by Laken Cane
“Teagan,” Caleb said.
“Yes?”
“How old are you?”
I ran my fingers over the dog’s thin body. I’d cleaned him up and washed his wounds, but there wasn’t much else I could do. His leg didn’t appear broken, despite his limp. “Sixteen. How old are you guys?”
“I’m eighteen,” he said. “Lila hasn’t ever said. I figure she’s around thirty or forty.”
Lila snorted. “It’s none of your business how old I am.”
“She’s twenty,” I told him. “Twenty one, maybe.”
Lila lifted an eyebrow. “Who the fuck cares? Really. Who cares?”
“Just curious,” Caleb said.
“Nosy, you mean,” she told him.
He grinned, then sobered. His eyes were solemn when he looked at me. “You did good. Fourteen and alone when shit went nuts, and here you are with a setup like this, house full of supplies. You did a good job.”
I smiled down at the dog, ridiculously pleased. “Thanks.”
“Let’s get back to work.” He grinned at me. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
“Yeah,” Lila said. “Our Caleb is a real good time. Taking you to see A Gathering of Mutants. I hear there’ll be lots of alcohol.” She cackled at her own wit.
I got to my feet, ignoring them both. I wasn’t afraid of tonight, really.
But the thought of walking alone into the gods’ camp loomed over me and left me dark and filled with doom.
I was sure that fear would become terror when we entered the camp, and I could not let it incapacitate me.
I was going to get Sage.
And I was going to face the gods.
But first, I was going to go with Caleb and Lila and find out what it was like to deliberately seek out a mutant.
I was going to hunt.
Chapter Fourteen
The evening sun was drooping tiredly in the sky when we left the house. Caleb and Lila were both subdued and I was glad of their solemnity. I didn’t want to be the only one with fear lying like a cold fist in the pit of my stomach.
“You will always be afraid. Can you handle that?”
I really wasn’t sure I could.
Once upon a time I’d enjoyed the little thrills of fear and adventure as I’d bicycled from my house to town each morning.
But that’d been when I was living in relative ignorance. Blissful ignorance.
Seemed like a million years ago.
Stay with me, Robin. I need a friend.
I’m here, sister.
Her body had never been found, so my mother hadn’t given up the idea that Robin was somewhere alive. Waiting for us.
I knew she was dead.
I felt it.
I felt her with me. She couldn’t be with me if she were still alive, could she?
Could she?
But what if…
No.
Robin was dead. No matter what I wanted to believe or hope for.
She was with me.
The bulky water guns and alcohol tanks were heavy and uncomfortable as I jogged down the streets, Caleb on one side of me and Lila on the other.
“Do we lure them to us?” I asked. “Or just hope we get lucky?”
“It depends,” Caleb said. “Today, we’ll see who we can lure out.” He flashed me a smile. “We’ll use Lila for bait.”
“Or we won’t,” Lila said.
“Come on, Lila. Be a good sport,” he told her. “I’ll take my turn next time.”
“Whatever.”
It seemed crazy to be putting ourselves in danger, deliberately hoping for a mutant to pay us a visit, but pretty much everything about being a hunter was crazy.
I squeezed the gun I carried. There was another one in a holster at my side. It didn’t seem like enough.
“Try here,” Lila said. She walked across the street and leaned against a streetlight, then winked at me. “You’re looking a little pale, precious.”
“Why are you always such an asshole?” I asked.
“She’s like a seven-year-old boy,” Caleb said. “The more she likes you, the more she’ll torment you.”
“Awesome,” I muttered.
Lila looked away. “Get out of here. Let’s see what we can entice in.”
Caleb tapped my arm. “Come with me.”
We jogged across the street and then slipped to the side of the house directly across from Lila. “You’re on,” Caleb called to her. “Hit it, fresh meat.”
“Why don’t we just shoot a gun?” I asked. “That will always bring the mutants.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but we don’t want to bring every mutant within two miles. We only do that if we have a lot more hunters and a few badass traps waiting.”
“Oh.”
In the next second, Lila screamed, and even though I was ready for her to make some noise, I jumped and shrieked—not nearly as loudly as Lila, but still.
Caleb sighed.
I didn’t look at him. I was too embarrassed.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, Caleb pushed away from the wall. “We’ll try somewhere else.”
Lila met us in the middle of the street, and we walked on.
As we walked, I found myself waiting for Sage to run toward us. She’d have some story about how she’d been taken, and how she’d escaped, and how she found me once again.
It’d happened once. It could happen again.
“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked me.
“Just thinking about Sage.”
“How’d you find her?” Lila asked.
“She found me, really.” I told them about Sage’s pregnant mother—but not what I’d done to her. I also told them about killing the mutant, and then losing the child. “I heard a knock on my door and there she was.”
“Strange kid,” Lila said.
“Yeah. Super smart. God knows what she went through before they escaped.”
“Seems strange, though, doesn’t it?” Caleb asked.
I frowned. “What does?”
He shrugged. “Her whole story, I guess. And now she’s missing again.”
I fell silent. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, and I didn’t care. I knew Sage—he didn’t.
“What happened to the mother,” Lila asked. “And the unborn mutant? You kill them?”
I couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“Teagan?” Caleb said. “What did—”
Lila stopped walking and held up a hand. “Shhh.”
I stuffed my earplugs in immediately. I tasted metal on my tongue as I listened, barely breathing. “Should we hide?”
“Hell no,” she said. “We didn’t come here to hide. We came here to kill.” Then she jerked up her gun, spun around, and began spraying something behind me.
“Shit,” I cried, and just that quickly, we were surrounded.
“Back to back,” Caleb said, calmly. “Keep your cool, Teagan, and aim for the face.”
We made a sort of triangle, and then, there was no time for anything but shooting and staying alive.
There were five of them in front of me, but I caught movement farther down the street and realized more of them were coming.
“Die, motherfuckers,” Lila screamed, and I could hear joy in her voice.
Lila loved what she did. Caleb might be scared every time he went hunting, but Lila wasn’t.
Someday I might be like her. Fearless.
But right then, I was scared out of my mind.
I shot in a spraying arc, but the mutants were fast.
“Is it my imagination,” Caleb asked, “or are they—”
“Faster,” Lila finished, breathless.
I would probably have screamed if I’d had the breath for it. The mutants kept coming, and as they died, they screamed.
And as they screamed, they brought more mutants.
We were outnumbered badly—every time we killed a mutant, two more took his pl
ace. And we were caught right in the middle of them all.
“We fucked up,” Lila screamed.
We were in hell. The mutants kept coming, despite the fact that they were burning, melting, and dying in agonizing pain. Their screams began to blend together into one earsplitting, brain scrambling shriek, and though my earplugs softened the sound, they could not shut them out.
But I couldn’t succumb to the screams. I had to fight. I had to kill.
Even if I didn’t want to. Even if I wanted to throw my gun down and rush to comfort the suffering mutants. It wasn’t me. Their screams were simply messing with my mind.
The streets were overflowing with the creatures—they hit us from all sides, and though I knew there couldn’t possibly be as many as my crazed mind perceived, there were still way too many of them.
Their faces loomed large in my tunneled vision. They looked too human, suddenly. Their eyes were wide and full of panic and rage and their bloodless faces were paler even than usual.
The dying writhed on the pavement, hands to their melting faces. Some of them lifted their scorched arms, reaching beseechingly for help. But there was no help.
Not for them.
Caleb, Lila, and I stood in our little circle, dousing the mutants until all around us they lay dead and dying—and finally, despite their rage and hunger, the living mutants began to fall back.
“We’ve got this,” Lila muttered.
“We need to get back home,” Caleb said. “Start walking. Slowly. Teagan, make us a path. Lila—”
“I know what to do.”
Breathing hard, I began sidling back down the street. I sent a jet of alcohol anytime a mutant got too close, but only two of them dared. “We’re low on alcohol,” I whispered.
“They don’t know that. Keep walking,” Lila said.
“They came from town,” Caleb murmured. “What are they doing out here?”
“Searching for humans,” Lila replied, calmly. “And now that they’ve found us, they’re not going to give up.”
“Then we’ll have to go after them,” I said. “Hunters hunt. We’re not going to sit around waiting for them to find us, are we?”
“No,” Caleb said, and I heard a smile in his voice. “No, we are not.”
“We need bigger tanks.” I picked up my speed just a little. We’d driven the mutants back, and though I caught occasional movements from the shadows of houses and behind parked cars, not one of the bastards came closer.
“We have them,” Lila said. “We just didn’t think we’d need them tonight.”
“If they start using guns…”
“They don’t want us dead,” he replied. “They can’t eat or use or knock up corpses.”
“But I’ve seen them kill people.”
“Yeah,” Lila said. “By eating them. They didn’t kill them and then eat them, did they?”
“No.”
“There aren’t enough of us left for them to throw away,” she said. “They won’t outright kill our asses.”
“Sage told me that the scouts aren’t allowed to eat us. They have rules, and they’re supposed to take us to the gods. Then the gods decide what to do with us.”
“The orphans kill,” Caleb said.
“Yeah, but the orphans are all dumb as rocks,” Lila told him. “They don’t have any impulse control, either.”
Finally we began jogging home, and halfway down my street I saw Richard waiting, his hands at his sides, watching us come.
I had a sudden feeling he’d known we were in trouble, and waited patiently to see if his hunters would survive the fight.
He’d had to have heard the death screams.
“Why didn’t he come to help?” I asked, looking at Caleb.
Caleb looked away, but Lila surprised me by answering.
“If you’re not strong enough to survive a fight, then Richard doesn’t believe you deserve to live,” she said, then sent me a smile that chilled me almost as much as her words had. “It’s a hard world. We have to be harder.”
“That’s…” I swallowed hard, then continued. “That’s insane. And that makes him an asshole.”
“Nope,” Lila said. “That makes him right. Only the strong survive. This is no place for the weak.”
Then she ran on ahead, whooping as she gave Richard a high five and hurried on to the house.
I couldn’t meet his eyes when I walked by him. Neither of us said a word. When he held up a hand for me to slap, I pretended not to see it and left him standing on the street with Caleb, his heavy stare burning holes into my back.
Chapter Fifteen
I lay awake, my arms under my head, staring into the darkness. I couldn’t sleep. I was still keyed up over the close call we’d had a few hours earlier and worry over Sage ate at me. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face.
She’d been trying to get me a dog. She’d wanted to do something sweet for me and some asshole had taken her. I couldn’t bear to think about her in the hands of the mutants once again.
The horrible, terrifying mutants.
The others sloughed off the encounter like it was nothing to worry about. Just another day in a world of mutant fighting.
It had rattled me.
Richard seemed to think I’d get used to it, and I know they were all amused by my lack of experience and my fear. I’d been sheltered.
I got that.
But ever since I’d met Sage, things had gotten rough—starting with me killing her mother. My life had changed.
And not for the better. Except I wasn’t alone. That was better.
The others slept soundly—Richard and Caleb bedded down in thick sleeping bags on the kitchen floor, and Lila took over the couch. Just until Sage came back—then Lila could get her own sleeping bag.
“What are you over there blubbering about?”
I lifted my head from my pillow, peering into the shadowy darkness at the couch. I’d left two battery powered lights on—they were small but gave enough light so that we wouldn’t kill ourselves if we had to get up in the middle of the night.
Sometimes the darkness was so oppressive it smothered me, and my fondest wish was for the days when lamps and ceiling lights were the norm. I would never take something like that for granted again.
“I thought you were asleep.” I winced when my voice came out nasally and thick.
“Who can sleep with you over there moaning and sobbing? What’d you do, run out of eyeshadow?”
I sniffed, wiped my face, then grinned. “You’re a bitch.”
“Go to sleep, Teagan.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Then be quiet so I can.”
I turned to my side and closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t come.
“I’m scared,” I said, ten minutes later. “I’m afraid I’ll never find Sage. I’m afraid to spend the rest of my life fighting mutants. I’m afraid they’ll catch me.”
She sat up. “There’s a big possibility you won’t find the kid, that you will spend the rest of your life fighting, and that the mutants will catch you. There’s also a big possibility that you will find her, that you’ll spend your life fighting the bastards and saving people who can’t save themselves, and that if they do catch you, you’ll make them regret it.”
I stared at the ceiling, trying to imagine what it’d be like to be Lila Stone.
“It’s all in how you look at it.” The cot rattled when she jumped onto it. She crossed her legs and then patted my arm. “So until you lose the fear and learn how to live in this strange new world, I’ll help protect you from the big bad muties.”
I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I was like you once.”
I squinted at her. “I don’t believe you were ever afraid.”
She scratched her nose, pursed her lips, and looked away. “Oh, I’ve known fear. But I realized that no matter how afraid I might be, shit’s going to happen anyway. So I decided to be a badass instead.�
� She grinned and spread her hands. “And here I am.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not that easy,” I said, dryly.
“Fake it. Before you know it, you’ll be pushing yourself into sick situations just to get that delicious little thrill of fear. It lets you know you’re alive.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sleep now. If you wake me up again, I’m gagging you and locking you in the bathroom.”
I slid back down in the bed and turned to face the wall. “Goodnight, Lila.”
I drifted to sleep sometime later, smiling.
The dog’s barking shattered the silence, jarring me out of a dream I couldn’t quite grasp but I knew it’d involved Robin—her laughter seemed to hang in the room when I jerked awake.
In the next second, something shattered upstairs, and I realized it was the sound of glass breaking. At almost the same time, I heard sounds like wood splintering, then thumps—and then the house was on fire.
Smoke began to roll in from the kitchen, and Richard, Caleb, and the dog rushed into the living room.
“They’ve found us,” Richard said. There was no panic in his voice, but his movements were sure and quick. “We need to get out of here now.”
“The hell?” Lila asked, thickly. She jumped from the couch, grabbed her weapons, and then ran to help Richard yank the plywood off the living room window. Going through the door would have taken too much time—not only were thick boards nailed over it, but I’d shoved a heavy wardrobe in front of it, and the wardrobe was now filled with clothing.
And they’d be waiting at the back.
I yanked on my jeans, shoved my feet into my boots, then grabbed my water gun off the coffee table.
The dog’s barks became excited yips, and I heard Richard’s calm voice giving quiet orders to Lila and Caleb.
The house was on fire. Smoke billowed in from the kitchen, the upstairs—even though I’d boarded it up, there were cracks.
“Grab what you can,” Lila yelled. “Hurry.”
I grabbed my belt and buckled it around my hips, then yanked my bag from where it hung over the back of a chair. I held my breath as I shoved two tanks into it, then slung it over my shoulder, and ran to the window.