Little Apocalypse

by Katherine Sparrow

  The checkerboard girl knelt and ran her hands over the tied-up ice man’s bony body, prodding and poking him. All she wore was a holey T-shirt and patched jeans, but the cold didn’t seem to bother her.

  Demetri did the same to the ice woman.

  Celia rubbed her arms to try to bring warmth back into them. I’m going to be okay? she wondered. I’m going to be okay. Maybe.

  Daisy yanked one leg of the monster’s white pants up to his knees. Midway up his calf lay a pulsing bulge taped to his leg. The Little cut it off and held up a glass globe full of swirling flecks of snow on the inside. It throbbed in her hand.

  Demetri searched the ice woman: turning her over on her side, looking in her shoes, and checking her hair. Nothing. Then he opened her white leather purse and found a matching throbbing snow globe.

  Daisy handed him the ice man’s heart, and Demetri held both of them, one in each hand. His fingers, tipped with black claws, squeezed them. Both Bigs let out gasps. “Neither of you will hurt anyone. Neither of you will tell anyone anything about Celia, Daisy, or me. Both of you will be bound to complete silence until I tell you otherwise.”

  The two monsters didn’t wake up but muttered in their sleep, “Yes, master. Your will be done.”

  Demetri put the two matching snow-globe hearts in his backpack.

  He stood and started walking back to the subway train, but Daisy stood over the ice man, staring down at his long, unmoving form. “He was Arcadio’s maker. He froze off his toes, one by one.”

  “We have their hearts, Daisy. I’ll make sure these two never harm anyone else,” Demetri said.

  She nodded but didn’t move. “Is that enough? Shouldn’t they suffer more?” She kicked the ice man hard in the side.

  The ice monster growled but didn’t wake.

  “It’s never enough,” Demetri whispered. “You know that. But we need to get gone.”

  Daisy kicked the ice man again. “I hate him. And the monster who made him, and whoever came before that, and all of them all the way back to all the first monsters and Krawl.” She wiped tears from her black-and-white face. “You’ll let me squeeze their hearts, right? Whenever I’m in a bad mood, D?”

  “Of course.”

  She kicked the ice man again and said to his limp form, “I plan on being in a bad mood all the time.” Daisy turned and ran past Celia and Demetri. The Little swung herself up into the subway train.

  Celia followed. Demetri walked beside her. His horns curled around his head. Half of his face was lit, the other lay in shadows.

  24

  Intrepid Heroes

  Celia pulled herself up into the subway car and sat down on a plastic seat across from Daisy. The cold ached through every bit of her. She couldn’t stop shaking. Demetri walked past them and disappeared into the cabin. The train rolled in the opposite direction from the tied-up ice monsters lying on the tracks.

  Soft yellow lights shone along the subway’s ceiling as the familiar motion of a train picking up speed took them through the tunnels beneath the city.

  I got rescued, Celia thought, letting it warm her. She looked out the window and into the darkness. “How is this train moving?”

  “Magic!” Daisy said. She jumped up and swung around one of the poles, holding on with one hand and leaning away from it. Her checkerboard face grinned and showed off a set of black and white teeth rimmed by a white upper lip and a lower black one.

  Celia hugged her knees to her chin and rubbed her hands together to warm them.

  Daisy stopped spinning. “I’ve been dreaming about you, Celia. Every time I close my eyes.” She stared at Celia’s forehead as though it were filled with interesting things. “Weird, scraggly dreams.”

  Celia sighed and inched her knees in even closer. “Any idea what I’m supposed to decide?”

  She shook her head. “In my dreams, you’re always chasing me and you’ve got some serious speed. You run track or something?”

  Celia shook her head.

  “It’s probably symbolic. Your destiny looms,” Daisy said, and laughed like she’d told a joke.

  Celia shivered some more. She had the feeling that if she thought too much about how she was supposed to be the one who would decide how all this turned out, then she’d break into a million pieces from the pressure. She decided not to think about it.

  “So how’d you find me?” Celia asked. If they hadn’t, maybe Krawl would have her by now.

  Daisy pointed toward Celia’s chest.

  “My heart?”

  “Your ward.”

  “Oh. Right.” Celia pulled out the granite ward from beneath her clothes and ran her fingers over its smooth surface.

  “Demetri felt your fear, and we followed it. It wasn’t very specific: we had to guess which tunnel they’d take. We only had one stick-web. Good thing we guessed right, huh?”

  Understatement of the year. “Yeah. Thanks.” Celia thought about why they would go to the effort of saving her. No one is my friend. No one likes me, she reminded herself. “Good job catching the doom girl. Now you can use me however you want.”

  “Um . . . what?” Daisy asked.

  “You want to control me, right?”

  Daisy flopped down onto the seat across from Celia. “No. You were in trouble. So we helped you out.” She shrugged and looked down at the ground. “People always think Littles are monsters, but we didn’t choose to be this way. We can’t help it. Sometimes we do something just because it’s the right thing to do.” Daisy wouldn’t look at Celia. She played with her shoelaces, tying and retying them.

  “Sorry,” Celia said. “I didn’t mean . . . it’s just . . .” She swallowed. “It’s hard to know if anyone is my friend or if all they care about is the doom girl thing.”

  “Demetri wants to help you. He doesn’t want you hurt by all of this. Did you know he’s been a little happier ever since you met? I didn’t even know that was possible. It’s nice to see him a little less sad.”

  Celia looked at the closed door to the cabin. She smiled, then shivered and frowned. Where was any of this going to end up?

  “You’re shaking all over. Because you’re terrified of me? I won’t change you. Promise. I’m all about the self-control.” She put her hands in prayer pose, breathed deeply, and made an om sound.

  “I’m really cold.”

  “Oh. Right. I can make a spell to warm you up, if you want. I bet I could figure out how.”

  Celia imagined spells catching on fire, exploding, or going wrong a dozen different ways inside the small train. “No thanks.”

  “Cold is all those two monsters can do, but they rock it, right? One time they froze my girl Spelunk all the way through, and we had to be careful when we thawed her.”

  “She didn’t die?”

  Daisy shook her head. Her short black-and-white hair spun out in a wild halo. “Littles don’t get sick. Or age. Or die. Cut off an arm, and we’ll regrow it. We’re kind of awesomely invincible. Except for kids. Kids are our kryptonite. You smell, by the way.”

  Celia blushed. She probably reeked from being so scared.

  “Like vanilla and moonlight,” Daisy added.

  Celia laughed. “You smell like saltwater taffy and the beach on a hot day,” she admitted as she touched her own cheek. Her monster mark felt warm, despite the chill in the rest of her. “The ice monsters told me all the Bigs were searching for me.”

  “We’ve heard that too.”

  “So where are you taking me to keep them away from me?” Celia asked.

  “Your home,” Daisy said. “It’s not the best, but no place is the best right now. We’re going to set out a watch and try to keep anyone from finding you.”

  “Home?” If the Littles were planning on taking her there, they really weren’t trying to control the doom girl. They were just trying to help her be safe. But then Celia thought about her apartment. The hunters knew where she lived. A Big had been on her rooftop. Demetri had left protection spells there, but it still d
idn’t feel safe. “Home isn’t where I should go,” Celia whispered.

  Daisy tilted her checkerboard face to the side and blinked. “There’s not a lot of options: everyone is looking for you.”

  “If I need to stay hidden, there’s one place the Bigs and hunters have never found, even though I bet they’ve been searching for it for decades.”

  Daisy blinked her large eyes and shook her head. “Is that a good idea?”

  Celia breathed warm air into her hands. “I’m right though, aren’t I? It’s the one place I’ll be hidden.”

  Daisy shrugged. “It has thousands of wards and spells to keep it hidden, but do you really want to be the first kid to ever go to the sanctuary of the free Littles? You understand what we are, right?”

  It wasn’t a great option, but it seemed better than all the others. “You are Littles, but you’re all more than that. Right?” Celia said.

  Daisy sat up straighter. She grinned. “We are. We so are. Okay, I’m going to go tell the boss there’s a change of plans!” She bounded up and ran into the cabin.

  The train kept moving underneath the city as Celia ached with cold and listened to the sound of Demetri and Daisy arguing. She couldn’t hear most of their words, except for Daisy saying over and over again that Celia should be able to make her own decisions.

  The train slowed with the hissing and screeching of brakes. The doors slid open and a musty rodent smell filled the air. Daisy and Demetri came out of the cabin. Demetri was scowling, but Daisy flashed Celia a thumbs-up. The Little took a flashlight out of her bag, and the beam of light danced over the tiled floor and benches of an empty subway stop.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Celia,” Demetri said.

  “It’s the best place to hide,” Celia countered.

  Demetri sighed and nodded.

  Celia followed them off the train. She recognized this subway stop. She’d been here before, on a day when she and her mom had gone to meet her dad for lunch. It had been filled with office workers and street musicians playing violins. Now the only sound was the scrick-scrack of rats crawling up the walls. At least Celia hoped it was rats. When does life get to be normal again? she wondered as she peered into the darkness.

  They followed Demetri to the elevator. He took out his yo-yo and pulsed it up and then down, closed his eyes, and whispered a word Celia couldn’t hear. A throbbing purple light brightened the station for a moment before flickering out. Demetri pressed the elevator button. It glowed green. The doors pinged and swung open. “The spell will make the elevator work for about a minute, even though there’s no power down here.”

  They got in. Celia stood against the back wall of the small metal box, keeping as far away from the Littles as she could.

  Daisy pressed the up button twice and then the close-the-door button four times. The buttons flared with another purple light.

  The elevator carried them down.

  “Down?” Celia asked.

  “We spent forever digging a hole beneath the elevator and swapping out some gears and pulleys to get it to do this,” Daisy explained.

  “One, two,” Demetri counted in a quiet voice.

  “Three, four,” Daisy added. “Five!”

  Demetri hit the red emergency button and the elevator came to a lurching halt. He worked his fingers in between the rubber stops of the doors and muscled them open. A squawking alarm sounded as the doors opened to a dirt tunnel dug through the earth. An underground breeze that smelled like dirt and metal blew at them.

  “It took a long time digging this tunnel too,” Daisy said.

  Celia sighed. Another pitch-black tunnel. This one was about six feet tall and had uneven dirt-and-rock walls. A trickle of something wet dripped down from the ceiling as they stepped out in a single line. Daisy went first, dancing her flashlight around so Celia could see where they were going.

  Demetri was the last one out. He reached around and pressed the emergency button again. The alarm stopped, the doors slid closed, and the elevator climbed silently upward.

  “The secret tunnel of the Littles, in which our intrepid heroes rescue the doom girl from a fate of torture or worse,” Daisy said, and giggled.

  Demetri stayed silent, like a cold wind at Celia’s back. She walked in between the Littles, and the fact that both of them longed to touch her and turn her into a monster loomed. Was this the right thing to do? She had no idea.

  The uneven ground of the tunnel lay full of baseball-sized rocks, perfect for twisting ankles. Celia did her best to keep up with Daisy, who walked like the tunnel was as smooth as a sidewalk. The walls were slimy and gross, and Celia’s hands got covered in mud every time she put out a hand to steady herself.

  “You can’t tell any of the Bigs about our tunnel, okay, Celia?” Daisy said.

  “I never would.”

  “Or hunters,” Daisy added. “Demetri said you like running with them. Why? I mean, it’s good they fight the Bigs, but I guess you don’t know what else they do, or you wouldn’t hang with them, right?”

  “I don’t want anything to do with hunters ever again,” Celia said. She remembered Ruby and Amber attacking her. The fact that they had done that ached through her, just as real as the cold. “I won’t tell anyone anything, ever. I promise.” Of everything she’d learned about the monster world so far, Demetri and his friends were the only ones who tried to never hurt anyone else. Besides, Demetri had saved her life twice now: once from the snakes, and most recently from the Bigs. She would never do anything to harm him.

  The tunnel twisted and turned so many times that Celia lost all sense of direction. Finally, it ended at a brick wall with a metal ladder going up it. Daisy pulled herself up and disappeared through a small hole overhead. Celia followed and climbed. Soon the narrow hole surrounded her, scraping at her back.

  “Keep going, Celia,” Demetri whispered beneath her. “We’re almost home.”

  25

  The Second Rule

  Celia pulled herself out into a world of cement, light, and greenery. She blinked and squinted as she tried to make sense of this place. Warm, sweet air enveloped her.

  “Our sanctuary,” Demetri whispered, coming up and standing beside Celia. He chewed on his lip as she looked around.

  It was the inside of a warehouse, with corrugated aluminum walls peeking out from beneath the thick vines that grew everywhere. Kiwifruit vines climbed up the walls next to fat pink hibiscus blossoms and red bougainvillea. Across the warehouse, garden plots grew where concrete chunks had been cut out of the floor. The bright orange of pumpkins grew next to stalks of corn and bean bushes. Up near the ceiling was a row of windows that streamed in weak winter light. It didn’t seem like enough to grow the plants, not this time of year. Surrounding each garden plot sat little shacks and tents. Dozens of Little monsters worked at tables, walked along different paths, and watered plants.

  Then the Littles, all across the warehouse, froze. They raised their heads and sniffed the air. Their heads swiveled, and each of them turned to look at Celia. They stared and smiled, because of what they were, and because of what she was. They all kept sniffing her scent as their smiles grew.

  They stood and started coming closer over pathways covered with scraps of carpet and worn Astroturf.

  Why did I think I should come here? Celia wondered. She stepped behind Demetri and eyed the passageway she’d climbed up.

  They closed in on all sides. They had horns, claws, and fangs, or swirling skin and misshapen skulls, or forked tails, or bright-red skin. A few looked like Demetri—90 percent normal except for feathers for hair, or skin with a dusty metallic sheen. About a hundred of them gathered, and the air filled with a heady, impossibly delicious smell. Nothing that smelled that good could hurt her, right?

  No. That idea could destroy me, Celia thought, even as all of her senses told her she was safe. She breathed in the summery- feeling air and noticed she had finally stopped shivering.

  “You found the doom girl,” a
short Little with bright-pink eyes and pinker skin said into the growing silence.

  “Yes. And all of you are tasked with keeping her safe. You can do this.” Demetri gave them stern looks.

  Some of the Littles looked down. Others licked their strange-colored lips.

  “Of course we can do it,” Daisy said. “Like the time Demetri took us all out on Halloween to test us being around kids.”

  “That was the best,” said a girl with tentacles sprouting out of her head. “Remember how all those people gave us tons of candy because they said they’d never seen such great costumes before? Everyone could see us because they expected to see kids dressed up as monsters. It was fun, until . . .”

  “Until Wallace attacked a boy,” Demetri said. “He gave in and became evil.” He looked out at all of them.

  Celia watched a Little touch the sharp edge of her fang, and another pull his sleeves down over his bearlike claws.

  A horned boy lisped, “We can put up a tent for her as far away from everyone else as possible. We won’t hurt her.”

  All the Littles nodded.

  Demetri looked at all of them for a long moment before nodding. “I will be watching each and every one of you. You all know the kind of magic I can do. Do not think you will go unpunished.”

  “We got this, D,” a Little called out. The rest of them murmured and nodded.

  Demetri looked toward Daisy. “You’ll keep watch as well?”

  “Of course.”

  Demetri walked to the highest hill in the warehouse, which was surrounded by grass and had a scraggly green tree at the top of it. He sat down and leaned against it. It was high enough that he could watch over everything from there.

  “Class dismissed.” Daisy made shooing motions toward all the Littles with flicks of her black-and-white fingers. “Let’s get food,” she said, turning her mismatched eyes toward Celia. “I could eat a hundred horses.”

  The Littles walked away along the dozens of paths that wound through the warehouse floor. Every single one of them kept glancing back at Celia with hungry eyes.

  Celia followed Daisy down a carpeted path to a rickety picnic bench. Flowering nasturtiums grew up one side of it. A couple of Littles brought them bowls of food, and Celia had a moment’s panic, wondering what monsters ate. She relaxed when she saw mashed potatoes, beans, and brown rice. Littles hovered around the table, pretending to be busy but obviously wanting to be near Celia. She glanced toward Demetri, who sat stone-still under the tree. He won’t let anything bad happen to me, she thought. The last cold that had been lodged deep inside her belly began to thaw as Celia swallowed mouthful after mouthful of warm food. She scanned the warehouse, knowing this wasn’t a place she could ever let her guard down.