by Aubrey Rose
Shame on me not checking my surroundings, but she scared the shit out of me.
“You shouldn’t be awake either, Emma,” I answer gruffly. I’m not very good at avoiding questions, and she sees straight through my non-answer.
She cocks her head to the side and raises one eyebrow as she looks me up and down, and then she grins, pushes off the railing and saunters over to me.
“My excuse is the snoring and I’m sticking by it,” she says, leaning in so close to me against the railing that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin. “What’s your reason, or do I need to play twenty questions like last time?”
I shuffle a few inches to the right and put a little space between the two of us before answering.
“Thinking about Ben again. More of the usual.”
She nods and then turns away, staring down at the city as her shoulder-length blond hair dances on the wind. I try not to be too critical of military management now that I’ve gotten a taste of how hard it is to keep the grunts in line, but some administrator seriously screwed up when he deployed Emma with us. Not only is she the only woman in our pathetic excuse for a company, but she’s just barely eighteen and so thin that I could pick her up with one hand. I’ve seen her handle a rifle during training exercises, and she’s living proof that even the best stance in the world won’t help when you’re too light to stop the recoil. What sort of madman thought it was a good idea to send a frail young girl into the Lazaretto Containment with a bunch of unruly grunts like us?
“I’d ask if you want to talk about it, but I already know the answer,” she says, still not looking at me. “Eventually there’s nothing more you can say, is there? You just want it to end so you can move on, but it keeps on hiding inside and waiting for you to let your guard down, doesn’t it?”
And there’s why Emma doesn’t belong here, I think. She shouldn’t be here because she’s too damned smart to be stuck at Ground Zero. She should be off working as a psychiatrist or something, not stuck here in hell with me. I’m here because my big plans all died along with Ben, but why on earth did she join up?
I just nod back to her and stare silently out over the city. She’s right as usual—she’s heard Ben’s story plenty of times. The show’s over and there’s nothing left to talk about.
“I probably ain’t supposed to ask this, but why’d you sign up anyway?” I finally ask after what feels like forever, and for a brief instant, Emma’s face hardens into a grim mask. Before I even know what I’m looking at, though, the emotion’s gone and the lost little girl is back.
“You’re from upstate too, right?” she asks, glancing in my direction before returning her gaze to the darkened streets below.
“Yup. Ontonwa Falls,” I answer. Emma’s from some podunk little village a good fifty miles north of my hometown. I forget the name, but the town’s so small that Ontonwa is like a boomtown in comparison.
“Then you know what it’s like.”
I sigh and shake my head, and my breath crystallizes in the freezing night air. I may be from upstate, but I ain’t psychic and I have no idea where she’s going.
“Pretend I ain’t from up there,” I tell her. “Imagine I’m some stupid city-boy from SoCal or something and explain it in my language.”
“You? A SoCal city-boy?” she snorts. “Might as well tell me to pretend you’re a minotaur or something, Cage.”
“Would it help if I mooed?” I ask with a grin, and she doubles over the railing in a fit of laughter. I don’t think my joke’s quite as funny as she seems to, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it. The frozen cloud of Emma’s laughter quickly disappears into the night, and she rolls her eyes at me before answering.
“Cage… what’re all the girls from your high school up to these days?”
“Dunno, really. Haven’t given them too much thought lately,” I answer, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot as I lean over the railing beside her. Somewhere off in the distance, a car alarm goes off. The apocalypse came and went and people still ain’t learned how to shut those stupid things off.
“Any of them make it out?”
Out of where? Oh, I see where she’s going now. I shake my head.
“Nope. Last I heard, pretty much all the ones I knew from my class are still in Ontonwa.”
“Exactly! You think it’s hard for guys to get out? Take a look at us,” she all but spits at me. I don’t think the venom’s directed at me, but I still take a step back to keep a respectful distance. “We all end up stuck there doing whatever the hell we can to make ends meet. Strippers maybe, married to our old high school sweethearts if we’re lucky, probably mothers by nineteen…”
“It ain’t that bad, Emma,” I protest, but I already know I’m full of it. She rolls her eyes at me again and scoffs.
“It is and you know it, Cage,” she says, looking me straight on with a fire in her eyes I ain’t seen before. “You wanted to know why I’m here? That’s why. I’m here because it was my only way out.”
She turns away again, her anger spent, and all I can do is lean against the railing beside her in silence. Damned if I know what to say to her after something like that… you and me both, Emma? No, it ain’t really both of us. I could’ve worked in the mines if I stayed, but they would never have hired a tiny thing like her. She’d have ended up trapped and helpless just like everyone else.
The one thing I can honestly tell her finally comes to me.
“Sorry.”
“Ain’t your fault, Cage,” she says, still not looking at me, and silence takes over again. Now her story’s told, too, and there really isn’t anything left to say.
Emma shivers after a few minutes, or maybe more. I have no idea how long we’ve been standing out here in the cold, and I only just now realize she’s not wearing a coat.
“You want to head back in? You won’t be much use if you get yourself sick, Emma.”
She shakes her head. “No, not yet. Still need some time to think.”
“I thought you said the snoring kept you up?”
“Sure… let’s go with that,” she answers, shooting me a thin-lipped smile. “It’s as good an excuse as any.”
She looks disappointed that I don’t follow up on her invitation to talk more, but one, I ain’t a junior psychiatrist the way she is, and two, I’m her senior officer. I stepped over a line by even telling her about Ben in the first place, and I have no business treating her like anything more than a soldier. She’s too… damned if I know what it is—young for me, maybe? No. That’s not it. Innocent?
Fragile. That’s the word I’m looking for. Even if I wasn’t her senior officer, it’d never work because I just can’t see myself ending up with someone I have to protect all the time. No way in hell I could deal with that. I can barely deal with protecting my platoon.
There’s one thing I can do, though. I take my coat off and drape it gently over her shoulders. The cold wind stabs bitterly into my exposed arms, but it’s still worth it. You’d think I gave Emma a kitten judging by her smile.
“I’m gonna try to get some sleep,” I say, patting her on the shoulder as I turn away. “Just toss the coat on my trunk when you come in and I’ll grab it in the morning.”
“Sleep tight, Cage,” she tells me, and then as I head for the stairwell, she calls after me.
“Hey, Cage?”
“Yeah?” I look back at her over my shoulder.
She opens her mouth to speak, but then shakes her head and turns away again.
“Thanks for the coat,” she says, sounding almost as if she’s ashamed of herself or something. I stare back at her for a long time before answering.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing,” I tell her, and then I step inside out of the cold and close the door behind me.
Fifteen flights down… tiptoe past the sleeping soldiers… and into bed again. The clock reads 05:45 now, and I’ve still barely slept a wink. At least it’s Christmas and we’re getting the day off. I’ll h
ave plenty of time to catch up on my sleep—it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.
This is my second Christmas in New York. I can’t believe I’ve been in this awful city for two years now. What the hell am I doing?
Spinning my wheels? Surviving? Trying to make up for Ben?
None of the answers seem to fit tonight. I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m too tired to worry about it anymore. My eyelids flutter shut and I finally fall asleep.
Merry Christmas.
Chapter Five
Bindi
The patrol guard stops me again as I go to leave. He turns me around. Again I see his eyes like yellow bismuth twinkling under the fluorescent lights of the military grid. This time he doesn’t let me go.
This time he kisses me.
Twirling in a slow embrace, my movements seem impossible to prevent. My hand pushes against his chest, but not unwillingly. Lips hotter than the sun seize mine, and I am dizzy with pleasure. A sweet ache works itself through my body until I am arching against him, and then we are kissing, kissing, and I never want him to pull away. I know in his arms I am safe.
Something falls out of my pouch. The rations. He pulls back and I see a flicker of doubt in his eyes. Then his face begins to shift, to morph into a kind of creature I’ve never seen. His nose pulls back into a snout, and he grows even bigger. He looks down at me in terror and anger, and I know somehow that it’s my fault that all of this is happening.
All my fault.
He’s huge now, furred and fanged, and his claws pull me back toward him, closer, closer, until his hot breath puffs out through his sharp teeth. Then...he roars.
I jerk out of my fantasy with a start and tear the covers off of my shoulders. Too hot. Kit, still curled up next to me in the cot, flicks her tail once but doesn’t wake up. I’m panting with an embarrassed mix of desire and fear.
It stings me that I can’t control my thoughts. Even my fantasies end in nightmares.
Patting Kit’s furry fox head, I whisper soft things until I know she is sleeping soundly. Sweat has dampened my clothes, and as I pull the blanket off of me, the cold chill of the tunnel makes me want to snuggle back up with Kit and sleep until morning.
But today is Christmas, and I am Santa Claus.
I tiptoe to the stove where I left the pack of rations and pull out the small ragdoll with red hair. Kit should love it, even if one eye is a bit torn off, dangling by a loose thread. I think that maybe I should fix it but I don’t know where Lily keeps her sewing stuff. Oh well. They’ll have fun fixing it together. I wrap the doll in a piece of colored cloth and tiptoe back to the cot.
Kit’s paws are twitching, and I hope that her dreams end better than mine do. Slowly, trying not to disturb her, I tuck the wrapped doll at the bottom of the cot so she will see it when she wakes up.
The other presents I have hidden in a bag next to my cot. For the past two months, I’ve been on the lookout when I go topside for food. Sometimes I scavenge through dumpsters to see if there’s anything that the other shifters have missed. I try not to tread into territory I know is dangerous. There are monsters living in the Laz, and they’re not all animals.
I heard of a human gang living in a brownstone in Washington Heights who would shoot any animal that came down their street. Just snipe them from the window. I don’t ever go out in animal form anymore, even though it would be faster.
Still, I’ve found some treasures apart from the old bags of beans and rice. That’s what’s normally left in the emptied out apartments. But sometimes I get lucky.
For Logan, I have a little box filled with tools that I’ve found over the past months. Two screwdrivers and some screws; a pipe wrench; plenty of wiring from a computer I found shattered in the middle of the street. Someone had thrown it out of a window. I put the toolbox at the foot of his bed where he lies sleeping.
For Lily, I really wasn’t sure. She keeps the tunnel clean for us, and does most of the cooking with Logan, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate a new scrubpad or whatever. Instead, I snuck downtown to the east side where the rows of boutiques used to tempt rich ladies into overspending. A brick through a window, and I was inside. I picked out a beautiful light green dress for her and some fancy underwear: two bras and a handful of silk panties with price tags on them that boggle my mind.
Now, I put the wrapped package of clothes on her bed and worry that I made the wrong choice. She’ll love it no matter what—Lily, sweet Lily, always wanting to please—but I hope that I have better taste in clothing than I think I do.
At Nim’s bed, I pause for a moment and watch him. He’s almost a man now, and not for the first time I wonder if we’re destined to be mates.
I don’t think he loves me, not truly. And I certainly don’t love him. But the kids need someone to look after them, and if I ever were to get caught...
Not now, though. Maybe not ever. Nim turns in his sleep, the blanket falling off of his shoulder to expose his bare chest. His body is strong and able. He is a born fighter. I worry that he will go out looking for fights if he doesn’t have someone to come back to. I don’t want to lose him. I worry what it will take to keep him.
He’s so tall that his feet hang off the edge of the cot. I put the small square package next to his bed instead, so that he won’t knock it off. Not that it would break or anything—it’s just a book.
I check the clock. There’s plenty of time before the kids will wake. I put on my shoes and pull on a jacket. Slipping out of the tunnel, I close the door behind me. I walk quickly up the tunnel, trying not to step in the puddles as I go. I don’t have the lantern, and the tunnel is black as night until I’m around the bend.
The far side of the tunnel opens up into a subway stop, and I pull myself up on the train platform. All of the subway stops have been boarded up, but here there is one board loose and I’m able to squeeze through without breaking it. The last thing I want is to attract attention to the tunnels we’re hiding in. Likely as not, it doesn’t matter. Likely as not, they already know we’re somewhere down here.
Why else would they have sent out a military patrol last night, on Christmas Eve?
I run lightly through the empty streets. The sky is turning gray with the incipient dawn, but it’s still cold when I get to the edge of the river boardwalk. My breath comes out in white puffs. I look around but there are no patrols, and it’s too dark for humans to be coming out of their homes. After all, there are monsters prowling in the dark.
I wait, watching across the East River, and then the sun rises.
The sun breaks over the Macombs Dam Bridge. Or what used to be the bridge. The military blew up the middle of all of the bridges so nobody would escape from the city.
The whitewashed steel bracings of Macombs used to arch majestically across the entire river. Now the middle of the bridge is gone and the cables dangle crooked and useless. The steel is charred and twisted. The sun comes up through the middle of the gap, silhouetting the snapped steel tendons of the bridge.
The water flickers with light. The East River is cleaner now that everybody is dead in New York, and nobody to spill oil or gasoline into it. Ripples turn red and orange and white with the rays of the sun. The edges of the river are crusted with black ice. The ice reflects the red light of the sun, and for a second it seems to be a river of blood, but then the sun heaves up over the bridge and the red is gone and there’s only white, white light reflecting off of every bright and gleaming surface.
Ducks paddle around under me, hoping for bread even though nobody has fed them for years.
I close my eyes and feel the warmth spread over my skin. The rays lick my nose, my ears, my neck. I pull off my jacket to feel the sun on my arms. It’s cold, very cold this morning, and there’s frost on the ground, but I don’t care. I open my arms and let myself breathe the warmth in and out with my whole being, ignoring the goosebumps on my skin. Looking again up the river to the bridge, I smile in the silence.
My present to mysel
f is this: a Christmas morning sunrise.
The siren breaks the morning air, wailing over the river. The ducks startle away, paddling out to mid-river. I snap my head around to see if there’s a patrol nearby. None that I can see. The siren rises to a high pitch, and my heart beats fast as I realize that it’s coming from farther west. They’re doing another raid. And from the sound of it, the sector they’re gunning for is the one right over our den.
I run.
Chapter Six
Cage
“Attention!”
I snap to attention at the head of my platoon and salute as the Major arrives at exactly 0800 hours. It’s Christmas morning and even though the troops are all supposed to be on leave today, he’s ordered us to report for duty. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last four years, it’s that you do what the Major tells you to do, period.
Major Harkut is a good twenty years too old to still be in his current rank, but even the first time I met him, something about the way his eye right eye twitched as he looked me up and down told me everything I needed to know.
He’s still a Major at his age because he’s insane.
Not strait-jacket, padded-room insane, mind you… a different, more dangerous type. He’s the type of insane who would knowingly send a company on a death mission if it’d advance his cause even the slightest bit, casualties and morals be damned.
In other words, he’s exactly the sort of crazy person the Lazaretto Containment needs right now.
“Captain Jones, at ease,” he barks. I relax my posture and approach him as my platoon watches on, my breath shallow in my chest. He’s my commander and I’d obey his orders to the end of the world, but I’d be a liar if I said he didn’t creep me out a little.
“Jones… were you briefed on today’s operation?” he asks, lowering his voice as he looks up at me. I’m a big guy—6’2” and 230 pounds—but something about Major Harkut’s confident glare tells me he ain’t cowed in the slightest. He’d break me in half in a second, given the chance.