“If we leave it open they’ll know someone was here,” she whispered.
We were in another corridor. This one was cool, and smelled of floor cleaner and something sweet and rotten that made my stomach churn. The light from the fire exit sign was the only light we had. We crouched there by the door, waiting to see if those footsteps would pass us by, but instead, whoever they belonged to stopped on our landing.
Someone fumbled with a key in the lock above our heads.
I grabbed Gracie’s arm, feeling it was my turn to do the hauling for a change. We ran down the main corridor, and off into a side room. In the darkness, I could just make out a kind of a bench thing. There was no time to look for a better hiding place, so I pulled Gracie down behind it.
The door swung open out in the corridor, and the flick of a light switch followed, flooding the hallway with amber light. I laid my cheek against the chilly tile floor, squinting through the gap under the bench just in time to see a pair of shiny shoes walk into view.
Shiny Shoes whistled as the fluorescent lights flickered on. I wondered if he didn’t know what his buddies were doing to all those people downstairs, or if he just didn’t care.
I glanced around the room, looking for a better place to hide. The light spilling in from the corridor illuminated metal file cabinets and a small desk with a dark computer. There was a sink with a trashcan next to it marked with a yellow biohazard decal. The bench we were crouched behind was made of steel. Heavy leather straps dangled from it. Stained leather straps.
“They cut her up!” Mona’s words forced their way into my mind, sending a prickle of goose bumps over my skin. I wondered if she’d been as crazy as I’d thought.
I pushed that happy notion away; I couldn’t lose my nerve if I was going to find Dad. Shiny Shoes paced up and down the corridor, his rubber-soled boots squeaking on the linoleum. A bleep and a hiss of static made me jump, followed by a man’s voice coming in fuzzy over a radio.
“Okay, we’re done here. Are they loaded yet?”
“Yeah, the samples are on the truck,” said Shiny Shoes. “What about the six-seventy-sixes? You still want them alive? ‘Cause that will take longer.”
“We ran out of time on that one an hour ago. The keystone cops held us up.” The man on the radio laughed. “Trying to let the geese out of the pen. Naughty, naughty. We have to wrap it up now.”
“I know it, Treen,” said Shiny Shoes. “You guys coming up here?”
“No. You take care of it.”
Shiny Shoes sighed. “I got to haul them downstairs on my own, too?”
“Quit bitching or you’ll be hauled out with ‘em.”
“You guys took all the guns.”
“Improvise. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes tops.”
“Shit, I thought we had hours!”
“So did I. But they know, and they’re coming now. Get it done. If you’re not on the truck, we leave without you.”
The radio crackled, then went silent.
“Asshole,” said Shiny Shoes.
Gracie tugged at my shirt, but all I could think about was what shiny shoes had said.
“Do you want them alive?”
There could still be time to save Dad.
I crawled toward the door of the medical suite. Gracie grabbed at my ankle but I kicked free of her. I knew I was acting crazy, but I also knew that Treen and his buddies weren’t the only ones running out of time. I heard those shiny shoes pacing off down the corridor back the way we’d come in, then a heavy door opening and closing.
“Come on, we’ve got to go now,” I whispered to Gracie, ducking out into the corridor before she could argue or my nerve could fail me. The first door I tried opened on another medical suite. The next an office. The desk drawers and file cabinets gaped open like empty mouths, stripped bare of files. I reached for the doorknob of the last door on the right—
A scream shattered the silence, and I froze and Gracie gasped for my hand. As we spun toward the sound, a woman came stumbling out of one of the rooms back by the stairs. She was naked, and so thin that every bone was visible under her sickly, bruised flesh. Her head was a mess of crudely stitched incisions. Her left arm dangled awkwardly at her side as though the bones in it were broken. A fresh red cut gaped across her chest, spilling little streams of blood down her body that dripped on the floor at her feet. She saw us, met my gaze, eyes wide, then started to stagger in our direction.
Shiny Shoes appeared in the doorway behind her. “Pain in the ass bitch,” he muttered.
In his hand, he held a dripping scalpel. His fingertips were covered in blood, and he wiped them off on a wad of paper towels in a fussy sort of way.
Gracie took a step toward the woman.
“Stephie? Oh God!”
Shiny Shoes’ head snapped up. “What in the hell?”
“Run!” I screamed at Gracie. Shiny Shoes fumbled his radio out of the pocket of his lab coat.
“Red! Red! We got a code red up here. Treen? Get your guys up here now!”
I grabbed Gracie by the arm and yanked her down the passageway. Shiny Shoes made a lunge in our direction, but the pale broken woman was between us and him, and she got in his way. I didn’t know if it was something she did on purpose, but I thought I’d never forget the look in her eyes as shiny shoes grabbed her pale skull in his hand, spun her around and slashed his scalpel across her throat.
“The door,” panted Gracie. I knew what she was trying to say; we were running the wrong way—Shiny Shoes was between us and the stairwell we’d come up.
His radio spit static as he yelled into it. “Yeah, they’re heading for the North stairs.”
I wanted to tell Gracie that I was sorry I’d dragged her into this when she’d worked so hard to save our asses, but I barely had enough breath to keep running.
The corridor ended at another door, and we burst through it into yet another stairwell, filled with the clatter of heavy footsteps coming from above and below.
I was about ready to give up when Gracie grabbed my wrist, her hand slick with sweat. “Window.”
I stared where she pointed. Sure enough, there was a narrow window set in the wall of the landing above us.
“Are you crazy? We’re twenty feet up! At least!”
Gracie ignored me, pelting up the steps. I had no choice but to follow her, and the two of us strained to shove the window open. I groaned and closed my eyes at the sight of the hard concrete parking lot so far below us.
“I don’t think I can—”
“There’s a drainpipe. Hurry it up!”
Gracie’s backpack caught in the window and I had to give her a shove. She slung her arms round the drainpipe, which swayed and creaked under her weight. She slid down about halfway before she dropped to the ground, landing neatly as though she’d been sliding down drainpipes her whole damn life. I clambered onto the window ledge, my arms shaking. I leaned into space and made a grab for the pipe. The slippery plastic shot through my sweating hands and the toes of my sneakers scraped on the brick wall as it flashed by me. A loud snapping noise sent a knife of fear through my belly. The drainpipe gave a final groan, and before I knew it I was falling. I fully expected to break my legs, but my body seemed to know what to do, and I found myself rolling over on the asphalt of the parking lot with nothing worse than a pair of grazed knees, the wreckage of the busted drainpipe lying around me. I couldn’t believe we were outside just like that, but I didn’t have the luxury of enjoying it. Windows above us shattered and a machine gun roared to life, peppering the parking lot around us with skittering bullets.
“Now where?”
“The gates,” Gracie panted, but she was cut off by the rumble of truck engines.
I thought that was it. That we were surely going to buy it now, but as truck after truck came screaming into the parking lot, I realized that the men piling out of them were dressed in green.
The army guys had come for us at last.
They shot Treen.
/> Shiny Shoes too.
After the fighting was done, they made them kneel down in the parking lot and put bullets in the backs of their heads. Shiny Shoes cried and begged them for his life, but Treen didn’t. It should have felt good to see that happen, but all I felt was numb. The other suits they put into the back of one of those big green trucks, which peeled out of there.
There was no one left from the warehouse. We saw them hauling the bodies out, and stacking them in a big pile: Lou, Frank, and Jean, who might have been a bitch, but had been a stone-cold gunslinger when it came down to it. Marty, Mrs. Ostrinsky, even the three little kids.
It took them until dawn to clear the building. The Captain let us look through the body bags they’d found loaded up on Treen’s truck, even though it was against the rules.
The first one I opened was a girl, one eye open, one eye shut, her skin blue with little veins. The top of her head was gone, where the brain should have been there was nothing but a raw socket. The next one was a man, then a little girl.
“Brandon, I swear to God I’m going,” Gracie told me for the hundredth time.
The bags were stacked like cordwood, and I shoved at the pile, opening faster.
I almost didn’t recognize him.
He looked smaller. Older. His skull was cut open, and it made his face look different. They must have worked quickly; they hadn’t even bothered to fix him up the way they had some of the others. I tried to pull him out of the crackling black bag, but his arms wouldn’t unbend. He was cold. I needed to get him warm. If I could just get him warm…
I tried to stop crying, because I knew Dad would have hated to see me sniveling.
The army guys sealed the Center doors with yellow tape and started to get back into their trucks. I ran over to the Captain, but when he saw me coming he shook his head before I could even ask the question. They had to move out that day. The Captain couldn’t take me with them; they were in the middle of a pretty big operation.
He said he was sorry.
Jake
efore He was anyone else, He was Robbie.
Robbie remembered a lot at first, but as He began to know more, Robbie’s memories faded to the back, accessible, but not always easy to understand.
What Robbie remembered: A woman who was Mommy. She stayed at the front of Robbie’s mind the longest. Her hair fell down around Robbie’s face when she read to him. Her hair smelled like something good to eat. The book she read from had bright pictures.
Caterpillar.
He remembered the word, but the picture didn’t make any more sense to Robbie than it did to Him. Colors on a page was all.
A man whose name was Daddy.
A creature who was a Dog. A yellow one with ears that drooped down.
Robbie remembered that they were outside, and they were going to go in the car. Robbie had a special up-high seat. It was a new big boy seat, so he could see out the window. Robbie didn’t know why Mommy and Dad were sad. Mommy’s tears fell on him as she put him in his new car seat. The tears fell on his skin, and Robbie wiped them off.
Then the monsters came. Now Robbie was crying too. Mommy and Dad were wrapped up in silver arms.
Robbie ran and ran, back inside the house, to hide in his room, under the bed where it was safe, but the thing got him, pulling him close with its long, black monster arms.
Robbie remembered when the house went “boom.”
The black arms pulled Robbie closer even as the house fell, shielding him, pulling him in tighter and tighter, like a hug. There was a funny tight feeling in Robbie’s head, his nose, his ears—something tried to get in. When he opened his mouth to scream, the things got inside that too.
Butterfly.
That word meant nothing either.
It was dark. He opened the eyes and tried to see. The body felt strange; there was a disconnect between His mind and the stubborn loyalty of Robbie’s flesh. He flexed the muscles, made the new limbs move. It wasn’t all his newness that was stopping him from leaving his uncomfortable bed in the rubble. There was something across his chest.
House, said what was left of Robbie. Part of the house. It all fell down.
Robbie was still there.
“Mommy?” Robbie made the voice work. He struggled to stay in control, but Robbie knew the body better than he did, and He was pushed back into the sweet, sleepy darkness.
He was Himself again when the ship came. The engines called to him. Robbie struggled weakly, but the song of the engines, the good light of the ship that shone through the wreckage of House made Him strong. The heart beat and the thick warm blood pumped. He wanted to get up to run to the ship, but the beam across His chest pinned Him firmly in place. He struggled and moaned, but the voice coming out of the mouth sounded unbearably strange, and He clamped it shut so he didn’t have to hear it mewling.
The ship was leaving and He was trapped.
The others, the ones that used to be Mommy and Daddy had gone with the ship. He/Robbie could feel it.
Only the Dog was still there. It lay beside them, licking the face that was sometimes His and sometimes Robbie’s.
It was day, then night, day, then night. When it was night, they could see the stars through the gaps in the beams and broken walls. When He was Himself, He could see more than Robbie could. He could see the stars and the stars beyond them, sweeping silver patterns that made Him hurt with longing. One day, Dog was gone too, and then they were all alone.
He was growing stronger, but Robbie’s body was weaker. Once it rained and He drank the water, then there was nothing else to drink. He got thinner, and when the Ships came again, He hardly struggled.
Sometimes He slept.
When He woke up from one of the sleeps, there were two people staring down at Him, a boy and a girl, pale and skinny and dirty, like He was.
“Jeez,” said the boy. “It’s a little kid.”
Gracie
f you stop again, we’re just gonna leave you,” Brandon snapped. “Then what?”
“I won’t leave him,” I said. “Come on Jakester, hold my hand for a while, there will be other Shinys at the mall.”
I didn’t usually like to hold Jake’s hand, which tended to be sticky, or sweaty, or both, but the road was broken up and it would’ve been easy to take a spill. Jake never cried when he fell down and cut his knees, which was way creepy for a little kid, but it did slow him down, and Brandon was already in a grouchy mood. Not that that was anything new.
Today, we were on a “covert supply mission.” What that meant, if you weren’t a freak like Brandon, was that we were going to sneak into the mall and try to find some food and maybe some warm clothes, because winter was coming soon, and we couldn’t just hope to find what we’d need up in Maine.
Jake stooped to pluck up a couple more bullet casings, which he put into a pocket, already sagging with the weight of his treasures. He picked up shiny things like a little magpie would, collecting and hoarding treasures, his pockets getting heavier throughout the day.
One day, the pockets would rip clean off his overalls, I was sure of it.
When we stopped to rest, Jake liked to make patterns with the Shinys. Neat lines and squares, or strange wavering spirals that sent you cross-eyed if you looked at them when the sun hit just right. Each day’s Shinys disappeared in the night, and the next day, Jake would start his search over again.
I guess Jake buried them. I’d have loved to ask him why he spent all that time picking things up just to toss them away every night, but Jake didn’t talk.
We didn’t even know his real name.
“Mr. and Mrs. R. Jakes” was painted on the mailbox of the house where we found him, and the name “Jake” seemed as good as any, even though we knew that “Jakes” was a last name, and the house could have been anyone’s.
The fall leaves blazed red and yellow and covered the roads and sidewalks—and thankfully any dead guys there might be—in thick drifts, making for a beautiful day in spite of the nerv
ous, squirmy “going to the mall” twisting in my belly.
Brandon was already bitching about the leaves. They hid the big crevices in the asphalt, and he’d fallen on his skinny ass twice. It was his fault for walking so fast all the time. I lagged behind with Jake, kicking the leaves up in extravagant puffs around my scuffed sneakers.
Eventually, Brandon threw down his backpack and stood, waiting, with his arms folded.
“You guys better pick up the pace,” he yelled. “We got a good stretch before we get to the mall, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend the night in there. Gotta get in and out before dark.”
“I know,” I told him. “We’re coming along as fast as we can. We don’t want to fall. Can we eat now? We are allowed to eat, right?”
Brandon considered, eyes narrowed behind the dark brown-black curtain of his hair. “Okay. Best to stop now while we still have cover. If anyone comes, I’ll signal like this”—Brandon extended two dirty fingers and pumped his scrawny arm into the air—“and we—”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “I know. We run off the road and hide in the weeds. Did you get that signal from Commander Lightning on ‘Action Squad?’ You’re kind of old to watch cartoons.”
“I don’t watch cartoons.”
“Are you sure? Because that’s totally what Commander Lightning does. ‘To the Sky-copters!’ just like that.” I dug a can of spaghetti hoops out of my backpack.
Brandon glowered. “It’s a military signal. And you better pay attention if I do it, or we’ll all end up dead.”
“Okay, Brandon, chill. We’ll pay attention, won’t we Jake?”
Jake sat cross-legged in the leaves, pulling Shinys from his pocket and arranging them into a neat series of zigzags. He cut his eyes toward us and gave the curt jerk of his head that could mean “yes” or “no” or “buzz off’—I hadn’t yet figured it out, since it was the same motion for each response he gave.
“Good,” said Brandon. “Eat quickly.”
At first, food hadn’t been hard to find, but as the weeks rolled over into months, what wasn’t in cans was spoiled and useless. Finding cans that weren’t dented or crushed was becoming trickier, too.
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