Panther in the Hive (The Tasha Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole, Olivia

  Chapter 23

  Twenty minutes later Ishmael is ladling soup into bowls for them, telling them what happened at the stadium while Tasha and Vette were gone to gather food.

  “We were out on the field,” he says, “moving the bodies into a locker room. We’d been meaning to do it for awhile, but no one was really up for it. Anyway, we were out there moving them when Jeremy—Number Sixteen—comes running, screaming that they found a way in. Sure enough, they had. I don’t know how. They’re not good with doors and stuff like that. You know. But they were in the stadium, about sixteen or seventeen of them. Way too many for us. I knew there were probably even more where they came from, so me and Jeremy starting telling everybody to go back to the storage room. Everyone was running. The…people with the implant were running too. Some of them are faster than you’d think.

  “One caught up with Jeremy and got him on the ground, but I didn’t realize it right away. By the time I looked back and got to him, there was one on his leg and one on his neck.”

  At this point he looks at Malakai.

  “Malakai, go put the ladies’ bags in the guest room.”

  Malakai hesitates. Tasha doesn’t see Ishmael bat an eye, but she knows some unspoken signal has passed between them, and Malakai takes Tasha and Z’s bags, carrying them upstairs without a word. Ishmael sets the two bowls of soup in front of them on the table with salt and pepper shakers. The shakers are in the shape of sheep, one black and one white. Tasha reaches for the pepper. The sheep’s eyes are painted on round. She stares into them as Ishmael resumes his story. Baa, she bleats silently at the pepper.

  “I got them off of Jeremy, but I didn’t have anything to kill them with. So I just grabbed him and we kept running. It was hard as hell getting him up those stairs.

  “When we got to the storage room the rest of the team was gone. The door was open. They just…left. I guess I can’t blame them. Maybe they thought we were right behind them.”

  Tasha says to herself that the only thing the team was probably worried about was whether the Minkers were right behind them.

  “In the storage room I guess one of our guys must have slammed up against the door on the way out. Broke the handle. Jeremy was on the floor. There was a lot of blood. He told me to leave him. It felt…really bad. It felt bad. But he told me to go. I think he was dead before I even left the room. When I got outside, I didn’t see anyone, none of the team. There was a crowd of sick people to the north but they didn’t see me. I ran.”

  “Where?” Tasha thinks they must have barely missed each other.

  “South. Took Lakeshore to Montrose, then over to Broadway. I ran into a bunch of them there. I broke into a lot and took a scooter, rode that on Broadway until it turned into Clark, then Clark to Roosevelt and over to State. I charged it in the train station. Had a nasty little incident with a Driver while I was waiting,” he adds, shaking his head.

  “Then I came here. Malakai thought I was dead.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts, before finally, slowly, turning his eyes to Tasha.

  “Where’s Vette?”

  Tasha tells him. It’s more difficult than when she told Z—Ishmael had known Vette, had run alongside her in the sun, had high-fived her, had known her last name. Tasha watches his face crumple as she tells the story of his friend’s death. She doesn’t go into detail, hoping she doesn’t sound cold, monstrous. A monstress. She doesn’t tell him that she left a chocolate crucifix on his teammate’s chest. He might not understand—might mistake the gesture for mockery and not tenderness. Besides, Vette’s memories of her grade school flame and his bouquets of Snickers bars might have been a secret only for Tasha. Tasha will keep her secret.

  “It’s so fucked up,” Ishmael says, his fist against his forehead. He turns back to the stove. Tasha knows this kind of speechless grief from her father, the dam built hastily before tears. Conversation over.

  Tasha and Z eat their soup, and Tasha stares at Ishmael’s back. If he had just waited a little longer at the stadium, she wouldn’t have had to travel alone. They could have mourned Vette together. Tasha also wishes she had thought of stealing a scooter—or a car—sooner. Her calves would be a lot less sore, her Nikes less scuffed, and she would have gotten south a lot quicker. But then she might not have met Z. Or run into Malakai. Or have been able to eat this soup, which is tasty. She looks into the broth, which is the color of honey but tastes like chicken. It’s thick with barley and carrots and pieces of celery, punctuated with flecks of black pepper. Tasha looks up at Ishmael, hoping to extract him from his misery.

  “How are you cooking this? The electricity is out, right?”

  She looks around. What’s left of the daylight illuminates the kitchen, but the many unlit candles perched on various surfaces tell her that when the sun goes down, the house sees by candlelight. She takes in the kitchen while she can. The floor is graying white linoleum squares with pale green diamonds at the vertices. It needs to be washed, but it’s not filthy. The table where she’s sitting is small and square with neat wooden chairs; an empty bowl is the centerpiece. There’s a vase on the windowsill with dead flowers sprouting out of murky water. They might have been roses; it’s hard to tell in their browned and withered state. The refrigerator is tall and silent, covered with magnets and notes and a calendar with a picture of cats wearing hats. It’s turned to April, various pre-Change dates circled: dentist appointments, lunch dates, anniversaries.

  “It’s an old gas stove. As long as I have matches I can light the pilot. How’s the soup?”

  “It’s really good,” says Z, wiping her mouth with the cloth napkin he’d given her. “Tastes like something my grandmother would have made.”

  Ishmael laughs, and bows slightly.

  “My mother’s recipe,” he says. “Malakai helped.”

  Malakai appears in the kitchen, grinning. Tasha thinks he must have been listening at the door. He looks at Tasha and Z expectantly, reminding Tasha very much of a Border Collie waiting to be told what a good boy he is.

  “It’s good soup,” Tasha offers.

  “Great soup,” Z adds.

  This seems to satisfy him and he sits at the table with them, watching as Ishmael fills two more bowls.

  “Is it just you two here?” Tasha asks. She knows Ishmael had worried about the safety of his mother. He mentioned her only a moment ago in regard to the soup—calmly; not with the heavy grief she would expect from someone who had only recently found out that his mother had been eaten by crazed, roaming fiends. He seems content, or close.

  Ishmael sits at the table with them, scooting one of the bowls he’s brought with him toward Malakai.

  “Just me and Malakai now. We sent our mom West yesterday with our older brother Marcus.”

  “West?” Z says with interest. “Like, the West Side?” Tasha knows she’s probably thinking of her father.

  Ishmael shakes his head.

  “No, farther than that.”

  “…Downers Grove?”

  He laughs.

  “No, even farther. California.”

  “California? As in, the Nation? Of California?” Tasha feels a little dizzy. Are they flying? She hasn’t heard a jet in weeks. Driving? They couldn’t possibly be walking.

  Ishmael nods.

  “Lots of people have gone,” Malakai pipes up. “The whole block is pretty much empty at this point.”

  “Just gone?” says Tasha. “How?”

  “They go in groups. It’s a long trip, obviously. The group that went yesterday—with our mom—was about forty people.”

  “Wait, they’re walking?” Z has been wondering the same thing as Tasha.

  “Yeah,” says Malakai. “Crazy, right? They start off in cars, but those don’t get them all the way there. Cuz the batteries die. So eventually everybody walks. We haven’t heard from anyone after they’ve left. The first group left the day after everything happened, so Ishmael says they’re probably only in Iowa. If that.”

  “So people are
walking. To California.” Tasha almost laughs.

  “Manifest destiny, baby,” Ishmael grins. Tasha smiles back, without really knowing why. It’s not funny; it’s insane. But she’s seen enough insanity in the past week to be unsurprised by the idea of groups of people walking all the way from Chicago, Illinois to the Nation of California. She imagines them in long strings, pulling cargo—a new incarnation of the Oregon Trail. What are they seeking? Gold? Opportunity? Freedom? The story has changed with every generation—eventually it melted down to fame, plastic surgery. California’s secession meant an interruption of the great American journey, but now it has begun again. Tasha wonders how many other cities have had the same idea, how many survivors have packed their bags and struck out West, inspired by a rumor?

  “What do they think they’re going to find when they get there?” Z asks. “If they get there. I mean, seriously, how many miles of walking is that? Hundreds. Thousands.”

  Tasha doesn’t contribute, but she looks to Ishmael for his answer. Z’s right. It’s more than just a long walk. How long would something like that even take? She hopes the people from Ishmael’s block have packed extra pairs of shoes. And good shoes. Payless brand wouldn’t cut it.

  “We heard there’s no sick people in California,” says Malakai.

  “We heard that too,” Z says after draining her bowl of broth. “But there have to be a bunch of them between here and there. I bet Denver’s crawling with them.”

  “The Shepherd says the big cities are the worst,” Malakai says. “He says if we can stay away from the big cities, we can make it there in a few months.”

  “The who? The shepherd?” Tasha raises her eyebrow, ready to be scornful.

  “Who’s the shepherd?” Z is equally judgmental, but slightly more curious.

  Malakai is pleased that he’s said something that interests them both.

  “Yeah, sure. He lives a few blocks from here. He’s the one who’s been organizing the groups going west. The cops were after him before the Change. His cousin hid him in the basement of a church for awhile. No one really knows how long.”

  “Okay, well who is he?”

  “He’s a hero,” Malakai gushes. “He could have left when this whole thing happened but instead he stayed and helped people. He’s been giving people food and showing them how to kill the sick people. The Chipped people. And stuff.”

  Outside there’s a sound, which Tasha at first interprets as the peaceful tinkling of a wind chime on the front porch, the gentle clink of glass against metal. Malakai stops talking and Ishmael is up from the table and at the window before Tasha can begin to comment. Ishmael parts the blinds with two fingers, peering through the glass into the evening that has darkened, his body only inches from Tasha’s face where she still sits at the table. He smells like earth turned with a spade and the soup he’d spent the evening stirring.

  “What’s going on?” she says to muffle her impulse to ask what cologne he wears.

  Malakai has backed over to the stove and has made no move to join his brother at the window. His back is pressed against the kitchen counter, Tasha notices, and pushing. If he could melt in with the ceramic and disappear, he would.

  “How many?” The kid’s voice trembles only a little, but he’s scared. He’d seemed so fearless on the playground, the way Z had seemed so fearless in the Web. There are conditions to bravery, Tasha thinks. The playground is a kid’s kingdom, Malakai’s; the Web was Z’s. Where would Tasha need to be to become a lionheart?

  “Just two.” Ishmael backs away from the window. “Excuse me,” he says to Z, and takes a hoodie from the back of the chair she sits in. He puts it on. It’s gray and says University of Chicago on the front. Tasha wonders what he majored in.

  “Do you want me to come?” Malakai says.

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to come?” Tasha says.

  “Everybody stay here.”

  He goes to the front door. Tasha, Z and Malakai follow him to the foyer and stare from the entrance of the kitchen like wide-eyed puppies. On the table just inside the front door is a flashlight. Ishmael takes it in hand and, moving the blinds aside, shines it onto the street out front, clicking it on and off three times. He pauses and Tasha sees an answering three flashes from one of the gated houses across the road.

  “Mr. Jackson,” Ishmael says to nobody.

  He puts down the flashlight and takes up something Tasha hasn’t noticed until now, leaning in the corner behind the door. An axe.

  He opens the door and leaves without saying a word. As soon as it clicks shut behind him, Tasha, Z and Malakai move quickly back into the kitchen where the view is better, peering out onto the dim street.

  Ishmael is just closing the front gate, rewrapping it dutifully with the chain before walking out onto the street. Sure enough, two Minkers stagger around nearby. Across the way, Tasha sees a figure leave another yard and walk in a straight line toward Ishmael and the Minkers—Mr. Jackson.

  Ishmael carries the axe easily but lets it hang almost straight toward the ground, his body relaxed. He makes a wide circle around the two Minkers, who are just beginning to notice him. Tasha hears the muted bark of one, her flesh prickling as if the creature called her name. Ishmael walks over to Mr. Jackson, who carries what appears to be a knife about the size of Tasha’s Wusthof. Mr. Jackson is forty-something as far as she can tell, wearing what might be a raincoat. Tasha’s nearly healed bicep wound gives a phantom throb. A raincoat would be good protection from seeking teeth.

  The two men stand close together and confer, taking a few steps away from the now-approaching Minkers. Tasha realizes Malakai is gripping her wrist. She lets him. Z just stares, her hands knitted together as if praying.

  Ishmael and Mr. Jackson separate quickly, a plan made, much like Z and Tasha did in the Web when they first met. Instead of following suit, the Minkers both follow Mr. Jackson. Mr. Jackson jogs away and arcs back toward Ishmael. It’s a game of tag. The Minkers both follow gamely, speeding up their stumbling pace. Tasha feels like her brain is commentating a football game. He goes wide! He’s bringing it home!

  The Minkers are both barking as they close in on Mr. Jackson, celebrating what they think will be an easy kill. Ishmael raises the axe once and delivers a vicious, sidelong slice that takes one of the heads clean off.

  Tasha can imagine the sound the head makes hitting the ground—a solid wet thunk like a watermelon. Mr. Jackson hasn’t dealt with the other Minker yet. He circles it, waving his hands, until Ishmael approaches again and swings the axe one more time. Another watermelon hits the pavement.

  Ishmael stands with the axe gripped in his right hand, breathing heavily from the looks of his rising and falling chest. He and Mr. Jackson exchange a few words before Mr. Jackson goes to kneel by the bodies, crouching down with his knife held like a pencil. Tasha assumes he’s fiddling with the Chip: she had done the same thing early in the Change, wanting to be sure they were dead and perhaps exact some petty posthumous revenge. She sees a spark in the dusk as Mr. Jackson pops out the implant—Ishmael’s axe must not have hit it in the chop. Then he puts the Chips into the pocket of his raincoat.

  The two men put down their weapons and squat by the bodies, hoisting them up and carrying them one by one to a house two doors down from Mr. Jackson, entering the front yard. There’s no chain on its front gate. Tasha assumes this means there’s no one there left to protect. From Ishmael’s kitchen window, she can just hear the gate swing open with a rusty yelp.

  “That’s where they put the bodies,” Malakai says, unblinking.

  Neither Z nor Tasha respond.

  The two men return to the kill site and talk a second longer. Mr. Jackson is pointing at his chest and then putting one hand on top of his head. Ishmael shrugs and hands over the axe he had retrieved. He bends over one more time and then makes another trip to the house two doors down. He’s carrying the heads.

  When Ishmael enters his own house again, he’s carrying the axe as if
it’s dragged downward by some alien gravity. Tasha, Malakai and Z stand wordlessly in the kitchen door as he returns the axe to the corner behind the door and strips off the hoodie. There’s only a little blood on the sleeve. A moment passes before Tasha realizes he’s crying.

  “Who were they?” says Malakai, his voice sounding like what it is: a small boy’s.

  “Mrs. Lockhart from two blocks over. The other I didn’t recognize. His nametag said Gary. He worked at White Castle.”

  “Oh darn,” Z says with a weak smile. “I could’ve asked for some chicken rings.”

  Ishmael stares at her as if she’s willfully thrown a baseball through a church window.

  “Why does Mr. Jackson take the Chips?” Tasha wants to diffuse the sudden tension, but she also wants to know.

  Ishmael rubs his face with his arm and sniffs, turning away from Z.

  “He keeps them as evidence for when all this is over. He’s a lawyer. Says he’s going to sue Cybranu on behalf of Chicago, and the police too for not protecting us.”

  Tasha feels a laugh bubble up in her throat. Or it could be vomit. Either way, she swallows it and coughs slightly.

  “He knows the cops have Chips too, right?”

  “I’ve told him.”

  “So he thinks this will pass.”

  “Yes.”

  Tasha’s eyes burn a little; she’s not sure why. Hearing her own buried hopes—Dinah’s hopes, Z’s hopes—out loud and knowing they’re absurd is like a head-butt to the gut. She wonders what Z is feeling: Z who hopes even harder, and out loud.

  “Do you?” she asks.

  Ishmael rubs his stubble, the patchy beard of a man who’s younger than he seems. He walks over to Malakai, who is standing motionless between Tasha and Z. Ishmael puts his hands on the kid’s shoulders, two pairs of brown eyes staring into one another. Ishmael touches his brother’s cheek before he answers.

  “No.”

  Chapter 24

  Tasha wakes in a yellow room on a bed she shares with Z, who is still sleeping. After the events of the night before, there had been a quiet agreement to go to bed early. Ishmael had led Tasha and Z up the narrow staircase, lit by the same flashlight he had used to signal Mr. Jackson. Ishmael and Malakai slept together down the hall. Some blurred part of her was glad that none of them were sleeping alone. Tasha and Z’s room was small and warm. They hadn’t even crawled under the covers.