The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine

by Jason Sizemore

  Now Karla is one of the things I have to remember. I will keep her memories too, for me and for Timo.

  Timo and I have scavenged enough bricks and wood to make ourselves several rooms among the ruins of Quadriga at the end of Unter den Linden. It’s cold in the winter; the wind whips through the shelter we’ve built between the columns, tearing at our clothes and hair. But out here it’s not as easy for the Hunters to trap you as in tumbled down halls and rooms.

  We didn’t always live here. We used to live not far away in the remaining wing of a big building with Karla and a couple dozen other kids, a building she said was once a university—like a school, but a place for adults to learn. I had never been to school, but Karla had, Before. I asked her everything, and she taught me how to survive. But I have always been better at hiding.

  I wish she had been better at hiding too.

  It was summer, so we had berries and roots and vegetables to eat along with the pigeons and squirrels we caught and cooked. Since we didn’t have to scavenge as much, we had more time to play. That day we were playing school in a room where one wall was missing; Andrea with the six fingers, Ingo with the sleeping head on his left shoulder, Fatima with the glowing feet, and maybe half a dozen others besides me and Timo.

  Karla marched in front of us, teaching us a song in words we didn’t understand. She said it was a language people all over the world used to speak. “Now you try. If any of you ever leave here, it would be good to know English.”

  I didn’t see how any of us could ever leave or where to go if we tried since, as far as we knew, the whole world was like Berlin now. But we all liked Karla and we sang along.

  “Three blind mice,

  “Three blind mice

  “See how they run,

  “See how they run!”

  It struck me that she was turning into an adult, and I wondered if we would still be able to trust her then. Some adults are not Hunters, like Frau Decker, the old lady who told me about the war that killed the world. But you never know; it’s best to stay away from adults.

  Karla would be one of the different ones, I was sure. I couldn’t imagine having to hide from her.

  “They all ran after

  “The farmer’s wife

  “She cut off their tails

  “With a carving knife

  “Did you ever see

  “Such a sight in your life

  “As three blind mice?”

  We were having too much fun and making too much noise, and we didn’t hear anyone coming. Karla was writing the English words we didn’t understand on the wall with a charcoaled piece of wood, so none of us was facing in the direction of the missing wall.

  Mistake.

  Karla turned to explain the words she had just written down—and screamed.

  The rest of us turned to find a pack of Hunters, white like Karla and Timo, not brown like me. A wall of mean adults in place of the wall that had once been there. The only escape was through the single door next to where Timo was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  I grabbed Timo’s hand and pulled him up, yanking open the door and running down the hall. The rest of the kids streamed out with us.

  The faster kids were already far down the hall; Timo and I would have to hide. Timo was really big and strong for his age, but he was slow. I hadn’t seen any dogs with this group of Hunters, so we just might have a chance. I dashed through an empty doorway and up a flight of stairs, my hand still clamped tightly around his. The stairs came out on emptiness, and we made our way carefully through the rubble to what was left of some walls. Once behind them, we sank down to the floor.

  Below us, I heard screaming.

  Karla.

  Timo clapped his hands over his ears, and tears began to seep out of his eyes. Bad things always hurt him so much more than anyone else. It’s one of the reasons I have to protect him.

  I motioned to him to stay put, and he nodded. I crawled over to the edge of the building where there was still a fragment of wall and peered over, trying to see what was going on.

  Six of the Hunters were standing around laughing, four men and two women, but I couldn’t see Karla, only hear her, screaming and pleading. The Hunters were all looking at the ground, not up, so I leaned a little farther out.

  Karla was underneath a seventh Hunter, pounding on his shoulders while he pounded her. The high whine she was making hurt my ears.

  And then she saw me, and for a moment it stopped, somewhere between a hiccough and a shriek.

  The Hunter stopped pounding, got up, and a second unzipped his trousers and took his place between Karla’s bloody thighs. Karla’s eyes were pleading with me, a message I didn’t want to understand. When Timo and I did that, what the Hunters were doing with her, it didn’t make me cry, it made me happy.

  And then she screamed again.

  I couldn’t take it. I lugged the biggest piece of wall I could find to the edge, right above the man on top of Karla.

  I pushed.

  There was a high pitched scream, male this time, and then silence.

  Without peering over again to see what had happened, I grabbed Timo’s hand and ran through the ruins for the next stairwell.

  “Frau Decker, Karla is dead, I killed her!”

  Timo followed me into the old woman’s apartment, crying more than I was, loud jerking sobs that only made it worse.

  Frau Decker sat on what was left of the sofa in what was left of the apartment on Jägerstrasse. I once asked her why she stayed in a place with no roof, and she just said where was she to go, an old woman like her when all her family was dead?

  “You can find a house with a roof at least,” I had said.

  She shook her head. “This is my home. My children grew up here. It is all I have, even if I must sleep in the hall.”

  But Frau Decker would not be able to comfort us this time or ever again. When I came around the front of her sofa, she was gazing out at the ruins of Berlin with empty eye sockets. I had no one to learn from anymore.

  How was I to keep Remembering—and keep Timo safe?

  The only one who could help me now was the Beast.

  I became more careful and more afraid, as we all did. I once asked Frau Decker why so many adults were Hunters, but she didn’t know either. She said that they were the hopeless, which didn’t make much sense to me, since it wasn’t any different from the rest of us. It seemed to me that the Hunters killed for fun, which meant that if we stayed out of their way, maybe they would kill one another. We children began to report to each other when we found bodies—it told us where adults were hunting, the places to avoid.

  We couldn’t stay hidden all the time, though, since we had to eat. One late summer day, Timo and I were tending our garden near the Reichstag when we heard a loud whirring in the sky, like thousands of wings beating the air at once.

  We hid among the trees at the edge of the field and watched as a huge metallic bird with wings as fast as a dragonfly’s landed straight down in front of the ruined building. The wind it created flattened the long grass in all directions.

  Slowly the whirring wings stopped and several figures jumped down from the flying metal thing. They looked like people, but their heads were funny round things resembling the eyes of an insect.

  This was something I did not Remember.

  “Yasmina, should we run?”

  “Shhh. They might hear us.” As big as he was, Timo was always scared. I should have been too, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the strange people and their machine.

  One of them waved something shiny in the air and then reached up—and took off its head.

  Timo gasped, and I clapped my hand over his mouth. “Look, Timo, they’re normal adults!” I whispered.

  After the first one had taken the bubble off, the rest did as well. There were only six of them—if they were Hunters, it was the smallest group I had ever seen.

  And every single one of them was darker skinned than the darkest Hunter
I had ever seen.

  Timo took my hand off his mouth. “They’re almost black,” he said, remembering to whisper this time. “A lot darker than you, Yasmina.”

  I nodded.

  Another one began waving something shiny in the air as well. It stopped, the piece of metal pointed straight at us.

  The strange, dark people began walking in our direction.

  “Run!”

  Timo didn’t need any more encouragement. We dashed out of our hiding place. “Not back to the Beast!” I yelled. “We don’t want them to know where we live!”

  We pounded through the grass for the ruins of the Reichstag.

  “Wait, we want to help!” one of the strangers called out in German. The words sounded strangely different. “We are from Africa, a place not destroyed in the wars!”

  The voice was that of a male adult, but I couldn’t be sure if I had understood what he said. The words were all off in a way I had never heard. Sometimes Hunters spoke Turkish, words that brought back scraps of a life little more than a dream, my life Before. When those Hunters spoke German, the words sounded different too—but not as broken as that of the dark strangers trying to run us down.

  We hid among the ruins of the Reichstag until nightfall, and then crept back to our home beneath the Beast.

  I dreamt of Africa, a name I had heard once for a place far away. Africa and wars and dark skinned people with their heads in round bubbles.

  That night, we were startled awake by shots and screams.

  Timo and I held each other until the night was quiet again and then drifted back to sleep.

  When the sunlight crept through the cracks between planks and concrete and woke us, we crawled out and looked around in every direction. The sun shone, warm and strong on our faces, and there was no movement except for the squirrels and no sound except for the birds.

  I wished there were not so many empty spaces, but we made our way to the field in front of the Reichstag without meeting either Hunters or Strangers. The huge flying thing sat there, a burned-out shell, and all was quiet. Some of the tomato and bean plants in our vegetable garden were trampled. There were bodies strewn around the flyer, Strangers and Hunters both.

  But more Hunters than Strangers. And the Hunters were mutilated in ways I had never seen before, or at least not before I had started to Remember.

  Timo was whimpering, and I put my arms around his waist. “Shhh. We must try to find some of the other children so that we can bury them.”

  And then another voice called to us in the strange German I had heard the day before. “Is there someone there?”

  I froze for a moment. But no one here could harm us, and I followed it, Timo following me.

  One of the Strangers still lived, barely. Bearded—a man.

  I knelt next to him, and he gripped my hand. “Please,” he said in the same odd German as the one who had chased us.

  “When more of our kind come, you must trust them.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Timo knelt next to me and took my other hand.

  The Stranger did not answer my question. Instead he gave me a message. “Tell them, the ones who come after, tell them to save the children.”

  He was an adult, but he was dying. He couldn’t hurt us. I took the head of the dark man in my lap and I began to sing.

  “Three blind mice,

  “Three blind mice,

  “See how they run.”

  Perhaps it was the right thing to do. The Stranger looked at me with wide eyes and smiled.

  I continued to sing. When he died, he was still smiling.

  Most of the kids who used to live in the university before Karla died were still somewhere along Unter den Linden, scattered in twos and threes, in places where it wouldn’t be as easy for the Hunters to find.

  Timo and I went from hiding place to hiding place, telling them what had happened, so we could bury the dead before they started to stink and rot in the summer sun. Many of us had garden plots on the edges of the field next to the Reichstag, and no one wanted decaying bodies there.

  Even though there were over thirty of us, it took us several days to bury them all. Not all of us were as big and strong as Timo, and our shovels were old and worn. We scavenged for new things when the old broke, but we couldn’t always find exactly what we needed.

  We were pushing the last of the bodies into shallow graves when Andrea cried out a warning. “Look! From the river!”

  Over two dozen Hunters, and they had knives rather than just shovels.

  “Scatter!” I yelled. “Run for the trees and the ruins!”

  Everyone ran, most heading either for the nearest stand of trees or the Reichstag.

  I couldn’t run as fast as I wanted; I had to keep an eye on Timo.

  And then he tripped.

  “Timo!” I felt as if my scream scraped the hard blue of the sky.

  The Hunters were too close, but I couldn’t leave him there, I couldn’t. I dashed back and pulled Timo up, supporting and running and dragging and doing anything that would get us out of danger. Luckily, many of the Hunters had stopped at the flying machine and were climbing in and throwing things out to their companions—more interested in scavenging than in us.

  We reached the trees. I pushed Timo down beneath some bushes and knelt next to him.

  “Don’t make a sound,” I whispered.

  We could hear a Hunter nearby trampling the bushes and branches and underbrush, but he didn’t notice us.

  Timo and I stayed there long after everything was quiet again, and the birds had resumed chattering and chirping above. When I felt safe, I whispered to Timo that we could go.

  He moaned and pushed himself up on both hands. “Yasmina, I don’t know if I can walk.”

  I managed to support and drag and coax Timo back to our home beneath the Beast, but even now, with days and days of rest, he still cannot walk on his own.

  The Beast protects us, but she cannot help me in this. When she comes to me at night, she folds her wings behind her and shakes her head sadly. I know nothing of medicines, Yasmina.

  I turn away.

  I am growing desperate.

  I have checked on the others living on Unter den Linden to see if anyone knows what we can do about Timo’s ankle. All of them are back in their hiding places except Kyrill and Verona, but none of them knows what to do for someone with a leg that will no longer support weight. I do not have the right memories to do what is necessary.

  And now Timo’s foot is growing huge and turning colors both bright and dull that scare me.

  I am scavenging for medicines in apothecaries on Dorotheenstrasse when I hear the strange whirring noise again.

  Strangers?

  I throw boxes and bottles into my bag. My treasures bouncing against my hip, I run between the ruins in the direction of the Reichstag.

  When I reach the corner of the building, I see for the second time one of the bird like machines setting down on the field, flattening the grass beneath it.

  This time, the Strangers who jump down into the tall grass are not wearing the round bubbles on their heads, but they too have glistening skin so dark it is almost black.

  As I watch, they walk around the abandoned flying machine, inspecting the debris on the ground, the broken pieces the Hunters left behind.

  Then one of them, a woman I think, notices the recent graves. She cries out and drops to her knees. Even at this distance, I can see that tears are running down her face.

  The rest run over to the graves we dug. One of the dark people is counting, shaking his head. Another draws the woman back to her feet and puts his arms around her. A third notices the gardens we have planted near where I am hiding and begins walking in my direction.

  The man who died with his head in my lap told me to trust them, told me to tell them to save the children.

  I cannot. Trust does not come easily.

  I run back through the ruins, k
eeping to the shadows as much as I can. When I get back to our home on the shadow side of the Beast, Timo’s skin is hot to the touch.

  “Yasmina, everything hurts now, not just my foot.”

  I dump the medicines I found on the ground and start pawing through them, but the tears starting in my eyes are blinding me.

  This is too hard. Even though I Remember, I still do not know enough to read all these strange words and find whatever will cure my friend.

  I cover my face with my hands and turn away. Life would be no life without Timo.

  “Yasmina? What is it?”

  Squaring my shoulders, I look at him again, smiling. But he sees the shape of my eyes. “Don’t cry, Yasmina,” Timo says, stroking my hair. “You will take care of everything. You always do.”

  But I cannot.

  Tell them to save the children.

  I kiss Timo on the forehead.

  A medication that describes itself as relieving pain and reducing fever calms Timo and puts him to sleep.

  I lean my back against the stone wall of our shelter and watch Timo’s even breathing, the slight smile on his lips as he sleeps. Despite how peaceful he looks, I worry. Timo seems to be better now, but I do not know if I have helped him or just made him unaware of his injuries for a time.

  I am still afraid when I leave our sanctuary where Quadriga guards us. Darting between ruins and trees, I run in the direction I do not want to go, toward the field in front of the Reichstag. Perhaps, if I am lucky, the Strangers will already be gone.

  Perhaps, if I am lucky, they will still be there.

  There, just past the second flying machine, they stand next to the graves we dug, gazing silently at the freshly turned earth, their hands crossed in front of their bodies, their heads bent. There is something about the way they are standing, quiet and intent, that makes me slow down as I approach. By the time they notice me, I am walking.

  The woman closest to me pulls something I know must be a weapon by the way she is holding it. “Stop!”

  I do as she says. We all stare at each other for a moment, silent, not knowing what to do.