City of Savages

by Lee Kelly

  If she finds us, we’re done for.

  “Stop here,” Phee calls from behind when we approach the stairs of 76th Street, the ones that lead out to Fifth Avenue and down to the Carlyle. “You still have his gun?” she asks between breaths.

  I look down at the long red-nosed pistol, the weapon of the dead warlord. We don’t say Darren’s name. We’ve taken his life, captured his soul, and yet we can’t say his name. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “All the year-rounds and the winters are kept in the Carlyle,” Phee tells the men. “About a block east.”

  “Winters?” the oldest man, Lerner, repeats.

  “The ones like us. The prisoners who’re on their own in summer months,” Phee says impatiently.

  “Wait, so you choose to be here?” Sam jumps in. “Lerner, these girls aren’t prisoners. They’re guests.”

  “Guests? You don’t know the first thing about us,” Phee snaps at him. “You’ve got no clue about this city. What it takes to survive—”

  “Sam, right?” I interrupt Phee in the most patient voice I can muster, trying to ignore that precious minutes are falling around us like rain. “I know you’ve got no reason to trust us. But we’re prisoners too. We’ve been held on this island our whole lives, lied to, deceived. Please believe us, we’re on the same side here.”

  No one answers me—my words just hang in the air, ripe for picking. Finally Phee plucks them and kills the silence. “Our mom’s on the third floor, all right? We’ve gotta get her before we can leave.”

  “Okay, okay.” Lerner runs his fingers through his silver blanket of hair. “We help them get their mom, and then we’re off. Everyone got it?”

  Sam mutters to himself in the dark but doesn’t argue further.

  “This Carlyle. Is it guarded?” Ryder says. It’s the first time I’m hearing his voice, and I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. He has that beautiful, melodic accent like the other men, but his voice is gravelly, like water running over stones.

  “There’re whorelords in there, sure,” Phee says.

  “Whorelords?” Ryder probes.

  “Guards, like the ones who threw you in prison,” Phee says. “But there should only be a squad or two roaming each floor.”

  Despite the fact that I haven’t stopped trembling since we burst into the reptile house, I know I need to be the one who guides the men into the Carlyle. As far as I’m concerned, there are two stops, the roof and our hotel room. Perhaps it’s crazy, perhaps it’s pitiful, but regardless, there’s no chance I’m leaving Mom’s journal behind. “Sam, will you stay with my sister out here?” I ask.

  “Wait? Are you serious?” Phee pulls me aside and whispers. “Sky, that guy’s the worst. Plus, I think it makes more sense for me to get Mom.”

  “I don’t trust him,” I whisper back truthfully. “Please, you’ve got the gun we know works, right? And you know how to use it.”

  She thinks this over, then finally gives a little nod, satisfied. She hands the bow over to me. “Take it. In case.”

  I give her a quick hug, and then motion for Ryder and Lerner to follow me.

  “Go in from the west,” Phee tells me. “We’ll figure out a distraction and pull the door guards away. Meet in fifteen minutes at Seventy-Seventh and Madison, all right?” Phee’s eyes are wide as she grips my hand.

  I want to hug her again. Part of me wants to throw my arm around her and head upstairs to sleep, then wake up tomorrow just a normal prisoner, plodding along in the fields, ignorant, my hopes small, my dreams smaller. But I know that’s never going to be possible again.

  Besides, a bigger, stronger part of me now wants so much more.

  “Seventy-Seventh and Madison,” I repeat. “Fifteen minutes.”

  Ryder, Lerner, and I run up the Park stairs and cross the deserted highway.

  17 PHEE

  “It’s been at least nine minutes already,” Sam whispers. “Maybe even ten.”

  The two of us are holed up behind some ancient Dumpster in the back of a Madison Avenue storefront. I’d never agree out loud with this psycho, but it’s got to have been at least ten minutes. I’m worried. I should’ve gone with Sky. What if Rolladin already got wind of our shootout in the reptile house, and there’re tons of whorelords crawling around in there? What if my sister’s now being dragged back to the castle?

  I readjust myself against the brick back wall of the store and try to think about anything but what’s going on at the Carlyle, but it’s impossible. I close my eyes for a second to relax—

  But my mind’s eye offers blood and dead whorelords.

  18 SKY

  “I thought you said your mum was on the third floor?” Lerner says. We’re on the fifth-floor landing of the internal stairwell, the three of us crouched together in the dark. It’s taken a lot longer than I ever would’ve imagined without a fire torch.

  But we had to get the journal. I can’t say good-bye to it, not without a fight. And once I get Mom and she knows what’s happened, I’ll never be able to come back for it—the past will be lost forever.

  “She is,” I whisper. “I left something up here that I need to grab first. I’ll be quick. I can slip through the door.”

  “This has taken too long already,” Lerner says, but he doesn’t argue further.

  I make my way to the roof-deck door. I think twice and pass Ryder the bow, as a consolation prize for waiting, or a sign of trust, I’m not sure. Our fingers touch in the darkness. His hands are field hands too, rough like sandpaper. “I’ll be right back.”

  I round the half-flight and push open the door to weasel through the crack, as Phee and I did before, but the warlords must have locked it tight. Oh God. I wasn’t expecting this.

  I pull out Cass’s thick set of keys and start fumbling with them—there are at least ten, maybe even twenty.

  A surge of panic passes through me.

  19 PHEE

  “Time’s a-wastin’, desperado,” Sam says from across the alley. “At the fifteen-minute mark, I’m taking that revolver, grabbing my brother and Lerner, and hightailing it off this island.”

  I raise the gun to remind Sam who’s got the ammo here. “You’re not leaving without us.”

  Even though I fake calm pretty well, I’m starting to freak out. I need to get out of here, to breathe, and think. My sister and Mom are at the Carlyle, maybe in danger, maybe caught, and I’m just supposed to stay here, in this tiny alley, with this jerkoff, and be patient?

  I think about flying the coop and just taking off for the Carlyle myself, but I know it’s impossible. Even if I wanted to run, we can hear the Carlyle door guards searching Madison Avenue, trying to find the holdout who howled like a psycho in front of the hotel and then dashed into the night. I’ll give him this, Sam’s cover let me sneak up Fifth and across 77th. And I don’t know how Sam pulled it off, but he lost the guards and somehow found me hidden behind this store.

  “Why’d you come here, anyway?”

  Sam sizes me up again. “Manhattan was the only POW camp we knew of still standing.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Our army. England.”

  I gulp. “You fought in the war?” I study him, long and lean in the alleyway’s shadows.

  “Both sides had pretty much destroyed each other before I saw any action off base.” I watch Sam watching my gun. “But I was a Royal Marine.”

  I have no idea what that means, only that it doesn’t sound good for me. I swear, I’ll shoot this guy if he tries anything, Royal Marine or not—if he pushes me. I’ve shot two people.

  I’ve killed one.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to think about Darren right now.

  “How many bullets are actually left in that thing?” Sam nods his head towards my small pistol and shuffles a little closer. Then the bastard actually
smirks. “Mind if I take a look?”

  I position the gun in between my knees, so that it’s ready to go. “That’s close enough.”

  Now it has to be at least twelve minutes. Thirteen even.

  Sky, Sky, Sky. I focus, try with all my might to tap into her mind and bug her. I’m worried. Please hurry your ass up.

  20 SKY

  I return to the stairwell breathless, Mom’s book tucked into the back of my leggings—our old torch in one hand, and the dead warlord’s gun in the other—to find a frantic, wild pair of Brits.

  “A torch,” Lerner says. “You made a pit stop for a torch?”

  “Lerner,” Ryder pleads with him. “Come on, that’s not helping, man.”

  “We’ll need it,” I say cautiously. There’s no reason anyone needs to know what I have, what we’ve found in this journal, besides Phee and me.

  “Well, that torch might have just cost us our lives.”

  I listen, slowly catching the men’s panic. There are footsteps shuffling, and a stairway door swings open somewhere below us.

  “We still have time. We need to get to the third floor,” I say as calmly as I can.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time!”

  I don’t answer Lerner—even though he’s only speaking up for the dissidents inside me, the angry Greek chorus that’s been howling during the agonizing minutes I spent finding the right keys to release the door’s chains. How could you waste so much time? For a book of secrets? You would choose to know the past rather than to save your own mother?

  I force myself to tune them out, focus only on moving quickly, quietly in the dark. All that matters now is getting Mom and getting out.

  We creep down the stairs as the warlords inch their way up. They talk about inane things—who’s going to be stuck watching the fieldworkers tomorrow, who owes who a pint of vodka from old bets. It’s chatter, nothing about the murders at the zoo, so I know that the news hasn’t reached the castle. If it had, the full guard of warlords would be patrolling for us. My guess is there’s a squad or two, just rotating floors.

  We reach the third-floor steps ahead of the warlords and slink out the door. I think we’re unseen, until I hear one of the lords whisper, “Wait, did you see that door open?”

  The quicker shuffling of boots.

  Then a long bellow, “Stop!” behind us. The warlords’ crawl becomes a stampede. We don’t look back, just race down the hall.

  “I said STOP!” a warlord calls.

  I stutter-step, eye the approaching lords, then glance down the long hall to our room. It’s clear we’re not going to make it to Mom’s. Lerner grabs the bow from Ryder’s hands.

  “Sky, give Ryder your gun. Now!” He backs up slowly, nods his head at me. “Run and get your mother. Don’t look back.”

  My heart is pounding, my vision is blurred, but my body jumps at his command, thrusts the old revolver into Ryder’s hand, and starts sprinting towards our room down the hall.

  I hear shouts, barking orders. “Attack, do you hear me? Take them down!”

  I burst into our room, shake Mom out of sleep, start throwing clothes and the remains of our half-eaten dinner into my book bag. She’s lying there, looking fragile, the sleep still on her, and I want to embrace her, just curl into her arms and forget the world.

  “Grab a torch, get your crutches,” I say as I add the journal and the knife wedged underneath the mattress to my pack. “We need to leave. We need to leave now!”

  Mom attempts to argue, but sleep’s tentacles still hold her captive. I throw her arm around my shoulders and try to propel her forward.

  “Sky, wait—stop! What is this? What’s going on?”

  “Mom, not now. Later, trust me. Where’s your coat? Where’s your shoes?”

  We hear a gunshot, and then another, and Mom’s eyes fly open in fear. She thrusts her coat over her pajamas, stuffs her feet into her shoes, and lurches towards her crutches resting in the corner. “Where’s Phee?”

  “She’s okay. She’s outside.”

  There’s a heavy, panicked knock on the door.

  “Lerner’s hit!” Ryder calls from the other side. “We need to get out of here!”

  I help Mom to the door, then crack it open. “Watch her ankle, it’s sprained.”

  Ryder nods and huddles Mom and me into his chest. Lerner’s behind us. He’s been shot by an arrow—his leg is red and raw—but he’s still managing to load our bow and get in one or two shots at the warlord team trailing us with knives and makeshift weapons. We move like a snake together, down the hall, down the stairs—

  We round the marble staircase to the lobby, breathless, devils on our heels.

  “Out the door!” Lerner calls ahead to Ryder.

  Ryder pulls us out of the lobby, into the night. We’re greeted by two door guards coming from the east. They stop, shocked at finding us, raise their knives—

  But Ryder takes the gun and shoots one of the guards in the chest.

  “Drop your weapon,” Ryder barks to the other. It’s a younger lord—a man, maybe a decade older than me. He’s carrying nothing but a small spear.

  The man slowly places his spear on the ground as we push past him, out into the night air. We race to Madison Avenue, with a team of warlords on our heels.

  21 PHEE

  “PHEE!” I hear Sky bellow, a shaky war cry across a dead highway, and Sam and I scramble to our feet and run out to the sidewalk.

  Sky, Mom in pajamas, Ryder, and Lerner are being chased by a mob of whorelords up Madison. It looks like a parade out of somebody’s nightmare.

  I wave my hand, start running towards them without thinking, on instinct. My gun out and dancing in the air, ready to rumble—

  But Sam grabs my hoodie before I can get very far.

  “Forget it, there’s too many of them,” he says. “We need to run.”

  “Run? Where?”

  Sam looks uptown. “The tube. We can lose them in the dark.”

  He’s speaking gibberish. “What are you talking about? What tube?”

  “Whatever, the subways. Underground.”

  The tunnels.

  No.

  No. No. No.

  But he doesn’t wait for a reply, just inserts himself front and center of this cat-and-mouse chase, and there’s not a second to waste, to think. Soon me, Sky, Mom, Ryder, and Lerner, we’re all following him, up Madison.

  “Lerner, Ryder, the tube, on the left!” Sam shouts, and I swear Mom almost screeches to a halt.

  “Girls, we can’t.” She starts trembling.

  I put my hand on her and look behind to the army of guards. They’re literally on Ryder’s and Lerner’s heels.

  “Mom, it’s our only option.”

  We approach a set of stairs, with a green rusty gate that reads 77TH STREET ENTRANCE and has a big green circle around the number 6. The stairwell cuts back and forth below us until it disappears into darkness. Sam’s already stumbled into the pit. But he doesn’t know what’s down there.

  “Come on!” he calls up to me.

  I stop at the railing for a second. The whorelords are still firing arrows behind Ryder and Lerner, who both push us into the tunnel.

  “It’s the only way,” Ryder tells us. “GO!”

  Mom gives a low, long wail, like an animal that knows it’s seen its last day, but I can’t listen to her. I turn my back on the whorelord army and tuck her walking sticks under my arm. Then I grab her hand, and Sky grabs the other. We stumble down and into the dark.

  PART TWO

  Save yourself. Whatever it takes. Save yourself.

  —From September entry,

  Property of Sarah Walker Miller

  22 SKY

  The warlords march over the steel grates above us, shouting, cursing, firing hopeles
s arrows into our abyss, literal shots in the dark. But they won’t come down here, not unless Rolladin puts a rifle to their heads.

  No one comes down here.

  I squeeze Mom’s hand tighter as we burrow into the deep, the torch that Phee now holds our only guiding light in this twisted labyrinth. We run past an abandoned box of a room labeled INFORMATION, then hop over a series of steel gates.

  “Sky, where’s that other torch?” Lerner asks. He takes Mom’s hand to help her over the steel bar. “We need all the light we can get down here. And those guards will be down soon enough.”

  “The guards won’t come down here,” Mom says, quivering, as she makes her way over the gate, wincing as she lands on her ankle. We hobble with her after Lerner, Ryder, and Sam, down another set of stairs. “Listen, we’ve already attracted too much attention ourselves. We should stay quiet and get back to the street at the next stop.”

  We climb down onto the tracks. Sam stops to patch up Lerner’s leg, ripping shreds from his own shirt to wrap it like a mummified limb.

  “What do you mean, no one will follow us down here?” Lerner asks Mom as Sam works. “You mean we lost the guards?”

  “Yes, but now we’ve got a bigger problem.” Mom settles herself onto her crutches. Her hands are shaking so badly, she’s making the walking sticks tremble. “We shouldn’t be down in these tunnels—they’re not safe. We need to get back to the surface—”

  “Lemme get this straight.” Sam looks up at her. “We’ve got a mob of ruthless guards prowling New York for us. We’ve got a clear-cut path downtown, underground. You’re positive no one’s going to follow us down here. And you want us to go back to the streets?”

  Mom grips her crutches tighter and straightens her spine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Sam.”

  I haven’t really looked at Sam—my eyes have been on my woodsman, Ryder—but he’s younger than I originally thought, probably in his twenties. He’s wartime thin, with big, deep-set eyes, and his own shock of black hair.