Estranged

by Alex Fedyr

  Kalei replied, “I’m not going to ask.”

  They had been walking for about half a mile when Kalei told Shenaia, “You know, I’m guessing the entire point of this exercise is that we don’t get high from touching them.”

  “Don’t you worry ‘bout that.” Shenaia pulled a pair of Warden’s gloves out of her back pocket. “If you’re nice, I’ll let you borrow ‘em when I’m done.”

  Kalei raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “Well, ain’t you a goody two-shoes? Did Terin hand you a freakin’ rulebook before he left? No.” She pulled the left glove down firmly over her wrist. “No rules, no cheatin’.”

  They took a left down an alleyway, and as they emerged into a parking lot on the other side, Shenaia pointed out, “There.” On the far side of the parking lot stood a flat, square building with burnt-out lettering above the entrance which read: C-n-ma. And sure enough, huddled against the outer wall like smokers out for a puff, sat three Estranged.

  One man wore nothing but a pair of grimy briefs, and he sat with his legs sprawled out while the sun gleamed off his balding head. The second man was only marginally better dressed, sitting cross-legged and wearing a pair of basketball shorts, but he had enough hair on his chest and limbs to make him look like he was fully clothed. And both men possessed an ample supply of belly fat, which sprawled over their waistlines like some ill-conceived clay creations.

  Then there was a little girl, probably no more than six years old, wearing a faded yellow sundress. A ponytail hung limply from the back of her head as she looked to the sky with closed eyes and hummed a cheery song to herself. She was small and flexible enough that her hands held on to her bare feet as they moved back and forth to the rhythm of her humming.

  Shenaia laughed. “I think we found Erit’s girlfriend.”

  Kalei rolled her eyes. “Stop being stupid. Let’s just shake their hands and get out of here.”

  Holding up a gloved hand and wriggling her fingers, the teenaged girl said, “Watch how it’s done.”

  “No thanks.”

  The two women crossed the parking lot and made their way over to where the Estranged sat. Shenaia headed for little girl, while Kalei picked the hairy man as her target. She didn’t want anything to do with Mr. Boxers.

  When they came within a few feet of the Estranged, the three opened their eyes and looked for the source of the scuffing noise Shenaia made as she walked. Their eyes lit up when they saw who it was, and they reached out eagerly to the newcomers.

  Kalei stepped up to the hairy man, pulled the darkness back from her arm, and offered him her hand.

  His two hands latched onto her one. As his fingers closed around hers, a grin spread across his face, revealing black, rotting teeth. His excitement was palpable, but nothing happened. Kalei sealed the handshake with a quick up-down, then tried to withdraw from his hold. The man’s smile slid from his face, and creases began to appear on his forehead as his eyebrows came together in anger. Before Kalei could break free, his grip tightened and he started to yank on her arm with impossible force, like a small child trying to yank their favorite toy out of the bushes. Kalei almost lost her balance, but she caught herself on the brick wall with her other hand. Off to her right, she heard the shrill notes of a temper tantrum starting up.

  Kalei delivered a solid kick to the man’s ribs, yet he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept yanking and yanking, his lip curling as he redoubled his effort. Kalei thought her arm would pop out of its socket any moment. Then the bald man decided to take an interest and began crawling toward the party. Dammit!

  Kalei looked back at Yanker and tried to concentrate despite the constant jolt-jolt of the man’s persistence. She reached in, ripped off a piece of darkness, and shoved it down her arm. She pushed it out her hand, into the man’s palms, and kicked him in the chest as it hit. She pulled her arm free just in time to catch a tackle from Mr. Curious.

  Kalei hit the ground hard, forcing the air out of her lungs. The little girl’s screams became frenzied, like a wild chimp, furious that her meal was trapped inside a glass box.

  The bald man had her arm. Shit! Kalei’s control of the darkness had slipped in the attack, and now she could feel a high racing up her arm from where he made contact. Kalei severed the connection with all the darkness below her shoulder, and, just like with the first man, she shoved it into her attacker’s hands. As his head rolled back and a grin blossomed on his face, Kalei pulled her arm away and struggled out from under his weight.

  A gunshot ripped through the alley. Kalei looked up in time to see the little girl fall to the ground, her brains splattered across the bricks of the cinema.

  Kalei regained her feet and shouted at Shenaia, “What the hell did you do!”

  “Wha’? She didn’ feel a thing. She’ll be fine,” Shenaia said as she calmly holstered her weapon.

  Kalei closed the last few steps between them and grabbed Shenaia by her shirt. “That wasn’t necessary.”

  The teenager grabbed Kalei’s hand and shoved it off. “What’re you so worked up about? She was Estranged! No harm done.”

  Over Shenaia’s shoulder, Kalei could see the little girl’s body crumpled against the wall, like a doll propped up for teatime. The child’s delicate jaw hung open. A bead of blood escaped from the red hole in her forehead and traced a jagged path through the light layer of dirt on her ivory skin.

  Kalei said, “That doesn’t make it right.”

  Shenaia gave a harsh laugh. “What the hell do you care? I thought you wanted all Estranged dead, Little Miss High-and-Mighty.” Shenaia grabbed her left glove by the wrist and peeled it off, then did the same for the right. “And what about all that ‘highs are bad’ shit? Look at your guys!” She finished removing her glove and pointed at the two men lying against the theatre with wide grins on their faces. “They’re high as the fucking moon! Don’t go preaching to me about what’s right, you fucking hypocrite.”

  Shenaia smacked the gloves against her open palm and walked back across the parking lot.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Freedom

  Kalei, Shenaia, Mar, and Erit sat in the back of a windowless van, rocking back and forth with the motion of the moving vehicle. The bleak interior with its two benches reminded Kalei of the first time she had sat on the back bumper of one of these vans, getting tested while she wondered how much longer she would be keeping her job. So much time had gone by since then, so much had happened... the incident felt more like a dream than a memory.

  They were on their way to their first Call. Kalei sat next to Shenaia, and as she watched Mar grunt at the straps of her helmet, nearly elbowing Erit when one of the straps came loose, Kalei couldn’t help but wonder if this was a good idea. They were still Estranged, all of them. Could a little bit of training really change anything? Who knew what Mar had done in her past? It wouldn’t surprise Kalei to learn that the old woman had killed someone, Estranged or not. It made sense, back at the hotel when Mar had said she was going to make things right. Maybe she was trying to redeem herself for past crimes? Why else would the old woman be so set on learning to suppress the darkness?

  But suppression was not erasure. Once they were out in the city, it would be too easy for Mar to hurt innocent people. Take away her weapon, tie one hand behind her back; it wouldn’t matter. Mar was Estranged. Let her have her pinky and she could wipe out an entire city block in the span of ten minutes.

  Kalei wasn’t sure she was ready for a Call. There was too much at stake.

  “What the hell is a ‘Call’ anyway?” Shenaia blurted, breaking the silence.

  Erit hadn’t explained much when they left headquarters. He showed up at the Lounge and told them to suit up, Terin had orders for the team to take their first Call. So they did.

  Irritated, Kalei saved Erit the bother of explaining. “It’s when the police call SWORDE to alert them—” Kalei glanced at Erit. “—to alert us to an incident involving Estranged. The police will secure t
he area and wait for Wardens to arrive.”

  “Precisely,” added Erit. He leaned forward to address his students. “We will go in as a four-man team, with me as the leader, of course—”

  “Shouldn’t you be teaching?” Mar butted in.

  Erit closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, then he opened them and propped his right hand on his knee as he told Mar, “There are plenty of people who can teach as well as I. Terin has assigned me to lead your team, and so I shall. Now, from what I understand, an Estranged has attacked the West Hill apartment complex on Lake Street. The building has been evacuated, although the occupants are in quarantine until we can confirm that they are not Estranged.”

  “Is that really an issue?” Kalei asked. “Some of them are victims, for Pete’s sake. Why make the police coral them into pens like cattle if—”

  “Not every Estranged is a blubbering zombie, as you well know. It is possible that the attacker may be hiding among our victims, posing as an Untouched.”

  Kalei leaned back and diverted her gaze to the rear doors. “Makes sense.”

  Erit continued, “Our task today is to locate the Estranged who attacked the complex, disable him or her, and relocate them back to the Downtown District along with any corpses. We must submit what bodies we find to the Containment and Observatory Department to ensure that they do not decide to wake up in the near future and become Estranged themselves. Now, any further questions?”

  Leader perhaps, but always the teacher, Kalei thought to herself.

  Kalei returned her attention to Erit and asked, “Do we know for certain that just one Estranged is in the complex?”

  “We do not.”

  Shenaia scooted forward on her seat, a big grin on her face as she said, “What if the guy is hot? Damn, I love bad boys.” The van grew silent as the three other occupants openly glared at her. Shenaia’s grin fell from her face as she rolled her eyes. “Okay, alright, go back to your little policy-chat or whatever you’re doing. Forget I said anything.”

  Erit shook his head, then replied to Kalei, “Reports are vague at best. You will find that with most any Call. Once the word ‘Estranged’ gets out, panic tends to run rampant among the witnesses, and the local police can offer very little assistance from the sidelines.”

  “Sidelines?” Kalei couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. “Yeah, they’re on the sidelines because Terin got cozy with the mayor and forced all the officers out of—”

  “My apologies, Kalei,” Erit quietly interrupted, holding up one hand to stop her. “I did not mean to offend. I understand the difficult position the police are in, I do. If anything, I commend them for respecting the laws in place, even as it bars them from helping those to whom they are sworn to protect. But you and I both know that it is for the best.” He held Kalei’s eyes with his own and waited for her response.

  She looked away again. “Yeah, of course.”

  The sound of screeching brakes filled the compartment as the van slowed to a halt. Shenaia used the momentum of the stop to fall dramatically into Kalei. Kalei pushed the girl off and gave her a glare, then picked up her own helmet from the bench and pushed it down over her head.

  “Helmets on,” Erit reminded the other two as he put on his and waited to see that they were all similarly suited. Kalei felt the magnet in the back of her collar snitch into place as it connected to her helmet. She ignored the other three Wardens and watched the edges of her visor as the WARCOM system came online. When it flickered to life, she could see four small icons in the left corner of her visor and a slight crackle told her the audio was now live.

  The four icons displayed a black smiley face, the spine of a book, a steering wheel, and a swirl: a live feed of the team’s nails. Shenaia’s steering wheel flicked happily back and forth on some cheery drive, Erit’s book read The Puppet Masters, and Mar’s smiley face kept its mouth flat-lined, but its eyebrows arched in a deep scowl.

  Erit opened the doors and they stepped outside.

  It was Kalei’s first time outside the fence since she had officially become a Recruit with SWORDE. She stepped out into the grey day and listened to the light rainfall against her helmet. Looking past the raindrops multiplying on her visor, she could see the apartment complex ahead. She was standing at the edge of a cluster of tall, repetitive brick buildings reaching for the sky with about as much character as the grey clouds that hung over them. Less, actually.

  Meanwhile, the second building on her left was cordoned off with caution tape, and a handful of locals crowded the yellow ribbon to get front row seats to the show. There, a man with a thick brown jacket and a baseball cap, both hands in his pockets, stood on his toes to see the entrance of the apartment building. A middle-aged woman in her sweats asked a police officer for information, holding an umbrella as she hugged her heavy sports jacket closed with her free hand. It was the typical crowd Kalei was used to from her policing days.

  Within the caution tape, stretching out across the open area between the police cars and the apartments, stood an expanse of dirt that could hardly be called a lawn. The squat tufts of grass were clearly the minority. Across the yard, cement paths wandered this way and that, not lending much to the greenery despite the hardy clumps of weeds that made their stand in the many cracks and crevices.

  Standing huddled at the intersection of these paths stood a dozen scared people surrounded by a half dozen police officers. The officers questioned the civilians with soft voices and notebooks in hand, while the civilians alternately nodded nervously and demanded answers. Nothing had changed since she left. The same scene, the same people, the same helplessness pervaded. Except now, she wasn’t helpless.

  She spotted Dwaro among the officers and walked over to him.

  “What’s the situation?”

  He spun around so fast Kalei almost pulled her gun. He gaped at her for a moment, his eyes dancing across her visor as they tried to work out some burning question. “Uh, a woman heard screams. She, uh— Kalei, is that you?”

  Shit. Kalei tried to think of something, anything she could say that would change his mind. But she couldn’t open her mouth. Even if she tried to change her voice, she had worked with this man for years. He would know her voice anywhere. Obviously.

  They stood there for what felt like a year, Dwaro watching her incredulously as he waited for her response, and Kalei with her mouth working frantically, trying to answer his question without speaking. Kalei was on the verge of creating some absurd bastardization of sign language when Erit finally showed up.

  “What the hell are you doing? Get over there with Wheels.” Kalei nodded, relieved, and walked over to Shenaia, who was laughing, of course.

  “Haha! You made Books say ‘hell’! Haha! That was great!” Kalei rolled her eyes and accepted one of the assault rifles from Mar. Estranged might not be killed by guns, but it stopped them all the same. No one likes to get shot.

  Erit joined them and gave the signal. “Let’s go.”

  As the Wardens walked into the building, it didn’t take Kalei’s eyes long to adjust to the dim light. In front of her, on the opposite wall, stood two elevators, and to her left and right, hallways led down to the first-floor apartments. Mar and Erit went to the end of these halls and secured the fire exits while Shenaia and Kalei began to clear apartment after apartment after apartment.

  For most people, additional closet space is a perk; for Kalei, it was just one more nook to check. And these apartments could boast a lot of closet space.

  The first floor showed nothing. So, they took the stairs up to the next floor.

  Kalei saw Shenaia’s wheel take an erratic 180-degree turn. Shenaia said, “We have to do this for ten freaking floors! Why the hell don’t we have more people for this shit?”

  “Budget cuts,” Erit replied sarcastically. Wardens didn’t get paid a dime for what they did.

  “Fuck you and your budget cuts. I’d rather be sitting in the van than marchin’ up and down these damn hallways,” Shena
ia retorted. That being said, Shenaia continued to march up and down the hallways with Kalei, clearing each of the apartments.

  On the third floor, they stepped into a room that was completely dark. Not unusual, but when they tried to flip the switch, nothing came on. Per protocol, they pulled out their flashlights, attached them to the top of the rifles, and proceeded with caution.

  The beam of Kalei’s light slid over a large couch, a wooden end table, and cast a huge shadow on the wall as it caught the lamp. She worked her way around the living room while Shenaia checked the closets, but both came up empty, so they continued down the hall.

  Before they reached the first door, Kalei heard something: a muffled, choking sound. Kalei signaled for Shenaia to stop. The sound was hard to pinpoint with her helmet on, but she didn’t dare remove it. Instead, she moved slowly to the first door on the left and gently pushed it open. The sound grew louder. She raised her rifle, and the beam of light from the flashlight revealed a bed covered in a thick blue comforter and, on the other side, tucked between the bed and the wall, the top of someone’s head.

  Kalei moved toward the far wall, her flashlight trained on the person as she yelled, “Put your hands up! Make any sudden movements, and I will shoot.”

  Instead, the head ducked down and the choking noise grew louder. Kalei tucked her rifle tighter into her shoulder and placed her finger on the trigger, but as her line of sight broke clear of the bed and she could see the full body of the person, she saw a crying young boy. His hair covered his face as he hugged his knees tightly to his chest, his shoulders bouncing to the rhythm of his sobs. Kalei lowered her weapon.

  “Is he Estranged?” Erit asked over the radio when Kalei reported the discovery.

  Kalei crouched down next to the boy and put one hand on his back. Shenaia moved in behind her and pointed the flashlight at the boy so they could see.

  Kalei said, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” She continued to talk to him as she gently pulled his hands away from his legs.