by Logan Keys
Cory plugs up the last one on his side with shots to the head before walking over and, without hesitation, puts a few bullets into the tot. We all cringe as she jerks and falls backwards. Some of the team close their eyes, or glance away. But I force myself to watch.
After she’s still, Cory turns on us with a sneer. “You pussies better get over it, and quick. You think America isn’t going to be half full of these little freaks? You piss yourselves over kids, but she’ll eat your face off, same as the rest.”
He spits toward the tiny body, and Bee steps forward. I stop him with a hand on his chest. Cory’s looking down at the mini-zombie, and his face is stretched thin over the bones. Technically, he’s right about them being the same as the others. But he’s not … right.
I shake my head at Defoe, who looks like he’s about to say what we all want to, and I signal for us to move on.
“Sick,” Defoe mutters so only I can hear.
But I’m focused on my breathing. My heart rate’s too high. Any minute I could—
The village appears; out of the green, it reveals itself. We’ve reached the edge of the jungle, and the scene before us is like something out of Vietnam, only … we’re in the middle of Sweden. Our group had watched tons of footage of the old wars, but the Third World War was the toughest to see, because small nukes were used to destroy entire cities, leaving nothing but craters where metropolises had once thrived.
It’s almost evening now, and a purple sky hangs heavy over the abandoned village. I can sense everyone behind me is reluctant to enter, too. The wind picks up, rustling the grass roofs, like fingers that beckon us to our doom. I’m not the only one who shudders from the eerie hissing sound.
The village is a ghost town. Had the stiffs eaten the other teams? If so, where’d they all go?
Cory, I notice, isn’t so eager to lead anymore. With a sigh, I straighten and say, “Reload.” Clicks and taps ensue as we knock off our empty mags and let the next round of bullets hitch a ride under the M-4s. “Check your belts. Flash grenades only,” I say, reminding them of close quarters and all. “We don’t need to blow ourselves up.”
The resounding “Roger!” from the ten guys behind me is rather subdued.
I lift my hand, and they fan back out into a wedge.
We begin to move forward slowly as one.
We have been trained.
We have been trialed.
And I get the feeling we’re about to find out just how little that really means.
Chapter Thirty-One
Liza
Manda stands in my apartment, arms crossed. “Come on, Mo. It’s time to do something besides work and sit around.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I’m engrossed in reading. The book had cost nearly half my week’s pay, but it’s written by a British author my mother loved, and upon spotting it in the hands of one of my commune-mates, I’d begged and cajoled to obtain it.
This is my third read-through.
“Mo-oh,” Manda whines.
I’m starting to wonder if she should have gotten ready at her own place; mine now smells like half a bottle of cheap perfume. She tilts her head at my book’s cover, sounding the words out before sitting on my bed with a pout. “You gonna read that crap all night? Readin’ is only good for one thing, ya know.”
Manda twists toward my wall mirror and presses her chest into cleavage of light brown skin. “My mothah always told me it’s for tryna look smart for a guy, or tryna keep ya husband out of your pants. Neithah is goin’ on in here, so let’s go.”
When I don’t answer, she says, “Fine. What if I told ya there’s lots more of those where we’re goin?”
“Lots of what?”
“Books, dumb-dumb! Tons of ‘em. Ones the Authority ain’t gonna let you just buy on the cornah.”
After this, I can’t get ready fast enough.
Whenever I say “yes” to Manda, I regret it.
Since it’s after curfew, we have to sneak through the streets, and Manda has these little hand signals: flapping really fast in my face means “stop,” while putting a finger practically up my nose and then pointing means “thata way.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “The guards don’t come past this part.”
I hesitate for obvious reasons. “Where are we going?”
“You know how New York had Long Island, the City, and Harlem? Rich folks in their own space are like Long Island, you and I live in the City, and this …” We step turn into an alleyway where people are funneled into a building. “… is Harlem.”
It’s a gymnasium at the end, only five times the normal size. Two rugged men wearing camo and carrying guns stand at the entrance. By the sound from inside, there must be hundreds of people in there.
Manda winks at one of the men standing at the door, and he smiles, flashing a gold tooth before nodding us through.
We’re shoved around once inside, jostled in the crowd. There’s music playing, and tables for gaming. Some people even hold the leashes of large muzzled dogs. It’s been forever since I’ve seen a dog, though these aren’t fluffy house pets.
We pass a game of dice, and one guy rolls before he reaches for the cash stacked in the middle of a ring of people. I’m towed away by Manda, barely moved clear of the swinging fists when a fight breaks out as they identify a cheater.
“Where are we?” I ask.
She laughs and pulls out a cigarette. “This, my friend, is paradise. But ya might know it bettah if I just say it’s the black mahket where we trade the kinds of things the Authority’s nixed. Folks that run this place, they go into the wilds to get stuff.”
“The wilds … ?”
“Yeah.” Manda nods, brown eyes sparkling. “A bunch of the guys go into the old cities. Fight the zombies. So hot, right?”
Manda reaches across a nearby table to grab a cup. She digs into her pocket and leaves some bills behind. “Here.” She hands the cup to me and takes another for herself.
Real money; she’d pulled out green cash from the old days. She gestures for me to drink, but I stare into the fizzy yellow liquid with reluctance.
“It’s beeah. Sorta. The only kind we can make.”
My brain translates: beer.
The guy behind the table nods at me, waiting eagerly while I try a sip. Bitter, but definitely tasty. “This is very good!” I tell him.
We check out the various booths. In one, music boxes sit on glass shelves, and my fingers feel each one before I move on. None have a ballerina like mine. A pang comes at the thought that I’ll never see her again. How I miss my little music box.
A young tattoo artist is taking customers at the next booth. The whir of his gun buzzes above the talking and the music. His drawings are beautiful, and the work he’s done practically leaps off the skin in 3D.
A set of angel’s wings in his book catches my eye.
“Those are new,” a deep voice says over my shoulder, startling me. The tattoo artist has taken a break and come to join me.
I pet the feathers that look so alive on the page. “They’re amazing.”
He’s got a cocksure grin and pretty green eyes that flick up and down the length of my body, making me self-conscious. “They’re meant to be on the back,” he says, “each wing on the shoulder blade.” His touch on my back makes me blush. He notices the short hair beneath my hoodie, but seems to shrug it off.
“Well … I’d better find my friend,” I say, still smiling at him. I can’t stop. The beer’s made me fuzzy in the hot environment, and I’m steadying myself against the table.
The tattoo gun starts up again, and the artist leans over his customer to fill in an outlined image of a spider. The young woman turns her head to look at me through dull black eyes. Lines—scars—crisscross her cheeks. She stares as if daring me to look away, and when she sees that I won’t, one corner of her mouth lifts.
“Found her,” a deep voice calls nearby.
A dark-skinned man holding a big gun walks toward the
tattoo booth with meaning. Manda’s nowhere to be seen, and this man jerks his chin in my direction. “Are you the girl who came from the Island?”
I glance around stunned. But before I’ve worked out my answer, he leans into the booth and roughly yanks back my hoodie. Upon seeing my hair, he sucks his teeth and grabs my arm.
“Hey, wait!” I cry. “Where are you taking me? Where’s Manda?”
Everyone stops to watch as the man tows me along like so much luggage. “Kiniva wants to see you,” he mutters.
“Kanana who?”
“Kiniva.” He pulls me back the way we’d come. “He runs this place.”
“Why?”
The muscle ignores me.
We exit into a hallway through a side door. With so many twists and turns after that, I quickly lose my way. He pushes me into a room that’s furnished well and lit poorly.
On the far end there’s a man sitting in a leather chair. He’s got two leashed dogs that strain their tethers, growling.
“Tranquilo,” the man says between cigar puffs.
Above, lights flicker with too little infused electricity, and there’s a constant drip of water. An unmistakable musky scent of sweaty men permeates the air. We’re lower here, maybe beneath the black market.
With the cigar clenched between large front teeth, the man says, “This latina, Amanda, is she your friend?” He’s dressed in old-style military fatigues of dark green and black, and a maroon beret tops off the image. The gun in his lap is his only other accessory and incredibly modern by contrast.
My nod is cordial.
Kiniva squints when a tendril of smoke finds his eye. “She says to me that someone’s come back from the Island. This true?”
Another nod.
He tsks as if in challenge, while the man holding me brings me closer. “The thing about that place is nobody ever comes back,” Kiniva says, curling a finger around the cigar to motion at me with it. “No. Body. I’m sure you know this to be the case. These other mensos saying, la chica es un fantasma?” He elaborates when he thinks I’ve not understood, “Ghost, flaca, a ghost. They think you’re some … wooooowoooo …” Kiniva wiggles his other hand while making a ghost’s howl. “Estan todos locos? Are they all crazy …?”
He doesn’t let me answer, not that trying to explain I’m corporeal makes any sense. Instead, Kiniva stands and puts a hand out in front of the dogs to stay them. When they fail to listen, he pivots and barks at them—actually barks, as if he’s a dog—before shouldering the gun to walk a circle of smoke around me. He flicks my cheek, making me flinch. “I’m no so supersticioso as those other men; I don’t believe in the spooky things that are really bed sheets in the night.” He puts the cigar into my face. “But I did have to see for myself. You feel as real as any skinny girl I’ve ever met. So, you did really come from the Island, no? They let you go?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“I see.… ” But his expression is clearly one of confusion. Kiniva gestures to me, then back. “Why do they have to keep us so tightly under their heels? Do you think it’s because when you are sick, that is all they see? And my skin, my accent, that is all they see …?”
“Maybe.”
He puffs on his cigar.
The beer has made me brave. “Or they’re afraid of us.”
Kiniva’s gaze sharpens, and he snubs the cigar on a boot, leaning forward with new interest. He gestures for me to continue.
“Maybe they don’t like different,” I go on, “because in this place, it’s easier to control when everything’s the same. You can make slaves out of the same. You’re right; they don’t like me because they can’t control my sickness.” Stepping forward, I conceal a smile when Kiniva swallows and covers his nose. “Permit me to explain, Señor Kiniva, in … Creo que tiene todas las armas que necesita para ser una amenaza. You cannot be controlled. You cannot be understood. The Authority does not like that at all.”
“We are all so civilized,” he says, “while the Authority is allowed to ravage us like rabid dogs.”
He returns to his place near the chair and rubs the massive dome of one of his obviously augmented beasts. They’re humongous, eyes wild and red. They are not your average canine.
“It is only right to put down the animals who turn on us,” Kiniva says. “What say you to that, Ghost Lady?”
My gaze meets his evenly, and he can glean from it what he will.
He laughs. “Si, señorita. I think you and I see eye to eye on this. That island, it must have left a nice impression.”
Kiniva thinks for a moment. “I’d like to invite you to the fights tonight.”
“Dog fights are not really to my taste.”
He chuckles, then gives a whistle. The dogs follow, and he winks at me as they move past. “They do not fight each other, Bonita. Never each other. They are brothers. United.”
This other building where the fights are held is even larger than the first. Stacked seats, stadium-style, hold bodies crammed shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s nothing short of ripe in here. But I’m distracted by the gathering itself.
Hope wells at the visual proof that the Authority hasn’t reined in everyone just yet.
But it’s possible they see a benefit to this place. Let the citizens become strong, but keep their minds weak.
At the stadium’s center is a large fenced ring floored with sand, and that makes me nervous. I’m not exactly spectator material for gladiator fights; I’d just rather buy my books and leave.
And I still haven’t seen Manda. Declining Kiniva’s offer would have been rude, so hopefully she’ll spot me in the crowd and help me sneak away during the fight.
Kiniva has me in his row, and people are staring. Curiosity sits in a few gazes, outright hostility in others.
Handlers walk Kiniva’s massive animals into the arena on the far side. Once free, the dogs attack the fences, but not each other and I let go a breath.
The crowd’s cheer is proof that what happens next is not unexpected by anyone but myself. Other handlers approach the ring, only these are leading zombies.
Two undead, chained at the legs and hands, struggle at the end of long poles, heads in wooden boxes with holes so they can’t bite anyone, although that doesn’t stop them from trying.
I’m so surprised that I can only gape as they march them onto a platform where, in one swift movement, the handlers unshackle and un-box them before pushing them into the pit.
The zombies land on the sand with a fleshy thud, now stuck inside the arena with the dogs. A buzzer sounds and a timer starts to count upward from zero. I cover my eyes.
The crowd’s roar is deafening, and I sneak a peek through my fingers. I’ve never seen zombies outside of being chased back on the Island or the one inside the theatre bathroom. These have eaten recently, and it’s obvious how they change tactic from the fence to the dogs as soon as they realize the futility of clawing at the metal.
There is some sort of minimal thought involved in this decision that raises the hair on my arms. The zombies’ snapping jaws and swinging arms make Kiniva’s animals more careful, too. The two canine brothers look like pit bulls, only three times the size, with wiry fur that curls away from their massive heads. And they work together with such precision—one leads a zombie off, while the other grabs a foot or an ankle; a method they do in several rotations. Seems they’d been trained for this purpose alone.
The work is quick, and red streaks the sand as the dogs finish off the undead in an array of impressively deadly maneuvers.
Before another round can begin, I’m rushing off, hand over my churning stomach. “Bad idea, Liza,” I whisper to myself. “Very, very bad idea.”
The nearest doors spit me back outside instead of into the hallways. Night’s cool air is helping already, though, and I lean against the building’s brick wall with my eyes closed, thinking about heading home on my own. Manda will just have to find me later.
A figure moves in the shadows of the alleyway, startli
ng me. He stops not far from where I stand.
“You can breathe again,” he says. “I already know you’re there.” He seems to notice my hesitation. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.”
That’s what Grey Eyes said, but I’m too busy forcing myself not to puke to try to run. “Would you warn me if you were?” I ask.
“Probably not.” He laughs.
It’s a nice laugh. Doesn’t sound like the laugh a murderer would have. Or a rapist. My sigh from that insane thought is long and loud. Probably the beer.
“You sound too young to be so depressed,” he says.
There’s the hint of a smile in his voice. It’s a nice voice—deep, steady.
“I was just thinking, is all.”
“What about?”
Everything comes out at once. “About how you say I sound too young to be down, and how ironic that is, because at my age, my mother was skydiving over volcanoes and zip lining through the jungle while being offered dance positions in every country that held major studios, and my father, well, he had composed his second great symphony and requiem. So actually, for my age, I’m quite behind, being thoroughly depressed over some larger-than-life issue and career, and very aptly depressed over the state of things, and rightly so, if you ask me, which you didn’t, and here I am blathering … ”
Hand to my head, I mutter to myself, “Instead of having those types of opportunities, I’m watching dogs shred people in some sort of underground cage match.”
Silence hangs between us while I wonder if I haven’t scared him off. Not that that would be a bad thing.
He makes a noise in his throat and says, “That’s strange.”
“Which part?”
“You’re the only other person I’ve ever heard who’s referred to them as people.”
I sniffle. “Well, I don’t usually, but one time … oh, never mind.”
“No, what? Tell me.” He shuffles closer.
“I swear, there was this one … it was as if—this may sound strange—but it was like … it wanted to say something to me.” I move into the moonlight. “Does that sound crazy?”