Series Firsts Box Set

by Laken Cane

Alcohol.

  When the forceful stream hit the mutant, it stopped him in his tracks.

  His scream was unearthly, eerie, and utterly heartbreaking. I dropped my blades and put my hands over my ears, and only the fact that Sage threw herself against me kept me from running to him.

  That scream.

  I went down.

  Every awful thing that had ever happened was in that scream. Every agony, pain, break. That scream made them…human.

  “Oh,” I whispered. “Oh, no.”

  And I cried with him. For him.

  “It’s their death scream,” Sage whispered, her voice wafting into my ear, my mind, my heart. “Shut your mind.”

  I latched on to her voice. To her words, frightening as they were. They helped me shut out the mutants’ screams as the toxic alcohol melted their faces and ran in burning tracks down their bodies. I looked around, horrified, watching as the alcohol ate their flesh like they’d been dipped into vats of acid.

  The screams echoed inside my mind, and would, I was sure, follow me into my dreams.

  Their very screams were weapons—at least against me.

  Sage didn’t seem as affected. Maybe she’d heard them before and had hardened herself to them. The three humans didn’t seem bothered, either.

  They ran, dodged, and sprayed the alcohol, and kept the mutants away from me and Sage.

  Dizziness overtook me and a blanket of black descended, and when I screamed, only a groan emerged.

  Then, there was nothing.

  My last thought was a prayer, really, and it was similar to Sage’s plea to me.

  Don’t let them touch me.

  Don’t let them get me.

  Chapter Nine

  “Teagan? Can you hear me?”

  Sage’s voice seemed far away and echoed slightly, and I frowned, trying to remember what had happened. The ground was hard and cold beneath my aching back and a heavy scent of cooking meat hung in the air. My stomach growled. “I’m not dead?”

  Sage leaned closer and I realized my fingers were trapped in her small, cold hand. “What?” she asked.

  “I’m not dead.”

  Her grip eased. “No.”

  “You should be.” The voice was young and sounded almost amused.

  I opened my eyes, and needles of pain shot through my eyes when the hazy light hit them. I squinted and finally, the world came into a fuzzy sort of focus.

  I struggled to sit up, and someone grabbed my arm and yanked me to a sitting position. That was when I realized I had the worst headache of my life.

  “What happened?” I lifted a hand to wipe at the wetness on my lower face, and my hand came away covered with blood.

  The three people I’d meant to kill were standing around me, arms crossed, unsmiling. The ground was littered with smoking bits of flesh and charred bone.

  “The death screams hurt you,” Sage said. She glanced at the three strangers. “And they have found a way to kill the mutants.” Her voice was filled with wonder.

  “You’re welcome.” The speaker was a teenage boy with a quick smile and deep brown eyes. He gave me a quick wink when I looked at him, but it was difficult to see him as breezy, cute, or harmless.

  For one reason, he was a stranger. And he was male. And…

  His face was filthy, his eyes sunken, and he looked like it’d been a while since he’d slept or seen a meal. The other two were no different.

  I frowned and looked away, and my glance landed on the girl beside him. She was around twenty or so. A gray knit cap covered her hair, and a bulky coat—too heavy for the early fall—hid her body. If she were trying to pass as a guy, she wasn’t succeeding. Her features were too delicate. Her lips were full, her lashes thick and long, and her face was heart-shaped and pretty, despite the grime.

  She didn’t smile, and no hint of friendliness lit her blue eyes. “You nearly got us all killed.” She whirled her baseball bat like a baton.

  I cringed. She’d hammered nails into the end of that bat, and I was sure she was going to hit me with it.

  A man stepped up beside the two others. Maybe he was thirty, maybe fifty. His hair needed cut—and combed. His face was rough with a short growth of gray and black whiskers, and lines radiated out from the corners of eyes so emotionless and light they looked like translucent green glass. A long scar dissected his upper lip, and he had another that streaked across his forehead and traveled down to his left eyebrow. “We need to get out of here. There will be more of them.” A trace of contempt crept into his voice. “You can’t use guns in this world.”

  And suddenly, I remembered.

  I cried out and rolled away from them, scrabbling for my weapons, but my pockets and sheaths were empty.

  They’d taken my weapons.

  I ignored the pain in my head and grabbed Sage’s upper arm, dragging her away from the strangers.

  “Stop,” Sage said, pulling away from me. “Stop.”

  I backed away, still patting my pockets obsessively, as though that would make my weapons reappear.

  The three strangers didn’t move.

  “They won’t hurt us. Calm down.” Sage reached out to pet my arm, like I was a skittish, fearful animal. “Shhh. It’s okay.”

  I began to shiver, then the pain in my head became too much for my stomach and I turned away to dry-heave until finally the nausea passed.

  The boy who’d winked at me held up his hand. “She’s right. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re human, same as you.”

  “So what? The humans I’ve seen are as bad as the mutants.” But I knew if they’d wanted to hurt us, they would have already. I still wasn’t going to trust them—of course I wouldn’t trust them. But I calmed down.

  Strangely enough, I felt…better. Less depressed.

  I wasn’t alone. Suddenly taking on the awful mutants seemed less daunting.

  “Why did their screams do that to me? Why weren’t any of you hurt by them?”

  The older guy crossed his arms. “We’re used to them. Killing the bastards is what we do.”

  I put my arm around Sage’s shoulder. “She calls the big ones gods.” I expected them to be as shocked as I’d been.

  He curled his lip and pinned me with his emotionless stare. “What does it matter what they’re called?” He put his hand on his water gun. “What matters is that they die.”

  “I’m Caleb Kelly,” the boy said. He nodded toward the older man. “That’s Richard Connor, and she’s Lila Stone.”

  I lifted the edge of my jacket to wipe away the blood still trickling from my nose. “So after I hear their death screams a few times, they won’t hurt me like this?”

  They glanced at each other, and there was uneasiness in their faces. “We don’t know,” Caleb said, finally. “We’ve never seen anyone hit that hard by death screams.”

  “They didn’t hurt any of you? Ever?” I took a step back, automatically, as though their immunity was somehow a bad thing.

  “It hurt us,” Richard Connor said. “In the beginning.” He gestured at my bloody face. “But not like that. None of us bled or fainted.”

  “Gave us headaches from hell,” Lila said. “And made us a little soft for a while. Not enough to keep us from blasting the ugly fucks, but still.” She shrugged. “After a while, we stopped feeling the pain.”

  The older man, Richard, pointed his chin at my house. “This one yours?”

  I hesitated. I did not want three strangers in my home. My safe place.

  Sage squeezed my fingers, and when I looked down at her, she nodded. “Let them in. We can’t survive without other humans.”

  “You saw what the humans did back in the woods,” I told her. “You know what the men are doing.” I glanced at the man, then the boy. “You saw.”

  “These ones are not the bad guys,” she insisted.

  “How do you know?”

  “Teagan,” she said, her voice soft. “They’re starving.”

  “You have food in there?” Caleb asked.
He rested a hand against his belly.

  “It’s not up for debate,” Lila said. “Move your ass and open the fucking door. We need a place to crash while we’re in town helping you clear out mutants.”

  Sage began walking toward the door, still gripping my hand. “It’s okay. Let them in.”

  I still felt the mutants.

  More of them were heading our way. And when they saw the dead littering my backyard, they might start kicking in doors. Searching for us.

  I was shivering so violently I could barely speak, and sensations like electric shocks shot through my body every few seconds. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I knew it. Pain, hot and red, shot through my skull and the light, fading though it was, hurt my eyes. My stomach was rolling, I was thirsty, and I just needed to lie down.

  And the mutants were coming.

  “Follow me,” I told the small group.

  They had saved my life, after all. They’d saved Sage.

  And I did not want to be alone. Not anymore.

  Once we were inside, I shut the door and locked it, then leaned against it as my head swam. I was nearly certain I’d caught a glimpse of a mutant just across the yard right before I’d shut the door.

  “Oh, my God,” the girl whispered.

  I’d never heard such awe in a person’s voice. I turned to look at her, curious.

  “Oh my God,” she said, again.

  She and the others were staring at the food and cases of water stacked against the walls. As I watched, they walked slowly around the room, dazed, touching the supplies.

  If they thought the kitchen was incredible, they’d faint if they saw the cellar.

  “Help yourselves,” I said, and almost before the words were out of my mouth they fell upon the food like starving wolves. “I don’t understand. Why are you guys so hungry?”

  The girl, her cheeks bulging in her thin face, looked at me, her eyebrows up, eyes wide. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I shook my head, mystified. “What?”

  “There is no food,” the older man said, opening a can of beans with his knife. “The towns have long since been looted—if not by other humans and animals, then by the mutants.” His stare was hard. “There is no food.”

  I pointed at a drawer. “There are can openers. And you can use that camp stove to heat your food.” I didn’t believe there was no food. No supplies. I just didn’t.

  They saw it in my face.

  The boy, surrounded by packages of cookies, jumped to his feet, then began shrugging off his tanks, unbuckling his belts, and finally, ripping off his coat. The other two ignored him, even when he lifted his shirt over his head.

  I put my fingers to my mouth when he waited, shirtless, staring at me. His chest was caved in, and his ribs stood out in sharp relief like a picture of a starved dog I’d once seen. His cheekbones were sharp, his eyes sunken and ringed with darkness, and his lips barely closed over his teeth. “There is no food.”

  I nodded, trying to keep my tears in check. “I’m sorry.”

  Satisfied, he pulled his shirt back on—thank God—and sat back down to finish his meal.

  “I had nothing else to do for two years,” I told them, opening a bottle of water, trying to control my emotions as well as my nausea. “I’ve gone out every day for supplies. Only orphans have been in Crowbridge.” I frowned. “Until now.”

  “You got lucky,” Richard said, finishing his beans. He tossed the can in the garbage, then began taking off his gear.

  He unstrapped the tanks from his back, then took off the belt holding the squirt guns—the one on his right hip was large, but the one on his left hip was small. A backup, probably.

  “I’m going to make some dinner,” he murmured, and smiled at the thought.

  “Alcohol,” I said, wiping sweat from my face. “That’s seriously what kills them.”

  He ignored me and began looking through my stock, pulling out cans and packages as he searched.

  “Other than slicing their heads off—which grow back, for all we know, if they’re taken care of—it is the only thing that kills them,” Caleb said, his mouth full. “And we’re not even sure they know what it is we’re spraying them with.”

  “What do they want?” I asked. “What is their purpose?”

  “We don’t know.” He stared into the distance and his sparkly brown eyes became flat and serious. He looked immediately older. “We don’t really know, do we?”

  “To survive,” Richard said. “They want to survive. Just as we all do.”

  “Do you know they’re impregnating human women?” I rubbed my arms. “I…” But I couldn’t tell them that I’d slaughtered one of those pregnant women.

  “Of course we know,” the girl said, angry. “We were out there fighting them while you hid in this house with your bed and your food. You don’t know what it’s like out there. Richard’s right. You’re fucking lucky.”

  I swallowed three Tylenol tablets. “I’ve been out there. You don’t know me and you don’t know what I’ve seen.” I rubbed my throbbing temples, then looked at Richard. “What are you doing?”

  “Making dinner.” He frowned at me. “I just told you that.”

  Sage took my hand. “Come lie down, Teagan. You’re sick.”

  “Kid’s right,” Caleb said. “You look like you’re about to pass out again. We’ll wake you when it’s time to eat.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”

  And all three of them stared at me when I uttered those unthinkable words, their stares full of envy, disgust, and a little bit of hatred.

  I didn’t want to sleep while my house was full of strangers, but I was sick. Bad sick. The mutants’ death screams had done something to me, and I was recovering much too slowly.

  Sage followed me into the living room, and after I’d unbuckled my belts and fell into bed she leaned over and pulled the covers to my chin. “We should stick together,” she murmured. “Whenever we find humans who are nice, we should add them to our group.”

  “Nice? Lila’s an asshole and the other two are male. They’ll probably hand us over to the gods tomorrow.” But in spite of my misgivings, my heart was lighter. The three strangers were the reason. I hadn’t quite realized how lonely I’d been.

  And they had killed a dozen mutants almost easily.

  “Maybe they could be nicer,” Sage agreed, “but they won’t eat us or make us have their babies. That’s nice enough for me.”

  I fell asleep to the unfamiliar rumbling of deep, quiet voices and the occasional hushed laughter, and though I fetched a knife from under my bed and slid it under my pillow, I was more comforted by the company of my new friends than I was by the cold, meager protection of the blade.

  Chapter Ten

  Alcohol would kill mutants.

  Alcohol was our defense—better than clubs, blades, anything. Alcohol killed the mutants. And with that knowledge, with the alcohol, hope was born.

  When I woke up, I remembered floating sporadically to consciousness during my sleep, and hearing the strangers talk and laugh and eat. Sage’s melodic laugh echoed dimly in my memory, and though I’d never heard her laugh, I knew it belonged to her.

  She was happier in the group than she had been with just me. It was understandable. Safety in numbers and all that.

  I sat up, yawning as I stretched. My sleep had been sweet and uninterrupted by nightmares, something I’d needed since…forever.

  “Sage,” I called. “Sage?”

  I stood, wincing as my full bladder threatened to explode. I hurried toward the bathroom, nearly certain I was alone in my house. It had that dead silence that only came from an empty home.

  Twenty minutes later I was back in the living room, washed, combed, and wearing fresh clothes. “Sage,” I yelled, then headed for the kitchen to see if she or the others had left me a note.

  There were no notes, but a large water gun sat on the table with a pack of tanks beside it. Someone had written my name on a Post-it no
te and stuck it to the gun.

  My stomach tightened with excitement. It was like Christmas morning. Grinning, I hefted the gun, then put it back down and turned toward the small pot of stew sitting on the camp stove. The stew was cold, but I didn’t care.

  I grabbed the pot and a spoon, and began shoveling stew into my mouth. I was ravenous.

  I wasn’t much of a cook. Actually, I wasn’t any kind of cook. I heated food up on the little camp stove in the kitchen, but never made anything unique. Whatever was in the can was what I ate.

  I took a quick drink of water, then finished off the stew. I could almost close my eyes and pretend I was at the dinner table with my mom and Robin, having one of Mom’s home cooked meals.

  Mom had loved to cook. Robin would have taken after her in that department. She’d always been the one playing with the Easy-Bake oven while I raced around the cul-de-sac on my pink and purple trike.

  I didn’t like to cook. I didn’t like cleaning up much either, but after I finished the stew, I took time to wash out the pot and my bowl, then sat them in the drainer to air dry.

  My headache was gone, my mind was clear, and my usual anxious energy was strong. I had to get out of the house.

  Richard and his gang had better take care of Sage. They shouldn’t have taken her in the first place, but I wasn’t upset. Most likely they’d gone to raid the houses on the block for alcohol.

  I strapped the tanks to my back, then grabbed the water gun holster and buckled it around my hips. After I’d pushed the water gun into its holster, I grabbed my vest off the hook by the door, then picked up one of the ten machetes leaning against the wall. In the living room were six more. I’d stashed another dozen of them in the cellar, along with other weapons—swords, knives, slingshots, bows, even some guns.

  When the guys had left, they hadn’t locked the back door. That just pissed me off. They’d taken the extra keys I’d put on hooks by the kitchen door--so why would they have left the doors unlocked while I lay unconscious in the living room?

  I stepped out through the door and onto the porch, but hesitated when I started to lock the door. What if Sage got separated from them and couldn’t get into the house?