Hatch

by Kenneth Oppel

  —Let’s go, he told Darren.

  “It doesn’t taste that good,” Darren said aloud, looking wistfully at his burger.

  “It never did,” Seth said.

  “This used to be my favorite burger.”

  —Come on, Seth told him. You’re on TV.

  Darren turned his face to the screen, then slowly stood and followed Seth. At the front of the superstore, Esta, Siena, and Charles were waiting in a cashier’s line. Another cop was doing his slow back-and-forth along the aisle ends.

  —There’s a picture of Darren on TV, he told Esta.

  —We need to go, she replied. Right now.

  —Pay first. We run now, they’ll chase us.

  He didn’t want to wait for the others outside; those cops guarding the door might take a closer look at him. So he stood nearby with Darren, who nibbled at his burger and fries with less and less enjoyment until he scrunched up the bag and dropped it into the garbage.

  Esta was paying the cashier when a scream wrenched Seth’s gaze to the deli counter.

  There was something on the ceiling. It looked like a pale armadillo with six insect legs. It had no fearsome jaws; in fact, it hardly had a head at all, only two globular eyes sunk in the fleshy folds of its body. It stood very still, its eyes flicking to and fro, tracking the people who were running away, shouting and screaming—including a little boy and his mother rushing in Seth’s direction.

  Something big and yellow hit the boy in the back of the head and oozed around his face and neck. With a gasp, Seth realized the yellow goo was actually the end of a very, very long tongue. It originated from the gaping mouth of the armadillo insect on the ceiling, some thirty feet away. The tongue stretched diagonally across the store like a meaty clothesline—and then snapped back.

  The boy was yanked off his feet and flew through the air. Halfway to the creature’s mouth, he hit the top of an aisle-end display, sending glass jars of pasta sauce splattering red all over the floor. The insect’s tongue slackened for a moment, and the boy bounced on the ground, giving his mother a chance to throw herself on top of him.

  “Help me!” she screamed, trying in vain to pull her son free.

  Seth ran. Maybe it was because the boy was so small and gangly; maybe it was because the mother’s anguish struck a deep, echoing chord in him. Shrugging off his protective jacket, he flared his feathers.

  “Move back!” he shouted at the mother.

  With a quick slash, he cut through the thick yellow tongue, sending the severed end snapping back into the creature’s mouth.

  Gunshots rang out, and Seth jerked, half thinking he was the target. But when he looked, he saw two police officers firing on the creature. The bullets sank into its flesh, and it sagged, but fast as a cockroach, it scuttled back through the swinging doors behind the deli counter.

  Suddenly Seth was aware that all eyes were on him, even as he tried to tuck himself back inside his protective jacket.

  “Look!” he heard someone shout.

  “His wings!”

  The small boy looked up at Seth fearfully, still dragging the gooey bits of tongue off his face.

  “He cut me!” his mother cried out.

  Startled, Seth saw the blood on her hands. He must’ve nicked her accidentally with his feathers.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “He’s a hybrid!” she shouted.

  —We’re leaving! Esta cried out to him. Run!

  The cops were looking only at him now. One lifted his gun. Seth heard the shot and the bullet’s dull smack in the cans behind him.

  Suddenly everyone was running and shoving. Shopping carts toppled; people tripped and went sprawling. A huge panicked knot of people jammed the main exit.

  —This way! Seth called out, and pelted down one of the aisles, deeper into the store.

  He saw Siena and grabbed her hand, pulling her along, even as she cried out with the pain of running. He heard cops shouting, saw people staring at them in horror. One big shopper tackled him, but Esta must have stunned him with sound, because the guy grabbed his head, and Seth was up and running again.

  He vaulted over the bakery counter and burst through the kitchen—flour and the smell of fresh bread. He checked behind himself to make sure the others were all still with him, then smashed through a loading door to the outside.

  They were in luck: no one was around. Seth made for the mesh that tented the entire plaza and cut a slit. One by one they pushed through.

  They skirted the edges of a neighborhood. A few lights shone behind windows. A face peered out of one. Seth heard the drone of a distant helicopter, but it quickly faded out. Before long they reached a street that dead-ended with a sign:

  DANGER

  YOU ARE LEAVING THE SPRAY ZONE

  Seth looked at Esta, then at the doubtful faces of Siena, Darren, and Charles.

  “Are you kidding?” Siena asked.

  “It’ll be harder for them to find us outside the Spray Zone,” he said.

  Then he climbed the barrier and kept going.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WHEN ANAYA BURST INTO the infirmary, Mom was sitting on an examination table, a blood-pressure cuff around her arm and a sensor clipped to her index finger. Dr. Weber pulled the thermometer from her ear.

  “I’m fine, really,” Mom said as Anaya threw her arms around her. “It was just one bite, and it barely got me.”

  Anaya whipped a look at Dr. Weber, wanting reassurance, but didn’t get it.

  “You’ve got a fever, Lilah,” Dr. Weber said. “I think we should start a course of antivirals. We’ve had some success reducing—”

  “Is she infected?” Anaya asked, her voice breaking. High mortality rate: those terrible words careened through her head.

  Dad put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think we know for sure yet, sweetie.”

  Nearby stood Sergeant Sumner and Petra, who looked utterly miserable in her wet clothes.

  “It’s because I dived for the eggs,” her friend said, “and I stayed down too long.”

  Petra started to cry, and her mother put her arm around her. Anaya could only stare; she couldn’t bring herself to go comfort her friend. She didn’t even trust herself to speak.

  She turned on Dr. Weber instead. “Why was my mom even outside! She was just supposed to fly the plane!”

  “Anaya—” Mom said. “I was helping. We were all worried.”

  “About Petra, yeah,” she muttered.

  “Anaya,” Dad said gently but firmly.

  She didn’t care if Petra was still crying. She looked at the red mark on her mom’s neck—and remembered how horrifying those mosquito birds felt on her skin. Her poor mom.

  “It was an accident,” Mom said with force. “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I didn’t have my collar done up properly.”

  Mr. Sumner arrived with a stand carrying a bag of intravenous drugs and started setting it up. “Would you like me to get the IV going?” he asked Dr. Weber, and she nodded.

  Anaya watched her mother give a little shiver. Her skin had a waxy sheen to it.

  “Mom,” she said helplessly.

  She’d seen terrible things the past few weeks, but this was the worst. She needed her parents safe; they were the pillars holding up her entire life.

  Her mother gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Come on, let’s be a little optimistic here. This isn’t a death sentence.”

  Anaya wished she hadn’t used that word. She felt herself start to tear up—and then caught a whiff of dirt and pine needles. She looked around the antiseptic sick bay in confusion and realized the smell was in her mind, as was the amber light trembling at the edge of her vision.

  Terra.

  She was less startled this time, but it still pulled the breath from her lungs and she gasped in surprise.

  “Anaya, you okay?” asked Dad.

  “It’s Terra,” she said, sinking down into a chair.

  She wanted to see if she could keep her eyes open
this time. She felt her focus splitting. Before her was the infirmary, her family and friends, but inside her mind was Terra’s silent and shimmering presence. Could she hold them both?

  —Hello.

  Anaya was too upset to stop the anger and fear that poured out of her.

  —My mother’s hurt. She got bitten by those stupid mosquito bird things and now she might die!

  The silence seemed to stretch out a long time. Had Terra even understood her frantic gabble? It was still a mystery how her words got translated inside the cryptogen’s head.

  —Trust, Terra said.

  —Trust? Anaya retorted. Right now? How am I supposed to trust you? How do I know anything you’ve said is the truth?

  —I will help you trust, Terra replied.

  Even though Anaya still had her eyes open, her focus was suddenly consumed by the growing amber pulse in her head. It was a bit like the box that Terra sent her at the bunker’s antenna farm. And now she did squeeze her eyes tight so she could concentrate.

  “Anaya?” she heard Mom say. “Are you in pain?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She tried to block out the sound around her. Before her mind’s eye she watched a shape draw itself with light, and instinctively she knew this was important.

  “I need something to write with!” she called out, and a moment later felt a pencil and pad of paper pushed into her hands.

  She traced the image taking shape in her head. It began with a hexagon. Some of the sides were a single line, some double. More lines radiated from the hexagon at different points, branching and spawning new geometric shapes. She hurried to keep up. The growing image flared very brightly, then faded to nothing. She felt suddenly alone. Terra was gone without even a good-bye.

  Blinking, she stared at what she’d drawn. “Looks like something from chemistry class.”

  “You saw this in your head?” Petra asked.

  “They’re molecules,” Dr. Weber said. “May I?” She took the pad and showed it to the others. “Carbon, hydrogen, potassium . . .”

  “Why’d she want you to see this?” asked Sergeant Sumner.

  “To help me trust her,” Anaya replied. “It felt like she was giving me a gift.”

  “How?” Petra asked.

  Dr. Weber started scribbling notations around the diagram. “It may well be a gift. It’s a chemical compound.”

  “A medicine?” Anaya asked hopefully, looking at Mom.

  Dr. Weber glanced up with a quick nod. “I think it’s the formula for an antiviral drug.”

  PETRA WOKE UP IN total darkness.

  Her eyes were open, she could feel her eyelids fluttering, but she saw nothing. Even if it was the middle of the night, where was the pale glow behind the curtains from the base’s floodlights? Or the simple line of light underneath the bedroom door? Was there a power outage?

  No, there was definitely something over her eyes. Her eyelashes were brushing against it. She reached up and touched thick scales. Her heart battered her ribs. She sat up and cried out for Anaya—

  Except she couldn’t open her mouth. Her fingers flew down to her lips.

  Where was her mouth?

  Her entire face was encrusted. She dug her fingernails between her lips, cracking through the scaly stuff, tearing it away in strips, spitting it out of her mouth in disgust.

  “Anaya!” she gasped. Her voice made a weird whistly sound through the hole she’d made. “Anaya!”

  “Hmm?” her friend murmured, half asleep.

  “There’s something on my face! I can’t see!”

  She heard her friend moving, then the click of the lamp—and then Anaya’s shriek.

  Which made her shriek. “What? What is it?”

  “Your face, it’s—”

  “What! Oh my God, what’s wrong with it?”

  “Okay, calm down,” Anaya said, sounding very much like she was trying to calm herself down. “I think it’s what happened to your skin, you know, on your legs and arms. I think your face is . . . molting.”

  Petra’s hands touched her chin, cheeks, forehead. She gouged out her ear holes. All this had happened overnight while she slept! The only bit that was clear was her nostrils, which explained why she hadn’t suffocated.

  “Okay,” she panted, “so I’m not blind.”

  “No, just . . . crusted over.”

  “Is it really hideous?”

  The shortest of pauses. “No.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “It’s hideous.”

  “Anaya! You’re not supposed to say that!”

  “I thought you wanted the truth!”

  “I want to see!”

  “Don’t scratch at your eyes!” Anaya told her. “Maybe you should wait for Dr. Weber.”

  All she could see was a vague glow and a blurred shadow that was Anaya.

  “I’m being punished,” she gasped.

  “What? You are not being punished, Petra.”

  She could barely think. Huge, jagged thoughts ricocheted off the walls of her head.

  “It’s because I ate the egg! I ate one of them! I couldn’t stop myself.”

  She could still taste it in her mouth, the spurt of flavor each time she’d bitten down. Crunchy and sweet, and utterly delicious. She’d wanted to stuff more into her mouth!

  “And I stayed down there way too long. I wanted to be in the water, Anaya! So it’s my fault your mom got bitten!”

  “No, Petra! I’m sorry I was mean about it. I was really upset. It’s not your fault.”

  Anaya was just being nice. Petra did calm breathing, a trick she’d learned from a therapist in a different lifetime. It wasn’t working.

  “I’m a monster,” she said.

  “You are not a monster,” Anaya said, then added quietly, “I’ve done it, too.”

  “What have you done?” she asked, astonished.

  “Last night. Coming back from the sick bay, I saw a vine growing up from a crack in the pavement. I ripped it out so I could show Dr. Weber. But when I saw the berries on it, I had to eat them. And then I ate the vine itself, all of it.” Her friend paused. “I couldn’t help it. It tasted so good.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “I did. I mean, I told them where the vine was growing so they could spray. But I didn’t tell them I ate it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I felt ashamed. It wasn’t the first time.”

  Petra exhaled slowly. She wasn’t alone in craving cryptogenic food.

  “Wish you’d told me,” she said. “Still, doesn’t make it better. We’re changing. We have no control over ourselves. What’re we going to do next?”

  “It makes sense, though,” said Anaya. “We’re half them. They probably eat this stuff, so we want it, too.”

  “Remember when you said, I’m still me? What if it’s not like that? What if we’re not going to stay the same inside? What if we’re going to change on the outside and the inside? What if we start thinking like them?”

  Anaya said nothing, and Petra felt uneasy, wondering what was going on in her friend’s head. She worried that all these transmissions with Terra had unbalanced her. Anaya believed everything she was told! She was way too trusting. It was like she saw everything from Terra’s point of view instead of theirs. Did that mean Anaya was becoming more like the cryptogens?

  And was she, too?

  She felt Anaya take her hand and hold it for a few quiet seconds.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” her friend said. “But I feel a lot better knowing I’m not alone.”

  “Yeah.” It was a comforting little thought, but she couldn’t help wishing Seth were with them, too.

  “You want me to go wake up your parents?” Anaya asked.

  She sighed heavily. “Thanks.”

  A few minutes later, she felt Mom’s arms around her and heard her dad saying he’d call Dr. Weber right away. She relaxed into her mother’s embrace, glad she couldn’t see how people w
ere looking at her. If only she could disappear entirely.

  When Dr. Weber arrived, she said, “You’re fine, Petra. It’s definitely the same process we saw with the rest of your skin.”

  “Shedding like a snake, you mean.”

  “More or less.”

  “Can you get it off, please?”

  “I think so. Let’s go to the bathroom. There’s more light. Could the rest of you wait here?”

  “I want Anaya.”

  The three of them went inside the bathroom, and Dr. Weber sat her down on the covered toilet.

  “I’m going to remove a piece on your cheek first.”

  “You’re not using a scalpel or anything, are you?” she asked.

  “Only a pair of tweezers.”

  She felt Anaya squeeze her hand as the tweezer tips crackled through the crust.

  “It comes off easily,” said Dr. Weber. “Close your eyes now.”

  She felt the tweezers peel the scale away from her right eye, then her left.

  “How’s that?” Dr. Weber asked after clearing a little more of the surrounding skin.

  She opened her eyes and saw Anaya smiling at her reassuringly.

  “Wow, your skin is so smooth,” her friend said.

  “I want to see.”

  “Maybe wait until—” Anaya began to say.

  She went to the mirror and choked back a yelp. The sight was truly frightful: a scaly red shell covered her entire head. She squinted.

  “Where—is—my—hair?”

  “Maybe it’s just underneath?” Anaya said uncertainly.

  She gripped the edge of the sink. She wasn’t sure which was worse, being blind or being bald.

  “It’s underneath the scale,” Dr. Weber said, looking more closely. “I can see it.”

  That was good. She had hair. Petra looked at her reflection, Her new skin was beautiful. She could already see the hint of patterning. She’d have a tattooed face as well. She could live with that, as long as she had hair.

  She stared herself in the eyes and thought: Am I really still me?

  SETH LOOKED AT THE donuts behind the glass and didn’t want any of them. He’d had his fill last night and still had their oily aftertaste in his mouth.

  After leaving the Spray Zone, they’d sprinted, then jogged, then walked, and finally reached a desolate industrial strip. The long road, cratered with living pit plants, was flanked by warehouses and self-storage lockers and car lots. Asphalt and gravel and chain-link fences crawled with black vines and razor wire. Charles had kicked open the door of a miserable-looking coffee place, and they’d sprawled in the back room, eating stale donuts, until they fell asleep.