by Katie French
Corra doesn’t care about Mo’s life. The only thing she sees is a one-way ticket out of that hellhole bunker she was living in. If I’m along, at least I can try to protect Mo. For Riley.
Before I left, I hinted to that Betsy girl what my plan was, taking care of Mo, rescuing her from Corra when the time came, but I don’t think she was all there. So that means Riley could think I’m in on it. But she knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t betray her. Right?
“Almost there,” Corra says, her arms stiff as she navigates the solar car over the windswept roads.
I look out the window. Mo is on my lap, still naked, but with a makeshift diaper this time. The drugs Corra gave her did help to stabilize her, but she’s still in serious jeopardy. This Nessa woman better know what the hell she’s doing.
“Tell me again what the plan is once we get to Albuquerque,” I ask, looking out at the remains of civilization. On the left and right are patches of swept sand, with the occasional building peeking out. I see a metal structure half-buried that must’ve been a swing set next to a house that leans at a forty-five-degree angle, its roof gone and its windows in little glass shards along the frame’s edges. Razor sharp.
“Let me do all the talking when we get there,” Corra says, her eyes focused and steady. “Nessa knows me. She knows that I do what I say I’m going to do.”
“Didn’t you betray her and steal her favorite creation? That’s what got you into this mess, right?”
Corra glances sideways at me before staring back down the road. “Water under the bridge.”
“For her, or for you?” It’s important I tread a fine line here between believable skepticism and downright disagreement. Corra has to think I’m on her side.
“Nessa has always been a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. Just like me. I am bringing her what she wants. And in exchange, she will give us immunity. We can start work as scientists again. Doctors.” She looks over at me, arching one eyebrow.
It’s what she thinks I want. To be free of Clay. To save myself the heartbreak of loving a girl who will never love me back. And to work helping people again. Corra says I have more training working with patients than half the doctors at the hospital now. But then, she might just be buttering me up.
“Sounds great,” I say, trying to make my voice sound genuine. The truth is I’d love to work with patients, but from everything I hear, the hospital is a nightmare. And working for one lunatic, like I did for Merek at the bullet factory, was enough for one lifetime.
Corra’s hand finds its way to my knee, as her eyes stay on the road. “We’ll be together,” she says softly. “No more heartache. No more eating bugs.” She gives a barking sort of laugh and continues. “We’ll protect each other.” Biting her lip, she turns to look at me with that flirtatious way she has.
I smile, but I know Corra. She likes anything that moves. She’s used that same gaze on Riley, Clay, her men, anyone who might have something she wants.
Hugging Mo a bit tighter, I turn my eyes to the road. A few piles of brick that used to be businesses line either side. A leaning light pole blocks out half the road, and Corra maneuvers the solar car around it.
I think about Riley, how she’s reacting to coming home and finding Mo gone. She’ll be devastated. And I helped cause her that pain. I just hope she’ll see why I had to do what I did.
We crest a hill and Corra says, “There.”
Ahead is a city skyline bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. Albuquerque.
Most of the buildings I’ve run into are two or three stories, max. Some of the ones ahead must climb twenty to thirty stories. And there are so many buildings clumped in such a small space. Where I’m from, there is mostly sand with buildings here and there. We are headed to a place where there are no empty spaces, just lots and lots of dark alleys. Places to hide.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I ask, eying the multitude of places marauders and thugs could be hiding.
She gives me a sly grin. “Who said anything about it being safe?” One hand floats down to the gun in her lap.
She insisted on leaving most of her guns behind, stating that Nessa would just take them all away when we got there anyway. I protested that we’d need to make it to Nessa first. So she gave me a very nice handgun and a box of bullets. She took the same for herself. The rest she left in her cache just in case.
If Clay finds them, he’ll have a field day.
Mo stirs in my lap and bats out with a tiny fist. I stroke her hair and watch as her mouth makes little puckered sucking sounds. “If she wakes up and Riley isn’t here . . .”
Corra looks down at Mo. “I gave her one hell of a sedative. She won’t wake up.”
I narrow my eyes. “Should you give someone in insulin shock a sedative?”
“Oh, you know so much about her condition?” she asks. “Doctor.”
The mocking tone in her voice makes me want to deck her, but I swallow it down. “No. It’s just that from what I understand about insulin shock—”
“This isn’t insulin shock, and you don’t understand. Leave the treatment and diagnosis to me, okay? I mean, I made her, after all.”
“Right,” I say because I have nothing else to say. How can you argue with that?
We quiet as we drive through tighter, narrower streets. The buildings grow closer together, squeezing us in and making it harder and harder to escape if someone were to come after us. But it looks like that is unlikely to happen. We see no one out as we drive past. Deserted street after deserted street streaks by. Bullet holes and burn marks curl up once inhabited buildings. A perfectly usable car sits in the middle of the street ahead, the door wide open. Something happened here. Something bad.
When I look over at Corra’s face, I can tell she’s worried, too.
“Where is everyone?” she whispers.
“There used to be people here, right?” I ask.
She nods slowly.
Corra drives through the city, her eyes darting around. I spot feet and then a body lying in an alley, but we’re going too fast to make out what happened, and thank God. I hold Mo to my chest and keep my other hand on the gun in my lap. When I look over, Corra is doing the same thing.
The only building lit up, even though it’s still only twilight, rises in front of us. I was told the Breeders’ hospital was a shiny beacon, the last lighthouse on a rocky shore, but it doesn’t look like I expected. The exterior looks gritty, dirty. Several windows are smashed out. It looks like the building has been shot at. Attacked.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask Corra as she pulls up the drive and turns at an old sign that says, “Emergency Room West.”
“I’m going around the side. That’s what Nessa said to do. Put Mo down in the backseat. Cover her up,” Corra adds, gesturing.
“I thought we were taking her in?” Riley would be furious if she knew we’d left her baby in a solar car with lunatics around.
“We will. But we can’t just walk in with her. Then Nessa will have everything she wanted and no reason to bargain.”
“You think she won’t check the car?” Nervously, I do what she says, then sit and watch as we pass under a concrete overpass and drive around to a parking garage. The hospital itself is huge. I wonder how many people live inside its seven stories of metal and glass. The large parking lot is as empty as the town. There are signs of battle here too. A dried smear of blood that drags along the receiving area. The front doors are blasted to pieces, open with glass littering the ground like snow.
Two guards dressed in black with military-grade rifles step out and hold out a hand for Corra to stop. She brakes the solar car.
My heartbeat picks up a ragged tempo.
“Out of the car!” they order, aiming at us. “Now!”
“Okay, okay,” Corra says, holding her hands up in surrender. “Leave the gun in the car,” she says to me.
“Are you crazy?” I ask, looking at the guards’ lethal guns.
“Do
it,” she says, opening the door and letting her gun slide onto the floor.
Knowing this is all a huge mistake, I open my door, stepping out without my gun. It falls to the solar car’s floor with a heavy thud. Then I stand up, holding my breath.
“State your business,” one guard says. He’s middle-aged and thin with close-cut brown hair and tan skin. The one next to him is older, late fifties or early sixties with little hair to speak of and a scarred left cheek. They both look more thin and frail than I’d picture an infamous Breeders guard being. But then, the guns are formidable, huge black monstrosities with long barrels and a stock that holds dozens of bullets. A gun like those Corra insisted we leave at home.
“We’re here on the invitation of Nessa Vandewater. She knows we’re coming. We’re delivering something to her.” Corra says all this with her head held high, no sign of fear in her voice. She’s better at acting than I am.
“You’re the two benders,” the older guard says with a sneer.
Corra stiffens.
“Don’t they castrate benders at birth?” the younger guard says to the older, a hint of a mean smile on his face.
The older guard laughs. “Nothing to castrate. Their willies fall off a couple days after they’re born.”
“These two are pretty though,” the younger guard says, eying Corra. “Look a lot like girls. Think they look like girls down there?”
The older guard nods and stalks toward Corra. The other heads toward me. “Only one way to find out.”
I get ready to run, but realize there’s nowhere to go that won’t leave me mowed down by bullets. Does Corra have a plan for when this all goes horribly wrong?
“Hold on,” Corra says, stepping back. “Nessa invited us. She told us to come. You have no right coming near us.”
The older guard grips Corra by the neck, pressing the gun to her chest. He sneers as she struggles. “Nessa? The old bat’s not in charge here anymore.”
The younger guard grabs my arm, yanking me to him. His hot, smelly body presses into mine, sweat and grime and the sour odor of clothes not washed making me cringe and writhe, but then the gun barrel fits securely between my shoulder blades. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“She ain’t in charge anymore. We are.”
Clay
“There it is,” I say to Ethan sittin’ in the cab beside me. He looks up, and I watch his face as he takes in Albuquerque again.
The last time we were here, I killed my own pa and was almost done in by the mother I never knew I had. But I got Riley back and gained this family I never knew I was missin’. Good trade. Real good trade.
But now, at the prospect of seein’ my mother again, the woman I tried to kill and failed, a knife twists in my gut. She plays with my head, makes me feel weak and childish. I hate to admit it, but she may be the only person in the world I’m scared of. Why in the hell are we drivin’ toward her instead of away?
I know the answer before I turn it over and kick it around. Riley. Riley wants Mo, and I love Riley. I’d drive into a thousand hornets’ nests if she asked me to.
Glancin’ in the rearview, I see her solar car behind me. She’s got Auntie in the front seat and Besty and the new girl in the back. Four women. If two of ’em weren’t the best badasses I’d ever seen, I’d be worried.
But when the hospital comes into view, I start to doubt myself. Something about the town doesn’t feel right. Twilight is business time for the town’s folk. From what I’ve seen, months ago when I was here, the night bazaar is usually in full swing right about now. Vendors come out. Smells of street food and catcalls and the curlin’ scent of devil’s weed filter through the air. Tonight, I smell nothin’. Hear nothin’. There’s not a soul on the street and no lights of cook fires or dancin’ flames of torches down the alleyways.
Worse, the streets are getting too narrow and choked with debris for my semi to make it. The solar car will be just fine, but when I snag a car carcass and make a horrible noise draggin’ it several feet until it grinds away, caught on a light pole, I know we can’t take the semi any further.
“Shit,” I say, pullin’ over and brakin’.
“What is it, Clay?” Ethan looks over at me, the revolver I gave him clutched tight in his hand.
“Nothin’ to worry about, bud. I might need to hoof it the rest of the way. We’ll get you in the car with Riley.”
He shakes his head, his long hair falling into his eyes. “I wanna stay with you.”
“You will,” I say, rustlin’ his hair. “Just, you’ll be in the car, and I’ll be out there. With this.” Reaching down I draw out my prize, the high-tech, state-of-the-art, fully automatic gun Calico M12-70, a gun so sophisticated I want to kiss it.
His eyes light up. “That gun is awesome.”
Runnin’ my hand along the gun’s nose, I nod. “You’re damn right.”
Hoppin’ down from the truck, I walk Ethan back to the solar car. Riley meets my gaze with concern on her face.
“What is it?” she says, steppin’ out, eyes rovin’ around the crumbled buildings on either side like decaying canyon walls.
“Somethin’s not right,” I say, scannin’ too. “And I can’t go any farther in that monster.” I nod back to the semi-truck. “Take Ethan with you. I’m gonna walk.”
“Clay.” She frowns.
I give her a reassuring smile. “I’m fully armed. No worries.”
But she looks worried anyway.
“I’ll walk with him.” Desdemona steps out of the solar car, stretchin’ her long legs. Then she retrieves her bow and arrows from the hatch.
Riley looks between us, her brow furrowed.
Desdemona raises an eyebrow. “Can’t no one else drive that thing,” she says of the solar car. “And your brother can’t fit unless someone gets out. You think I’m gonna let an old lady walk instead of me? ‘Hey, granny, get to steppin’.” She shakes her head and then slips the sand-colored mask over her hair and face.
Riley sighs. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I gotta get away from Betsy’s muttering anyway. That girl fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch down.” Desi whispers, walkin’ over to stand beside me.
“Don’t worry. If there’s any trouble, I got us covered.” I show her the gun.
She nods in proper appreciation of a machine so deadly. “They say you’re the best shot they’ve ever seen.”
I shrug.
She narrows her eyes. “I’ve seen some pretty good shots.”
I furrow my brow. “Like who?”
She shrugs. “Well, I’m pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.”
“I can’t shoot worth a damn with one of those things, but I bet you could figure this puppy out in about ten minutes.” I tap a hand against the gun barrel.
She gives me that small smirk of hers, the one that lets me know she’s with us, but still calculating how far in. “I prefer a weapon that won’t run out of lead.”
The solar car starts again with its quiet purr. Riley drives around the semi and slowly ahead as Desi and I walk behind it, scannin’ the buildings and alleyways, the car husks and piles of trash. There should be people somewhere, signs of life, but there just ain’t.
“This isn’t right,” I mumble.
She looks over at me.
“There should be noise, music, people. Where’d they go?”
Quietly, she looks for the answers in the high-rises, their blank windows like empty sockets.
“So, you and Riley, huh? You really want to make a go of it? Love and marriage and all that?”
“That girl is my whole world.”
“I figured, if you’re willing to walk into this place for her. Nothing like love to make you do a stupid thing like that.”
“You ever been here before today?” I ask, checkin’ out a commuter bus on our right that’s burned to just the frame.
“My ma said if anyone ever tried to take me this way to run or kill myself. Said the hospital was worse than h
ell.”
“She was a Breeders’ girl?” I ask.
“Former Breeders’ girl. They sold her as a sex slave when she couldn’t reproduce. Then, low and behold, I was born. So those docs aren’t all that smart. Anyway, I figure I owe them for what they did to my mom.” Her voice is hard.
“That explains why you were so willing to come along. But it won’t be that easy.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “What about my life has ever been easy?”
“True. So revenge? That’s what runs your motor?”
“Nothing makes you feel more alive than killing your enemies. And I mean that in the most normal, well-adjusted way possible.” She steps over a pile of something nasty, but manages to keep pace with me.
“Too bad my enemy is blood kin.” Nessa has hurt enough people. It’s time I put a stop to it once and for all.
“How’s it feel to be the son of the most hated woman in America?”
I look over and see that she’s teasing me. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I decide making a joke’s easier’n getting pissed. “It feels like shit. How’d you think it’d feel?”
“Like shit,” she says, agreeing. “I guess it’s good she didn’t raise you.”
I decide not to tell her what an extraordinary piece of shit my pa was. “Guess I lucked out in that regard.”
The cawin’ of birds has been pickin’ up steadily for the last few paces, but now it’s too loud to ignore. Wherever and whatever they are, there must be a lot of damn birds. As I listen, Desdemona turns her head toward the sound.
“Crows,” she says quietly, drawing a bow from her quiver.
“Why so many?” I adjust the heavy gun.
“One way to find out.”
She runs up and raps on Riley’s window. When Riley rolls it down, she tells her to hang on just a minute, that we’re going to go check somethin’ out. Together, she and I take a side street and follow the sound of birds.
But the closer we get, the more my senses pick up how wrong things really are. There’s a smell that’s growin’, something rotten and decayed. And there are more signs of battle. Bullet holes in brick and wood, spots of new blood on concrete patches, and the singed remains of a fire that burned fairly recently in the buildings on this side of the city.