Panther in the Hive (The Tasha Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole, Olivia

  MINK, in large letters across the top. Under it, in smaller letters, Medical Inoculation Network of Knox. And in still smaller letters beneath that, The Few. On the back of the card is the man’s name, Citizen Security number, MINK account number—all that made him matter in the world. The card now feels warm in Tasha’s hands.

  “The Few,” she says out loud.

  She looks at the dead man, at the red in his teeth. Yes, he’s safe. One of the “few.” His MINK had given him the Chip, armor against infection and assault, and now against the Chip itself. Tasha’s mind wanders to the weeks before the Change. Gina, Cara, Mrs. Kerry, Tasha’s neighbors. The Drivers of the L. Her doorman. Policemen. They were the few. Who were the many? Tasha looks around Michigan Avenue, the Promenade littered with corpses. Some of them might be Chipped—laid low after a lucky strike from their would-be victim. But most of these bodies, Tasha knows, are the unChipped. Regulars. The many. She wonders if any of them realized—too late—that if they could just destroy the blinking red light… Too late.

  Suddenly the MINK card feels like an anchor in Tasha’s hand. She lets it drop. She imagines it quakes the street as it hits the ground.

  She continues down Michigan. The hum of the Volamu has become something like tinnitus. It being the only sound, she finds herself sticking her finger in her ear and wiggling it, thinking her ears are ringing. The silent Magnificent Miles are not as she remembers them from just over a week ago: brimming, buzzing with the sound of credit cards being swiped. A week ago she was squinting at the purses of swaying women; she was curling her lip at passing men and their lewd remarks; she was ringing Gina on her cell and demanding that they meet for drinks. Now the silence is a shroud around her shoulders. It blends in with the heavy sky and the musky smell hanging in the air.

  What is that smell? Tasha sniffs a few times in quick succession, reminding herself keenly of a Basset hound. Where’s that smell coming from? It smells like a barn; a vague hint of vanilla; sweat.

  She pauses, points her nose down. Sniff, sniff. She pokes her nose into the corner of her armpit. It’s her.

  The reality that she’s been wearing the same sweatshirt for days, the same socks, the same jeans, the same—god—underwear, reenters her consciousness in a flurry like birds’ wings. She takes comfort from the fact that Ishmael—or any attractive man—isn’t anywhere near her. She’ll probably never see a man again, let alone be close enough to one for him to smell her sweat—or her underwear, which makes her despair even more—but the sheer knowledge that she is walking alone down Michigan Avenue in Chicago and can smell herself inspires her to issue an ultimatum, the conditions of which include soap, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes.

  She surveys her location. Michigan and Ohio—only a block from the Web, the Apiary’s biggest shopping competitor. Harmony’s Beauty Bar and Spa in the lower level, where she can find soap. Clothes in the rest of the mall. It’s a plan.

  Walking toward the Web, Tasha nearly steps on a small machine lying among some debris on the pavement. It’s an iPod. An old generation, one of the models her grandparents might have had. Some people her age had taken to buying them off eBay before the Change; retro items such as this always had a certain amount of appeal. She picks up the iPod, a white one with a large display, and it takes a moment before she realizes it’s not touch-activated. She clicks the little scrolling wheel. After a moment a faded apple appears on the dim screen. It loads, and Tasha takes the earbud that isn’t bloodied and puts it to her ear. The shrill, nasally voice of an artist whose name she vaguely recognizes sings a few bars before the battery of the iPod dies. Something about rainy days and saved pennies.

  Tasha drops the extinct iPod back onto the pavement, noting with a new satisfaction that the screen cracked a little on impact.

  The Web is empty, emptier than she’s ever seen it. She had expected to encounter at least a few Minkers, but she sees nothing but the endless polished tile floor, and entrances to stores thrown wide—at least on this floor. She feels the way Oprah must have felt when she went shopping; the owners closing the stores, barring all shoppers except the one who matters most: Tasha.

  This is ridiculous, of course—she is essentially going to be shoplifting during her visit today—and doubts that Oprah would approve, but then again, Oprah has been dead for decades, long since given her own national holiday. Maybe she wants a bit of excitement from where she sits, bored to death, in Heaven. Tasha imagines Ms. Winfrey pumping her fist in angelic fandom and smiles to herself as she heads down the escalator to Harmony’s.

  The lobby of the spa is as deserted as the upper-floor of the mall, and the music is quieter here. Probably Enya or something. She looks around, fearful of finding the aestheticians’ bodies stretched out, still wearing their pink spa gloves. But there is nothing, and no one: only the chanty yoga voice coming through the speakers, and the smell of chamomile washing over her in waves of artificially-scented nostalgia.

  From one of the glass shelves that line the walls she takes down a few bottles: facial scrub, body wash, shampoo, lotion, toner; bottles of potions that had filled the shelves in her apartment so far away on Foster, each one a promise. Arms full, she picks up a pink spa towel between her elbow and hip and wanders off to the baths, the Wusthof clenched unsafely in her teeth. She’s sure she looks like a pirate. A pirate with a soft spot for Deep Sea Facial Scrub and Apricot Masque. Pirates gotta stay pretty too.

  She’s visited the spa enough times to run the bath herself, and she’s soon up to her chin in hot water. She hadn’t thought to grab any bubble bath, so she sits glaring through the clear water at the shifting mirage of her naked body. It reminds her of going to the public pool when she was a kid. She had sat with Leona on the edge of the deep end, gazing at her shimmery legs. They were almost like fins.

  In her past visits, she’d had cucumber slices over her eyes, which doesn’t lend itself well to awareness of one’s surroundings. So instead she sits studying herself, surprised by how dirty her ankles are. She’s curious about her body. When was the last time she’s really looked at her ankles other than to make sure they weren’t turning into cankles? Does she sweat from her ankles and has never known, the truth hidden by daily showers? Her skin is a mystery. She doesn’t even know its name.

  She washes under her arms and is annoyed by the hair she finds there, but also a little fascinated. She hasn’t gone more than two days without lasering the fuzzy parts of herself since she was thirteen. Now her inquisitive fingers pet the tiny patch in her armpit as if it’s a small, foreign animal, strange but strangely welcome. Eventually she leaves her armpits alone to wash her neck and behind her ears and, finally, now that she has worked shampoo through it, her hair. As she submerges, she knows there will be not one straight strand left on her skull when she comes up for air. The water will undo the last of the flat iron’s labor.

  Underwater, she keeps her eyes wide open, afraid that any minute a gaping, barking face will appear above the surface and plunge its hands into the tub to grab her throat. She hears the alien clicking one inexplicably hears under water as she holds her breath, a sound she has always equated to the whisper of a seashell pressed against the ear. She knows it’s not the sound of the ocean, here in this pink bathtub; it must be the voice of the ear itself, a tiny creature of a mermaid sitting inside the canal, tapping the drum.

  She can’t hold her breath any longer and breaks the surface, her hair plastered to her cheeks like octopus tentacles. She paws it back impatiently before stepping out of the water. It’s murky with everything she’s washed off. She stares at the draining tub as she dries herself with the huge pink towel, and is only half-disgusted by the gray water. It could be worse—it could be red. She ties the towel tightly around her and picks up the Wusthof to carry with her. She’s going shopping.

  She only has to go up one floor from the spa. At the top of the escalator she goes into Guess. The mannequins stare accusingly at her and she gives them all, each one of them
, the finger. None of them react.

  Fitting rooms have always been her nemesis, so she tries to make it quick, discarding the first two pairs of jeans she’s gathered for their tightness. As good as they make her ass look, she won’t be able to run in them. She briefly mourns the idea that all future clothing will be worn for its functionality.

  As she’s pulling her feet from the legs of the denim she pauses. Behind the auto-tuned voice of the singer wafting through the speakers of the fitting room, she can hear a sound. In another time, she would have thought it was someone in one of the other fitting rooms, singing along, tapping out the beat. She focuses on the sound. Breath, and an almost rhythmic bumping noise. It’s coming from inside the fitting room. Tasha jerks her second leg out of the jeans and snatches up the pink towel. She ties it tightly around her body, grabs the knife, and sticks her head out of her little fluorescent stall, looking left and right. She doesn’t see anyone, but with her head out in the small hallway she can hear the sound more clearly. It’s at the end of the hall, in the fitting room reserved for the differently abled. She wonders for a moment if it’s someone in a wheelchair, their little steering stick stuck in the forward position, wedged in their dead fingers.

  She creeps down the hallway, grateful for the silence her bare feet allow her. She holds the knife ready, one hand outstretched, prepared to yank open the curtain of the stall at the end. In her hand the knife is trembling.

  She rips open the curtain with a yell. She doesn’t know why she yells; perhaps the anticipation had bubbled up as she held her breath. Either way it is unnecessary, as the Minker she sees before her barely acknowledges her presence.

  It’s a girl. No more than fourteen years old. She’s naked except for a pair of bright blue underwear, cut to show the bottom of each buttcheek. Across the ass is printed the word “Smart.” Tasha wonders if the girl—or her parents—was aware of the joke, or if she just thought the best way to advertise her intelligence was to wear panties that attested to it. The girl’s back is slender and crossed with the tan lines of a one-piece bathing suit. A swimmer perhaps. Tasha imagines the girl’s parents getting the Chip for her, thinking it would protect her from muscle deterioration, bursitis, chlorine poisoning or whatever dangers lurked in pools, just waiting to contaminate unsuspecting youthful dog-paddlers. So much for that. But what’s she doing here? And alone? Perhaps her parents had left her when she’d come out of the fitting room snapping her teeth. Tasha tells herself that she would have at least tried to muzzle her own kid had it come out acting like a rabid coyote. Or maybe not.

  Tasha stares at the girl, who stares at herself in the mirror. She is bumping her forehead against it every eight seconds or so, resulting in the rhythmic sound Tasha had heard. The girl must have been at it for awhile; her forehead sports a light-colored bruise. The Chip has probably been keeping up with the damage, preventing her from spilling her brains all over the glass. Although she’s not hitting her head very hard, Tasha imagines the skull to be very much like an egg; if you tap and tap, eventually the shell will split and release its contents. This particular egg is just difficult to crack.

  Tasha feels strange watching the nearly naked girl. Surely the girl has noticed her in the mirror: Tasha’s surprised she’s not turning, barking, biting. She just bangs and bangs, her brow furrowed and her eyes glazed. Tasha considers the possibility that the girl hasn’t yet noticed Tasha’s presence. She decides to announce herself, just to be polite. She coughs.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  Tasha coughs again.

  “Um…excuse me?”

  The girl is deaf to Tasha’s gentle pronouncement, and goes on butting her forehead against the glass. At a loss as to what to do next, Tasha half-heartedly raises the knife and feels her leg twitch, as if it had decided to take a step forward and then changed its mind. She knows it would be easy to dispatch the girl—she can see the Chip’s square nesting ground on the bare neck—but the idea feels strange. The girl’s face is lineless and clean of make-up, the eyelashes unblackened. Her naked body seems too soft, too exposed. She’s like a mole, blind and unfurred.

  “I’ll just leave you to that then,” Tasha says. She takes a step backward and slowly, quietly slides the curtain closed again, like a hospital sheet up to a patient’s chin. She takes the jeans from her fitting room and leaves. As she exits the store, she can still hear the faint rhythm of the girl’s skull against the glass.

  Tasha leaves Guess and crosses the hall to Victoria’s Secret, which has become less and less secretive. Inside the store aren’t the faceless, motionless mannequins Tasha had flipped off in Guess. Instead, Victoria—whoever she is—has upgraded to six-foot holographic women, their iridescent asses wearing brightly colored panties, sparkling. They strut up and down the tops of the long platforms, which house drawers of drawers. Tasha gazes at the ghost-women only for a moment. Passing one of them, she slashes at its calf with the Wusthof, the blade slicing through the air, not even interrupting the hologram.

  She goes straight to the demi section, and opens the drawer with her size. This she doesn’t need to try on; she’s been wearing the same bra since she started college: black demi-cup, lace back. She has it in beige too, but the black is sexier. She pulls two out of the drawer. Does this new world have a place for black lace? Black lace is like the Great Auk—impressive, but dead. The women who the holographic thong models imitate are dead. Sexy is dead. The thought is both heavy and weightless, and Tasha feels the shifting pressure and the void. Without sexy, who will she be? She supposes alive is the only who, the only what that matters at this point. She hasn’t yet decided if this is enough. Oh, look, underwear is on sale.

  She stops in a few more stores, picking up two black tank tops, a pack of socks, a Nike hoodie, and a toothbrush that’s self-foaming when you add water, the toothpaste stored in the handle, discharged with a twist. She’s also collected a recycled cotton shopping bag to carry her bounty back to the spa.

  Heading spa-ward, she passes the gleaming entrance to Macy’s, the entire floor of which is dominated by cosmetics. Tasha stands undecidedly in the entranceway, shopping bag in one hand, Wusthof in the other. The thought of the endless, pristine surfaces of the beauty counters beckons to her. She thinks of the teetering towers of eyeshadow clams, their exotic and interesting colors. From where she stands, she can see the fluffy brushes used for applying the shimmering powder that will conceal all her flaws. They will have lavender face lotion. She takes a step forward.

  The loudspeakers in the mall switch on with a crackle, and a voice echoes through the empty Web.

  “They’re coming.”

  Tasha freezes like a doe caught in a backyard floodlight, her heart a mouse playing a rickety tambourine. She tries to move her eyes and search for the mouth the voice comes from without moving her body. It had sounded like a woman—where is she? Tasha remembers she’s still in a towel and scrambles to tighten its knot as surreptitiously as possible. She hopes it would stay on in a fight, but if she has to kick ass butt naked, she will.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” says the voice, “I said they’re coming. Get to the second floor now.”

  There is only one “they” in this new world. Tasha hesitates a second longer. If she’s a doe, this could be a decoy fawn, a snare using her fear as bait.

  Then she hears the first bark.

  She’s off like a shot, bare feet slapping against the marble, her shopping bag rustling as she makes a beeline for the escalator ahead that will take her to the second floor. The cringing homunculus in her brain whispers that there might be more of them one level up, two levels up—the whole place could be swarmed. She can’t afford to listen.

  She trips up the escalator, fully prepared to be torn to pieces when she gets to the top, packs of rabid shoppers who’d been up early for a sale dying to get a piece of her. In a place like this she might as well have a red “seventy-five percent off” sticker slapped on her forehead; she’d be gone like Black Friday clearance.


  But when she gets to the top, panting, the only person waiting for her is a pretty Asian-ish woman with a black backpack over her shoulder and a box cutter in her hand. She smiles, looks down at Tasha’s towel, then over the rails at the barking crowd gathering outside Macy’s on level one and says,

  “You’d better get dressed.”

  Tasha does get dressed, banishing any shyness as she dons the pilfered underclothes, jeans and tank top. She hadn’t gotten any shoes; she’d assumed she’d be going right back down to the lower level spa for her Nikes. She starts to put on socks but changes her mind: if they have to run she doesn’t want to slip. She remembers a brief image from an old film she’d seen freshman year: a young man sliding in his underwear. Better to stay barefoot. Once Tasha is dressed, the Asian woman extends Tasha’s knife, which she’d been holding for her.

  “Ready?”

  Tasha takes the knife.

  “Ready for?”

  The woman nods down at the Minkers. Tasha sees there are four, not as many as her fear-crazed brain had imagined.

  “We’ve gotta get rid of them.”

  “Wait, what? Us?”

  The woman laughs.

  “If not us, then who?”

  Tasha goes on staring, so the woman expounds.

  “I’ve gotta sleep here tonight. I really don’t want to worry about those four making it upstairs and sniffing me out.”

  The idea of hunting Minkers is a new one—so far Tasha has mostly just cowered and lashed out when necessary, a poison dart frog hopping around trying to stay out of reach then releasing toxins when caught. This is different. She thinks of the lions in the zoo, their hungry gaze through the glass of the Cat House. She looks down at the Minkers outside Macys, trying to look at them that same way. She could be a panther, she thinks. She tightens her grip on the Wusthof.

  “Let’s do it.”

  They ride down the escalator in silence. It feels a little anticlimactic; not the thundering hooves and war cries that Tasha would expect from what really boils down to a charge on the enemy. Nearing the bottom, the Asian woman says,