Gods of Anthem

by Keys, Logan

  The gate begins to move, rolling aside, squealing and scraping open. We stay hidden as six guards bring along six people, all of whom drag their steps toward the giant metal slab. Each one stares at the ground and walks fairly dead on his feet.

  “Rejects,” Jeremy supplies.

  Two are scarred and bloody, like they’d crawled through razor wire.

  I covertly search Jeremy’s shirt, feeling like he’s a stranger after seeing something of his past. Does he have scars? Have I ever seen him in anything but long sleeves?

  The six are marched through the gate.

  “Where are they going?”

  “They lead them through three gates,” he answers, “then the rejects are left outside.”

  “What? How do they defend themselves…?”

  But the answer’s obvious.

  “So. How do you get them back?” I ask.

  And Jeremy shakes his head like it’s obvious. “March them right back inside.”

  “How?”

  A smile flirts with his mouth as the ghost of his past slowly leaves his eyes.

  The gate begins to close behind them.

  Then, we wait.

  My patience proves too thin, because after only a few minutes, I’m begging Jeremy to tell me the plan. He patiently sits back and crosses his legs, ignoring me. With his eyes closed, as if to take a nap, he’s perfectly comfortable, while I’m on the tip of my toes, watching the gate like a hawk.

  Forever later, it opens again. The six guards come back through and turn in another direction.

  Then, another six come through, and they turn toward the truck where we’re hidden.

  Twelve?

  “Jeremy!”

  “What?”

  “The guards are coming!”

  “Oh, what will we do?” And he grins. Has Jeremy gone martyr on me again? Only this time, he’s brought a silly girl with him.

  The guards approach, but before we can run, one of them grabs Jeremy’s arm, tugging him up from the ground, and—

  They hug…?

  “Glad you made it.”

  The guards reach up for their helmets. The one with Jeremy pulls it off to reveal a long black braid—a young woman … and she’s familiar…. Then, I remember. At the black market, she’d gotten the spider tattoo.

  Her expression is a surprised look at seeing me, too. “What’s she doing here, Writer?”

  Jeremy shrugs and shakes hands with another guard, who pats his shoulder.

  He pauses, then motions to me and back to this young woman. “Crystal, meet Liza. Liza, this is Crystal, leader of the uprising.”

  The rest thud their chests and say together, “Against all Authority.”

  My eyes widen. So these are the Skulls, in the flesh.

  Crystal watches me like the spider she has somewhere underneath her clothes. “And why is she here?”

  At the same time, I’m asking Jeremy, “I thought you were the leader.”

  He chuckles, saying to me, “That’s what we need the Authority to think.”

  Crystal crosses her arms, clears her throat, one eyebrow raised.

  Jeremy turns serious. “Don’t worry, Crystal. She’s as patriot as they come.”

  Crystal tilts her head toward him in a familiar way, and my interest peaks. “Then why does she talk like that? She doesn’t even sound American. You know the UG has spies everywhere. Jer, we can’t risk it. Not now.” She moves in and hisses, “We’ve come so close!”

  Jer…?

  Jeremy’s fondness for her softens his features, but he speaks to me. “Crystal’s always been the leader, and I’m simply the voice.”

  She sniffs. “We started this together.”

  Jeremy ignores her. “We agreed that after I died, it would seem like the group was in disarray, when in reality, Crystal here has organized the greatest stance this dictatorship has ever seen. She’s been culling those who’ve been purged since … when was it, Crys? Two years?”

  Her gaze shifts to me, then back, like she can’t take her eyes off of Jeremy. “We began the real work together. But then he went off to die on us.”

  They’ve sunk into their own little world as Jeremy leans closer to her. “It was always the plan, Crys. You know that.”

  “Not mine,” she says softly, making me feel like they should be alone.

  “Our country before ourselves,” he replies, equally as soft. “Besides, Liza’s the reason I’m still here. She saved me.”

  Crystal blinks at him in confusion before she pushes past to tower over me like the tall and stately thing she is.

  Her mouth pulls tight after she looks me over. “Is it true what he says?”

  “Yes,” I reply. Then, more loudly, “Yes.”

  Crystal’s eyes close, yet not quick enough to hide the flash of pain inside the darkness. When they open again, they’re dull like before. “Then I—we—owe you a debt of gratitude. Whatever you want, name it, and it’s yours. He may have been all for killing himself off for our revolution, but we’ve needed him now more than ever, so … thank you.”

  Her last words are a mere breath from broken.

  My throat tightens as feelings emerge. Somehow she’s conveyed undying love for someone so deep and dark and unending … yet … she holds no hatred for me. She’s let him go. If you love something …

  As gracious as I can, I try to convey back an understanding that words could never cover with a nod, meeting her eyes and willing my own feelings to be heard.

  As to her offer, a million things go through my mind. False humility, and a sense of irony, too. But then something blips ahead of these, something larger than myself. “I’ve now met two leaders of small armies, and I feel like you both do yourselves a disservice by not working together. Why not join forces with Kiniva’s group?”

  Crystal laughs and adjusts her helmet under her arm. “Well, well, well. Not only a patriot, but also an idealist.” Her grin broadens, and a few laughs come from the ranks behind her. “Kiniva’s as traitorous as those bleeder-hounds he trains; he comes for the meat, then leaves when it’s gone. Not a patriot. You’ve met him, so you know that.”

  “No. He’s not an American either, but he sees an opportunity here, and his hatred for the Authority is as honest as anyone’s love of country.”

  Crystal eyes me with wisdom beyond her years. “Enemy of my enemy.”

  She shrugs, then turns to Jeremy. “Figure out how we can meet and discuss. I don’t think it’s wise to trust Kiniva, but we should exhaust all of our options before the big bang.”

  “The big bang…?” I say.

  “Easy there, killer,” Crystal says with a cutting glare. “You just got into the club. You aren’t exactly a member yet.”

  When the Skulls leave, with Crystal at their lead, Jeremy watches me carefully.

  “But, what about the purged people? Were they the ones who came back, dressed as guards? Is that how it happened with you? They washed you out and you had been outside the wall?”

  He nods, still not deterred from searching my face. “Yes. She helped me. And Crystal will round these ones up, give them a place to heal. It takes some time to help their minds regain a sense of normal … if ever.”

  We head for the tunnel, and Jeremy’s got a new tension in his walk.

  “What’s with the spiders?” I ask.

  “Huh?” he says distractedly.

  “She was getting one as a tattoo—Crystal was—when I saw her before, at the black market. Another had one on his neck. I thought your insignia was the skull?”

  After checking that we’re all clear, Jeremy lifts the manhole cover. “Perceptive and pretty. I shall have to remember that. Every time you get purged, you get a spider tattoo. It’s kind of a tradition. The skull is drama. People love drama. And we need the people.”

  I’m trying not to imagine where his tattoo’s at.

  We move into the tunnel, and once inside, he pauses, grins, and crosses his arms. “It’s on my back.”

/>   “I wasn’t … never mind.” I walk ahead, guiltily avoiding him. Jeremy follows closely behind.

  My voice is husky. “Hers was a web of three.”

  “She’s been through it three times.” He sounds subdued. “More than any other. Last time she was caught … she shouldn’t have lived. She disappeared for a while, even, and we all thought she was lost to us, but somehow she came back and has been the leader ever since.” Jeremy sighs, his breath warm on my neck. “They say the blood is tainted with spider venom. I’m not sure if it’s true, but we all believe it has some kind of neurotoxin, because you see things.”

  Then, he mutters more softly, “Forget things.”

  At the end of the tunnel, I turn to place a hand on his chest. “Why?”

  He knows what I’m asking: Why he brought me there.

  “Liza, I trusted you with my life before I even knew you. That girl in the courtroom, so obviously out of her element, the one who hesitated, who said ‘not guilty’ when anyone else would have just pressed the button….” His knuckles graze my cheek. “I thought I was a goner, but then I realized we’ve got ourselves a hero.” He chuckles. “Someone finally made it out of that hellhole Island. Someone amazing.”

  My face feels like it’s on fire as his warm hands find mine in the dark, washing away his shared hug with Crystal like it never happened. Why can’t it just be like this forever? Just me and him?

  Another time and place, maybe. But for now, Jeremy Writer is holding my hand, and he just called me a hero.

  “So let me get this straight,” Sergeant Nolan says from behind his desk.

  We’re in his office back at the barracks. I’ve changed clothes, and Cory’s switched underwear, no doubt. His perfect face isn’t so perfect anymore.

  Sergeant Nolan continues, “You two retards used your voodoo magic bull on my live-fire training mission.”

  We don’t answer. It’s not a question.

  A laugh jumps from Sergeant Nolan’s mouth. It’s almost obscene to witness the man find anything humorous. “Leaders running around like crack pots. I’ve got magneto, here, and some kind of giant, fighting like children, when they’re supposed to be training for war.” He spits into his cup. “Then, the magic hands-with-boobs talks fathead out of going boom-boom-kachue on all of my entry squad. One poor dead idiot, because you two needed to measure your wieners, is that it?”

  Sergeant Nolan doesn’t want to hear anyone’s version of events. Around here, Murphy’s death won’t rank high on the scale of “what the hell,” and UG has already written it off as a casualty of war. They’re not interested in trials, or punishment, or locking up nutty soldiers like Cory.

  “We die a lot nowadays,” Sergeant Nolan says. “And it ain’t pretty.”

  The sergeant grabs his Mountain Dew and chugs, then he tiredly wipes his eyes, and when he looks across the desk again, it’s like he’s another person. “You know, boys … I wish I could say this war is gonna be the last, or even that there’ll be a reprieve after we get back to that ol’ hunk of dirt that used to be ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’ But the Authority, or the UG, or even stiffies can’t bring back what was ours—not fully. No pressin’ rewind and livin’ like we did. Ain’t no amount of winning here to be had, you get me? Only just not dying.

  “The UG came in with this idea to do more screwing with your bodies, and I don’t understand it—a fightin’ man is what I am. It’s no good that you”—he points at Cory—“can get into people’s heads like they scraped out their brains and fed ‘em to ya with a spoon. Or that you”—he points to me—“turn into something out of a circus freak show. I think you two are no better than the stiffies, if you ask me. I should put a bullet in you both right now.” He pulls out his pistol, closing one eye to sight it on us. “I think if the Man upstairs wanted weirdos like you, he woulda made ‘em.”

  Sergeant Nolan puts his gun down with a sigh, then gets up and walks past his medals and inspirational posters to tip his head at three urns sitting on a shelf. “The scientists was so busy tryna keep everybody alive, like death was the worst thing that could happen, and now look. My healthy wife.” And he flicks the first black urn with a ping, before flicking the other two in kind. “Daughter, and her son—my grandson—Kyle. That boy didn’t know a Sergeant Nolan, he only knew Papa, and he only knew smilin’. That loser boyfriend of hers? … well, he’s as stiffie as they come, still wanderin’ around since he cut out on my baby and my baby’s baby. I didn’t even put him out of his misery when I seen him all zombie’d up. Not too long ago, I found him on the same block, up and back again.”

  Sergeant Nolan looks at us suspiciously. “He’d even stopped at his own car to stare through the window like he recognized what’s in there. What do you two smart asses think of that? You think them stiffies are wanderin’ around the same places, like they remember? Like some of us is left in them rotten brains? Sure as hell ain’t gonna be me. You see me stiff up, you put a bullet right here.” He taps his forehead.

  After he moves back to his desk, his face returns to its familiar sneer. “Nah, it’s the scientists who made more death. And here you two are, given these gifts. If you can call ‘em that. And ya squander it, fight each other like two high schoolers. And I suppose that ya are. We’ve had boys before in war, eighteen to nineteen. Now we got thirteen-year-olds who suck blood.” He glares at us. “And if you two want to kick the bucket, then by all means, go ahead and leave the facility. Let the stiffies gnaw your idiot faces off, for all I care. It ain’t right, if you ask me. None of it. Let the stiffies have us, if that’s what they want.”

  “Then why do it? Why train us?” Cory asks, wiping blood from his mouth.

  Sergeant Nolan pushes his tongue into one cheek and eyeballs Cory, making it obvious who he answers to. We don’t rank high enough to get his patronization. “I heard biggie here kicked your ass. That true?”

  Cory swallows with an icy glare.

  I try not to smile. Try.

  Sergeant Nolan puts his hands out to encompass it all—the situation, the place. “Let’s just say I do this out of morbid curiosity, gentleman.”

  When I get back, I check on Joelle. It’s so tempting to pull her out and hug her, to make sure she’s as alive as when I left. That head game had felt so real, and the charred remains of my dear Jo-Jo keep flashing through my brain. I’m mourning her already, like a piece is missing, when it really isn’t. The heart is a different set of mind.

  It makes me want to try to kill Cory all over again.

  Then, I think of Murphy, and my spine sags.

  Blood on my hands; I’m sticky with it. Killed a brother like Cain, my dad would have said. And same as him, from anger, it controls me ever since they fed it, changed it into an actual thing inside.

  My dad’s voice is crystal clear.

  “You get heated too easy, Tommy. Don’t know how, but it’s gonna bite you back some day. Slow to anger, boy. The Good Book—”

  “I don’t care about the Good Book, Dad! I don’t need a Bible lesson every day of the week! Jeffrey took a shot at me on the field yesterday—it was cheap! I made him pay for it. So what?”

  “You’re bigger than him. Smarter, too. If beating up on Jeffrey no matter how he deserved it don’t make you a bully, I don’t know what will. Son, I know someday this rage you got … it’s gonna come alive. Its gonna eat you from the inside out.”

  My face heats as the words cut through the madness like a knife, just like my old man’s always did.

  Funny thing is, though, it was the monster that always made me feel cornered. Because of him, I knew I’d eventually hurt someone without meaning to. I’ve lived with that fear ever since the first experiment. And here, I’ve killed an innocent someone while completely normal and myself, and not the beast. It’s like he’s laughing in my head, hating me, yet loving the taste of epic failure. He likes when I’m off balance, and there are times an echo of thoughts not unlike my own but slightly twisted enter my he
ad even when I’m not transitioned.

  He’s getting smarter.

  I’m tempted to wake Joelle and ask her to watch TV with me. I’d cover the windows for her, maybe pull out my old black-and-white movies that’ll take me back to better times; good old days when guys and gals went on car rides.

  Instead, I decide to try to sleep. She’d just freak if I woke her midday. It screws up her cycle. Afterwards, it takes weeks of day-terrors, with her trapped in there and myself out in the field, unable to help her.

  In the end, I simply crash on my bunk, fully dressed.

  “You must have gotten home early, Tommy. The sun’s down.”

  I wake to find a small, sweet face peering underneath my arm. She looks paler than usual.

  “Go eat, Jo. Wake me up after.”

  I grin into my pillow at the muffled growl she returns, and her quiet movement around the barracks is like a balm to my torn soul, because it means she’s okay.

  When I wake again, it’s to music.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake.” Joelle stands up and yells at the screen, “Sound up!”

  It blares, and I cringe before moving over to the small kitchen, which is really just a coffee pot on milk crates.

  As “Bohemian Rhapsody” echoes through the barracks, I wonder what on earth made her pick Queen.

  Jo-Jo’s jumping on the couch. She’s at her cutest like this. Rarely does she get to leave, so she’ll sometimes turn into an energizer bunny, which is both annoying and sweet. She’s got braids in her hair, and they swing from her crown like black licorice. Pink bubble gum pops between her razor teeth, and her glasses sit on the very edge of her nose, almost falling off when she leaps and mouths words, pretending to know the song.

  She hates the taste of blood, so gum or mints are never far from our kitchen. But if she doesn’t eat, she gets very “movie vampire.” Ferocious doesn’t even begin to explain it. That’s why she can’t room with anyone else. It scares the other soldiers. Plus, we can’t chance anyone messing with her while she sleeps, or forgets and lets daylight in.