by Cass Kim
Alyssa peered around his back. She tried to keep track of the forms, more distinct as they worked their way through the bushes. The bear broke away from the fight, staggering through the forest, ramming into trees in its desperation to escape.
The remaining Wilders fought in a hurricane of torn clothes, flying limbs, and blood spatters.
Jackson waded into the fray, knife flashing. Emerson stayed firmly planted in front of her, knees loosely bent, stance staggered.
Alyssa gripped her hands into the back of Emerson’s shirt. She didn’t want to watch, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the fight.
Kina and Shelly danced in and out of the battle, planting hard hits and swift kicks before dodging away, one just out of reach as the other took the lead.
Andre and Yvette were whirlwinds of brutal destruction, tearing at skin and clothes alike, heedless of not having a weapon. Alyssa stared in horror as Yvette reached out a hand and gripped into the front of another Wilder’s throat, her long nails digging through the thin skin and muscle there. Alyssa swallowed bile as the Wilder woman wrenched back her arm and tore the large male Wilder’s airway halfway out of his neck. The Wilder swung furiously at her, even as he dropped to his knees, fists battering weakly at her calves. Yvette was already turning to the next Wilder in her path when his body convulsed, then stilled.
Jackson slipped around the fight, silent, swift, and deadly. The glint of his knife heralded slit throats, clipped hamstrings, and severed spinal cords with each attack. Within moments of him joining the fight, the mass of new Wilders was put down.
Alyssa thumped onto her knees, light-headed and nauseous. These had been people. It wasn’t like in the yard, when she’d had no choice but to kill the Wilder. There was a cure coming. Maybe they could have been people again. But not now. Now they were torn, bloodied piles of bone and muscle, broken.
She could not stop the words flooding from her mouth. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What happened?” Alyssa’s eyes refused to look away from the mess. There had to be at least five bodies there. Maybe more further back in the woods. “They’re not supposed to work together. Wilders don’t work together. They can’t. They can’t think to.” She repeated the phrase she’d been taught her whole life in school. “Wilders are always alone. They can’t think.”
Emerson sat beside her, his face pale, sweat dripping from his hairline as his adrenaline rush faded. “Well. Looks like we, and they, can.”
Jackson looked from where he crouched, wiping his knife carefully across the only clean piece of shirt on the dead Wilder in front of him. “They weren’t. Not really. Not like wolves do. Not like we did. If they did, this might have had a different ending.” It was the longest string of words Alyssa had heard the mysterious Wilder put together.
Shelly and Kina exchanged looks before nodding in unison. “We. Go.” Kina held up a bloody finger and made a loop, indicating they would do a sweep of the perimeter.
Jackson gave the nod and then looked meaning fully at Andre and Yvette. Yvette’s lips quirked in what might have been a voiceless “okay,” and the two started off in a hard run toward the river they’d passed an hour earlier.
Emerson asked in a hollow voice, “They go to rinse off?”
“Yes.”
“Think we’re at risk?”
Jackson stared at his bloody hands for a long moment. “Hard to say.”
Emerson nodded.
“At risk for what?” Alyssa looked between the two. “For more Wilders?”
Emerson shook his head, gaze moving from Jackson to meet her eyes steadily. “For infection.”
“But you’re all already infected. And human still.” Alyssa stared hard at him, waiting for him to smile and say it was a bad attempt at a joke.
“The virus is mutating.” Emerson lifted his clean hands then looked again at Jackson’s bloodied ones. “We don’t know if we’re inoculated against this strain.”
12
Renna
Renna pushed harder, breath gasping from her lungs, running so fast she could barely dodge the trees coming at her. Still, the woods were alive and teeming with pursuers in tactical gear. Just when she’d get away from an area with noise, she’d be running into a new set of shouts, a new shaking thicket of brush.
She swiped at the sweat on her forehead, trying to stop the stinging in her eyes as the trickles slid between her eyebrows and her sunglasses. How many people could they have brought? It had to be a National Guard. Seemed like there were hundreds of them in the woods. That Botox man. What had he said? Something about the government. She didn’t know who had been shot first, and if the other shots meant more people dead, but she knew one thing. She couldn’t get caught.
She leapt over a stump and veered hard to the left, away from the camp. At least, she thought it was away. With so many sharp turns and unplanned changes in her course, she could be virtually anywhere in relationship to where she’d started.
Slowing, she scanned the trees for Emerson’s carved markings. None within eyesight. She slowed further, peering through the dense woodland, looking for a game trail that might lead her to Emerson’s better marked paths. Nothing. She scrambled over a fallen tree, continuing straight forward several hasty steps before stopping.
Heaving air into desperate lungs, she pressed a hand to the ever-present ache in her hip. “Get it together, Renna,” she hissed to herself, fighting the panic tightening her chest. She needed to form a plan.
What could she do? Should she try to get people out of camp? Create a diversion? Get as far away as possible now that she was already out? Maybe look for the supply team as they headed back? She needed to warn them.
A distant shot knifed through the momentary silence, the sound ricocheting as it faded.
If they were shooting anybody, it had to be the Wilders left in the camp.
Benjamin! What would happen to Benjamin? She had to get to him and get him out. And she had to do it now. Before things were quiet, before everybody had settled into a routine.
“Think Renna. Think. How do you rescue your Wilder brother? How can you control him?” Still looking for a path, she walked forward. “One thing at a time. Find your way back first. Plan as you go.”
She saw a slim deer run peeking through the trees on her right.
“Renna!” Faint and desperate, the voice filtered toward her.
There was no way that was her name. She had to be hearing things. Turning, she listened intently. No shouting men. No snapping branches and crunching leaves. Just the faint sound of her voice being called. By one very distinctive Southern drawl.
“Syd!” she called back, sprinting toward the voice in full Wilder speed. Syd must have run into the woods the first chance she got. She wasn’t Wilder fast, but she was smart. Renna was sure she’d have an idea for getting Benjamin out safely.
“Syd, I’m coming!” She responded again, the calls getting louder as she got closer.
She didn’t see the trip wire until after she’d sprung the trap. The rope net hastily hidden by leaves snapped up, dragging her into the air.
“Syd! Run!” She gasped, trying to get a grip on the rope, trying to make sense of the spinning forest around her.
Syd stepped out from the trees, flanked by two men with guns. She stepped forward, her dark eyes hard, her face expressionless. “Don’t take it personal, Renna. Trust me, it’s better this way.” The curvy girl pulled a long syringe out from her pocket and uncapped it as she walked closer to the net. She nodded at one of the men, who untied a knot a few trees over and lowered Renna to within Syd’s reach.
“Syd. What— What are you—” Renna struggled to find words to express her sense of betrayal. “Why are you doing this?”
“Like I said.” She pushed the needle through Renna’s jeans and into the meat of her thigh. “It’s better this way.”
Renna’s muscles became warm, loose. She knew what this was. This was the Wilder specific sedative.
Two Syds danced in her vision
as they both said with a dark look, “Trust me.”
13
Alyssa
Alyssa stared at the Wilders in the group. It was hard to tell if they were so tense and rigid because of the proximity to Placid Falls now, or because of the possibility of the new infection. Once they’d covered the bodies in a pile of stones and rinsed carefully in the rapidly flowing, icy-cold river, the group had marched onward toward Placid Falls.
They stopped just inside the tree line a few miles outside the downtown area. It was a city by Alyssa’s standards, but in reality, it was more of a well-provisioned large town. This close, though, the Wilders could feel the electricity. Andre and Yvette were hanging back the furthest. Having changed with one of the earliest batches of the vaccine, they were the most sensitive. That was the polite way of saying the most Wilder, the least human.
“Look. You were right when you said I can’t just take a shopping cart and push it around. I’ll take a lot of trips. Give me two backpacks. I’ll wear one in the front and one in the back. I’ll carry shopping bags.”
“That’s still going to take too long.” Emerson looked meaningfully at the sisters, whose muscles were pulsing with the contractions caused by being close to the powerlines.
“I’ll take the bus. There has to be a bus.” They couldn’t go back empty-handed. At the very least they needed to bring back food and clean water for the camp to survive on.
“And if somebody recognizes you on your million and one trips back and forth?”
Alyssa threw up her hands then stopped. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t want to. But she had to.
“Give me your knife.” She held out her palm expectantly.
Emerson ran a hand down his face. “Why?”
“I need it.” She thought of all the photos of her on social media they could post on the news. There was no doubt in her mind that each and every one of them showed off her long blond hair. It was such a part of her. Gritting her teeth to keep from reaching into the long tresses in question and braiding obsessively, she thrust her upturned palm closer to Emerson.
“I’m not giving it to you until you tell me why. You’re half psycho more than half the time.”
Alyssa wondered if that was why the four wildest Wilders among them didn’t have knives too. “I’m going to cut my hair.”
“Now?”
She rolled her eyes, “Yes. So they won’t recognize me.”
“Just put it under a cap.”
“A cap won’t be the same as a different hair-cut, and some dirt smudged in to make it look darker.”
“Great, then you’ll just look extra eye catching with your mud-hair and still have to take way too many trips for this to be feasible.”
Before Alyssa could come up with a response, Jackson pulled his knife and grabbed a handful of her hair. “Argument over. She goes.” He gave her a grim smile and pulled the long locks taunt, sawing at them.
Alyssa didn’t know if she should jump for joy at winning, sob at losing her hair, or be slightly terrified of this man holding a knife so close to her face. Instead, she bit her lip to keep from protesting as the good looking Wilder sawed off fistful after fistful of hair. His face was serious, but something softened around his eyes as he held up the last handful of golden locks, letting the strands fall in a cascade to the ground.
“Thanks,” Ayssa said, her voice thick with unshed tears. She ran a hand over the rough bob, fingers thunking down onto her shoulders, unused to the hair ending just past her ears. “This will certainly save on shampoo,” she said feebly.
The handsome Wilder ignored the bad attempt at a joke, turning away and wandering into the woods.
“I guess you can use the scissors from the first aid kit to try to fix the edges.” Emerson said, pinching his chin and tapping a finger across his full lips. She expected him to make a joke about the rough haircut, but he didn’t. Instead he rooted around in his pack and tossed the small first aid kit at her. Then he pulled out the notebook with the list of items needed in the camp.
“Okay. So, while you get your hair ready, I’m going to figure out what’s essential. We tolerate for you to take roughly three or four trips.” He tapped the pencil against his chin. “Maybe five, if we want to be risky. If you’re fast.”
She unzipped the kit and found the scissors while he talked. Alyssa wasn’t sure how even she’d get it without a mirror, but she was sure she could at least make it look less, well, knife-hacked.
The sisters drifted further back into the woods now that the plan was back in order. Alyssa snipped as Emerson muttered under his breath and did calculations. With the late afternoon glow dimming, Emerson removed his sunglasses to read better.
Looking around to be sure the others were out of hearing, she hissed at Emerson to get his attention, “Psst! Emerson.”
He looked up, blinking the math out of his eyes and raised an eyebrow at her partially fixed hair. “Yeah?”
“Gimme your sunglasses so I can see myself in them to fix this. And what’s up with that Jackson guy?”
Emerson shrugged, tossing the glasses to her. “Not really my story to tell, ya know?”
“Oh come on.” She angled herself to use the sunglasses as a mirror. Not bad, actually. A little piecey, but it would work. “He keeps giving me weird looks. And he’s kind of creepy, but also clearly very talented with a knife.” She thought of how he’d moved through the fight like water through a rocky riverbed. “Which, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but makes him like less creepy and more hero-ish.” She tossed the sunglasses back to him and zipped the scissors into the small pouch.
Emerson quirked his eyebrow up even further. “You have got to be kidding me.”
She shrugged. “He’s a little crushworthy. I’m not saying I have the healthiest crushes in the world.” She thought of Benjamin, pursing her lips. She’d been half in love with him for half her life. That was different.
“Just ask him yourself.”
“He barely talks!”
A throat cleared behind her, whipping her head around to the sound. There was the Wilder in question, standing a few away.
She pivoted her gaze back to Emerson, accusing. “You knew he was there the whole time didn’t you?” She swiveled back to the older Wilder, “And you! Just standing there listening? Creep factor just raised again.”
Jackson chuckled and shook his head. “Not the whole time. And not crushworthy.” He meandered closer, almost as comfortable near the town as Emerson seemed to be. The sun was sinking behind the tree line, allowing him to remove his sunglasses as he crouched on the ground in front of her. “I can talk. I just don’t like to.” He looked up at her, icy blue against fiery copper, a war of emotions in his eyes. “Gather the sticks for the fire, and I’ll tell you while we make food.”
Alyssa frowned. Maybe she had overstepped. “You don’t have to. I mean, if you don’t want to talk about things, you don’t have to.”
The Wilder shook his head. “Better, to have a record. A memory. In case.” He looked down at his hands, as if thinking of the infected blood that had covered them hours ago.
Alyssa gathered sticks as the sky gathered darkness. Each snap of a branch, each rustle of leaves, had her jumping and starting back to the others. They set up camp further into the woods, so that the others would be able to get some rest. Emerson explained the plan for Alyssa to carry as much as she could each trip, and bring it to the edge of the town, where he would be checking for her at intervals. He, as the Wilder best able to tolerate being partially in town, would then haul the load back to the camp area. Once they had enough for two Wilders, the more sensitive ones would start back to camp. Alyssa hadn’t seen it, but Emerson had been carving marks in the trees along the straightest path. Apparently, these guys never rested.
They sat in a loose circle around the fire, Alyssa’s job done now that the light was all but gone. The moon sent pale beams to play among the shadows within the trees. Six pairs of reflective eyes star
ed at the fire as Jackson began speaking.
“Tonight, you must listen.” His gazed pinned Alyssa before returning to the fire. “If we Change again, you will remember. For us. You will be our memory.” His voice was low gravel, rusty from limited use. “I had a family. A daughter, young and blond. A wife, tough, scared of nothing. You remind me of them, sometimes. So, I protect you. I am—was military. Special forces. Front lines in San Diego when the Change hit. Stationed there before it happened. When my wife got infected, I contacted every possible defense contractor, CDC specialist, higher up anybody I could. Janeece Quick responded. Said to come to New York, to the Adirondack forest. We left. No orders. No word.”
Alyssa held her breath. His wife had been infected. But not his daughter. His blond daughter. She thought of the cascade of golden hair earlier, how he’d watched it fall from his fingers, strand by strand.
After a long pause, he continued. “I left them in a hotel, in Placid Falls, to contact Janeece. To scout the location. Make sure it was safe.” His shadowy form shifted uncomfortably. “Lorabelle was eight. She could not move fast in the woods. She stayed in the hotel with my wife, Elizabeth.” He reached out Wilder fast to stir the pot at the edge of the fire with a wooden spoon. Voice almost too soft to hear, he continued, “She had changed while I was gone. I heard it first on the news. I heard a Wilder had been shot at the site of a hotel lobby massacre in Placid Falls, listening to the radio with Janeece after meeting her. Assessing her. For safety.”
Silence.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, Alyssa whispered into the night, “What about your daughter? What about Lorabelle?”
“Dead. Evidence that her Mother tried to save her from herself. She had no wounds. She died from a head injury, from hitting the table corner with force. The coroner report suggested her Mother had shoved her away from herself as she left the room.” He continued on, voice even, as if reading facts, “Janeece asked me for blood samples. Asked me to be a trial. So I did. I knew what they were doing. I wanted the risks. I had nothing left. I used my training to get into the biohazard body storage and into the morgue. I took the blood samples as instructed. I came here.”