Little Apocalypse

by Katherine Sparrow

  20

  The Girl Who Decides

  “Hi, Celia.” The boy’s eyes flicked up and down the road as his fingers massaged the bruise that circled his eye. “I’m Rampage. We haven’t had a chance to talk one on one, but, like, heya and how you doing?”

  The short-haired girl leaned against the brick wall of the community center with her hands folded across her chest. “Hey, I’m Trix.”

  “I thought all the hunters were supposed to be hunting Krawl,” Celia said. “Did something happen? Is everything okay?”

  “Okay?” The girl laughed and shook her head.

  “Not even close, not even a little bit.” The boy looked behind him, eyes darting everywhere before he fixed his gaze on Celia. “But last night I dreamed you’d be on this road, and we have to tell you something.”

  “Road’s empty, Rampage. Make it quick,” the girl whispered. She stepped onto an overturned planter box and stood a couple of feet above them, scanning the road. A shivery wind blew snakeskins past them.

  Celia bit into the stale bagel and chewed while she listened to them.

  “Yeah, so Celia, so um, there’s this thing Ruby doesn’t exactly want you to know.” The hunter spoke fast and his words blurred into each other. “It’s like, when I dream, I sometimes get tiny glimpses of the future. Like, not that I’m magic, and it’s nothing useful, mostly, but . . .”

  “We haven’t got all day, Rampage,” Trix reminded him.

  “Yeah. So. The thing I keep dreaming about is . . . you.”

  Celia shoved her hands in her pockets and shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Do you know what I’m supposed to do?”

  “Nah. If I knew that, I’d win the prize for best hunter in the world if there was that kind of prize. All I know is that your face is plastered all over the future, and a lot of terrible things might happen. Like destruction and death and stuff. And there’s something we think you should know, doom girl.”

  “Get on with it,” the girl said, and ran her hand through her stubbled hair.

  He nodded and licked his crooked teeth. “Yeah, so Ruby told all the hunters that you had to think being the doom girl was a straight-up good thing. She said you had to learn the doom prophecy a little wrong, so you would choose right. The real prophecy says, The city will shake and the girl will be found. The city will hiss and the girl will run. The city will fill with silent words and the girl will decide. And that’s it. That’s all.”

  “Get it?” the girl asked. “Ruby added on the last part about how you would decide to save the city. The real prophecy doesn’t say anything about what you’ll decide. So don’t go thinking you can’t mess things up, or that you’re destined to be a hero or something.”

  Celia blinked. Her world tilted and moved, but this was no earthquake. She took a step back from both of them. Saving the city had felt like way too much, but at least it was a good thing. And now, maybe she would decide something right or maybe she would get it all wrong?

  “You’re the girl who decides which way things go. You’ll choose good, now that you know it’s a choice, right? Trix and I got worried that since you wouldn’t know, you would just stumble into doing bad.” He bounced up and down in his thick leather boots as he spoke. “We tried to talk to Ruby about it, but she doesn’t like it when people disagree with her.”

  “But you won’t, right? Not even if the hunters lose track of you and we aren’t there to make sure you do the right thing?” the girl added.

  Celia’s eyes narrowed into slits. “If they lose track of me?”

  Both hunters suddenly got very interested in studying the ground.

  “You mean the hunters were ordered to babysit me so they can force me to do whatever they think is the right thing?” Celia’s stomach clenched and twisted. Amber and Ruby don’t like me. We’re not friends. I’m their job, same as hunting Littles, she thought.

  The boy whispered, “Sorry.”

  Trix jumped down from the planter box. “What’d you expect? The world isn’t made of fairies and Care Bears. We have to do everything we can to stop the Bigs. The monsters are the bad guys. The hunters are just trying to do what’s right. You get that, don’t you?”

  “Right,” Celia echoed. Except when the monster was a sad boy who fought against his own nature to watch out for her. Except when the good guys lied to her and pretended they liked her.

  “What are you thinking, doom girl? About all the ways you’re going to save people, and not destroy them, right?”

  Celia shoved her cold hands into her coat pockets. “What would Ruby and Amber do if they thought I was about to choose the wrong thing?”

  “Hunters got to do what we got to do,” Rampage said, and shrugged. Behind him pigeons and crows pecked and squawked at each other.

  “Time to bounce,” Trix whispered. She ducked down like she was tying her shoes. “Hunter girls at two o’clock.”

  Celia scanned the road and saw Ruby and Amber over a block away.

  “Tell me what they’ll do to me if they don’t like the decisions I make,” Celia said again, but the two hunters had already disappeared into the community center.

  Amber leaned against Ruby as they walked down the street. I’m not their friend. I’m nothing to them, Celia thought. All of that was a way to trick me.

  “Celia!” Amber cried out. She grinned with a phony, pretend-friend smile. “I’m so glad we found you.”

  21

  Artificial Love

  “Sorry about this morning. Everyone was exhausted and crabby,” Amber said. Her skin still had a gray sheen, but she looked better. She held out her arms to hug Celia. “Can we start over?”

  “How did you find me?” Celia stepped back from Amber. She was their assignment. They weren’t her friends. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “We tracked you. Hunters stay together.” Ruby kicked at a crack in the sidewalk. “Who were you just talking to?”

  They don’t like me. I’m their job. It felt so obvious, now that she knew it. How could I think they’d want to be friends with me? “Some workers at the community center came out to ask me if I needed anything,” Celia answered.

  Ruby narrowed her eyes and watched Celia for a long moment. She nodded once. “Let’s get going and head north. There are some warehouses where Demetri might be hiding. Not that we’re likely to find anything.”

  “No. I already told you no.” She remembered how Demetri had kept watch all of last night as he sat curled up like a gargoyle in the window. At least he likes me, she thought, and then pushed down hysterical laughter at the thought that the only kid in town who liked her had to fight his own nature to keep from turning her into a monster.

  Ruby, using her bossiest leader-of-the-hunters voice, said, “I’ve already talked to you about this. The three of us are hunting Demetri today. That’s our job.” She stood, hands on her hips, expecting to be obeyed.

  “Go away,” Celia said. She knew they wouldn’t. She knew they would follow her no matter what, since their real job was watching her.

  Amber frowned and shook her head at Ruby. She threw an arm around Celia’s shoulders.

  Celia shook her arm off.

  “What’s wrong?” Amber looked concerned. Fake, Celia thought. She was so good at faking things. “Maybe we could all use a break?” Amber added. “I’ve stopped hallucinating, but now I’ve got a killer headache. Let’s go find some breakfast. Maybe we’re all just hungry.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Celia said flatly. She took an angry bite of the hard bagel.

  Amber frowned. “Did something happen?”

  “Do you even like me a little bit?” Celia asked. She wanted to sound like she didn’t care, but it came out high-pitched and shaky. She already knew the answer. They didn’t. She started walking away from them.

  They followed, of course.

  Celia rubbed angry tears out of the corners of her eyes.

  “Do we like you?” Amber asked. “Of course.”

 
Ruby added, “Why do you ask, doom girl?” Her voice held a quiet threat.

  The city, full of hard angles and broken roads, stretched out in every direction. Celia walked faster and didn’t need to glance back to know that both girls followed a couple of steps behind her.

  “We’ll forget hunting Demetri.” Ruby spoke to Celia’s back. “We can head over to the graffiti flats. It’s nearby, and one of the places where prophecies always show up. So many artists go there all the time that at least one of them will have caught the prophecy in a dream. We might be able to find some new clues there.”

  “Okay,” Celia said through gritted teeth. The girls would find a way to follow her, no matter what, and if she could keep Ruby and Amber from hunting Demetri, that was a good thing. Besides, if there was more to learn about the prophecy, she wanted to see it for herself, and not be fed more hunter lies. “They just write the prophecy all over a wall, not knowing what it is, right?”

  Amber nodded. “It comes to creative people, maybe because they are a little more open to magic? It’s like a song you get stuck in your head. It’s itchy for people, until they express it.”

  Ruby walked up beside Celia and flashed her a grin. “So you’ll come?”

  Celia glared at her and kicked a stone that went skittering over the sidewalk.

  Amber walked on her other side and tried to link up elbows. Celia didn’t let her.

  The city looked even more broken today. Side streets were barricaded with piles of rubble. Snakeskins drifted along like tumbleweeds. Everyone they passed walked in protective groups of twos and threes, talking in whispers about the snakes.

  Amber tried to keep up but couldn’t even walk in a straight line. Sweat rolled down her face.

  Celia slowed her pace. “I’m sorry you got bitten.”

  “I’m happy that cobra didn’t kill you. It was so huge. Hey, is something wrong, Celia? You can tell me.” Amber pulled at her long black braid and looked at her from behind her smudged glasses.

  “You’ve got a job to do,” Celia said coldly.

  “Yeah, we both do,” Amber said. “You, and me.”

  Celia slid her cell phone out of her pocket and turned it on. Still no reception. She wanted to talk to her mom or dad so bad that it hurt. Maybe my letter will reach my grandma’s house in a couple of days, she thought. But even if it did, a lot could have happened. Would she still be okay by then?

  Amber pointed at the phone. “When your parents come back, are you going to tell them everything or try to hide it?” she asked.

  Celia thought about her parents’ list of rules. Most of them seemed so tame compared to what she’d actually done. “I’ll tell them everything. That’s just the way my family works: we tell each other the truth.”

  “They might throw you out,” Ruby said. “Mine did. If they do, the hunters will take you in. We’ll take care of you, if you need us.” She said it like she meant it.

  She’s just saying that to manipulate me, Celia reminded herself. All of this is pretend to them.

  “My parents will love me no matter what,” Celia told her.

  Ruby kicked at long strands of snakeskins as she walked. “Maybe. Or maybe your parents will abandon you and you’ll hunt monsters, see horrible things, and have to do stuff you never wanted to. Things that no kid should have to do.” The way she said it, Celia knew Ruby was talking about herself.

  Ruby turned toward a rusted door that looked like any other on the block. She kicked it open and disappeared inside.

  Celia slipped in behind her and stepped into a world of huge murals and bright colors. The building had no ceiling, and the concrete walls rose two stories high. Every inch of the space was filled with a jumble of art, words, and symbols. A twenty-foot-tall painting of dancing robots covered one wall. Beneath it was written in swirly letters, Artificial Love. Next to it was a smaller mural of kids throwing rocks at an old lady.

  On another wall a huge octopus with golden tentacles floated over dozens of smaller pictures. Everywhere Celia looked, she saw colorful murals and words. She had to blink a lot to take it all in.

  They walked through the first room into another room jammed full of art.

  “I love prophecies,” Amber said. “It’s like there’s some secret force that wants to help us out whenever they use a lot of magic. I just wish they were more useful. They always make sense once the big spells are over, but they usually don’t help while it’s going on.”

  Especially if you lie about what they say, Celia thought. They passed a stenciled picture of a girl who was dressed just like Celia had been on the day after the earthquake. The girl’s face was drawn anime style, but even so, Celia felt like she stared into her own face. DOOM was written in block letters beneath the image. They stopped and searched the picture, but it didn’t say anything else.

  They passed the word Hate, written in thick black letters that went all the way up to the ceiling. In smaller print, written thousands of times inside those letters with bright-red paint, was the word Sad.

  “That’s Little art. The prophecy is this way,” Ruby said. She led them down a series of long, paint-drenched hallways. Because there was no roof, it felt like the corn maze Celia always used to go to outside Portland.

  They passed a white wall with a sprawling mural of a snarling blue man who had bat wings and bear legs. He stood beside a winged unicorn, painted so realistically it looked like it might jump off the wall. Over their heads hung a messy ball of spray paint in every color and shape.

  Ruby led them through two more rooms; then they turned and found themselves facing a painting of a black dragon, soaring above the city with his claws out and his lips curled back into a snarl.

  Ruby let out a low whistle. “That’s new.” She pointed to the dragon. Words were scrawled beneath his claws.

  Ruby walked up to the picture and ran her finger over the words. At first Celia thought it was written in a language she couldn’t understand, but the longer she looked, the more she could decipher the letters drawn in a distorted way.

  “The city will fill with silent words and the girl will decide.” Celia read the last part of the prophecy out loud and looked toward the two hunters.

  “The part about you saving the city must have gotten erased,” Ruby lied.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what happened.” Celia folded her arms over her chest.

  “Look, there’s more,” Amber said. She pointed at some words written below the prophecy. “He will fall,” Amber read slowly. “She will rise. That gives me shivers, even though I have no idea what it means.”

  “Who’s he? Who’s she?” Celia asked. Someone else had scribbled ugly neon-orange paint beneath those words. Then she saw it wasn’t scribbles but a word, written over and over again, dozens of times. “Celia,” she read.

  Her name was spray-painted all over the wall.

  “He will fall. She will rise. Celia, Celia, Celia,” Ruby whispered and shook her head. “But what does that mean?”

  Celia moved forward and traced her fingers over the orange paint and the rough concrete beneath. The air around her seemed to grow a couple of degrees colder.

  “Sometimes you can see things from farther back that you can’t see up close,” Amber said as she walked to the far side of the room.

  Celia walked to Amber and then turned to study the whole wall.

  “You see it?” Amber asked.

  Celia didn’t.

  “The whole shape of it,” Amber said. “The dragon and everything.”

  Celia looked at the dragon wings and the words scrawled beneath and saw how, all together, it took the shape of letters. She peered more intently. It read—

  “Demetri,” Ruby whispered.

  The leader of the hunters breathed in sharply as she raised her hand and pointed at the doorway near the mural.

  Two towering figures entered the room, silhouetted in the dim light. The first was a tall, skeletal man wearing a white top hat and a tight white tuxedo. His ice-
blue skin stretched over his gaunt features. He puckered his lips, and when he breathed out, a blast of icy-cold air hit the girls twenty feet away. It felt like standing inside a walk-in freezer. He smiled, showing off icicle teeth. “Look what we’ve found, sweet Snedronna. Hunter children.”

  “Bigs,” Ruby growled back.

  “Hunters and one very special doom girl, I believe, dear Snedron,” the other monster replied. She had the same pale skin the color of a white-blue iceberg, and long white hair that twisted in intricate braids and knots down her back. She wore a skintight white dress that clung to the sharp angles and bones of her body. Her high-heeled shoes were made of ice. She blew a kiss at the girls. White clouds blew through the air, which chilled another ten degrees.

  Ruby reached beneath her coat and pulled out the twin swords that she wore strapped to her back.

  “Two of them, three of us. Bad odds,” Amber whispered as she zipped open the pouch she wore at her belt. “If we fight them and lose, they’ll take Celia. It’s not worth it.”

  Ruby glared at the two Bigs and slashed her thin swords through the air. The Bigs watched her, amusement playing on their glacial faces. Ruby let out a low growl.

  “Ruby,” Amber whispered. “There’s the whole prophecy to think about. It’s your call, but I think we should—”

  “Run,” Ruby ordered.

  The girls turned and fled out the nearest doorway.

  22

  My Mind Cannot Make a Memory of You

  They sprinted past a thousand angry red spray-painted images of kids with horns and claws poking out from beneath their patched hoodies. Gusts of cold followed behind them, along with a bitter scent of lemons.

  “Which way?” Amber cried out when the hallway forked.

  Ruby led them left. Amber and Celia followed a footstep behind.

  “Run, run, little hunters!” the ice woman called out. Her shoes click-clacked against the cement floor.

  They ran through a room painted with a floating ball of arms, legs, eyes, and mouths all stuck together. The spray-painted eyes seemed to watch them as they streaked past.