“What?”
Eli shrugged. “I know because I was a soldier before. Did you have anyone arrested from your class, or simply vanish?”
I shut my eyes as my best friend’s face swam before my vision.
His hand brushed my shoulder and stroked my cheek, his thumb tracing along my bottom lip. “Iia? Are you okay?”
I looked at him, unable to speak. I nodded, even though I didn’t feel okay. I should have known we had no secrets. By letting my guard down, my friend had paid the price. He’d used this place to swap for black market parts and technology and met with other students doing the same. If I had known, I could’ve warned him, and he would still be around.
“You don’t look okay.”
“It’s nothing.” I broke his gaze and turned toward where the giant stood, looking back at Eli as something came to mind. “What about Akoni? He’s too big to go unnoticed.” The bushes rustled and the rebel vanished.
“Guess that’s your answer. He’s not going with us.”
“Okay, let’s get out of here.” I wanted to get to the train station quickly and put as much distance between myself and the giant as I could.
Within minutes, we were on my old campus. So many emotions washed over me as I saw the old barracks and students just waking up and milling around. Students stopped in their tracks, conversations ceased and eyes watched us. My heart skipped a beat.
Eli reached out and grabbed my arm, and gave me a sharp jerk, nearly taking me off my feet. “Where did you think you were sneaking off to?” His voice rose enough for everyone to hear, and it didn’t take much to understand. He’d realized at the same time as I had; we stuck out. Best to make it look like he’d caught a student breaking the rules. With my youthful appearance, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume I went to class here.
“Let go of me. I wasn’t doing anything.” I struggled, doing my best to break free, but Eli held on as though he were indeed apprehending me.
“We’ll see what the Dean has to say about that.” He gave me another jerk, and I shot him a dirty look, worthy of some kind of award.
Damn, he was good. I almost believed him. All the students who’d stopped to watch resumed whatever they were doing, no longer looking in our direction, for fear they would get caught up in whatever I’d done.
Looking the other way had become a safety mechanism. I’d never seen how programmed our behaviors were until the entire campus full of students didn’t see me, the girl in civilian dress being dragged away by a soldier. A man who didn’t carry a weapon, who wore a wet uniform and no face-shield. There were a thousand reasons to question the event, but no one did. They were too afraid to look closer, see what really took place before their eyes.
I had to ask myself, how many times had I been the same, turning a blind eye to the injustices committed before me?
Their crisp red uniforms and polished boots spoke of their futures. Oppressed. Controlled. Puppets. Before, when I’d been here, I hadn’t seen it, but I did now. I wanted to scream they had no idea what they were getting into. I wanted to warn them not to sneak off and party or build illegal devices, but I couldn’t, not without drawing attention back to us.
Eli dragged me down the walk, not slowing. “Come on.”
“Ease up,” I snapped. “You’re going to yank my arm out of the socket.”
“We’ve got to get out of the open. Someone will question what’s going on and contact security. I don’t want to be here when they do.”
We traveled a couple of blocks before we turned the corner beside a dormitory and headed toward the pede station.
Shit! I stopped mid-step, Eli in sync beside me, his hand on my wrist.
Neither of us spoke—most likely, he found himself as unable as I to process what happened before us.
His grip tightened to near-crushing, but I didn’t flinch. Something else held my attention, something so horrible my mind had a hard time categorizing what it took in through my eyes. I couldn’t fit what I saw into a neat little box, to sift through later and analyze, convince myself it could be fixed. It couldn’t.
Nothing could undo what happened before us, and I had every doubt in the world anything could stop it.
The hair on my nape stood on end, my heart seized and my joints locked, even though my brain screamed, take cover! Run!
Yes, I’d heard Eli say the bees could kill people, but seeing it was entirely different from anything my mind could’ve imagined.
Heat rolled before the swarm like a rogue wind, its stench a combination of vaporized clothing, burnt flesh and melted hair. The taste of death coated my tongue and inside my nostrils, impossible to escape. Red hot sparks and grainy bits of ash pelted my face as the bees drew closer.
People screamed, running straight toward where Eli and I stood as the black cloud devoured those in the back. Lightning danced within the mass, a mesh net of electricity, expanding and contracting as though it breathed. As the bees shocked, they lost their charge and dropped, rebooting before they hit the ground. Once recovered, they shot skyward. Then they’d start all over again, launching forward and delivering another dose of voltage. This movement by hundreds of thousands of the drones caught up the ash left behind from their victims and pulled it into the updraft and subsequent downdraft from the dropping drones.
Round and round like a funnel cloud on its side, the swarm of ash and bees rolled down the street, cremating every living being in sight. The buzz of thin silica wings drowned the terrified screams of the panicked students as they were consumed.
“Run.” Eli jerked my arm, its effect like a slap to the face. “Run, Iia!”
“Oh, God.” But I didn’t move. I couldn’t. As sure as I’d glued my feet to the street, terror had frozen me in my boots. “Eli…”
Eli didn’t wait for me to act. He took off, not letting go of my wrist, dragging me behind him. My brain registered the danger at the same time I stumbled and fell to my knees. Strong hands seized my shoulders, lifting me to my feet. Fingers clamped onto my wrist again, and we were off, headed toward a side street leading to a waste treatment building.
I knew without him saying it. We were going into the sewers again, and for once, we were in agreement.
Did the swarm follow as we turned the corner of a building? I took a second to glance back, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
The cloud twisted and funneled around the structure and drove straight at us.
“Faster!” Eli yelled and jerked my arm as he picked up speed. The sound and stench grew stronger from behind us, but I didn’t dare to look back again. We couldn’t spare the second it would take to do so. The heat of the swarm scorched my neck, my skin stinging as the buzz of thousands of tiny wings roared in my ears, ready to consume us. Daylight vanished as darkness rolled over us, and just as I thought we were dead, we leapt down a set of stairs, skipping five steps and landing in an underground parking facility. The swarm reached the building when our feet hit the primary landing, some of the bees continued through the opening. One hit my shoulder, delivering a shock that traveled down my arm into my fingers. Eli’s grasp slipped, but he caught my fingers before we broke contact and swung me around a corner, using the momentum to catapult us down a hallway.
Most of the bees hit the side of the building, the swarm too big to squeeze its mass all at once through the opening. The copper bodies colliding with the brick were reminiscent of metallic popcorn, if there were such a thing. Ting, ting, ting, ting…
The pings and buzzing grew so loud I couldn’t hear anything Eli shouted, or even the sound of my boots slapping the concrete floor as I ran for my life. I doubted if I screamed as loud as I could, I’d hear myself, or if I’d had the breath that I’d have done it.
We flew through an open door to a glass lift. I spun around in time to see the doors slam shut behind us and a barrage of bees impact the clear barrier. I backed up until my backside hit the rear wall of the lift. I raised my free hand to my breast, covering my heart, and t
hough I wanted to, I couldn’t summon a scream.
Silence. Every breath, my chest expanding as my lungs inflated halfway, and the quick whoosh out as I expelled, all seemed amplified. My head buzzed, static filled my vision. Eli stood beside me, still holding my hand, his pulse throbbing against my palm. I knew I was alive, but my mind seemed in awe of it. There I stood, breathing against all odds, watching bees hammer the glass doors.
I should be ash. I turned and looked at Eli in disbelief. We should be ash.
A jolt shook the lift, and the floor lurched. My gaze jumped up to the panel as air hissed into the chamber, pressurizing the compartment to prepare for ascent. The bees continued to hit, wave after wave, battering the door. More bees surrounded the clear tube housing the capsule and stretched along the outside of the building to the roof. Tiny fractures cracked across the surface. And then I registered we were going up. “Do something, Eli!” I yanked free of his hand and stared at the darkening sky, only night because of the swarm blocking the sun. More and more bees filled the air, diving toward our fishbowl.
He punched the down button several times. Somebody had called for a ride. The bees followed our ascent, continuing to assault the glass outer tube as we rose toward the roof.
“Not that way.”
“I can’t stop it.” Jab, jab, jab. “I don’t have a chip so it won’t take a command from me.”
“It’s going to the roof. You have to shut it down. It’s open up there, and they are following us!”
Jab. Jab. Jab. “It’s not working,” Eli said.
“Then we improvise.” The cracks in the outer tube grew larger as we passed the second and third floor.
I shoved Eli out of the way, leaned back and kicked the control panel as hard as I could several times, putting the weight of my body into each impact. The sound of breaking glass filled the tube. The bees had cracked through the outer pipe and were working on the capsule holding us.
The metal panel covering the control center fell off. I reached inside, grabbed the wires and yanked. Electricity arced off the exposed wire, biting into my hand. The jolt traveled through me in one hard blast, enough to make me wonder if I levitated before I landed on my ass. The smell of burnt hair and ozone filled my nostrils. The lift stopped.
Chips of glass began to crumble outside as the bees beat against the fracturing glass of our capsule. Our last line of defense weakened further by the second. I blinked to clear the bright lights dancing before my eyes and tried to get up, but my limbs failed me.
“What do I do?” Eli was back at the panel.
“Yellow to green—to reverse direction.” I gasped for breath. “Hurry.”
He put them together, and the lift dropped, rocketing toward the basement. The down light flashed, instead of blinking at each floor. “We’re going too fast,” he said.
“Hold them together.”
“How long?”
I raised my finger, and began counting down in my head as the tenth floor rushed past.
“We’re getting close. When?”
I shook my head.
“We’re going to—”
“Apart!”
Eli did as instructed. A metallic screeching from the emergency brake shrieked through the tube so loud, I truly believed my eardrums would rupture. The elevator came to a stop, lurching and rocking on the cable, throwing Eli off his feet. He landed on top of me, knocking me back to the floor of the lift. My shoulders pressed into the hard surface, his face a mere inch from mine. And for several seconds we just stared into each other’s eyes.
I lifted my gaze to the top of the glass tube, where small holes had opened from the entos’ assault. A second later and the lift would’ve been full of bees. We were underground and safe for the moment. Their power source didn’t work down here, or if it did, not enough to get a charge they needed to kill as they had outside. The lights popped on and off. On and off, the swarm drawing power from the building.
“They almost broke through.”
“Yeah.” Eli nodded and climbed off me.
Bzzzzzzzzzzz. He looked over at the corner and stomped on a bee. “Almost.” Sparks popped under his rubber sole, and then silence. “How did you know sticking those wires together would work?”
“I didn’t. But I know basic wiring. I hoped I guessed right. You were preventing the brake from clamping down with the current. Once we cut the electricity, the emergency brake activated.”
“Lucky for us, you knew what you were doing.” He reached down, offering his hand.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people outside didn’t make it down here with us. That person on the roof…”
“Whoever they were, they died quickly.”
It didn’t make me feel any better. I shook my head. “I stopped the elevator from going up. I stopped them from getting to safety. I…” My knees shook, and I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. Way too much death, and one more seemed it would be my breaking point.
As if sensing I were about to crumble, Eli reached out and pulled me into his arms, cradling me in his embrace, the only thing keeping me intact. “It’s not your fault, Iia,” he said softly, his breath brushing my cheek. “They wouldn’t have made it into the elevator in time and were probably dead shortly after they hit the up button.”
Eli was right, but I couldn’t help but blame myself. If not for me, the bees wouldn’t be on the rampage, hunting anyone human and cremating them. But right now, we had no time to mourn. We needed to get the towers shut down and quick. I slapped my palm into his and studied his grim expression. “Now it’s started, it won’t stop, will it?”
“No. Things get a bit trickier from here on out.”
I rise from where I sit and move for my kitchen to prepare breakfast for myself and my guest. With a glance out the window, I can see morning blooming on the horizon. Pinks and oranges light the eastern sky, creeping over the skyline. Liquid light pours out and illuminates the city in warm gold as though it were a canvas. I can’t help but stare in awe for several moments. Even the ruins were beautiful this time of day.
“I’ve survived a lot more than bee attacks. The raiders once made a move on the quarantine area. I thought for sure I’d die.”
“But you somehow turned them around.”
“Oh yeah, with my ghost army.”
“Your ghost army?”
“Remember the images I told you to ignore when we passed the gates?”
“You are responsible for them?”
I smile when I think about how I’d done it, splicing old films together and marrying the footage to my own creative images. The old theatre had provided more than enough material. “Yes, and I’m lucky I thought to create them. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, talking to you.”
Los Angeles, The Quarantine Zone. Five months since I’d left Sententia
The rumble of engines had me running toward the quarantine gates. Every day they’d gotten closer, and this time I feared they were coming in. I’d found a trunk in an old theatre with makeup and fake sores and various other items to make a believable plague victim. Motion picture cameras on the other side of the zone gave me the digital footage. I prayed they bought it. My bees were on high alert back at the compound. I couldn’t risk bringing them and giving the raiders a reason to delve into my neighborhood, but my safety felt naked without them.
It had taken hours to make the ghosts look convincing, and I’d made some jelly from the fruit I’d grown to use as ooze for the sores. If my holo film failed to scare them away, nothing would keep them out. I waited patiently from the third floor of an old office building, biting my lip as the horde approached. They stopped at the gates. For a moment, I thought they’d turn around. But they didn’t. If the sensors didn’t work, and I must’ve tested them a thousand times, they’d come inside and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.
I ran from the window, down the stairs and out the back. It was critical I get to the projection room, in case my equipment didn’t work.
&n
bsp; I hopped on my homemade hover. Angel stood beside me, waiting to take his position on the bench seat next to me. “No, you can’t come. Stay here.”
He whined but sunk to his belly in a submissive move. I started the silent engine and spun around, eyeing Angel in the rear-view mirror. He’d stood but hadn’t moved. I shot forward and continued to watch my dog, ensuring he did not follow. I didn’t want him in danger, nor did I want the raiders to see I had a pet, making them wonder what else I had.
My chickens and pigs pursued me along the sides of their pens, a habit developed when I shoveled scraps out the back of the hover during feeding time. I knew to anyone around here, this would be a jackpot, and if I were dead, it wouldn’t matter if they found it. Still, the thought of having someone take all my hard work and use it for their benefit, especially a blood-thirsty group of raiders, grated on me.
I’d set explosives to blow should I die, for that very reason. A sensor in my wristband would read my vitals and begin the countdown. The gates would open, letting the animals out, and minutes later, the deconstruction would start.
Angel would be free, my animals would escape back to the wilds where I’d collected them, and my technology would be gone. Chemicals sprayed from the irrigation would kill the crops. Better none of my compound land in the raider’s hands. I didn’t know much about them, but what I did know was it would be bad business for them to get their hands on my gadgets. I activated the gates and drove outside the compound, letting the heavy, steel panels clang shut behind me before Angel decided to ignore my command.
I drove several blocks, taking it all in. What I might not get to explore, where I liked to hang out in my downtime. An old swing in an overgrown school-yard squawked in the breeze, the seat rocking back and forth on its rusty chain. I could almost picture life here before the war. Children playing. A fruit vendor serving up fresh produce from a horse-drawn cart I found down the block. Laughter. Shouts. Life. People milling about, unaware their lives were about to come to an end.
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