Foamers

by Justin Kassab

  Kade felt a swell of emotion rise within him. His oldest friend and his little sister; in the Old World, people would have frowned upon such a pairing, but here in the Primal Age, he couldn’t think of a better match.

  * * *

  Victoria stood in front of the mirror, wrapped in only a sheet. She could see the bruises forming on her shoulders and neck. She hadn’t been unwilling when Sarge took her to his cot, but she didn’t realize what she was in for. Damian had never been rough with her like that, and the experience had terrified her.

  She’d had partners before Damian, but none of them had been so physical with her, either. Now her whole body hurt, and she felt used. She had always felt like a partner with Damian, but not here. Not this time.

  This new experience made her question if leaving the group had been the right choice even more than before. One day, Damian would arrive at Houghton, but Victoria had let her pride drive her away from the last semblance of family she knew.

  There was once a time, only once, where Kade and she had bonded. It was after she had slept with Damian for the first time. She knew it was his first time, and completely understood that he couldn’t even legally have slept with people for most of his academic career. What she didn’t know was that he thought it was also her first time.

  Damian had brought her home to the family for Christmas. Kade had accidentally found her in the bathroom in a similar pose as she was in now, standing before the mirror. Kade began to walk away, but that overriding need of his to take care of those around him kicked in, and he asked her what was wrong.

  Once she explained the situation, he laughed, which sent her storming out. He stopped her at the door and explained that he wasn’t making fun of her, but that the situation was an easy fix. It was one of the most interesting conversations she had ever had:

  “Just don’t tell him the truth,” Kade said.

  “I can’t lie to him,” she replied, knowing she couldn’t do that to the man she loved.

  Kade shook his head. “I didn’t say lie. Just don’t tell him the truth.”

  “Aren’t those one and the same?”

  “You scientists, wanting to make everything black and white. Has he asked you if it was your first time?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t correct him.”

  “What if he asks me?”

  Kade paused, and that was the first time she saw Damian’s mind at work in Kade’s gray eyes. “Assuming you don’t want to deal with him being all mopey, then I’d suggest learning to sell bullshit. Like, Yes, that was my first time, and leave off the back half of, with someone I truly love. The trick to selling it is relaxing the muscles in your face so they don’t give you away with natural ticks, and to punctuate it with a smile and a starry-eyed look like you are reliving the experience.”

  “Shouldn’t I just tell him the truth?”

  “Probably, but sometimes it’s better to let people have their illusions than to crush them. I believe in doing the right thing, which doesn’t always mean being totally honest.”

  When Kade left her, she practiced his technique to the mirror for close to fifteen minutes before she returned to Damian. To this day, Damian still thought he was her first.

  Victoria stopped looking at her fresh bruises and stared into her own eyes in the mirror. She and Sarge had spent most of the last two days recruiting people to join them for the assault on Houghton College. They had about twenty people in total, most of them former soldiers, but a few were blood lusting men who were enjoying the end of the world too much for her taste. Before this, she thought there might be a chance to talk sense into Kade and strike a treaty between him and the Tribe. After seeing recruits, she knew there was no way this would end peacefully. She didn’t want them to kill Kade.

  So she spent a good deal of time weaving half-truths to try and give Kade the best chance she could. Sarge didn’t know what Huntington’s was, exactly, so Victoria had spun it as Kade was mentally inept under pressure and he would fall into tremors under stress. She told Sarge Tiny was a weak woman who had messed her leg up so badly, she couldn’t even run. Mick was nothing more than a fat cop going through do-nut withdrawal, and Grace was a whiny little brat.

  Sarge and his boys seemed to take to the idea and stopped recruiting. The more men they brought along, the more ways they’d have to split their spoils. Twenty men still seemed like too many for Kade to handle, but at least Victoria had nipped it there. She had to give him the best chance she could. She owed her life to Kade—like it or not, that was the fact. Without him, she would be dead, or worse.

  There was no way she could stop the Tribe, but she could impede them.

  * * *

  Kade rubbed his bare wrists. He had hated the feel of metal against them and was glad to be out of the cuffs. It had been three days since X had released him, and he hoped he could go the rest of his life without being chained again. X had yet to turn into a foamer, and with each passing day, Kade felt more convinced that X was safe. At the same time, he wasn’t about to let his guard down.

  He sat with X on the roof of Lambian in the predawn morning. Even in the Primal Age, Kade found the sky just before dawn to be the most beautiful. The normalcy of the sky was a nice touch, a reminder to him that the universe would go on without him or humanity. Today, though, he was worried for his friends still at the hospital; they were going on their fourth day of separation. The two groups checked in twice a day—once in the morning, once in the evening—just to make sure everything was okay.

  From what Kade could gather, the other group was fine. Bored, but fine. His group was far from bored. With only four of them, they rarely had a break. With the constant snow, they were limited in what they could do outside of the dorm, but there was still plenty to keep them busy organizing and unpacking. It wasn’t Kade’s favorite job, but it was still work that needed to be done.

  X packed a snowball and let it fall all the way to the ground below. He brushed off his gloved hands and pulled his coat tight.

  “Remember when we looked forward to winter? Snow days and sledding,” X said, tucking his hands under his armpits.

  “Can’t say I miss it,” Kade replied.

  X laughed. “Me either. There’s a lot about this world I like.”

  “Does that mean we can sign you up for a long stay in Hotel Primal Age?”

  “If that means you’ll fluff my pillow and leave a mint, you can sign me up for an extended visit.”

  “At least this business with Ashton had a positive outcome. You aren’t just going to cut and run like I figured.”

  “You mean besides me hooking up with your little sister, right?”

  Kade spun, facing X, and pointed a finger at him. “Do you really want to get hit again?”

  “We both know in a real fight I’d kick your ass,” X said with a wink.

  “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get a hit in.”

  “You punch like a girl.”

  “I’ll put the knuckles on next time.”

  “I unpacked boxing gloves today. You just say when you want to go a few rounds,” X said with a sneer.

  Before Kade could return a counter
joust, the door opened and Ashton emerged, sleepy-eyed.

  “I’ll take sunrise. Why don’t you boys catch a quick hour?” she said.

  X and Kade made their way to the door.

  “You just name the time and place,” Kade said.

  “Anytime, anywhere,” X replied.

  The two of them passed into the stairwell.

  “You know I’ll fight to the death.”

  “I will break you.”

  Ash shook her head as the guys were at the point she could only hear their muffled banter.

  * * *

  Tiny lay across the waiting room benches, her head dangling over the end so she had an upside-down view of the outside world. The snow had piled over a foot. She could feel the damage in her leg with every slight drop in the air pressure. The wind howled outside as it picked up snow, keeping the air looking like a solid white sheet.

  The twang of John’s bowstring cut through the air as his arrow thunked into his makeshift target. After four days, they were all struggling with boredom, and John’s solution had been to stack mattresses against the wall at the end of the hallway so he could practice his long shots with the bow. Tiny was impressed with how hard he was trying to make himself feel worthy of the cohort. She didn’t have the heart to tell him they didn’t have enough people for try-outs; besides, she liked seeing his Primal side.

  John came into the waiting room, sliding his arrows back into his quiver as he paused in front of the vending machine. He punched in a number, then shook his head and laughed at himself.

  “I keep forgetting,” he said, and reached through the broken front plate of the vending machine to pull out a something to eat. “Last Snickers.”

  “It’s all yours,” Tiny replied, remaining in her bat-like position.

  “All I’ve seen you eat in three days is Snickers. We can split it.”

  Tiny sat up and crossed her legs on the seat, but immediately had to straighten her injured leg. She bit down on the inside of her lip as she pressed her hands around her damaged knee.

  John took a seat beside her and opened the candy. “What happened to your leg?”

  “That’s a story for another day,” she replied as she spun to face John. The memories of war were something she was happy keeping packed.

  He snapped the Snickers in half and held both parts up to her. “I’ll try again tomorrow, then. I broke it, you pick.”

  Tiny took the larger of the two halves. “You know, if you don’t stop being such a good guy, I am going to be sad when you die.”

  “I hope it’s a long time until you’re sad.”

  They finished their chocolate in silence, then Tiny said, “You know, you guys will have to leave soon.”

  “Soon as the snow stops, we’ll head back.”

  “We’re running out of food. You guys will have to go on foot, with or without me.”

  “Kade would throw me out if I came back without you, and I’m trying too hard to fit in to let that happen. Besides, I can’t leave you.”

  “Fine. Do you know where Mick is?”

  “Haven’t seen him today.”

  Tiny left John in the waiting room and limped down the corridor, searching for signs of Mick. She made it all the way to the end of the hallway before she heard him in one of the rooms. She pushed the door open and stood silently, watching him.

  Mick wore a doctor’s coat and had a stethoscope around his neck. In his hands, he rubbed two AED paddles together.

  “Clear,” he said, and applied the paddles to an imaginary patient.

  “Mick?” Tiny asked.

  He paused, set down the paddles, removed the stethoscope, placed the jacket on the bed, and then turned around.

  “Hey,” he replied.

  “You got cabin fever?”

  “It’s not that. It’s … Do you need something?”

  Tiny pulled out her combat knife and proceeded to dig under her nails. “My leg isn’t ready to try and take on Mother Nature. You need to take the Stray back.”

  Mick sat against the bed. “You know I won’t leave you here.”

  “There’s no weather channel to tell us when this is going to let up. Our numbers can’t be split like this. You need to take John back.”

  “Even if I wanted to, Kade would kill me if I left you here.”

  Tiny pointed her knife at him. “Since when’s everyone more afraid of Kade than of me?”

  “None of us wants to get caught on the line between you two. All three of us leave together.”

  “If I can’t convince you to leave, then tell me why you were playing doctor,” she said.

  “Boredom.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Mick wrung his hands as he thought about his answer.

  “I always wanted to be a doctor. Med school would have been close to ten years and a couple hundred thousand dollars. You knew my family, we didn’t have that. With the police academy they paid me and it was only a couple months. It paid well and I still helped people.”

  “Well,” Tiny said, turning toward the hallway, “we’ve got time. Money is no object. Start learning instead of playing.”

  “It’s not that simple. There’s med school, residency, boards, the list goes on.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and gave him a reassuring smile. “Not anymore. This is the Primal Age. You can be anything you want to be. Hit the books.”

  Mick laughed. “I’ll learn to be a doctor when you learn how to cook.”

  Tiny’s eyes narrowed as a smirk curled from the corner of her mouth. “Game on.”

  With that said, she left Mick to his thoughts. He picked up the stethoscope and turned it over in his hands, her words tossing around in the stormy sea of his mind.

  * * *

  The nor’easter started its fifth day. Alpha lay in a huddle with most of his troop. When Pepper had fallen into the river, they learned this trick to keep warm. Now they were using the method to survive.

  Alpha felt an internal pain, like a hand had squeezed his insides. The discomfort he couldn’t place built into a fiery ball of anguish.

  None of them had eaten since huddling. The pain gripped Alpha, and he erupted through the snow. His instincts spurred him into a four-legged sprint and the rest of his troop burst from their snowy dome and pursued him.

  Alpha’s nostrils flared as he searched for the scent of something to eat and his eyes scanned the snow-covered world. Nothing was the same as it had been when he lay down. The trees, the ground—everything but the sky’s color had turned to one.

  He spun in circles, his body in a panic, unsure of where to hunt or scavenge. The foam bubbled from his mouth and dripped into the snow as the rest of the troop caught up to him. There was something in their eyes he recognized from a long time ago. It made him feel something big, but he did not know what to call it.

  * * *

  Victoria trudged through the snow in the Tribe’s base to where the Humvees were idling behind a snowplow. The strike had been planned for before the blizzard, but she had
stalled them as best she could. When other Tribal assignments threatened Sarge’s ranks, he rallied his troops and decided attacking in these conditions would be the best choice, since the snow would conceal their numbers.

  Victoria hid her feelings and let her face stay slack, as Kade had taught her. The Tribesmen were at peak excitement for this attack, especially the civilian volunteers. The civilians were the ones she had trouble figuring out. The former soldiers were going into it like any other mission: An enemy had been presented to them, and they were told to neutralize the objective. The civilians seemed to be high on the idea of killing people, like this was a way to let off their pent-up frustration.

  If she knew a way to explain to them that nothing would make them feel better, she would have tried to talk them out of going, but she had become afraid to step out of Sarge’s shadow. Many men had made it clear what would happen to her if she did. As Victoria approached the last Humvee in the line, Sarge was waiting beside the passenger door.

  “You ready for this?” Sarge asked, opening her door.

  “Been dreaming about it,” she replied with a casual smile.

  “The men are stoked. Should be a fun day,” he said as she climbed into the Humvee.

  She stopped Sarge from closing the door and channeled her best Kade. “If they choose to fight, I want their leader, Kade, to die last. I want him to suffer. I want him to know everything he loves is dead. I want him to know how I feel.”

  A snake-like sneer tugged across Sarge’s face. “Yes, ma’am.”

  CHAPTER XV

  EVERYBODY DIES

  ___________

  Kade pulled a chair to one of the desks they were using as a breakfast table. Ashton, X, and Grace were gathered around, eating a variety of different cold breakfasts. The low energy in the room reminded him of mornings before school.