The Nahx latches a winching cable to his armor as the transport slowly descends through the clouds. Soon I can start to make out detail on the ground—trees, rolling hills, a frozen lake. I’m pretty sure I’m being returned to where I was revived.
As the transport hovers over the sand dunes, I can make out some human shapes lying far below in the snow. Dead? Rejected? Defective? Incompletely processed? I think I might be about to join them one way or another.
The little light lingers around the edge of the door, holding position despite the wind whipping my curls across my face. The Nahx yanks me forward, grabbing me by the front of my jacket. He signs with one hand, the sneering blade on his face reflecting the snow glare from hundreds of feet below us.
Good-bye.
“No! No!” My hand lashes out, trying to find something to grab on to. The light creature pops back into my field of vision, and my fingers close around them just as I fall.
My brain tries to estimate how long I have left before I slam into the ground, and I find it counting down, in bizarrely precise milliseconds and meters, even though I know it’s not enough to come up with any other option than to die on impact. Have all my efforts been for nothing? I didn’t save Tucker, I didn’t save Topher or Xander or even August. I never got to say the things I wanted to say to my parents. I’m not going to save the world or ever have a chance to be a hero. I’m going to die.
The last thing I think of is August and how hard he tried too.
XANDER
Three days pass without me being any closer to knowing what the hell I am doing in Garvin Joel’s testosterone-fueled enclave by the lake. My roommate, Dylan, shows me around; I get a shower, some new clothes, plenty of food.
What I do learn is mostly banalities. Why do we eat so many eggs? Garvin and his gang looted a chicken farm. The chickens live off our scraps in the boiler room. The rest of the food and supplies are mainly scavenged from the nearby town of Mackenzie, which was evacuated during the first attacks. Just like we did from the base in the mountains, teams of raiders go on sorties, looking for anything of value. I feel like I’ve landed on a snake and slithered back to where I started.
I’ve been introduced to everyone and tried to remember names, but so far no one seems to have any expectations of me other than to eat and sleep. No one asks any questions. It’s almost too good to be true, and probably stupid for me to let my guard down, but I’m so hungry and tired that I just meet those low expectations. I learn people’s names. I eat eggs and potatoes. I sleep in a comfortable bed. I don’t ask questions.
On the third night I wake up in the dark and have that disorienting feeling of not knowing what day it is or where exactly I am. In the faint glow of the moon through the high window I can see Dylan in the other bed, sitting up. He has one hand over his mouth.
“Dylan? Are you okay?”
He takes a few seconds, finally peeling his hand from his mouth. “Fine.” His voice is shaky. “Nightmare.”
“Nahx?”
He nods, wiping his face on the sheets.
“I get those too.” I’m pretty sure his aren’t like mine, though, fraught with the conflict of friend and foe. Mostly in the nightmares I’m watching August burn alive. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go back to sleep?”
He laughs. “No.”
I lean back on my pillow, tucking the pile of blankets into place. We have some heat on the barge, but not a whole lot. It’s still cold enough for us to sleep in our clothes. I’m even wearing a tuque.
“I heard you came from the other side,” Dylan says after a moment. “That’s wild.”
“Yeah.” I’m surprised no one has asked me about this before.
“You were at some hidden military base. What was that like?”
“It was all right. Warm. Where did you hear this?”
“Garvin told me. We’re not supposed to bug you about it, though.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Were there a lot of weapons there?”
“Some. Enough.” Now I’m wondering how Garvin knows this about me. It wasn’t a secret, exactly, but it wasn’t something I talked about a lot either. Someone who escaped the occupat
ion zone was enough of a novelty to draw attention. And that was the last thing I wanted.
“What kind of weapons?”
“Guns, rifles, you know.”
“Garvin has a grenade launcher. Like a bazooka.”
I turn to him. He has a huge grin on his face.
“For real? Where did he get that?”
There’s another moment of silence, one too long to not mean anything.
“I was with this military convoy,” Dylan says. “We were coming up east of Spokane during the first siege, a bunch of cars following these army trucks along a remote road. They thought it would be safer. But we got hit. By the Nahx.”
I can tell it’s hard for him to talk about this so I just let him take his time. Seconds tick past. He wipes his face again.
“I was the only one who… you know… didn’t get darted.”
I count in my head to fill up the silence. It’s like I’m measuring his trauma. It takes ten seconds to get to the next detail.
“I was in the trunk. We had one of those cars where you can pull down the back seat and get at the trunk. My brothers pushed me back there and piled a bunch of crap on the seat.”
Twenty seconds, each one like a hypodermic needle in the heart.
“I waited in there for two days. When I got out everyone was dead. My… my brothers were dead in the front seat. So I pulled their bodies out and took the car. Kept going until I found another convoy. I figured I’d join them, and if we got attacked, I’d just let the Nahx dart me.”
I don’t even know how much time passes before he talks again. It feels like an hour.
“Anyway. We made it to Kelowna and I was in a camp there, you know, when Garvin got word around that he’d take any guys who had something to offer. Information or whatever. So I told him I knew where a bunch of weapons were. He went down there, salvaged everything he could, and picked me up on the way back through.” He exhales, not quite a sigh but more than a breath. “He’s a man of his word.”
That last sentence gives me a chill. Garvin hasn’t made any real promises to me yet. I have a feeling that when they come, he’ll be looking for something in return.
“So you’re amassing weapons here? That’s what Garvin wants?”
“Among other things. Hasn’t he given you the list?”
“What list?”
Dylan lowers his voice to an ominous rumble. “THE list. All the stuff we’re supposed to look out for when we’re out on raids. Weapons and ammo are high priorities, but there are some funny things on there too. Coffee. Jell-O mix. Allergy pills. He has a running offer of two days off chores for anyone who brings back a pound of butter. We have barrels of flour from the bakery and pizza place in town, and as many eggs as we can eat. But no butter. It’s kind of heartbreaking.”
“So this is what you guys do? Just patrol around looking for stuff to scavenge?”
He frowns at me. I didn’t mean to make it sound so pitiful, but before I can apologize, he puffs himself up, even under his fluffy blankets.
“Nahx. We patrol around looking for Nahx.”
“To kill? And make videos?”
He nods, now thoughtful.
Something happens to the clouds and moon outside, and the light in my cabin changes, turning everything blue-gray, including Dylan. The terror of the dream seems have dissipated, and with it something that made him seem like a fully functional human. He looks dead now as he lies back on his pillow, resting his head in his hands.
“Xander,” he says after a moment. “Can I give you some advice?”
“Okay,” I answer warily.
He takes his time, parsing each word, as though he’s typing them out on an ancient typewriter.
“I get… let’s call it a vibe from you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, I don’t care. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that some of the other guys can be real dicks. And I don’t want you to get into problems with them.”
I have a pretty good idea of what he’s talking about, but I don’t feel like helping him out.
“What is the nature of this ‘vibe’?” I ask.
He rolls over, and I do the same until we are looking at each other over the two feet that separates our beds. I could reach out and touch his face. In the dark, I can see him smile.
“I’m just saying you might want to chill with it, a bit.”
“The vibe?”
“Yeah.”
I can’t help sighing as I roll over onto my back. I could drag it out, this euphemism game, but now I’m just annoyed with Dylan and his nightmares and his vibe. I wish I’d been given a private cabin.
“This vibe is gay, right?”
He snort-laughs, plumping his pillow, probably as an excuse to turn away from me. “Am I wrong?”
“I mean, bisexual, I guess, if you need terminology.” I’ve never said this out loud before, not even to…
Well. I’m beyond pissed off that this hairy American is the one who hears it first. I can think of twenty people who would have been better choices.
Pretty sure most of them are dead, though.
“Whatever, man, it’s cool with me,” Dylan says. “I’m from Seattle. It’s the other guys you need to worry about.”
I don’t quite understand how twenty young guys isolated in a postapocalyptic rebel enclave can be so uptight, but I guess I don’t have much choice but to play along. I can defend myself. I know I could take any of these slobs. But who wants to fight in a place like this? And anyway, Garvin said fighting would get me sent back to the refugee camp.
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Not a warning, bro. Just advice.”
I don’t really see the difference, but I keep that to myself too.
Dylan closes his eyes, as though having gotten a few things off his chest, he can now sleep. Meanwhile I’m wide-awake and staring at the ceiling, trying to let my mind run loose. Lately my thoughts don’t seem to go anywhere. I live another day. Repeat. Repeat. Then I die. Probably sooner rather than later.
Maybe the horror that’s been building up in my head doesn’t leave room for anything else. Raven bleeding to death. August getting blown to bits. Felix’s dead eyes. Lochie’s twisted neck. Liam’s head… just… like a really morbid merry-go-round.
I think I drift off at last, but what seems like seconds later, Dylan is shaking me awake, leaning over me with a big grin on his face.
“Wanna have some fun?”
“What? No! What?”
He yanks my blankets off, but before I can protest, two other guys are crammed into the cabin and dragging me out of bed. I’m preparing to defend myself when one of them hands me my coat.
“Where are your boots?” he says. The other one tosses them at me. I pull them on. So we’re taking the fight outside? That’s annoying. It’s freezing out there. I stand up, jamming my arms into the sleeves of my coat. When I turn, one of the guys shoves a rifle into my chest.
“What’s this for?”
“You know how to use it, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Come on.”
I follow them out of our cabin and into the dark hallway. Someone clicks on a flashlight, waving the beam around as a few other guys emerge from their cabins, dressed for a winter night like I am.
I can barely see, but I feel around, trying to check out my rifle.
“Is this a laser sight?”
Dylan huffs next to me. “Nice, right? US military. These are the ones I hooked us up with.”
I check the safety, making sure it’s firmly in place, then flick on the laser sight. A red beam joins the flashlight dancing on the walls as we walk. I click it off before testing the tactical flashlight mounted on the barrel. Pretty sweet weapon, actually. A year ago I would have been delighted with it. Now it just makes me feel dead. Preemptively dead, like how people who carry rifles around usually end up.
“What are we hunting?”
There are five boys with us n
ow. They all dissolve into chuckles.
“Dude, panda bears!”
That just makes them snicker even more.
“Mobbs spotted a Nahx out by the airstrip.”
I skid to a stop. The others carry on a few paces before turning.
“Are you kid—a single Nahx? Where’s its partner?”
Two guys shrug.
“We have to know where its partner is or we’ll get ambushed.”
One of the guys leans toward me. He’s broad and tall and has one of those mashed-looking noses, like he’s a boxer or rugby player. I try, as casually as I can, to sling my rifle’s strap over my back so I can have my hands free.
“Are you chicken?” the broad one says. I’m assuming this is Mobbs. He looks like a Mobbs.
“No. But I’m not crazy either.”
“This is what we do, Xander,” Dylan says. “This is the deal.”
I notice one of the guys has a small video camera instead of a rifle.
“Where’s Garvin?” I ask.
“He’s with the other guys out by the fence.”
I’ve lost track of who is talking.
“Go back to bed if you’re going to pussy out.”
Mobbs. That was Mobbs.
“I’m not going to pussy out. I’m just… I just woke up. Give me a break.” I pull my rifle from behind my back, pointing it down and checking the clip, the chamber, and the safety again. Snap. Crunch. Click. All very professional and badass. I haven’t held a rifle for nearly six months, but I guess it’s a bit like riding a bike.
A couple of the other guys whoop as we break into a run down to the end of the hallway. We turn onto the enclosed gangplank and emerge into the cold forecourt. It’s snowing lightly, which makes the night deceptively quiet and peaceful. Circling around a building, we turn back toward the lake, silently following the shore. When we reach the high fence that marks the boundary of the mill’s administration area, Mobbs calls us to a stop.
“It was outside the fence moving east,” he whispers. “Dylan, you take Xander and Michael across through the grinding shed to the south side, then follow the fence north. The rest of us will go the other way.”
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