by Ann Aguirre
And Fade went feral. He broke formation, fighting as he’d done in the tournament; it seemed so long ago now. His hands and feet were a blur as he demolished the one trying to eat me. When all enemies stilled, red spattered him from head to toe and he was shaking.
The last Wolf had taken grievous wounds. He bled from four different bites and had a painful claw wound across his chest. I couldn’t tell if Stalker was hurt. Like Fade, he had too much blood on him for me to be sure if any belonged to him. He stared at me with his odd, light eyes, wearing an unreadable expression.
So help me, I thought, if he tries to fight us now …
“Are there more of those?”
“A lot more,” I said. “Underground. I guess they found a way out.”
Part of me feared they’d broken through to the Burrowers and discovered those subtunnels with the holes that led up the surface. Jengu might be dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. The whole enclave might be dead by now. I feared for Stone and Thimble; maybe the underground tribes were no more. Quickly I put those worries aside.
“We need to move,” Fade said. “If I know anything about those things, there will be more. They’ll smell the blood and come, looking to eat.”
Stalker gazed down at his fallen and shook his head as if apologizing for leaving them to become Freak food. I doubted they minded, now. The strong survive, and the dead are past saving.
“Tegan,” I called. “Let’s go.”
She crawled out from under a table nearby, shaking from head to toe. “That was … the way you…”
“I grew up learning how to fight them,” I said simply.
There was no reason for her to be ashamed of her fear. I was afraid of the sky and the sun, after all, and those things probably wouldn’t hurt me. Not like the Freaks, though I was less than convinced the sun served any benevolent purpose.
“Where’s Pearl?” Fade asked.
She’d called him Semyon. It sounded exotic to my ears, a hint of a past I would never share. I tried not to mind when he went looking for her. He’d chosen to stay with me when he could’ve remained in peace and comfort. A choked sound echoed, and I went to find him.
Fade stood over the body of a Freak. Pearl lay partly chewed between the shelves. She’d tried to run and had drawn the attention of a hungry monster. While the rest of us battled and talked, it had been eating her, quietly. These really were smarter than the rest. If it had been clever enough to slip away before we finished fighting, we never would’ve caught the thing.
“Come on,” I said. “You can’t help her now.”
“She died because she let us look at her dad’s maps.”
That was true. We’d led Stalker to her door, and once we left, he had forced entry and taken her. So I had no words of comfort to offer.
We rejoined the others. I had no fears for Tegan anymore. Stalker had his hands full trying to get his lone Wolf out of the library before more Freaks showed up. Regardless of Fade’s sadness, that had to be our priority too.
“The city’s going to be overrun,” I said quietly. “As more Freaks find the way out, they’ll go looking for food.”
“It’s time to go,” Tegan agreed.
I skirted the pile of bodies and still left a bloody trail of footprints as I headed for the door. She followed and after a few seconds, Fade got moving. Stalker caught up with us halfway down, more or less dragging his man.
“Go where?” he asked.
I didn’t want to tell him, but he had helped us against the Freaks. “North. It’s supposed to be better outside the ruins.”
“Who says?”
“My dad,” Fade said quietly.
“Was he some kind of holocaust expert?” Stalker’s tone was mocking.
Fade shrugged. “He had a lot of books.”
I wasn’t about to let this disintegrate into an argument on the steps. We had a long way to go and no real idea where we were heading. “Which way is north?”
He tinkered with his watch and then pointed. “That way.”
“Then let’s walk until the sun comes up. Let the light mark our rest breaks.” Stalker and his Wolf didn’t need to know my fears.
Fade gave me a knowing glance but he nodded. “Moving.”
“We’re coming with you,” Stalker said.
Tegan froze. “No. If you try, I swear I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
“What about your cubs?” I asked.
“They might be meat by now. If those things are swarming, then I can’t help them by getting myself eaten on the way back.”
“But why do you want to come with us?” Tegan demanded. “Just a little while ago, you wanted us dead!”
“Wanted. Not anymore. Those two”—he jerked his head at Fade and me—“seem to know how to fight these things. That means I need to stick with them if I want to survive.” Then he fixed a pale gaze on her again. “I don’t care what you do. You’re useless to me.”
Silk would find his attitude commendable. He embodied the Hunter tenet: “The strong survive.” Part of me hated him for what he’d let the other Wolves do to Tegan, but the Huntress half of me wondered why she hadn’t fought until she died. And I admired his ruthless skill with those blades that seemed an extension of his hands.
I glanced at Fade. “It’s up to you.”
“We can use another fighter,” he said. “It’s likely to be a tough journey.” He glanced at the Wolf. “But I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”
He didn’t state the obvious — that the bleeding wounds would draw more Freaks. If they could smell warm meat down in the stench of the tunnels, it would be like an invitation on the clean, crisp wind. I waited to see how Stalker replied, interested in how deep his pragmatism ran. He was ready to abandon his cubs. Would he leave his Wolf?
The question became unimportant when the boy in Stalker’s arms gasped for breath. Blood bubbled up. We laid him down on the steps and when I peeled back his ragged shirt, I saw the wound was much worse than we’d originally thought. As a brat, I’d tended gut wounds in Hunters because nobody else wanted to, and they always died. Sometimes it took a long time but there was no coming back from the kind of damage I saw. The claws had torn into his belly, scrambling the flesh. Stalker whispered to him, and the boy gave a jerky nod. He ended things for him, and then we left him.
We walked along the dead streets in silence. None of us had the energy to do more. The vast wreckage around us weighed on me, as if I could hear echoes down the years from a time when these ruins were live and vibrant. Instead, there were only our footsteps, echoing in the dark.
Tegan hunched her shoulders, tension in the lines of her body. From the way she kept stealing glances, she seemed upset with Fade’s decision. I suspected she would follow through on her threat to kill Stalker in his sleep. Or try, at least. I didn’t think he would prove an easy target, even then. If he had fought his way to the top of the Wolves, then he qualified as strong.
As we walked, I kept my eyes down. I ignored the throbbing of my arm and the weight of the dark sky above. Sometimes I stole a look and the scope of it overwhelmed me. Fade had told me about the pricks of light above; he didn’t know what they were, exactly. I imagined they were torches from a city built on high. It would take a bird to reach it, so maybe the people who lived up there had wings. They would be pale and beautiful with ivory feathers and starry hair.
We passed a dark pond with still water, where rainwater had pooled in the broken rock. It smelled stale, but I used it to wash the blood off. The others followed suit. Afterward, the chill made me draw my head covering up. Then we walked on until light showed on the far edge of the sky. It began in a gray that softened to pink and then gold. Before the sun came up fully, I could admit it was beautiful, the way it tinted the buildings and softened their ruined lines.
This far north, I saw no ganger markings. Stalker noticed it as well. “We learned how to survive close to home. We never went beyond our territories.”
&nbs
p; “Unless you were raiding for Breeders,” Tegan said bitterly.
Stalker shrugged, as though her opinion didn’t matter to him. I understood, I thought. He could respect Fade and me because we’d fought. Because she hadn’t, Tegan might never gain full value in his eyes.
“Even then, we never came this far,” Stalker said.
“Let’s look for another shop,” I said. “Maybe we can find more tinned food and water. I’d rather not build a fire before we leave the ruins.”
The others agreed, so as we went on, the light starting to hurt me, we scouted for a likely place to rest.
Respite
Stopping at three different shops provided us with enough food for a few days, but we didn’t like the way the places smelled. For me, it was more of a danger sense, cultivated during my days as a Huntress. So we kept moving, even through the daylight. By the time we found a building that looked solid and secure, apart from the broken window we crawled through, I was exhausted, and my skin tingled unpleasantly. I went inside first, and Stalker followed.
“You’re red,” he told me. “Haven’t you ever seen the sun before?”
His attention didn’t bother me. I had already proved I could defend myself.
“Not that much. I told you, I’m from an underground tribe.” I used Tegan’s word for us. “College enclave,” I added, as if it would mean anything to him.
“You were serious?”
“Yes.”
Tegan and Fade slid in. He came in first and helped her through. We stood in a hallway illuminated by rays of light that swam with dust. The floors were intriguing, a mix of green and white. I studied the pattern as if it held some clue about this place. It seemed almost like a hidden pathway.
Fade said, “We should split up and scout the place. I’ll take Tegan.”
Maybe he knew she wouldn’t want to go off alone with Stalker whereas I could hold my own, even against his lightning blades. I moved out. The sign on the outside of the building had a number of missing letters, but I’d recognized the word “School.” That was where brats went to learn. We’d had school underground too. The idea of a building this size devoted to teaching brats astonished me.
He fell into step with me, still thinking about what I’d said about coming from underground. “What was it like down there?”
“Dark. Smoky. There wasn’t space like there is up here, so you got used to less. And I grew up knowing there were Freaks out in the tunnels, and that if I was brave enough and strong enough, I’d go out to fight them for the rest of the enclave.”
“And did you?” he asked.
“For a while.” I didn’t want to talk about the exile, but I just knew he was going to ask.
Sure enough, he did. “So how did you wind up here?”
“Bad luck.”
That sent the message clear enough. He subsided and took to searching the rooms across from the ones I picked. In silence, we patrolled the rest of the place. It was big with three levels, and lots of little spaces full of tiny tables and tiny chairs. They really had made this school just for the brats. In each room, there was only one big table and one big chair. Awed, I stepped in and saw a black wall with white dust on it. I could nearly make the faint impression of letters, but time had been too much. It was like almost glimpsing something in my own reflection that I wasn’t meant to see. I touched my fingers to it and drew the first letter of my name. I didn’t know how to spell the rest.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A D.”
We moved on. Stalker moved different than Fade, less caution, more aggression. If there was anything in here, he meant to kill it before it threatened us. I found the contrast interesting, but he was still thorough and watchful.
“Seems safe enough,” he said, once we’d walked our assigned levels.
I had to agree. There was nothing here but the signs of rats and birds, nothing larger or scarier. We passed into what I recognized as a kitchen from the pans, more than anything else. Copper had used similar objects for cooking down below.
Here, I found enormous tins of food. I’d never seen anything like it. “Too bad we can’t carry these,” I said. “We could eat for months.”
“We should save the smaller ones for travel. Eat some of this stuff now.”
“‘Creamed corn,’” I read aloud.
His pale eyes flickered. “How do you know that?”
“I can read, some. Not as well as Fade.”
Stalker stared at me, and then he asked, “What does that mean?”
How could he not know? And then I remembered how he’d come up, no Breeders to teach him anything at all. The only things he knew, he’d learned the hard way. Nobody like Stone had shown him anything or made sure he showed up for basic brat training. It was a wonder he could talk, let alone read.
“The letters here,” I pointed. “They spell out what’s inside the tin. I don’t know what ‘corn’ is, but I’m hungry enough to eat almost anything.”
I got out my tiny knife with all its funny blades. One of them punctured the tin, so I did it repeatedly, until I could pry the top off. I peered inside at the yellow goo. Stalker cocked his head and sniffed.
“Doesn’t smell bad.”
My fingers were clean enough from the pond that I dipped them in and tasted. Sweet. Not like the cherries, in a different way, but good. Following my example, he gave it a try too. I ate until I didn’t want anymore and then got out some of the bottled water we’d found. So far I hadn’t tried drinking it; I’d only washed off in it. But we didn’t have any choice now. I cracked the bottle open and took a drink. It tasted funny, but not dirty. I made myself down half of it, then I offered it to him.
“It’s not very good, but I think it’s clean.”
He took it, leveling a strange look on me. I realized he wasn’t used to the idea of sharing. What he wanted, he took. But it didn’t work like that, now. And he had to understand that.
I narrowed my eyes. “You realize, you’re not in charge. You never will be. Fade thinks your blades will come in handy on the trip and he’s probably right. But if you try to hurt any one of us, especially Tegan, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
His pale eyes narrowed, drawing up his scarred cheeks. “Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat,” Fade said, coming up behind me. “It’s the truth.”
Tegan growled low in her throat. “He can’t change. We should just kill him.”
“There’s been enough killing.” Fade put a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on him. He won’t hurt you.”
Part of me didn’t like the new additions to our group. I missed when it was just Fade and me against the world, even as I acknowledged we needed the help. There was no telling how far we had to go. He hadn’t found any maps in the library, showing us the route. We only had his dad’s stories and the hope we might get out of these ruins if we walked far enough. Right now it seemed impossible.
We lived in a dead world. The idea if we went far enough, we might find living people, who had fires and homes and food to eat — I might as well wish for those pale, lovely winged people to come down from the stars and take us there, as long as I was hoping for things beyond my reach. But giving up wasn’t an option either. I’d put my faith in Fade’s sire, and the fact that his stories must be true.
“Have some creamed corn.” I passed the huge tin to her, and she smelled it, much as Stalker had done. It would doubtless make her mad to find out she had anything in common with him. “It’s better than it looks.”
If the water had been bad, I would know soon. Stomach pains, coupled with quick eruption, marked the dirty disease. So far, so good. I missed proper baths with soap, but the clumsy cleanup at the pond would have to do. All things considered, it was a small complaint.
Shouldering my bag, I found a dark corner and rolled up in my blanket. Tegan lay down on my other side; she still had my club, I noticed. She kept one hand on it even as she fell as
leep. Fade put his body between Stalker and us. He didn’t seem to care.
No harm came to us while we slept. I woke first, roused by the noise Tegan was making in her sleep. I put my hand on her shoulder and she came up swinging. She landed a solid punch to my face before she realized who I was. I rubbed my cheek and smiled at her.
“That’ll teach me to wake you up.”
“Sorry.”
“Sounded like you were having a bad dream.”
Her gaze cut over to Stalker. “You could say that.”
“About him?”
“Well. No. But about what he let his Wolves do to me.”
“I thought you said he took all females first.”
“Not if someone else brought the girl in. He had the right to claim anyone he wanted, but he was usually generous.” Her anger sizzled. “He made an exception to that rule when you showed up.”
“You blame him for not helping you.”
“Of course I do! He was in charge — they listened to him. If he’d asked them to stop or leave me alone, they would have.”
“Can you fight?” Stalker demanded from the other side of Fade. I hadn’t realized he was awake, but she wasn’t being quiet, either. “Hunt? Can you make clothes or any other useful item?”
Tegan glared at him. “No!”
“Then as far as I can see, you’re only good for breeding. My job was to keep the cubs together. Keep them hunting as a pack,” Stalker said. He sat up and ran a hand through his fair hair. Like Pearl’s it shone brighter when the sun hit it, and it stood in unruly spikes. “I did that. Better than anybody had before.”
“And then you left them to die, because you were afraid to go back alone.”
Stalker lunged for her then, but Fade slammed up an arm and gave him a shake. “Shut up, both of you.”
I listened for signs there might be something coming for us. But I heard only the moan of the wind through the halls. After pushing to my feet, I put away my blanket and took up my pack.
“This can go only one way,” I said. “The two of you have to forget what came before.” At Tegan’s black scowl, I held up a hand. “If you don’t, we won’t make it. You think it’s easy for me? I could be safe and warm right now in my own pallet in my own space with nothing more to worry about than following orders.