by Susan Ee
“Funny you should ask,” I say, lowering my voice. “Can I talk to you for a minute? Outside?” I have a wild hope that Doc, Raffe, and I might be able to sneak away.
“No need for privacy,” says Obi. “Doc told us all about his work on Alcatraz and his hopes for Paige. We’d all love to hear about your sister. Is she all right?”
I look at the faces around the table. All of them are older than me. Some of them look like grizzled veterans from previous wars. Others look like they’re recently off the streets. What would they do if they knew they had an angel in the room?
“What do you want with her?” I ask. I can’t help but sound suspicious.
“Doc tells us she might be our best hope.”
“Doc is an optimistic guy,” I say.
“There’s no harm in seeing, right?”
“The last time you took a look at her, you had her tied in ropes like a rabid animal.” I can’t help but glance at Martin. His hand still looks rope burned as he drums a pencil against the fingers of his open hand.
“That wasn’t me,” says Obi. “I came on the scene just before you did and was trying to figure out what happened. Look, people make mistakes. We’re driven by fear and exhaustion and outright stupidity sometimes. We’re not perfect like the angels. All we can do is rely on each other and do our best. I’m sorry for how your sister was treated. We need her, Penryn. She could turn this war around.”
“Not if she starves to death,” I say. “Make Doc fix her, and we’ll talk about what she can do for you.”
“Fix her?” asks Obi.
I glance at Doc.
“I’ll see what I can do,” says Doc. “I need to make sure she’s all right first, which means I need to see her.” He gives me a pointed look.
“Can you bring her to us?” asks Obi.
I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I glance again at Martin, who is watching us with intense eyes.
“Fine,” says Doc before Obi can object. “Take me to her.”
I turn, hoping for a quick escape, but Obi calls out my name.
“There’s been a rumor about a teenage girl who killed an angel,” says Obi. “They say she has a sword that might be disguised as a teddy bear.” He looks at Pooky Bear dangling off my hip. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I blink innocently at him, wondering if it’s better to own it or deny it.
“I can see we need to rebuild some trust between us. Let me show you around so you can see what we’re about. We could use fighters like the two of you.”
“I’ve seen the camp, Obi.” I fidget near the doorway. “I know you rescued the people off Alcatraz. That was amazing. Really. You guys were fantastic. But I need to deal with my sister right now.”
Obi nods. “All right. I’ll go with you. We can talk while Doc looks over your sister.”
I try really hard not to exchange glances with Raffe. Unless we can get Doc alone, there’s no chance of talking to him about sewing on Raffe’s angel wings.
“I’ll take you up on your offer for a tour,” says Raffe. “It’d be interesting to see what you’re putting together here.”
I freeze my expression in place, trying not to betray my thoughts. This is just getting worse by the second.
Obi’s face breaks into a grin. “Excellent. I’ll introduce you to a few people. I think you’ll be proud to call them your brothers in arms if you join us.”
“All right,” says Raffe.
“Great,” says Obi. “I think you’ll like what you see. This is the council. They’re in charge of our strategic defense.”
I watch Obi and Raffe make their way around the table. Does Raffe think this is funny? Obi is about to give an angel a tour of the Resistance camp?
DOC SLIPS HIS arm into mine and guides me out of the room. “Is she hurt? What has she been eating?”
I look at the door closing on Obi talking to Raffe as we head out into the hallway. “Um, my sister hasn’t been eating . . .”
The twins follow us down the hallway. They glance out the windows and watch everyone around us as we walk, always alert.
“Hey, guys.” We push out of the building doors and into the night. “What’s Obi showing Raffe?”
“The usual stuff,” says Dum.
“Our refugees, our cutting-edge batteries, our amazing electric cars, and maybe some of our dried ramen noodle supply.” Dee shrugs.
I walk numbly in the cold, my mind mulling over whether any of that would be harmful. No big deal, right?
Right?
I must be moving too slowly as we talk, because Doc turns around and asks, “Where are we going?”
“The grove across the street,” I say.
Doc takes off at a trot and disappears into the street. I’m about to chase after him when Dee puts his hand on my arm. “Let him go. He’ll wait for you at the grove anyway. He doesn’t know where he’s going.”
He’s right, and it is good to see the twins again. I let go of my worries about Raffe. There’s nothing I can do about it now anyway.
I turn to the twins. “You guys are awesome. No one else would have gone out to save those poor people on Alcatraz.”
“Ain’t no big thing,” says Dum, sauntering beside me.
“Yeah, we save hundreds of people all the time,” says Dee.
“All the time,” says Dum.
“We were born for it.”
“And sometimes we even turn down offers from women wanting to show us their gratitude.” Dum struts beside me.
“Once,” says Dee, looking humble.
“Yeah, okay, but if it happened once, that means it happened ‘sometimes,’” says Dum.
“Doesn’t matter that she was an eighty-year-old lady who looked like our granny,” says Dee.
“A chick’s a chick, man, regardless of her age. And an offer is an offer.” Dum nods.
Dee leans over and whispers to me. “She offered to cook us Brussels sprouts, and we turned it down.”
“She was heartbroken. Probably needed to find some lucky dude to pour her affections on the rebound.”
“Rebound’s a bitch.” Dee shakes his head.
“Not that we’re ever going to know what that feels like.”
The twins bump fists like true champions.
“And was Obi totally on board with the Alcatraz recue?” I ask.
“Yeah, okay, maybe Obi might have had a little something to do with it.” Dee shrugs.
“Not that we wouldn’t have gone ourselves to rescue those people barehanded, but you know, it was a teensy bit easier with Obi running the mission.”
“Good to know he’s not a jerk to everyone.”
“Actually, you’d be surprised at what a good guy he is,” says Dee.
“I can tell he hasn’t thrown you in jail and abused your sister like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“He makes hard choices so the rest of us don’t have to,” says Dum.
That shuts me up. Wasn’t I wishing for someone else to make the hard choices for me?
“He’s human,” says Dee. “He has flaws.”
“That’s why we’re here,” says Dum. “We make up for his imperfections.”
“Don’t take it personally,” says Dee. “He’d sell his firstborn, his parents, his cookie-baking grandmother, his one true love, both his arms, legs, and his right nut for a chance to get the human race back on track.”
“He’s the most dedicated guy we know.”
“And there’s no sacrifice that he would ask of any of us that he wouldn’t make himself.”
“Who else can you count on when you’re chained up on an evil island like Alcatraz?”
They have a point. The Resistance was the only group that would even consider mounting a real rescue mission.<
br />
“He’s a little like you, actually,” says Dee.
That almost stops me in my tracks. “Like me? Obi and I don’t have anything in common.”
“You’d be surprised,” says Dum.
“Stubborn, loyal, utterly driven to accomplish your mission.”
“Basically, you’re both crazy heroes.”
“And everybody thinks you’re both hot,” says Dee.
I scoff. “Now I know you’re full of it.”
“You’re seriously going to tell us you haven’t noticed the way guys look at you?”
“What guys? What are you talking about?”
They exchange glances. “Girl,” says Dee, “even before your latest stunt, you were becoming the most requested fighter of all our events. Butt-kicking girls have always been smokin’ hot, but in the postapocalyptic world we live in, the hottest thing around is a sword-wielding, angel-slaying, foulmouthed—”
“I’m not foulmouthed.”
“Yeah, well, nobody’s perfect,” says Dum.
“How did you hear about this hypothetical teen girl killing an angel? Not that I’m saying I believe in such a wacky story or anything.”
“The angels put a bounty on this hypothetical girl’s head. Anyone who turns this angel slayer in to them will get safe passage from them. Even Obi didn’t get that. His bounty is puny compared to this girl’s.”
“Word is spreading like wildfire,” says Dum. “There are crazy stories about her being able to control angel swords and even commanding demons. Everybody’s excited. Half the people are looking for you—I mean, her—to turn you in for safe passage, and the other half are toasting you with their last beer. A lot of people are doing both.”
“So watch your back,” says Dee. “Whether it was you or not, people think it was you, and that may be enough to get you killed.”
“What with your teddy bear sword and history with demons and all.” Dum raises his brows at me.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” asks Dee, squinting at me.
“Just between us of course,” says Dum.
“We’d never tell.” They’re freakishly identical when they say the same thing together.
A part of me is dying to talk about it. But the smarter part of me says, “Oh, sure. Didn’t I tell you I could kill angels and command demons? I can fly too, but don’t tell anyone.”
“Uh-huh.” They look at me, watching my face for clues.
I scan my mind for a change of subject. “You guys seem to be doing a good job here.”
They keep eyeing me as if not sure whether to let me get away from the topic.
“I mean, it must be hard to build a refugee camp while running a resistance army at the same time.”
“Obi’s been trying to do it all, but we finally managed to get a council together to help him run some of the logistics. Oh, man, so many logistics.”
“And all because you had to go for a little joyride, and then give Obi an excuse to be the hero. Speaking of which, how was your bus ride?”
“Yeah, the last time we saw you, you were sending us love notes from your little bus jail.”
“We thought about busting you out, but Obi thought it was more important to get those people off Alcatraz.”
“We wouldn’t have agreed if we’d known your mom was there.”
“Pain in the ass, let me tell ya.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” I say. “I know all about what a pain she can be.”
Dee laughs. “She’s like a weapons-grade pain in the ass. We figured out to sic her on the bad guys, and she became a huge asset.”
“Freaked out the human guards there until we came.”
“Did you know she can be truly frightening?”
I nod. “Oh, yeah. I know that.”
“Most of us had no idea. Totally blindsided us all.”
“She’s one of our captains now.”
“What?” It’s hard to imagine my mother being in charge of anything.
“Yeah. For real. What kind of a scary world is that?”
I blink a couple of times, letting that settle in. I admit that if there’s one thing I can expect from her, it’s the unexpected.
“Your mom totally rocks.” The twins nod like little bobblehead dolls.
“Do you know where she is?” I ask.
“Yup,” says Dee. “We should be able to find her for you.”
“Thanks. That would be great.”
We step onto El Camino Real, getting ready to hop from car to car when someone yells into the night. It sounds like a fight coming from the grove on the other side of the street.
Paige is in that grove.
I break into a sprint, running as fast as I can into the woods.
WE RACE INTO the grove, chasing the noise. We’re not the only ones running through the trees. But I can’t see details, and everything looks like shifting shadows in the deepening night.
There are angry voices. I’m pretty sure hellions don’t talk, at least, not in human voices. I hope this is not the day that I find out otherwise.
Beneath the canopy of trees, a group of shadows raise and drop their fists, kick, and yell at someone curled on the dirt. As we near, I catch a glimpse of the dried skins of the locust victims. Some of them are wearing ripped clothes covered in dirt as if they recently crawled out of graves.
Fists fly and pound into the victim, who is simply taking it, grunting with each impact.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I run up. No one seems to hear me.
“Hey!” shouts Dee.
“What’s going on?” asks Dum in a hushed but demanding voice.
Several of the locust stung glance at us. They don’t stop their kicks, but one of them says, “It’s that bastard from Alcatraz. He did this to us. Created the monsters and fed us to them.” He viciously kicks at the man on the ground. I can’t see any details, but it’s obvious they’re talking about Doc.
The twins must have reached the same conclusion. They jump into the crowd with their arms up. “That’s enough!”
“The council has already said to leave him alone,” says Dee, pulling a guy off Doc.
“The Resistance council has no power over us. We’re not part of your camp, remember?”
“Yeah,” says another guy whose face is as withered as dried salami skin. “You’ve all rejected us. And it’s because of him.” Another vicious kick.
“The next person who kicks or hits him gets banned from all betting. You will be blackballed for the rest of your shriveled lives. Now back off.”
Amazingly, they all back off.
Everyone else might reject the locust victims, but I guess the twins don’t discriminate in their betting pools.
Dee looks just as surprised as I am. He glances over at his brother. “Dude, we’re the new HBO.” He flashes a grin.
Dum reaches down and pulls up a man who I barely recognize as Doc. He holds his arm awkwardly. His face, which was already bruised, is so swollen that he can barely open his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “What’s wrong with your arm?”
“They stomped all over it. They have no idea what they’ve done.”
“Is it broken?” It’s starting to dawn on me what it means to have a surgeon with a broken arm.
“I don’t know.” His conscious brain might not know, but his body sure thinks his arm’s broken by the way he’s cradling it. “It’s people like this that make me wonder why I bother to try to save them.”
Doc looks furious as he brushes past me. He only takes a couple of steps before he has to lean against a tree and take a break. Dum holds Doc to make sure he can walk steadily.
“We have another doctor,” says Dee to me. “We’ll see what she can do for him.”
“I’ll go with you.” I see the locu
st stung with new eyes. Their shriveled chests and shoulders still heave with their anger and frustration. Several of them are crying with pent-up emotions that go far deeper than the ones stirred up by the fight.
I follow the twins as they help Doc across the street.
I LEAN AGAINST the wall in a room full of patients waiting to see the camp’s doctor. Doc got high priority because he’s the only other doctor in camp. They let one of the twins into the back with him while the other took off on an errand. I was told to wait with the others in the waiting room.
There is only one candle for the entire room even though the windows are blocked off by blankets. There’s something particularly unnerving about being in a room that’s more shadow than light and hearing people around you coughing and whispering.
The door opens, and Dee’s bottle-blond head peeks in.
“What’s the verdict?” I ask. “Is it broken?”
“Badly,” says Dee as he walks in. “It’ll probably be six weeks before he can start to use his arm again.”
Six weeks. My stomach feels like I swallowed lead weights. “Could he instruct the other doctor during surgery? You know, to work as his hands?”
“She’s not a surgeon. Besides, no one wants to be known as Doc’s minion. Bad for your health, you know.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” I chew on my lip as I think. I can’t come up with anything to do except go back with the bad news. What are we going to do now? Doc was our one shining hope for both Paige and Raffe.
The entrance door opens, and Dum walks in. “Hey, I saw your mom. Told her your sister was in the grove and that you’d be going there in a minute too.”
“Thanks. Does she seem all right?”
“She was pretty excited. Gave me a hug and a kiss,” says Dum.
“Really?” I ask. “Do you know how long it’s been since she’s given me a hug and a kiss?”
“Well, yeah, a lot of women find that they can’t resist my charms. They’re all over me for any excuse they can find.” He takes a swig of pee-green Gatorade as if he thought that was sexy.
I walk to the door, trying to figure out if there’s anything I can do other than head back to the grove with the bad news. When I put my hand on the doorknob, something strange happens that makes me pause.