by Susan Kim
The boy on the roof became an easy target. As Slayd got to his feet, the others let loose a volley of rocks toward the boy, who was scrambling down the fire escape. They nailed him at once—on the back, the legs, the head. He rolled down the final steps and dropped to the pavement with a sickening thud.
In the silence that followed, Slayd brushed off his tunic, dignity intact. He didn’t acknowledge the protector any more than the assailant; both still lay, unconscious, on the ground. Instead, Slayd got back on his bike and led the rest of his band away, with a final, piercing shout. The last to leave grabbed the fallen variant and slung him over his shoulder. Then he too remounted his bicycle and was gone.
One by one, the townspeople straggled out of their hiding places. They stood in a state of shock on the street, breathing in the dust stirred up by the variants that still hung in the air.
There had been little left of their town in the first place. Now, there was even less.
TWO
HOURS LATER, THE STREET WAS STILL EMPTY AND SILENT, LITTERED WITH shards of broken glass, rocks, and splintered wood. The dusty asphalt showed the scuffed marks of bike treads and bare footprints that the wind would soon erase. On the ground beneath the fire escape, a few red splatters had dried and were blackening in the afternoon heat.
Far in the distance, a thin plume of gray smoke spiraled upward before disappearing in the darkening sky.
At the edge of the main street stood a one-story brick building surrounded by a cement field marked with fading white lines. Two battered yellow arches loomed overhead atop a high metal pole. By some miracle, the large windows that dominated three of the walls had been spared in the recent attack.
Now a small, anxious face peered out from a clear spot rubbed on the grimy glass.
It belonged to a sentry, a dark-eyed boy perched on a molded table attached to the floor and focused on the empty street, keeping watch in case of another attack. He was perhaps six or seven years old and he fought to stay awake. Behind him, the crowded room was restless and noisy, with a shrill clamor of voices raised in anger, fear, and confusion.
Everyone from town, more or less, was present; and it seemed everyone had something to say. More than a hundred children and teens huddled on top of tables and chairs, along the grimy tile floor and the stainless-steel counter. A lone child sat in the corner, soothing a younger girl who lay cradled in her lap, sucking from a dirty soda bottle. A few others retreated deep into their thoughts, staring upward at the ceiling.
One boy banged his fist on the metal counter until the others stopped talking.
“We got to go after them,” he shouted, his voice hoarse. He was nine, with a baseball cap pulled backward over his shaggy brown hair. “Before they attack us again.”
An older girl sitting on a table across the room shook her head. She was dark skinned and had several colorful belts cinched around her grimy robes.
“You mean go into mutant territory?” she shouted. “That’s crazy… they got more people. Or whatever they are.”
At that, the room erupted as everyone started talking once more. Another boy, pale and freckled, spoke up from where he sat on the floor.
“Maybe they are people,” he said. He looked to be about eleven. “Like us, only different. They’re boys and girls in one body. Maybe—”
The older girl sitting next to him, also freckled, smacked him hard across the ear. “Shut up!” she hissed; but no one had even heard. Another boy, so small his feet dangled a good two feet off the floor as he rested on the edge of the counter, piped up.
“And they got weapons. How can we fight if they got weapons and we don’t?”
Others chimed in.
“He’s right. We don’t got a chance.”
“But if we do nothing, they’re gonna come back. Maybe next time, they’ll kill us all.”
“They almost killed Jonah. When we brought him inside, he was bleeding pretty bad.”
People glanced at the would-be hero from the roof, who leaned against the counter; the side of his face was badly scraped and his left arm hung at a useless angle.
Nearby, Bekkah stood close to Eli, the blood-soaked T-shirt tied around her head not quite hiding the ugly purple and yellow bruise spreading down her cheek. Her left eye was swollen nearly shut and when she spoke, she sounded exhausted.
“They always been peaceful,” she said. “Now they’ve attacked us four times. What do they want? It don’t make sense.”
As the arguments raged, one person was watching the proceedings with a shrewd eye.
It was the leader of the town, who leaned against the far wall, with his arms folded. Short, with wide hips and stringy hair, eighteen-year-old Rafe had been elected to his one-year term the previous winter by the usual show of hands. It hadn’t taken him long to realize how much he enjoyed not only the prestige of his position but the perks as well. He was spared work assignments and was also given an extra weekly allotment of food and water. And so despite his advanced age, he was planning how he could be reelected for another term.
The recent variant attacks, he figured, gave him as good an issue to run on as any.
Rafe held up his hands for calm. As usual, he remained silent while the others exhausted themselves with bickering and suggestions. When he did speak, this gave him the impression of both thoughtfulness and authority.
“There ain’t never been sense to mutants,” he said. He also knew enough to speak softly; this forced everyone in the room to lean forward to hear him. “They’re like wild dogs. And I say we wipe ’em out.”
The girl next to him was shaking her head, arms folded over her thin chest. “That’s always your answer, Rafe,” she said. Against the relative whiteness of her robes, her skin looked dark and withered; she appeared at least two decades older than her sixteen years. “It ain’t so easy.”
“Let him speak,” shouted the boy with baseball cap.
“Yeah,” chimed in another voice. “How do you say we do it?”
Again, Rafe waited until the room grew quiet.
“We go to Levi,” he said. “We go there and we ask for weapons. Real weapons, I mean. Knives. Arrows. That way, at least we got a chance—”
The dark-skinned girl sitting on the table cut him off.
“But there ain’t no gas left to trade for the things we really need—like to eat and drink,” she said, her voice shrill. “And Levi’s been cutting back on what he pays us.”
Most were nodding their heads in agreement. The dark girl continued. “We got nothing else to give him. Without gas, why would he even talk to us?”
Rafe smiled. He had anticipated this question.
“Maybe not to you or me, unless we got something to trade,” he said. “That’s all he cares about. But there’s one of us I bet he’d talk to.”
Then he turned to look at a girl sitting alone by the window.
It was dusk; the meeting had been going on for nearly two hours. The small sentry at the window had relaxed his vigilance and dozed at his post. Behind him, several of the townspeople had lit candles, which they set on the tables and counters. As the nighttime darkened around them, the gritty windows reflected what was going on inside the room. From outside, the townspeople were all too visible, and with no view of what might be approaching.
If attackers were to come, they would arrive unseen.
And in fact, two people were now scuttling toward the lit building. Yet they were not there to do harm.
Esther bent low and ran from one shadow to the next, zigzagging down the sidewalk. She had been gone since before dawn. Although Esther chose to ignore the far-off explosion, she knew that it had to do with the variants. Now, uneasy, she could not help but notice the freshly smashed windows and broken storefronts that lined the main street of Prin.
Behind her was a reluctant and increasingly panicked Skar. With the stink of burning gasoline still lingering in the night air, the last thing she wanted was to be confronted by the town.
“
Esther,” Skar whispered, pulling at her friend’s arm for what must have been the hundredth time, “please. Let’s not do this!”
“Don’t worry,” said Esther. “They can’t see us.”
And Skar had to admit: This part was true.
It wasn’t just that the darkness gave them ample cover. Over the years, Esther had worked hard to become adept at variant ways—the peculiar stalking, hunting, and trapping methods that Skar had taught her, skills that had been second nature to the variant girl since early childhood. Skills that let you become almost invisible.
Esther ran on the balls of her feet, using cover and shadow to hide her progress, avoiding the straight line of approach, doubling back, leaping up to edge a few steps along railings and windowsills, seizing every possible handhold and foothold available to her: all the tricks a variant did to confound expectation and confuse the eye. If she were to be honest, Skar could fault Esther on a half dozen mistakes: Her tread was too heavy, her breathing too loud. The worst was that the girl still couldn’t interpret the terrain as having many possible pathways, not just the obvious one; she didn’t know how to strategize on her feet. Even so, although she would never say so out loud, Skar had to admit:
Not bad for a norm.
The two reached the building where the meeting was taking place and slipped into the adjoining alley. Esther took a swift, birdlike peek into a window, as Skar cringed in the shadows beside her, trembling with anxiety.
“Big group in there,” Esther said; “looks like everybody in town.”
Skar’s expression grew even more tense. “Can we go now?” she begged.
“Not yet,” replied Esther. “We’ve got to hear what they’re planning. It could be important.”
“What are you going to do?”
Esther didn’t answer. Skar was about to repeat her question when she saw what Esther was doing.
She was trying to climb the bare brick wall.
Despite her mounting anxiety, Skar couldn’t help smiling. Esther was attempting something she had learned only that week: using the tips of her fingers and toes to gain a hold on even the shallowest dents and faintest bumps in a surface. In this way, a variant could—with practice and the right combination of strength, balance, and weight distribution—scale even the smoothest-seeming wall, like a fly. Esther was able to grip the bricks with both her fingers and the tips of her sneakers, and she moved upward clumsily, yet with surprising speed.
By now, Esther was too far up the wall for Skar to call her back. Feeling resigned, the variant made a quick decision and followed.
Moving at twice the speed of her friend and with enviable grace, Skar clambered up the brick wall and caught up with Esther within moments. At the last second, she was polite enough not to overtake her. Instead, they reached the roof together and Skar even allowed Esther the illusion of pulling her up once she had reached the top.
“Don’t worry,” Esther whispered, clearly proud of herself; “I got you. And I got here first!”
But her jubilation made her forget herself and she stood upright, something a variant would never do, especially not in a moment of triumph, the one moment your guard was down.
Skar hissed a warning at her, but it was too late.
Esther wavered and then lost her balance, falling forward onto the roof and landing hard. The top of the building was steeply tilted on both sides like an old-fashioned cottage from a picture book, covered with overlapping reddish-brown tiles. Esther started to slide, her fingers scrabbling in vain to get a grasp of the tattered clay rows.
Skar reached out a hand, but it was no good. Esther kept sliding, rapidly approaching the edge.
At the last possible second, she was able to wedge one foot into the shaky rain gutter while grabbing onto a few secure tiles. One broke off under her hand; it skittered down the roof and disappeared in the darkness beneath them with a faint crash.
With surprising speed, Esther crawled her way back up to her friend, who was huddled miserably, waiting for her.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” Skar said.
The variant was astounded that inside, no one had heard the incredible noise Esther had just made. Any one of her people would have been outside investigating the suspicious sounds within seconds. She wished (and not for the first time) that Esther wasn’t so stubborn.
“But we just got here,” Esther whispered. She flattened down onto her stomach and crawled toward one of the many gaps in the tiles. “And I want to hear what they’re talking about.”
Skar had no choice but to follow her. She sat next to her friend, knees huddled close and bulging eyes shut tight.
One gap afforded a limited view of the room below. Esther glanced down, then placed her ear over the hole and concentrated. There were many people speaking at once, but she was able to detect a female voice. She had to strain to hear what she was saying.
“We got nothing else to give him. Without gas, why would Levi even talk to us?”
She peered through the hole. Esther could see the tops of heads, a few familiar faces. She recognized Rafe, the current leader of the town elders, a boy she hated because beneath his superior airs, he was both a coward and blowhard. As usual, he was doing his trick of talking softly. Esther had to put her ear close to the hole and focus hard in order to discern his words.
“Maybe not to you or me, unless we got something to trade,” he was saying. “That’s all he cares about. But there’s one of us I bet he’d talk to.”
Who were they talking about?
There was a brief silence, followed by a faint murmuring as people stood and craned their necks, looking to see who he was discussing. Esther followed their gaze and was startled.
It was a girl, seventeen, with dark, straight hair held back in a ponytail. Unlike everyone else in town, her robes were relatively clean and gathered neatly at her waist with a dark cord. She seemed embarrassed by all the attention, yet flattered as well.
“I… I don’t know,” she was saying. “For one thing, I don’t know what good it would do. I’ve never been to the Source. I can’t even remember the last time I spoke to Levi…”
Esther pulled back, as if struck. “Hey.”
“What is it?” Skar asked, opening her eyes.
“It’s my sister. Sarah.”
Frowning, Esther sat back on her heels. In that position, she could see the place they were talking about, where Levi lived. The Source lay to the northeast of town and was something she saw every day, as much a part of her landscape as the sun. Although it was nearly a mile away, it was hard to miss from anywhere in town.
The gigantic white building was like a beacon, huge and blindingly lit with electrical lights. They threw deep shadows across the trenches that lay next to it, black gashes in an overgrown field. The holes were just three of the dozens of pits scattered across town that the people dug day after day when they were unlucky enough to be assigned to the Excavation. The front and side of the Source faced a monstrous asphalt field marked with fading white lines and still crowded with the dusty remains of cars.
Now, it seemed Rafe and his followers wanted something from Levi, something new. And they apparently needed Sarah, the childhood friend who once knew him best of all, to be the intermediary.
Esther didn’t like it.
She glanced at Skar, who was amusing herself by tossing a small knife up in the air and catching it. She wasn’t even paying attention, and for that, Esther felt a stab of exasperation. Skar was, after all, only who she was—a great friend, but one who was easily bored, like a little child.
And little children needed to be protected.
Esther knew it would be up to her. She was not sure how she would do it, but at least she knew where to start.
It was evening. Shadows cowered low to the ground and scurried through the streets and alleys of Prin.
They were feral dogs, rooting through piles of garbage for something to eat. They snapped and fought over whatever they could sniff out, anythi
ng that was remotely edible: the stale and salty ends of flatbread, rabbit bones that had been sucked of their marrow, the burned crust of rice porridge. The dogs of Prin were dingy and skeletal, cringing yet vicious beasts accustomed to skulking in the shadows and traveling by night in packs.
There was, however, one stretch of sidewalk that had been swept clean. The storefront window behind it had not only been patched over with flattened cardboard and gaffer’s tape; it looked like someone had actually taken the trouble to measure it so it fit properly. A cracked and battered sign above what was once the window read STARBUCKS COFFEE in block white letters on a green background. And above the sign, a light was visible in the second-floor window.
Agitated shadows moved across the curtain. Behind the thin fabric, Esther was getting in her sister’s face.
“But you can’t go,” she was saying.
Esther was trying hard not to raise her voice, because she knew losing her temper would only cost her the argument the way it always did. Instead, she tried to sound reasonable, clasping her hands tightly behind her back.
“You can’t ask Levi for weapons,” she said. “This whole thing is starting to get crazy.”
Sarah stood at the kitchen counter, cleaning out the firebowl with a rag. The older girl acted as if getting rid of every last trace of soot and ash was the most important thing in the world. She was doing what annoyed Esther the most: ignoring her because she was focused on something more meaningful, something adult.
“Pass me those,” was all Sarah said, nodding at the forks and spoons.
Frustrated, Esther picked up the handful of dirty silverware. She couldn’t help herself; as she handed them over, she slammed them down on the counter harder than she intended to. At the noise, her sister jumped, to Esther’s private satisfaction. Then Sarah turned all her attention back to cleaning up.
“How could you listen to those people?” continued Esther, still trying to sound calm. “Rafe? He’s a big mouth, that’s all. And the others—they’re just thugs who want an excuse to hurt people.”