by Devon Hughes
“What about you? Did you hear anything else from Pete?”
“Oh,” Marcus’s face fell. “Joni didn’t tell you?”
Leesa shook her head. “Tell me what?”
“He’s not at the jail anymore. My mom went to see him, and they just said he’d been transferred to a more secure facility, but they won’t tell us where.” Just thinking about it made him feel sick all over again.
Leesa blinked. “How is that legal? He didn’t even DO anything! Where do you think they took him?”
Marcus shrugged. It was pretty much all he thought about, and all his parents argued about. “Bruce claims he’s at the Greenplains, and that they have him helping with the mutant transitions or something, but who knows? Bruce isn’t exactly trustworthy. Anyway, they have the island and the Greenplains totally blocked off, so what? We just never see him again? They keep pushing back the so-called trial.” Marcus shook his head bitterly. “We never should’ve freed Team Scratch.”
“Marcus, don’t say that.” Leesa’s face was firm.
Marcus thought of Pookie and all Leesa had lost, and he felt guilty for wishing they’d done nothing, but now that some of the animals were back in custody and his brother had disappeared, it just felt like their big escape was basically all for nothing.
“You should probably go,” he told Leesa. He was afraid he was going to start crying in front of her, which was about the only thing that could make her feel worse right now.
“No. Stop it.”
Despite her hard words, Leesa was scooting closer to him on the bed, and she leaned into him. They sat like that for a couple of minutes, shoulder to shoulder. Marcus could feel the warmth of her forearm through the mesh sleeve of her shirt. Her wrist bones seemed super tiny to him, and he noticed that her black nail polish was chipped, which for some reason he really liked. He did actually start to feel a little better and thought he could stay still like that for an hour or two, or maybe a month, until his life got a little easier, but as always, Leesa was on to the next plan.
“We need to discredit the case against him. All they really have is that video footage.”
Marcus perked up, brainstorming. “And Pete said the mayor and Bruce were there making him do it. Maybe we can find the rest of the footage and get a clearer picture of what went on. I’m an ace hacker,” he bragged. “If I could cut into the government-monitored slipstream . . .”
Leesa pursed her lips, unconvinced.
“Or, we could actually break into the facility and find the shots Pete said were in Bruce’s lab. And if we don’t find them, at least we’ll know what’s really going on with the animals there.”
Marcus shook his head. “I love how you think sneaking out, going across the city, breaking into a facility that’s on an island, and under investigation, AND controlled by the mayor is going to somehow be easier than a few shortcuts on the slipstream.”
She looked at him sidelong, but Marcus was beaming. He really did love that about her.
“Well, both your brother and stepdad do work there,” Leesa said wryly. “We should be able to walk right in.”
Marcus snapped his fingers suddenly. “Pete’s aircar! Still has all the clearance stickers. And a spot in the NuFormz hub. If I could just figure out what I did with Pete’s keys after we took them the day of the escape.”
The automapooch was smashing against the leg of the bed trying to get under it, making all these crazy beeping sounds along with the fake barks.
“Zippy, leave it,” Marcus commanded, but it had something in its plastic teeth that it was trying to pull free.
Leesa reached for it, and she pulled out the tangled mess of keys. Of course, a single, filthy sock—Unnaturals brand, which he still wore only because he had like thirty pairs of them from his fan days—was caught on the metal.
At least it wasn’t underwear, Marcus thought, his face flushing.
Leesa jangled the keys in front of his face. “Let’s fire this baby up and go find our next clue!”
39
“NOW WHAT?” KOZMO ASKED.
The group was sprawled out on the ground next to the toxic falls, drying off. Castor had watched the winged fox joke with his brother, and he saw Runt’s goofy, over-the-top laugh in response. He noticed how Jazlyn didn’t shrink around Kozmo anymore, either. Her shoulders were relaxed, her chin high, and she seemed downright chatty, which was unusual for the soft-spoken mutant rabbit.
Not as chatty as the lizard, though. Flicker had been oddly silent throughout their initial meeting, but now she and Runt were talking excitedly about the escape, and her high, nasally voice made his ears hurt. It sounded like . . . humanspeak.
“Why do you talk like that?” Castor barked sharply. All three heads snapped toward him, startled, but he held the lizard’s gaze.
“I, um . . . grew up with humans.” Flicker shifted closer to Runt.
“She lived with them her whole life,” the dog yipped, already defensive about this new friend of his.
“That’s why I wanted to leave,” the lizard explained in her weird accent. “I was tired of being poked and prodded every day.”
Jazlyn looked at Castor with sympathetic eyes. They could both relate to that.
But though Castor trusted Jazlyn’s instincts, he just couldn’t bring himself to trust these new animals like she did. He had been most worried about the fox-bat, but now it was Flicker who made him most suspicious.
“I think we should go our separate ways,” Castor told the lizard. “Laringo will follow you anywhere, didn’t you say that? Well, we can’t afford to get caught by the humans. I’m not going to lose my family again.”
“Castor, the humans are following all of us,” Jazlyn reasoned. “And you should know better than anyone that we’re all orphans now, and all family.” Her red eyes had a fiery intensity to them, and Castor remembered how she’d stuck by him again and again, while his own pack had turned their backs on him.
“I just want to make sure we get to the Greenplains,” he told Jazlyn. “Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“But Flicker can take us there!” Runt brightened up. “She knows the tunnels, and the river, and the shortcuts to the trains, and everything outside, too.”
“Is that true?” Castor asked the lizard. “You know how to get to the Greenplains?”
“Yes . . .” The lizard’s eyeballs darted.
“Isn’t that the most exciting news EVER?” Runt cut in. Runt bounded around the tunnel, and before he knew it, Castor’s own tail was wagging, too.
“All right, then,” he said, barking a laugh. “I guess we’re all going to paradise.”
40
KOZMO WAS A SURVIVALIST, AND USUALLY, SHE PREFERRED the predictable. Back in the room, she’d counted the mutants at night, so that she’d have a better idea of when Vince would set up fights and when Horace would arrive with new creatures and when Bruce would be back. She had noted which sleeping animals attracted which bugs, so that she’d always know where to look for food when she needed it. She had memorized exactly when the lights turned on each morning so that she could avoid any unnecessary contact with humans, and when they clicked off each night, so that she could hunt and collect materials for her nest. Kozmo’s days were a controlled experiment; she always liked when her hypothesis of how each would go was correct.
Outside of the room, though, her life was the opposite of routine, or predictable. Though she could see in the dark, Kozmo might as well have been walking through these tunnels blind, since she had no idea what might lie around each turn. The variables were infinite, and her days were all trial and error. And oddly, she loved it!
She loved the uncertainty. She loved the newness. She loved how unlike everything she’d ever known it was. It wasn’t about the actual places—the pipes and tunnels—it was about the discovery of what might come next. It was about the Greenplains, held in front of her like bait.
It helped that there was someone else to worry about a few of the v
ariables now, someone to help when she got stuck. It didn’t matter whether Kozmo knew what was around every corner. Though Flicker wasn’t a great hunter, or fighter, or climber, she sure had a great sense of direction.
Castor was skeptical, of course. You couldn’t please that eagle-dog. He kept asking, “Is this north? Are we under the river? We’ve gone five hundred paw ticks, is that too far? Aren’t the Greenplains west?”
But Flicker seemed to anticipate every twist and turn in the underground labyrinth, avoiding the subway lines populated by humans, instead guiding them to hidden passages and through trapdoors. At the end of that first day, Flicker wrapped her sticky digits around a lever and when she pulled the door open with a creak, all any of them could see at first was sunlight.
The sight of something so beautiful finally shut Castor up.
They were outside. Not just outside—in another world. Until now, Kozmo had only known the room with its man-made walls, its white paint, its greenish light. And then the tunnels with their dark muskiness that hung in the back of her throat. This was a full-on assault of the senses.
Kozmo wiggled her paws into the sand, and it was hot, and soft, and yellow, and grainy, and almost overwhelming. She let the sunlight hit her full in the face and it made her eyes water and her nose sneeze and her mouth smile so, so big. Even though she could see better in darkness and the daylight made her a bit sleepy, the warmth on her back felt fantastic. There were no walls, no zombie animals, no humans. Whatever happened next, Kozmo knew she was going to be okay.
Castor and Runt were running around excitedly, wagging their tails and wrestling in the sand, and Jazlyn had raced out a mile and back lickety-split to test her legs. Kozmo would have figured that the lizard would be sunning its scales, but she noticed its eyes were clicking around nervously. Like it was actually afraid to be outside. Or maybe it was just afraid of Castor.
“This isn’t the Greenplains,” the eagle-dog said, squinting into the pale horizon. “I thought it was just across the river?”
“We had to take the long way if you didn’t want to get captured. Paradise is up ahead,” Flicker answered, and plodded on.
They encountered obstacles, of course—many every day—but each one seemed an adventure on the road to the great Greenplains. The desert was a hard place, but Kozmo found that having friends nearby meant that she could hold her fear at more of a distance.
They had lots of time to talk. She told them about Vince and the Six, but her life had been small and contained, and quite lonely, which she worried didn’t make for good stories, so mostly Kozmo listened and began to notice things about her companions. Watching the other mutants in the room from a distance for so long had made her a top-notch noticer.
When she learned that Jazlyn had grown up in labs, like Kozmo had, she noticed that, as fast as Jazlyn was, when she ran, she favored the outsides of her feet. The wires of a cage had probably made her footpads tender. Kozmo had seen that happen in the Room.
She noticed that, even though Castor thought he was the one protecting his little brother, whenever there was a hint of a threat, it was Runt who trotted ahead. He pretended he was just chasing some bug or playing a game, but Kozmo saw the way the fur rose on his haunches as he cut between Castor and whatever worried him.
She noticed that Flicker still seemed nervous around mutants, but played nonstop with Runt, tossing tumbleweeds for him to fetch and tackling the dog on the dunes. And when she was fearful, the friends made each task into a small adventure, chattering to each other excitedly.
Kozmo wanted to join in sometimes, but it was hard to be a third friend with best friends.
That was okay, though, because in the desert, there were other things she could concentrate on. Like trying to survive.
Jazlyn went on scouting missions, racing ahead of the group to see what was over the next dune. Then she showed them how to suck water from cactus fruit, which she’d learned as a science class pet, and Kozmo and Castor took turns flying and surveying for food, which was scarce. And once Flicker got more comfortable in the sun, she began to sing songs to pass the time. For a lizard, she really had a wonderful voice.
When they’d gone two days without anything to eat, Kozmo had a strange instinct take hold of her, like a distant memory. Hearing a little scratching sound, her large ears swiveled toward it and she stared hard at the ground.
“What now?” Castor asked impatiently.
“Let me try something,” she murmured, and though she was pretty sure this move was meant to be done in the snow—the land of her ancestors on one side—she tried it, anyway.
Pushing off hard with her back legs to spring high into the air, she leapt up, she whipped down, she dove deep, and then she started digging furiously.
Jackpot!
When Kozmo burst out of the sand with her paws and mouth stuffed with scorpions, it caused quite a commotion of howls, barks, growls, and hisses.
“Look at their stingers!” Castor yapped. “They’re just like Laringo’s. She’s trying to kill us!”
“What are you talking about?” Kozmo laughed, almost choking on her mouthful of food. “They’re not Laringos. They’re food. And they’re delicious!” She crunched a couple more tails between her teeth and gulped them down before holding out a pawful to the bird-dog.
“Interesting,” he said as he chewed. Even Castor had to admit that there was a certain satisfaction in eating something that resembled his nemesis.
It was Runt who had the best nose for water, though.
“Water!” he barked sharply one afternoon, and just the word was enough to make Kozmo’s tongue spasm with want. “I smell it.” His tail stiffened into a straight line behind him. “And I seeeee it! Awoooooooo!” He howled, taking off to the west.
“Wait!” Flicker exclaimed. The urgency in her voice was alarming, and all the animals went on high alert.
Kozmo tore off after Runt.
Jazlyn’s super-charged panther legs beat them both there, though, and before they reached the edge of the desert, the land had started to get swampy. When they caught up to their friend, Jazlyn was stuck right where she stood.
“Quicksand,” Flicker explained.
“I saw the water, though,” Runt insisted. “A lake. A river . . .”
“A mirage,” the lizard said. “It wasn’t real.”
“Guys, we’ve got to hurry! Help her. It’s okay, Jaz, we’ve got you,” Castor said. One thing Kozmo did notice was that Castor was a pretty good friend.
By then it looked like Jazlyn’s legs had been shortened by half. She was sinking right into the gritty muck. They had to form a chain and use one another’s strength to pull her out. Kozmo thought that holding paws with everyone all in a line was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and when they finally pulled Jazlyn free, the success rejuvenated the group.
Still, each day walking felt longer than the last. There was only the sand, and the sky, and the unforgiving sun. The sand was scalding, and the tiny grains reflected the light, blinding them sometimes and tricking them others. The sky, which had once seemed so open, now felt oppressive. The animals had escaped the humans and evaded the zombie mutants, but there was no outrunning the sun. For Kozmo, a night creature, it felt like being cooked alive. Flicker, with her scaly skin, seemed to be doing surprisingly well.
Runt stayed upbeat. He bounded along beside Flicker, his tongue dripping as he panted from the heat.
“We’re almost there!” Runt insisted every few miles. “The Greenplains, can you believe it? It’s gotta be just over that hill, right? It’s gotta be. Right, Flicker? Right?”
“I’m so glad we’re friends!” Flicker beamed, but she was looking a little dehydrated now. It seemed that beyond each dune, there was only more sand.
From the air, the landscape looked even more desolate to Kozmo, and she found that flapping her wings was a dangerous waste of energy. Now, the animals walked in a sagging line, and their pace had slowed to a
crawl.
At night, it got so cold that they all snuggled together in a heap. Kozmo was still not used to being touched by other creatures, but she found that when she nuzzled against Jazlyn’s fuzzy bunny coat and Runt rested his head on her bushy tail, it was actually kind of nice.
41
You’re in the nest, snuggling against your littermates. You can’t see any of them, but you’re drawn to the warmth, and the soft fur, and the gentle sounds of breathing.
One by one, the bodies disappear around you, until you are alone. It is so quiet now. You are so cold.
A man’s voice. “I can make more. All I need is a dish and some cells. We’re all just clusters of cells, right?”
You don’t know where you are, and you can’t find out unless you screech, and you can’t screech or you’ll be discovered.
You lie shaking in the dish for a long time, not knowing what to do.
Then footsteps come. Two feet and an upright form. You think it is the man, but it doesn’t smell like chemicals like he does. It smells like fur. Like home.
The orangutan picks you up from the lab dish and hides you inside its long, orange fur, and walks away.
Who knew it was so easy to just walk away?
For weeks, until you are big and strong, you live on its milk. You also live on its love.
You’ll forget this creature because you are so small and so young, but somewhere inside of you, the lesson is still there: you can’t do everything on your own.
42
WHEN CASTOR AWOKE, HE THOUGHT OF HOW NICE IT WAS to be snuggled up with friends in the warm sand instead of lying on the cold, hard floor of a cell all by himself. It reminded him of being a puppy in the middle of the dog pile. He yawned and stretched a paw over his brother, and felt scales. And something like a coiled rope. And then he heard a percussive sound, a familiar sound—a sort of sssss.
Castor’s eyes snapped open.
There were Runt, and Flicker, and Jazlyn, and Kozmo, all sleeping soundly.