by Sean Platt
“It’s okay, Elijah,” Calla looked up at the boy. “I feel good.”
He swallowed, “I don’t know if I should—”
“It’s okay,” Calla repeated, reaching up and touching his hand sweetly, like a little sister.
“Okay. I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Thank you,” Calla said.
As the boy sheepishly left, Ana felt she had her morning’s first victory, minor as it was. She looked at the girl expectantly. Calla smiled, stepped the rest of the way into Ana’s room, peeked her head out into the hallway and said something to her shadow that Ana couldn’t hear, then slipped back into the room, quietly closed the door, and walked over to Ana’s bed.
Calla sat on the end, looking little like she had when they met. Before, she was hard as a box of nails and dirty as a bandit. Thick clothes were her shield from the world. Now, sitting slouched and freshly scrubbed, wearing a long blue dress with a single yellow flower on her chest, she looked like the frail child she was.
“He means well.”
“He means to kill you if you turn,” Ana said.
“I know, and he’s right. He should kill me before I hurt someone.”
Ana swallowed a lump in her throat as she considered Calla’s bravery.
Calla pulled up her dress sleeve and showed Ana a bandage: white gauze wrapped around her left bicep. Eyes haunted, she said, “They say you’re the only one who has ever survived infection and fully recovered. That true?”
Ana cringed at the bandage, remembering Duncan as he ripped into her flesh.
“Yes. Oswald was infected too, but he chopped limbs off, so he doesn’t consider himself to truly have fought off the virus.”
“What happened?”
Ana didn’t know what to say and wished she could say nothing. She felt oddly shy and uncomfortably ashamed. Though she hated talking about such an ugly reality with a child, she felt compelled to give Calla the truth.
“I was bitten. It was bad right away, then quickly got worse. I was weak and every bone felt hollowed out and stuffed with pain. Most of the time it felt like my body was on fire. I begged Liam to kill me, but he wouldn’t. Without mercy, I spent every second hoping for death, angry at being unable to find it. Then, one morning, right after it got its worst, I felt suddenly better. I still don’t know why.”
“Dr. Oswald says it’s something in your blood. That your blood reacted to the virus by fighting it, and that maybe he can get mine to do the same.”
“That would be nice.”
Calla stared into Ana’s eyes for an uncomfortably long moment. Ana felt like the girl was trying to read her thoughts.
“You don’t think I’ll live, do you?”
Ana swallowed, regretting the lies even as they left her lips. “I think you’ll be fine.”
“Please, Miss. Don’t lie to me. Everyone walks around The Station saying I’ll be fine, but I can see in their eyes that they’re lying. No one believes it, except maybe Percy the cook. He still won’t let me have sweets. If he thought I was gonna die he wouldn’t care about my teeth. But everyone else acts like I’m already dead. Even my father, sometimes. Please—tell me the truth: Do you think I’ll be cured?”
Ana thought back to her lowest point, when she’d begged Liam to leave her. She’d tried to run, but he’d kept believing in her, no matter what. Ana had often wondered if she could have survived without his faith in her, or if her body would have slouched in a corner to die.
Ana stared into the girl’s eyes and saw a bright fire that belied Calla’s scrawny frame. The child had to believe, and—more importantly—needed someone to truly believe in her, without candy or lip service.
“Yes, I think you’ll live.”
Calla leaped across the space between them and threw her arms around Ana, tears streaming down her face.
Ana allowed herself to cry and hoped she wasn’t wrong about Calla.
CHAPTER 17—LIAM HARROW
As they navigated the alleyway, Liam stayed behind Katrina and the man Egan had lent them. The man’s name was Clark, skinny and pale like a half-dipped candle. Pale except for the fact that every inch of his body was painted with tattoos. Before they’d left, Liam saw that the man’s chest, arms, and back wore a blanket of color. Then he put on a thick black jacket like the one they gave Liam and covered all but his head.
On the skidder, and in the two hours since leaving it behind and sneaking in through the only part of The Outback’s vast drainage network that wasn’t patrolled by orbs, Liam found himself pondering the mystery of Clark’s ink.
The tattoos were colorful geometrics, threaded by intricately drawn black vines. Letters bled through the shapes, though Liam couldn’t find meaning and didn’t feel like asking—or trusting—a man who had barely breathed a word since joining their expedition.
Regardless, Clark was said to be The Station’s best shot after Egan and more than made up for Ana’s absence in that regard. Liam couldn’t stop thinking about her, anyway. She would be furious at him for lying and leaving her behind. But Katrina had pulled Liam aside while Ana was in the bathroom and convinced him that there wasn’t much of a choice. She was certain that Egan would never really allow Ana to leave. It was best to go with Egan’s blessing and give Oswald time to find a cure. So as Liam and Ana made love, Katrina went to Egan and said they’d go, on the condition that they were given another warrior to help keep them alive.
Last night, the mission seemed simple enough: find Adam and bring him back. But as they crept from the sewers and navigated the crumbling city’s crooked corridors, Liam couldn’t help but remember nearly losing Ana in The Outback a year before. They would certainly have died on that rooftop if not for Belan’s orb.
But there would be no orb to watch their backs this time. If anything, Belan—who was at Paradise, one of Hydrangea’s sister camps—might be more inclined to help Sutherland hunt Liam down.
All odds were against them: they faced.bandits, players, and a city thick with the undead, plus whatever orbs The State had sent to monitor The Games. Liam was reasonably certain that, if he was spotted by someone at The Network, he’d be reported and exterminated in efficient order. The State couldn’t afford to have Liam, of all people, pop up in the middle of their precious Games.
He hoped that his hair—much longer than it had been a year before—along with his scruffy beard and the eye patch over his left eye would serve as disguise enough. Thinking of his eye made it itch even more. Liam pressed the leather patch hard against the socket, to kill the itching with a shot of excruciating pain.
Katrina held out a hand to halt them.
Liam’s gaze tracked her finger, which was pointing up toward a bank of windows overlooking the street. So far they’d been walking along a windowless row of decaying buildings. Now they’d be exposed unless they moved through the building beside them, which held dangers of its own.
Then she pointed toward a door dangling by one hinge from a wet and rotting frame. Clark nodded as he pulled open the door one-handed while aiming his blaster inside.
Clark slid into the building’s darkness, then emerged a moment later and said, “Clear.”
Katrina followed, with Liam taking the rear.
The only thing he hated worse than navigating The Outback’s roads was crawling through the city’s dark interiors, which were teeming with the wrong types of life—rats, bandits, zombies, and even the occasional wolf.
They crept along the building’s bottom floor, stepping over debris and slowly making their way through the littered space, ducking in and out of shadows, quiet like scurrying mice.
Liam’s heart was pounding hard in his chest like a warning in echo. From somewhere ahead—the floor above, behind a wall, in the next room, he couldn’t be sure—Liam heard the rumble of zombies, the murmur of the undead who no longer spoke and could only croak their haunting cry of death that had yet to claim them.
He looked over to Katrina, then to Clark. Both nodded
. They heard it too. Katrina didn’t bother with the hybrid rifle or the blaster at her hip. She clicked both her wrist blades to life like six razor-sharp claws eager to shred.
Liam wished like hell that he had such cool weapons rather than the crappy blaster he was carrying.
As they passed through two more rooms, the moaning grew louder. Katrina stopped at a door, shook her head, and twirled her finger through the air, motioning for them to turn back around. Liam was now in front, leading them back toward the door they’d come through a moment before.
Too late they realized the moaning was rolling in from every direction.
He was about to ask what Katrina thought they should do when the first zombie crashed through the doorway, rabid and frantic on its way to fresh meat. It gnashed and clawed toward Liam, the closest living human.
He made the mistake of looking to Katrina for direction, hoping she’d give him some miracle clue. She shot him a sharp look: pay attention, eyes—or eye—in front!
The lead zombie—an ancient looking man wearing crusted jeans and nothing else—launched himself at Liam.
They landed hard on the splintered wooden floor, zombie on top. Liam’s gun also lay on the floor, too far from his reach as the zombie’s jaws opened and closed repeatedly, desperate to taste his flesh. For the attack’s first few seconds he held out his thick jacketed arms, keeping the zombie from his skin. Before they’d left Hydrangea, they’d each wrapped several layers of cardboard and cloth around their forearms and wrists, both to protect from bites and to give them something to push the zombies away with.
With all of his strength, he pulled his arms back, then shoved forward. It wasn’t much: he still felt off balance with only one eye, and the zombie had most of the leverage, but Liam was able to tip him backward enough to use his momentum and shove the zombie from his body.
Liam scrambled to his feet and stomped hard on the zombie’s head, once, twice, three times—then four and five—harder and harder until the zombie’s face was a mountain of mush busted by God.
He might have kept at it if he hadn’t heard another three zombies approaching. Liam leapt back toward his gun, grabbed it off the ground, and turned to shoot. The closest zombie—a tall woman in pigtails, who looked like she might have been a kindly mom some once-upon-a-never-again—would have killed him for sure, but she flew by Liam on her way to something behind him. He managed to pop a shot between the second zombie’s eyes, disintegrating its face and sending the undead body twitching to the floor. The third zombie was on him and ready to bite.
Liam, caught by surprise, yelled out as if his scream could somehow scare the zombie away.
The zombie opened its mouth, putrid rot falling from it, as Liam struggled to guard his face. It was inches away when a blade split through the front of the zombie’s jaw, nearly slicing Liam’s cheek, and then the corpse was yanked away from him.
Clark turned on the zombie he’d just killed and swung his machete repeatedly, grunting with every hack, cutting into the creature’s head, chest, and arms until he leaned over in exhaustion, hands to knees.
Katrina stood behind him, slinging blood from her wrist blades onto the wall before sheathing then.
Liam stared at the litter of corpses—a wet, messy circle around them, seven full bodies and a couple in parts—dispatched mostly by Katrina and Clark.
“Are you OK?” Katrina’s voice was kind behind Liam. He looked over his still shaking body, trying to catch his breath.
“Yeah, I think so. Thanks.” Seeing he was fine, Katrina’s voice lost its softness.
“Well, be more fucking careful next time. You’ll get us killed.”
“What did I do?” Liam asked, genuinely perplexed. He’d done his best, followed her lead, turned when he was supposed to, handled the attack to the best of his ability. The problem was her bad idea, not him. Still, it was best to ignore it, at least until they were safe.
Katrina said nothing. She had been cold ever since the three of them had left the drainage tunnels. She’d always been a mystery to him, and he didn’t have time now to read between her many lines. He figured that probably more than anything, Katrina was more scared than she wanted—or was willing—to admit.
Liam didn’t want to think there was anything more, that maybe she harbored resentment toward him or perhaps regretted going on this mission. He hated politics and niceties in the best of times and certainly didn’t want to navigate them now.
They walked back toward the building’s exit in silence, prepared to go back into the snow, and paused at the door to stare out at a world that had grown louder around them, filled with gunshots, screams, and perhaps the most chilling of all sounds, man’s laughter as he committed atrocities against others. Danger was too close to risk being out in the open.
“We can’t go out there,” Katrina said, confirming his thoughts.
“Then where?” Liam asked.
She nodded across the room. A door, open. Beyond it, stairs.
“Up,” she said.
Liam didn’t argue. Instead, he fell into a soft gait behind Katrina and Clark, shoving the stir in his gut as low as he could, shaking his head from the memories of climbing to a roof where he and Ana were nearly killed a year ago.
CHAPTER 18—SUTHERLAND
Sutherland woke to the sensation of being shaken.
His head pounded from a gallon too much of last night’s hooch. That and whoring.
“Sir, Sir,” Gallus spoke urgently.
Last thing Sutherland needed was to hear Gallus braying into his morning.
“What is it?” Sutherland sat up. He pulled his red silk sheets up to cover his cold, naked body.
He looked over to where Nat’s curly, dark hair concealed her face beside him and repeated, “What is it?” Gallus was standing by his bed like an idiot.
“The throne room, Sir. Someone’s . . . well, I think you should just come see.”
Sutherland sighed, looked over at his whore. He said, “No, that’s okay, honey, you just sleep it off”—like she had any intention of waking—and stepped out of bed. He slid on clothes from the night before—black dress pants and a burgundy shirt—and pulled his long red hair into a ponytail. He tied it back with a thin strip of leather and fastened his belt with the blaster. He considered grabbing his sheathed sword as well but thought better of it. He still had to bathe and didn’t feel like fussing with more than he had to.
Sutherland felt suddenly hungry and realized he was damn near empty, but ignored the growl so he could effectively tend to whatever faux emergency Gallus was whining about.
As Sutherland’s number two led him through the crowded hallways, so many eyes staring at him felt like spiders on his body. Hydrangea’s air stank of something Sutherland could only identify enough to know he didn’t like it. He was about to ask Gallus if he could report what he’d seen, without the mystery and ballyhoo. He hated that everyone in Hydrangea seemed to know what in the hell was going on, while he fumbled his way from a hangover, trailing an idiot in officer’s clothing. But Sutherland couldn’t halt Gallus and ask him in front of the others, at least not unless he was willing to ignore their whispers. So he kept his eyes on the idiot and kept marching behind him.
They finally reached the throne room’s double doors where two of his men were standing guard. They met his eyes as he entered, then quickly looked down.
Sutherland was about to demand their reason for not holding his gaze but quickly swallowed the words when he saw for himself: someone had smeared two words on his new throne with feces.
KING SHIT
Sutherland stared, feeling his face redden, skin on fire.
He inhaled as slowly as he exhaled, swallowing the lump of betrayal, then turned to Gallus.
“Who did this?”
“I . . . um . . . don’t know, Sir.”
“Don’t know?” Sutherland snarled as if he couldn’t believe that Gallus had the nerve to admit something so stupid.
“No, Sir.
We’re looking into it.”
“When did this happen?”
“We don’t know, Sir. Therault and Harris came down here this morning to let in the builders so they could finish the design. The doors were open when we got here.”
“Where’s Connor?”
“Who?”
“Connor Vinson, the sneaky rat bastard who tried to rally support for an election earlier this year. Find him. Now. Bring him to me. Five minutes.”
Gallus left and Sutherland stared at the shit. His blood rolled to a boil.
From behind, just outside the room, he heard suppressed laughter from one of the two men at the door. He spun, drawn to the men’s laughter like a falcon to a fat and filthy rat.
Sutherland stood in front of the men, knowing neither of their names. One was thin and in his 30s with dark circles under his eyes that made him look like the sobbing whore his mother most certainly was. The other was fat, his extra pounds weighing him down with expendable sloth. He looked 20 or so. Both men’s eyes widened as Sutherland began to pace before them, his arms crossed.
In a low voice: “Is something funny?”
“No, Sir,” the whore’s son said, his dark-rimmed eyes staring at an imaginary puddle of his own reeking piss.
“How about you, Piggy?” Sutherland turned to the fat one. “Something funny?”
“No, Sir,” said the sloth, growing more expendable by the second, still staring at the ground and his own imaginary puddle of ammonia-scented fear.
“Well someone was laughing.” Sutherland scrunched his face. “Unless I’m hearing things.” He paused, leaned toward them. “I’m not hearing things, am I?”
“We weren’t laughing,” said the pig.
Whore’s son kept his eyes to the ground.
“So are you calling me a liar?” Sutherland was suddenly an inch from Piggy’s face.
“No, Sir.”
“But someone was laughing. And you two are the only ones standing here, right?” He feigned surprise. “Oh! Did I miss a gaggle of school children skipping by laughing on their way into the City? Is that it? Did I miss the frolicking wee ones?” Sutherland shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Such a shame to have missed them. There’s always much to learn from an innocent’s whimsy.”