City of Savages

by Lee Kelly

  “My brother, Ryder.” Sam points to my woodsman, then nods up to his older friend. “And you know Lerner, since he just saved your hide.”

  “Well, all due respect, Sam,” Mom keeps her icy tone, “but you don’t know anything about Manhattan. This city is haunted. There are monsters down here. Not humans, monsters—”

  “Monsters,” Sam repeats. He gives a frustrated laugh. “Funny, I don’t remember seeing any of these monsters when we walked through the tube from Brooklyn.”

  “Well, you must’ve gotten lucky.”

  Sam shakes his head. “Boys, any of you get the feeling this whole city’s gone mad?”

  He stands and starts tugging my backpack open for the extra torch. I try to pull away from him, but he pins me against his chest. I give a little yelp.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Mom hobbles forward as Phee starts clamoring, “Hey, asshole, lay off her!”

  “Sam, please,” Ryder pleads. “Easy.”

  “Everyone, just . . . stop.” Sam tightens his grip around my shoulders. Then he whispers calmly in my ear, “Give me your torch, then you and your family can crawl back to the surface alone.” He looks at Ryder. “These chicks aren’t worth it, trust me. They’re just extra baggage.”

  “Extra baggage,” Ryder repeats. He takes a slow step towards his brother. “You act like there are other places we have to run. But you said it yourself, Sam—Manhattan was the endgame. So where the hell are we going?” I hear Ryder swallow in the dark quiet of the subways. “I’m tired of doing things your way, all the time. These women saved our lives, so we save theirs. Baggage or not, we figure the rest out together.”

  My cheeks begin to feel warm in the frigid tunnels.

  “You’ve always been too quick to trust.” Sam shakes his head. “Too quick to play savior, Rye. Even still.”

  That “still” holds the weight of worlds, and I want to know more. As I watch my woodsman, I realize I want to know everything about him, who he is, where he’s from, and where he wants to go.

  “We do owe them, Sam,” Lerner says softly. “Ryder’s right about that.”

  Finally, slowly, Sam eases his grip on me.

  Under the dim light of the torch, Mom studies Sam, then Ryder and Lerner. I can tell she has a million questions for these men, not least of which is why they feel indebted to us. But something more powerful has precedence, has taken hold of her face.

  A raw, primal fear.

  “We don’t need your help,” Mom says. “We’ll give you a torch. Then you can run off into the night and take your chances. I don’t know what you and Phee have done at the Park, Skyler,” she says to me. “But it’s fixable, it always is. We’re not going to tempt death, walking down here. Rousing the tunnel cannibals.” Her eyes become glazed and gauzy under the torchlight. “We can beg for Rolladin’s mercy. We’ve done it before.”

  “Did she say cannibals?” Ryder whispers.

  But my gaze is fixed on Mom. I finally realize, after the rush and adrenaline have taken their toll and left me exhausted, that Mom has no idea what we’ve found out. What these men’s arrival even means.

  And someone needs to tell her.

  I unzip my backpack, careful to keep the other contents in, and dislodge the torch Phee and I used on the roof. Phee hands me our other one so I can light mine. I look at my sister. Who’s going to tell Mom? Who’s going to tell her that whatever demons haunt these tunnels are nothing compared to the one that rules the city?

  “Mom.” Phee finally takes the bait. “We’ve found out some things you don’t know, okay? Before we go back to Rolladin, you need to hear this.”

  Mom looks a little shaken but doesn’t back down. Not that I’d ever think she would so easily. “Fine,” she tells us. “You can tell me on the walk back.”

  “Mom.” I put my hand on her shoulder, as if I can literally transfer my sincerity, along with everything I’ve come to learn over the past few hours. “We can’t go back. Not anymore. We can never go back to the Park again.”

  * * *

  After she finally relents, Phee and I tell Mom everything—well, almost everything—as we continue our cautious trek downtown. We tell her about getting caught on the roof . . . stargazing. We explain about the castle and the trial. How Rolladin and her Council have lied to us, stolen our freedom. Then we tell her about Cass, and about freeing the men.

  We leave out the parts about the journal, and pledging allegiance to Rolladin. And about killing the other warlord. It’s not as if Phee and I have rehearsed this, but somehow we both know what boundaries not to cross, where the pressure points are in our story. There are things Mom just shouldn’t know.

  She embraces us, thanks God for us, stifles tears. It’s a long time before she collects herself. I know she must be a mess of emotions, as I was when we found out about Rolladin’s lies. And I’m sure that on some level she’s livid with us for sneaking out after hours and getting caught. But when she does speak, there’s no scolding, or pleas to return to the surface.

  Instead, she fires off questions to the men, hushed, desperate whispers. I know this feeling all too well—this raging urge to know—I’ve felt it ever since I laid eyes on Mom’s journal. Still, it’s kind of surreal to see my mother the one so hungry for information.

  “I don’t understand,” she asks Lerner in front of us. “China attacked us in ’16. Manhattan was officially occupied. . . .” She turns in on herself, thinking. “By the end of ’17? ’18, even?”

  “That’s right,” Lerner answers. “But by that point China had aligned itself with Russia and Korea, among others. Britain got involved right after they bombed your bridges and Ellis Island. If I recall, the EU splintered soon after that.”

  Mom pauses, as if she’s reloading her question pistol, then fires off another round.

  “Did you know?” she whispers. “Did the UK know they were keeping us on this island? That there were survivors?”

  “Sam knows all of this best.” Lerner tries to defer.

  “I’m letting them tag along,” Sam throws behind him. “That doesn’t mean I’ve got to catch them up on the last decade.” He’s a good five feet in front of Mom and Lerner, scouting the tunnels with the torch he managed to steal from me.

  Lerner and Mom just look at each other. “He’ll come around. He always does,” Lerner whispers as he and Mom traipse forward together, and Phee and I fall into lockstep with Ryder behind them. “Put it this way, the whole world knew what happened here. It sparked another world war, drove most of the globe to align with one side or the other, escalated combat from land invasions and air raids to weapons of mass destruction.” Lerner pauses. “An escalation that ended us all.” He looks around the tunnels. “How much do you know?”

  Mom pauses. “Hardly anything.”

  “I remember it began that March of ’16,” Lerner says, “after a year of worldwide droughts, with trade concerns driving China to the brink. They attacked New York, DC, L.A., and San Francisco the same morning. Their plan was to take hostages, gain hold of four major American cities—”

  “So how’d you learn to fight like that?” Ryder’s gravelly voice interrupts my eavesdropping, and I realize he’s talking to Phee.

  “What do you mean, like how’d I figure out how to use a gun?” Phee says. “I guess I taught myself.”

  Ryder laughs—a deep, melodic, hearty laugh. A good laugh. “No, though that was impressive. I mean how’d you learn to box?”

  “Box?”

  “Or fight in the street, whatever you New Yorkers are calling it now,” he says. “You had some serious moves.”

  I try to ignore their conversation and tune back in to Mom and Lerner’s, but I can’t seem to do it. A thick, familiar wedge lodges itself in the base of my throat. So Ryder saw Phee in action. Of course he did: He must have been the shadowed stranger, darting away
from the street-fights and back to the woods. And suddenly he no longer feels like my woodsman, but just another Phee admirer, another person floored by my sister’s bravery. I feel him slipping away.

  “Wait—you were there?” Phee asks. “In the Park, last night at the street-fights?” The self-satisfied grin on her face nearly becomes a third torch.

  “Yeah, we were in the woods when we heard all the commotion. We snuck down to that underpass and caught some of the performance.” Ryder gulps, then steals a glance at me. “What a show.”

  “Yeah, the street-fights happen every year at the Park census celebration,” Phee says. “And they’re awesome to watch for sure. But being in that ring was a whole different story.” Then she promptly clarifies: “Not that I was scared—I stepped up, obviously. So wait, you were in the Park that whole night? How’d no one see you?”

  “Oh, someone saw me.” Ryder laughs. “Your sister over there is quite perceptive.”

  My cheeks become hot and flushed, but I’m pretty sure the torchlight reveals nothing.

  So he had seen me, just as I had seen him.

  I want to say something, to use the kernel of his comment to pop open a full conversation, but all I come up with is, “I thought it was you.”

  “Wait, Sky, you saw these guys? And didn’t tell me?”

  “I saw Ryder for a second, Phee. When I went to look, I didn’t find anything. I figured . . . I figured it was just my imagination,” I answer. “And you’d been through so much with the street-fights, I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Yeah, I guess you have a lot of false alarms.” Phee shrugs, and then flashes Ryder a smile. “Once Sky swore there was a dragon downtown. In the stock exchange building.”

  “Phee, I was like eight,” I say, feeling my face growing hot again. “Plus, I had just read The Hobbit. It kind of made sense.”

  “You read The Hobbit? At eight?” Ryder sounds impressed, and my face flushes with something new.

  “I’ve read it a bunch of times since then, but yeah, I guess I did.”

  “All she does is read,” Phee mutters.

  I remind myself to tell her she’s being a brat later.

  “Where do you get your books?” Ryder presses. “I’d think that crazy lady, Rolladin, keeps everything under lock and key.”

  “There’s a small library at the Carlyle, but most of the good books have been taken,” I say. “We’ve found others during the summer, when we’re on our own. From the libraries when Mom takes us uptown, or from scavenged apartments. Do . . . you read a lot?”

  “Whenever I get the chance,” he tells me.

  Mom, Sam, and Lerner stop moving in front of us, and we catch up to them and grow quiet. Two giant forms have emerged out of the darkness. They’re like the abandoned taxis on the street, but monsters, like the one in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, car after car stitched together by thin cables and wires. The monster cars take up the entire width of the track.

  “What are they?” I whisper.

  “Subway cars.” Mom skips over to me on her crutches. “People used to ride in them. This is what the tunnels were for before the war.”

  Her answer brings me back to her words of long ago, to the story of her journal. But now the story’s leaping off those old crinkled pages. I look around, breathless. This is where Mom was when the Red Allies attacked. This is where she lived with Mary and me, for months. The shadows creep closer, the subway cars loom larger, and I feel my throat tightening like a lid on a jar.

  “They’ve never seen a subway?” Lerner whispers.

  “Long ago, they did,” she tells him. “I’ve made sure they never have since.”

  She turns on her crutches to address our motley crew. “Listen, if we’re going to keep moving, we need to trust one another. I swear there are disturbed people down here,” Mom says. “We need to get out at the next stop.”

  “Wouldn’t that be the first place your psycho leader would look for us—the stops along this 6 line?” Sam sighs. “You say there are . . . ‘monsters’ down here. But when’s the last time anyone was actually in these tunnels to see for themselves?”

  “Sam’s got a point, Sarah,” Lerner chimes in. “The lies this Rolladin woman was touting, it’s like she has your entire city under a spell. Maybe the reason the subways are off-limits is because they’re the only real way of leaving the island, since all the bridges are gone.”

  The men’s words hang in the air for a moment, and I watch Mom fold into herself as she often does, debate with her own demons. “I’ve seen the monsters down here myself,” she finally answers.

  This is new information.

  “It was a long time ago, yes. But the tunnel feeders are real.” Mom pauses. “We need to find another escape route downtown.”

  Lerner shakes his head, his silver hair sparkling under the torchlight. “I think Sam’s right on this one, Sarah. Better the devils we don’t know in this case, than the devil we’ve met.”

  Phee and I exchange a look. I know my sister’s thinking about the Park’s devil too, just like I am: Rolladin’s lies, her assassination orders given to her warlords in Belvedere Castle. Not to mention our betrayal, our shootout in the zoo, and us flying through the Carlyle, battling teams of guards on our heels.

  “Mom, we need to go with the guys on this one,” Phee says what I’m thinking. “It’s the only way.”

  Mom looks to me hopefully for backup, but I just shake my head.

  “Well, I guess I’m outnumbered,” she snaps. But then she takes a deep breath and grabs each of our hands. “All right. You two stay close.”

  We hoist ourselves onto the platform from the tracks, one by one, passing the torches forward until our entire squad has risen. By torchlight, I can just make out the black plaque of writing on the far, white-brick wall: 68TH STREET—HUNTER COLLEGE.

  As we walk past the college stop, I swear I hear a low, long wail. A soft scuffling, like pattering feet.

  “Quiet,” Mom whispers. She grabs my hand and motions for Phee to come closer. “You hear that?”

  “I don’t hear anything—,” Lerner starts, but Sam shushes him.

  “Listen.”

  It grows, moves closer to us, the tiny wail building into a full-on whimper.

  “Ryder, you’ve got that bow?” Sam asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hold it like I taught you,” Sam says, as he supports Lerner on his injured side. “Get ready to take aim.”

  Ryder moves forward on the platform, towards the approaching noise. It has to be a feeder. Is there one? Many?

  Phee takes her gun out of her pocket and moves to join Ryder.

  “No way,” Mom grabs her. “You stay here.”

  “Who are you?” Sam calls into the darkness. “Show yourself, or we’ll shoot.”

  But the only thing that answers is a moan, and then a breathless panting.

  “Last chance,” Sam calls. “You hear me? I’m counting to three. One . . . two . . .”

  And then, finally, from the darkness comes a tiny, hesitant answer:

  “Are the Millers with you?”

  23 PHEE

  It’s Trevor.

  I don’t know how, but it’s Trevor.

  I never thought I’d be so happy to see him.

  We pull him from the tracks onto the platform. He’s shivering, eyes wild, spooked like he’s been chased by ghosts.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Mom shakes him. “Why would you ever come down here alone?”

  Then she gives him a tight, suffocating hug.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Trevor whimpers. Under the torchlight, I see he has a few nicks and bruises, probably from falling as he stumbled through the tunnels. What the heck did he do, follow us down here? Just hope he ran into us? I knew Trevor had a few screws loose, but I didn’
t think he was suicidal.

  I hate to admit it, but I give him some credit.

  “I woke up to all this commotion at the Carlyle, shooting and everything, and I cracked open the door. You guys were running into the street with these guys I didn’t know. I got scared. . . . I thought you might be in danger.”

  “So what, you were going to rescue us?”

  “Phee,” Mom shushes me. “Let him finish.”

  “No—I—I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything. I just thought—”

  He’s getting all worked up, so Mom starts stroking the top of his silky head. “Calm down, Trev, okay? I’m not mad. I just would never want you to get hurt. You’re too important to me. Take a breath, tell us what happened.”

  He takes a deep breath. “I just thought—there goes my family. My sort-of family. I don’t know what I was thinking. Lauren’s going to flip when she checks my room tomorrow.” He shakes his head. “I just panicked and snuck out after the whorelords. I’ve been trying to track you, but I couldn’t keep up and I got lost and scared and—”

  “Send the kid home,” Sam says.

  “Excuse me?” Mom answers.

  “I said send the runt back to that spooky old hotel you’re all penned up in. We can’t handle any more kids in tow.”

  “This boy is practically family,” Mom turns to Lerner and argues. “My best friend’s his guardian, and he’s got no one else.” She takes another step towards him and drops her voice. “Please, I’ve left him before and it nearly ate me alive. I swore I’d never do it again. If he goes back now—”

  “Lerner, don’t even think about it,” Sam jumps in. “Helping her and her kids was one thing—”

  “You keep calling us kids,” I say. “But we’re not much younger than you—”

  “—but turning into a traveling day care is another. This one goes home. Or game over. We leave them behind.”

  I meet Trevor’s stare, and he mouths me a silent, Sorry. I shake my head. I still don’t know how he managed to find us. He’s already come so far, it’s just so unfair to turn him back around. Not to mention he’ll probably get caught sneaking back into the Carlyle, and he’ll be punished for sure. Whippings, definitely jail time.