by Peter Telep
Mom came to his rescue and asked, “Docherty, do you feel trapped in your own body?”
“Is this about the eyeliner?”
“We’re just concerned about you,” she said. “We want you to be happy.”
“I know, but I’m not happy.”
“Why?” Dad asked.
“Because I need sixty bucks.”
He looked confused. “Sixty bucks?”
“Yeah, there’s a new game I want.”
“Doc, we’re being serious.”
I didn’t have the heart to go on, so I just told them about Julie and the other guy.
The footnote here is that I never had the courage to wear Goth makeup to school, but I did experiment. I just wanted Julie to like me more than Mr. Vampire Extra. At least he turned out to be a loser.
So anyway, this story is kind of random. I guess you could say that in the face of certain death, memories get triggered by even the smallest details—
Like the dark rings around the grren’s eyes.
Come on, you’re not surprised. You knew this was coming. These are his tunnels.
You don’t go to a monster’s house without expecting him to eventually come home. You should expect him to be totally starving and stressed out from a hard day at the monster office and from the rush hour traffic jam he fought for two hours. Plus, the people he ate last night gave him heartburn, so he’s miserable and more grumpy than usual.
Sure, you can expect all of those things, but on a planet like Flora, the safer bet is to expect the unexpected.
Like for example, our grren is actually a she—
And her three cubs lie on a bed of leaves right in front of us. They’re about the size of full-grown lions but mew like kittens. We glance over our shoulders, and standing behind us is Mama Grren herself.
She’s twice as big as a lion.
No fur.
Green wrinkly skin.
Giant muscles in her hips and shoulders.
Pairs of yellow fangs baring deep scars.
Most stunning are her multi-colored eyes that look fake, like Julie made them with her old Bedazzler machine.
We gasp.
She hisses back.
Small skin flaps covering her nostrils quiver and flare, while black markings like tattoos flex on her forehead. The markings form a diamond pattern of four rings connected by jagged lines.
She’s the Incredible Hulk version of a saber-toothed tiger.
And she’s seriously pissed off.
This is just perfect. We are now a Happy Meal. “Keane?”
“Yeah?”
“What do we do now?”
“We can’t outrun her. We can’t even outrun the cubs. So I guess we die.”
“I’ll get in a shot before she takes me out,” Tommy says. “Meanwhile, y’all get ready to roll.”
Slowly, he reaches for the rifle slung across his back. The grren snarls so loudly that Julie and I scream in unison.
Her cubs react as well, rising from their bed and skulking behind us.
“Easy girl,” Tommy says.
“Better lower your hand,” Keane says.
Tommy looks at him. “Get ready, people.”
“Don’t do it,” Keane warns him.
I take a deep breath.
Tommy seizes his weapon—
Brings it around.
There’s a flash of green light that blinds us.
And now the growling sounds different. Like a chorus.
My eyes adjust.
Excuse me, what? No, this is not an illusion.
The grren has jumped into her personas.
I said personas, as in plural. As in six.
Shocked? Hell yeah, we are.
“Okay, boys and girls,” Keane begins, speaking like a tour guide. “Now you see why she’s the most deadly predator on the planet. She enjoys ganging up on her enemies.”
The grren personas surround us while Mama Grren shifts over to her cubs and noses them back into their bed.
“Pssst,” Julie calls to me.
“What?”
“No matter what, don’t do anything, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know what to do.”
I snort. “How?”
“I don’t know. I can just feel it…” Her chest ignites as she jumps into her persona.
But something’s different: she’s combed her hair, lost the glasses, and wears eyeliner. I guess it’s happening naturally, but she’s gaining real control over her persona now…
And then bam, she reaches out and touches the nearest grren on its shimmering head.
They vanish together.
Meanwhile, Julie’s person is standing next to me with her eyes closed.
“Keane? What the hell just happened?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Spit it out,” Tommy says.
“She connected with the grren.”
“Can she do that?” I ask.
“She just did.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s very rare. Like only green sages connect with them.”
“What do they got?” I ask. “Like special powers?”
“I don’t know. I heard it’s the blood type. Not sure.”
“So where are they now?” I ask.
“I have no idea. All I know is textbook stuff. We hunted the grren when we ran out of food, but as you can tell they’re extremely hard to kill.”
“Maybe Julie can remind them that we don’t taste good.”
“Oh, they love the way we taste. They ate one of my dad’s friends. I watched. That’s how I know about their tunnels...”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just sorry you’re here.”
“Whatever.” I study the pack of carnivores. “You ever meet anyone who survived an attack?”
“Nope.”
“Any ideas on how we can escape?”
“Nope.”
“You got anything positive to say?”
“My father said the grren are smarter than us. They kept away from technology or religion or stuff that would destroy the planet. So maybe we’re done, and they take over.”
“Thanks, Keane. You’re a breath of fresh air, but maybe you should shut up and get your head back in the game!”
“All right, let’s secure that,” Tommy says. “Now listen to me, and listen real good. I’ll volunteer to be the appetizer. Keane, if this thing’s got a wreath, you tell me where it is. If I can hit her in that sweet spot, then she can’t project her personas, and y’all can get away.”
I’m unsure if the grren actually understands Tommy or is just reading his body language, but she pushes through her pack of personas and forces Tommy against the tunnel wall.
Her personas do the same with us—two on Keane and three on me, with Julie left standing there in her trance.
The glimmering animals breathe hotly in my face, and their breath smells like ten-day-old Burger King that you forgot was in your nightstand drawer.
Saliva drips from their teeth and puddles on the dirt near my feet.
Their eyes, which up close look like ten eyes in one, rotate like a kaleidoscope and narrow on me.
One of the personas pushes a little closer, pressing its nose on my neck.
I hold my breath as the grren sniffs at me—
And then pulls back, opening its mouth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
So let’s talk about another beast, one called King Kong.
Really, Kong, that overgrown ape who terrorizes the big city and is tamed by a beautiful woman...
That’s what we have right here:
A classic beauty and the beast story, with Julie playing the role of the stunning young woman who charms the monster. I want to believe this. I need to.
Because one of the grren’s personas is still very much in my face—
And it thinks I’m a dentist, opening wide to expose rows of a razor-sharp
teeth. Behind them lies a forked tongue, and growing from each end is a needle-like tooth.
The tongue flashes like a lizard’s, and those teeth come within an inch of my nose. I’m about to die while staring cross-eyed at this demon cat.
“Doc!” Julie calls.
The grren personas crane their heads and dissolve.
Julie walks through their ghosts and seizes my hand. “I need to show you something.”
“Can I catch my breath first?”
“No. We need to go right now.”
I close my eyes, project my persona, and follow her.
We’re on the outskirts of the City of Violet, in a suburban neighborhood. Cars, vans, and trucks, some fitted with solar panels, hum past us. If you blurred your vision, you’d think you were on Earth.
Julie and I are on the sidewalk, watching a man dressed in workout clothes come toward us with a child strapped to his chest. He’s one of those power walker dudes on a mission, waving his arms and going for it.
Wait a minute. I squint at his thin hair, the lean face.
Oh, no. It’s Solomon. And the baby is Julie.
“Look,” Julie says, gesturing to a grren cub mewing beside us. “This is a memory.”
“Is that our grren when she was little?”
“No,” Julie answers. “But our mama knows him.”
I lean down for a better look. The markings on the cub’s forehead are different than Mama Grren’s. They’re shaped like an upside down triangle with a ring at the peak. The cub glances around like it’s lost.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He got separated from his pack and wandered down from the Highlands after a really big storm.”
“So why are we seeing this?”
“The grren can share memories with each other, just like we do. Mama Grren showed me this cub’s memory after she realized who I was.”
“They know you?”
She nods. “You’ll see why.” She clutches my arm, bracing herself for something.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She looks to the cub—
Just as he darts off the sidewalk and into traffic.
Bam, he’s struck hard by a pickup truck.
The poor thing flies over the hood and crashes across the windshield. As he rolls off the truck and hits the ground—
The entire scene fades to black.
We’re floating in a vacuum now, just listening to voices:
“Oh, no, why did you bring it home?”
“Because the driver didn’t care. He took off. And you know what the city will do. They won’t even try to save it.”
“This is illegal.”
“There’s this tech at the lab. Her sister’s a vet. She’s on her way. We can save this cub.”
“Just get rid of it. It’s dangerous.”
“No, we’re going to save it.”
“Why?”
“Because every life is precious. I mean it took us forever to have a child... Maybe that was a sign. Maybe that prepared me for this.”
“You think this is a sign from the First Ones? It’s not. It was just an accident. It’s not your responsibility.”
Julie squeezes my hand. Harsh light. I squint, try to focus.
She’s taken me to a backyard with a swing and trees and pots of flowers. The grren’s hind leg is heavily bandaged, and he limps across the grass toward a bowl of meat. He devours the meal in seconds, and then shifts over to Solomon, rubbing his head on Solomon’s hip.
The young Julie, who’s resting in the crook of Solomon’s arm, leans over and pets the grren.
“That’s my dad,” the older Julie says, her voice sounding fragile. “I’ve had this dream forever. I thought he saved a tiger, but then when I saw the grren, I was like, I know what this is, and then I could feel the urge to connect...”
I steal a look at her. Eyes red. Tears falling.
She goes on, “Look at my dad. He seems like such a kind man. I can feel that. I can feel the grren too.”
If she keeps talking I’ll throw up.
Solomon leans down and hugs the grren.
Julie sees love.
I see a man with a bloody knife in his hands.
I can’t bear any more and close my eyes.
When I open them, I stand on the shoreline of a deep blue lake. Smooth as glass. Miles wide. Clouds reflected in the water. Twin moons rise over the snow-capped mountains in the distance.
Solomon, Julie, and her mother are saying good-bye to the grren. The cub’s bandages are gone. With a noticeable limp, the grren trots away, back into the wild...
“That cub is still alive because of my father.”
“So do you actually talk to them?”
“Just feelings and memories, but they understand. And I feel like if we were around them longer, we really could talk to them…”
“Can you show them the attack? Can you tell them we need to leave?”
“They already know. The female wants to get back to her mate in the Highlands. She says we can come.”
“Awesome. Then let’s go.”
We return to our bodies and find Tommy and Keane with rifles drawn on the grren. She’s barking and hissing, while her cubs shift behind her.
“Hey, we’re good,” I shout. “She won’t attack.”
“That’s right,” Julie adds. “Watch.” She crosses directly to the grren, reaches up, and strokes her floppy, green ear. “We can connect with them in our personas or just by touching.”
“No way,” Keane says, his rifle nearly slipping from his grip. “No way... I don’t believe it.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” I tell him.
He takes a step back. “Who are you people?”
“Julie, are we good to go?” Tommy asks.
“Roger that,” she answers—with the monstrous grren at her shoulder. “We follow them.”
“You okay with that?” I ask Keane.
He’s still dumbfounded. “Uh, yeah, whatever.”
We climb on our bikes and get rolling. The grren gallops ahead of us, with her cubs at the flanks.
Once again Julie’s flashlight marks the path, but only for us, since the grren can see in the dark.
We’re led through several tunnels, pedaling for a least a quarter mile, maybe more.
“She’s been planning her escape for awhile,” Julie says as the pack slows down. “This tunnel ends just outside the main walls. She’ll dig the final section, and then we’ll be out.”
“How long will that take?” Tommy asks.
“Not sure.”
“Hey, so about the main walls, we have guards there now,” Keane says, listening in to the watch communicator we stole from the nomads. He’s been giving us updates as we ride, and the news has been grim.
The nomads have taken over the entire Palladium. They’re looting the cafeteria, the vast farms under the domes, and the all-important medical supplies.
It took Ms. Martha and her people nearly fifteen years to build this sanctuary and give the survivors hope.
And now it’s all gone.
Because of me.
I scream inside and picture the dining hall. The families. All those kids. Ms. Martha lying there, dying. The aqueduct. The floating bodies.
All of them survived a nuclear holocaust.
Hadn’t they been through enough?
And just as they got back on their feet... we ruined it all.
It does seem impossible to go on.
But I have to. I have to focus on the promise. Never leave Julie. Stop Solomon. Prevent more people from dying.
But it hurts so bad...
“Here we are,” Julie says.
I shiver myself back to the moment. We’ve stopped about ten feet from a wall of claw-marked dirt.
Mama Grren faces us and lifts her head, as though gesturing for us to get farther back.
As we retreat, she lifts her massive front paws and rises on her hind legs to extend her torso.
> Columns of dirt shoot from both sides of her body. She’s like a possessed mole, burrowing so hard and so fast that she’s building a mound of dirt between us.
Now we move up, getting in tighter behind her so she doesn’t bury us alive.
Her cubs squirm in beside her. They’re amusing because they can’t dig to save their lives. They make feeble attempts, spit out dirt, and try again.
As Mama Grren gets closer to the surface, the temperature increases dramatically by ten or even twenty degrees. It’s a little hard to breathe.
She makes a noise I haven’t hear before, almost like Darth Vader going, “Uh-huh...”
Just then, a shaft of dim light drops into the tunnel near her head. She stops digging and wriggles herself out of the tunnel to face us.
Julie touches her ear. “She’s keeping the hole very small for now and wants to wait a few minutes. It’s still twilight.”
Keane checks his watch. “Yeah, should be dark soon.”
Tommy wipes sweat from his brow. “If y’all don’t mind, the old man would like to recon the escape route himself. Will she let me?”
“I think so,” Julie answers.
Tommy dismounts from his bike, and then lifts his palms and eases past Mama Grren, who eyes him suspiciously. He crawls up the tunnel and lifts his head toward the small breach in the ceiling, just barely wide enough to fit his shoulders.
“Hey, Little Girl?”
Julie pushes her head into the tunnel. “What?”
“This hole up top is pretty small, so I doubt anyone can see it yet. Doesn’t matter, though, because now we got all kinds of trouble up there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tommy brushes off his pants. He’s about to explain what “all kinds of trouble” means when Keane interrupts him with a sharp announcement:
“I’m not going.”
“What?” I ask.
“I’m not getting sick and dying like my father.”
Tommy chuckles under his breath.
“What’s so funny?” Keane demands.
“Son, you’re worried about radiation? We got a thousand nomads out there. They’ll kill you first.”
“A thousand?” he asks.
“Maybe just nine hundred, but they’re posted along the wall every ten feet or so, plus some vehicles patrolling the perimeter. It’s a wide-open stretch of desert between us and the mountains. We can pedal as hard as we like, but there ain’t no way we’ll make it.”