This was the moment in her life that she had dreaded for so long. She knew she’d run from dread ever since she and her sisters had come to the Gardener camp, that she’d played a nightmarish, never-ending game of keep away from a demon named dread. She’d dwelled with that dread for too long. Today, it ended. Today, she would erase the dread within her, exorcise the never-ceasing fear that had made her walk not with hope and had crippled her with anxiety.
Lola took one of the Shakies and left the car, hiding in the tree line by the road, listening as the trumpet grew louder. She was not afraid. Lola was ready to stand up. She wanted to roar. She would become the demon dread she had feared for so long.
Lola would walk with pride and with a death-blow punch in her stride.
Eyes twitching, Lola steadied herself. Forgetting everyone else, this was her time, her battle. This wasn’t war with Madam or her henchmen; this was war with herself. These kills would be Lola burning down her mindset of terror that had kept her shackled for too long. Today, she would free herself to think clearly from now on.
The dust from the wheels of two vehicles shot up Lola’s nose as they came to a dead stop in the road. She fought back the sense of falling as she blindly pulled the trigger on her Shaky. The Shaky beads hit the side of the car right in front of her.
Instantly Lola could hear the Shaky’s beads pound the car, shattering metal, popping tires. Stepping forward, Lola smiled as she came face-to-face with the trumpet player. His smile quickly faded, and he looked shocked as the Shaky came into view. Lola pulled the trigger again, quickly stepped to her side, and pulled the trigger over and over as a small group of people attempted to rush her.
Dust filled the air as the boots of fleeing people kicked up dirt. Shouts were everywhere, men and women Hunters ran about, in different directions, crashing into each other, and Lola regretted not being able to watch the trumpet player melt from the Shaky beads, but there was no time. She knew she must kill them all.
Lola shot, not thinking of the Hunters as humans. Before Lola's eyes, the Hunters became nothing but shadows falling to the ground. Smiling, Lola shot at the other car, hearing the beads break glass. She stepped away, itching to pull the trigger again, looking for what or who to shoot next.
A large hand wrapped around her throat. “Give me that Shaky, pretty lady, and I might allow you to live long enough to please me.”
The man’s breath stank like that of a person who sucked the marrow from human bones, the stink of no morals, bad living, a complete lack of empathy for others in a vacant soul. Lola wanted to cleanse his scent from her nose and mouth.
Fed up and not caring what happened to her, Lola turned the muzzle of the Shaky behind her. A laugh popped from her when she pulled the trigger.
Twisting out of his grip was easy, and she watched him fall, surprise in his eyes. It must have been the first time he hadn’t won a fight.
Lola watched with mild interest as the skin on his chest buckled then rippled with the sweet buzz of Shaky beads bouncing within. She thought she heard his rib bones crack. Lola hoped his skin would rip open so she could watch the beads puree his heart.
Lola noticed a tattoo on his left arm: “Dog Will Hunt.” For the first time in years, Lola smiled, shook her head, and spat on the man as his body flopped in the dirt.
That had been the most enjoyable thing she’d ever done.
BD came up to Lola with soft steps, wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve. He watched the body of the man quake as bloody ooze poured from the holes the beads left.
“Did we get them all?” Lola asked.
“Yes, you came in like...like a...,” BD paused. He faced Lola and said with a sweet grin, “A total badass.”
Sunlight glinted off the trumpet lying near what was left of the trumpet player. He’d dropped it in the dirt when his fingers no longer had intact muscle and bone to hold it. Lola strode over to it and picked it up.
The trumpet was a foul thing, its sounds nothing close to music. She should smash it. Burn it. Shoot it with the Shaky. No, she’d take it with her instead, a reminder that dread no longer had a nest in her brain.
Chandler felt Suzy smooth her hair. Suzy tried to be gentle, careful, but her movements were the awkward caresses of a child.
“I think it’s over,” Suzy whispered.
Chandler was nothing more than a crumpled heap in the car. She had pressed her body hard against the seat, wanting nothing more than to be swallowed whole by it. Chandler cursed her misfortune of being human. Had she been a bird, she could have flown away.
“Oh. I see BD,” Suzy said, her voice tinged with surprise.
It occurred to Chandler that Suzy expected them to lose.
Far from gentle now, Suzy’s hands shoved Chandler away, as if Suzy had pushed her worries aside, too. The pickup’s door flung open. A breeze rushed over Chandler. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t open her eyes.
She couldn’t. They’d have to peel her off the car’s seat. They’d have to...
“Don’t worry.”
Jen’s voice flicked Chandler’s ears. Jen took Chandler’s hand.
“It’s over. BD and Lola got rid of them all.”
“Rid of...” repeated Chandler. She opened her eyes, pleading with her body to move. She wanted to see.
“Yes,” answered Jen with a bit of pride in her voice. “I can’t believe it. You were right about the Shakies. They did the trick.”
Jen’s smile faded, and she blinked back sudden, uninvited tears. “The Shakies. The Shakies took my parents but gave me a chance to live. Should I be thankful for them? Should I curse them?”
Chandler had no answer and stayed silent.
Danny tried to swallow in a dry mouth. The apprehension was too much, and he wished himself purged of it.
The anxiety wasn’t because of where they were going but on what he’d left behind: Madam and her evil empire, Nutri-Corp. Danny desperately wanted to leave his demons behind with her but wasn’t sure that was possible. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Madam’s wicked shadow would find him wherever he and his sister ended up.
“Stop, please.”
The nanny, who had said nothing since they’d dumped their car and walked straight into some woods, sat slumped on a nearby fallen tree. Her words came out in one lumbered heave. Sweat poured from her hair, dripping into her eyes. She looked beaten. Danny stopped and put Dolly on her feet. She’d been riding him piggyback for some time. He wouldn’t complain, but he was glad to let her down. She was getting too big to be coddled so much.
However, now that he wasn’t moving, exhaustion turned his legs to jelly. He sat on the fallen tree as well, not ashamed to wipe his brow and give his sister some side-eye.
“Dolly,” he said, the sound from his dry throat scratchy, “you need to walk for a while. I’m...” Danny looked down at the forest floor, trying to find words that would explain it was time for her to grow up a bit, without hurting her feelings.
“Tired,” Dolly answered, licking her lips. “Yeah, I get it. I’m so thirsty. How much farther?”
Until Dolly had mentioned it, Danny hadn’t thought about his own thirst. Now, it pulled him into its web. He was so thirsty he couldn’t think straight. It took him several seconds to comprehend Dolly’s question and come up with an answer.
“Not much farther. Another twenty minutes, I should start seeing signs.”
“Signs?” snapped Dolly, returning his side-eye. The way she looked at him now indicated she was questioning his ability, and that both insulted and amused him.
Danny answered his sharp little sister, “The Gardener camp is hidden. You can stand in the middle of it and not know it unless you see the signs.”
Danny’s calves started to cramp, and he stood, hoping to stretch them.
“Jen taught me what to look for,” he added.
Jen. Danny tried to swallow again, but his salivary glands had shut down; the sides of his throat scraped against each other painfully.
Would Jen be
here? Had she waited for him?
The nanny stood, announcing, “We must go. It’ll be dark fast.” She held out her hand to Dolly, who eagerly took it and pressed against the nanny’s side.
Since Nanny Maria wasn’t important to him, Danny figured she wasn’t important to Dolly either. Watching them stand hand-in-hand waiting for him to get started again made him realize he was wrong. Maria must have taken care of Dolly a million different ways that had never occurred to him.
With a deep breath, Danny looked ahead, eyes seeking. He smiled. There! A flash of red on a tree branch. It looked like nothing more than a forgotten rag, left by some hunter to mark his trail, but Danny knew better.
The red rag had three knots tied into it. Three Martinez sisters. He was on the right path.
“I hear buzzing.”
When the last z left Dolly’s lips, Danny’s reptilian brain took over. “Run!” he yelled, but all that did was panic Dolly and Maria.
Maria let out a quick scream and ran, dragging a yelping Dolly. Dolly pulled herself free and ran back to Danny. Without thinking, Danny picked up his sister and ran with her towards the red rag.
As the buzzing sound grew louder, Maria ran faster and surged ahead of Danny and Dolly, all the while screaming for them to run faster.
Danny couldn’t speed up. If he did, he’d miss a place to hide or another sign from Jen. Head whipping from side to side as he ran, he frantically look around to spot some brush, a fall of kudzu, anything Gardener to hide in.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Dolly cried into Danny’s neck, her tears trickling down his throat onto his t-shirt.
“Our mother’s drones,” Danny answered flatly. “The drones have Shakies, cameras, and speakers on them. She’s found us.” Danny slowed almost to a stop, turning in a circle. “Maria. I can’t see Maria.”
The buzzing was overhead now, and his heart was sinking, Danny realized this would be over soon. Where the drones went, Madam’s Nutri-Corp police weren’t far behind.
Dolly did not bother to muffle her cry or be brave. She had hoped to never see her mother again. This would be bad, so bad. Madam wasn’t a kind mom. She wasn’t the kind of mom a little girl could run away from and expect a welcoming embrace when reunited.
“Eyes!” said Dolly, jumping down from Danny’s arms. She pointed and grabbed Danny’s hand, pulling him toward some overgrown brush. “I saw eyes,” she said. “There!”
A hand waved at them, motioning them to come. A curtain of kudzu opened, and Dolly pulled her brother inside as a drone pulsed overhead.
An old woman sat motionless in what looked like a camper trailer. Its door was open, and the old woman was a shadow inside the dim kudzu enclosure. The old woman put her finger to her lips, cupping one hand over her ear she motioned for them to come inside the trailer. Dolly smiled at her and pulled Danny along.
They had barely settled inside the camper, barely caught their breath, when the sound of a scream came from nearby. Dolly sucked in breath and listened, but no more sounds came.
“Damn her,” Danny whispered, and Dolly knew who he meant.
Madam and Nutri-Corp were a blight upon the planet, and Dolly knew her brother would agree.
When the drones caught sight of Maria, things happened quickly. She would never get to speak for herself nor allowed a minute to tell her boss lady why she ran. Madam would not take into consideration Maria’s years of service, her silent and steady presence in Madam’s home, or that she had helped Madam raise her daughter.
Madam would give Maria no time to explain how much she missed her sisters, how she wanted nothing more than to be with them. But Maria had to know they were lost to her now, and it was time for her to be lost too, a different kind of lost.
When Maria’s weeping face appeared on the drone’s camera feed, Madam herself leaned past the drone pilot and used her long nails to tap in the kill command.
The drone’s Shaky lowered. A quick pop, and beads flew into Maria’s chest, rapidly burrowing through her blouse, a blouse washed by hand, hung dry, and ironed. For years, Maria had done this every other day.
The blouse was a soft blue like the sky, with a splatter of daisies. This was Maria’s favorite blouse, not because of the color or the flowers but because it was comfortable, cool, and still fit properly after many years of wear.
The blouse was like Maria—of good quality, dependable. But the Shaky beads paid no mind to it. Instead, they rendered the blouse to shreds and made their way to Maria’s lungs, deflating then collapsing them. Her last breath left her body with an audible wheeze.
But before that happened, Maria got one good scream out, and she hoped the sound reached Dolly and Danny’s ears. She wanted Madam’s children to have the memory of agony in their head and hearts, like she’d held the memory of her sisters on YUM with their countless tics, unable to control their bodies.
Daisy and Robert heard the racket of drones at the same time. Both brother and sister stared at each other. Daisy was gagged and unable to speak, but she mentally dared her brother to stand tall, to shoot the drones from the sky.
Instead, he ran, and she couldn’t help but laugh as she watched the sky and hoped the cameras on the drones would find her.
Would Madam see her? Would Madam save her? Daisy wasn’t sure. If she did, Daisy would never call her Megan again. It would forever and always be Madam, the way she liked it.
“What the hell is that?” Madam demanded, pointing to a monitor. One of the drone’s camera feeds whizzed by some cages in an opening of the forest.
No one answered, but a Nutri-Corp officer slowed her drone, reversed its course, and stopped it by a cage. The camera gave Madam a full view of a woman, tied, gagged, and kept captive by someone out in the forest of the Gardener camp.
“Get in closer. Let me see her face.” Madam squinted; she was too proud to wear glasses even though she needed them. Madam leaned on the officer’s console, smiling. “Well, well, Daisy, what have you gotten yourself into?” Madam tapped her fingers on the console, a bit too near the Nutri-Corp officer for her mental health.
The officer, by the name of Jade, fought hard to hide the trembling of her fingers. The only tic Officer Jade had ever had from her daily doses of YUM was a slight tremble in her pinkie fingers. If she presented herself without a tic to Madam, she could rise in the ranks, maybe even get promoted away from the drone operations trailer.
A mental picture of herself settled in Nutri-Corp elite housing made Officer Jade’s mind race with hope.
Madam leaned in closer, turning to smile at Officer Jade for a split second before she once again ready to tap out the kill command. Hesitating, Madam turned on the drone’s radio.
“Daisy, is that you?” Madam asked this question with a mouth full of innocence, with nothing except childlike wonder from her tongue.
The woman in the cage shifted, violently wiggling her body from side to side.
Officer Jade spoke despite knowing it was in her best interest not to. “She’s gagged, Madam.”
Madam laughed at that. “Oh, of course. How silly of me. How completely silly of me...” She laughed again while tapping in the kill command, humming a circus tune as her fingers ordered the end of Daisy.
The Shaky’s beads flew in different directions, some striking Daisy, some digging holes into the earth, while other beads shook the cage apart.
Daisy’s legs took the brunt of the onslaught. Beads dug into the flesh of her thighs, soon severing her legs. After the strike, Daisy froze, unimaginable pain making her vision go white.
This was her end, and beyond the pain, beyond the sensation of feeling one leg falling to the side, Daisy was upset. Not upset at dying, but upset that she would go in such a messy manner.
She had always been a tidy woman.
Micah could hear Clarissa’s whimpers from beneath his feet. Jeff had ingeniously hidden a compartment under the floorboard where one person could lay hidden. As long as everyone who sat in the vehicle
stretched their legs out a bit and the guards didn’t give their posture a second look, it would pass.
Desperate to get her out of Nutri-Corp City, Micah had given his wife a couple of shots of whiskey to calm her and led her to the car’s hiding spot. As he closed the lid, he saw panic in her eyes, but he was resolute when he placed her in the hiding spot. He didn’t care how uneasy or uncomfortable she was.
It wasn’t long before her whimpering burrowed under his skin as if he’d been hit by a Shaky. He feared her whimpering thundered throughout the car. How soon before Jeff’s father would kick them out of the car for it? How soon before her whimpering alerted a guard at a checkpoint?
With the last checkpoint in sight, Micah thumped his foot against the floorboard, a solid warning to his pregnant wife to shut up.
“Going out to butcher,” Jeff casually said when he stopped at the final guard post. Once past it, they would be beyond the reach of Nutri-Corp City. Jeff nodded in the general direction of his father and Micah. “It’s going to be a big one. I had to bring along some help.”
The guard frowned at what Jeff said, his mouth opening to question Jeff some more, but a senior officer gave Jeff a nod and a big grin. He hurriedly waved Jeff through.
The Hunt was the best-kept non-secret around. The checkpoint guard must have been the last one not to know what going out to butcher actually meant. All that mattered was the senior officer understood. Micah glanced at the officer as they passed him; he looked like he was trying hard not to salivate. Micah’s stomach lurched, and he looked away.
Beyond the gate, Jeff’s father, who had the look of a life in and out of prison on him, turned to look at Micah. He turned to his son and growled, “Best dump them in Old Town.”
“No!” Micah barked. “You’re not dumping us anywhere. Jeff and I made a deal that he would take me as far as he was going himself. If you try to dump us in Old Town, I’ll…” Micah wasn’t sure what he’d actually, but he hoped he sounded decisive.
Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel Page 23