by Jadah McCoy
Some of the other Sanctuarians still hold hope, those who haven’t seen this place like I have, littered with half-melted skeletons of the dead, like a garden of bones.
Muscle memory takes me to the building Serge, Lucca, and I scouted the day before. I don’t know when I’ll return to the Sanctuary, or if I’ll return at all. Soon it will be too dark to safely travel, so I must go back now or find a place to sleep for the night.
I can’t bear to drag myself back to that reeking gutter, back to Serge and the hurt look that deepens the lines in his forehead.
So I won’t go back at all.
I’ll move with the daylight and hide before night falls. I’ll kill what Cull I can, and if I die, so be it. It will be an honorable death. I will cut off all my hair because, even though the Cull are dangerous, human men can be more so. The thought of shearing my long, pale hair delights me, and I bundle the strands into one hand and reach for my knife with the other.
But all the excitement drains from me, and I lower the blade. What a stupid idea. What an idiot I would be to leave behind safety and security, even if it is a miserable existence that awaits me. Either way, I’ll have to return to my place beneath Lucca’s thumb. I turn back the way I came.
A crash startles me so much that the knife tumbles from my grip. It clatters to the ground, answering the loud sound. All around me, birds scatter from the trees. My heart is a heavy stone pounding against my chest again and again and again.
One beat passes before a terrible sound rises like a cloud above me, a sound that I dread—filmy wings rubbing together in agitation. Only one thing in my small world makes that sound.
I scramble for my knife, but my shaky hands are clumsy, and I fumble before I wrap my fingers around the handle.
A shriek pierces the air. It’s human and female. Another deeper cry answers before the woman’s scream fades away. This one is not human.
Adrenaline surges through me, and I take off in the direction of the screams, knife ready in my hand. I weave through rusted metal frames and leap over twisted roots and concrete rubble, easily navigating the congested streets.
Screaming and sobbing lures me into an overgrown alley where I hide behind a corroded heap of metal. A young woman huddles into herself, her legs nothing but red mush below the knee. The acerbic stink of acid and blood makes me wrinkle my nose. A tall silhouette creeps closer to her, and then the creature comes into view. The wings protruding from its back vibrate so quickly that they blur, and their sound is unmistakable.
“No, please,” she begs as her attacker comes closer in a torturously slow display.
She screams as though that might stop the creature, as though there are more than just mangled neurons firing at random in its brain telling it to kill and eat.
The Cull’s mouth divides, four flaps opening up to make room for whole body parts.
“Please,” the bug repeats, its words echoing in the warm evening air. “Please.”
Its raspy, trilling tone raises the hair on my neck and arms.
She collapses into sobs, the stumps of her legs useless on the bloody ground. Tears stain her dirty face. Without legs, she has no hope of escaping, and there’s nothing I can do to help her. Even if I kill the Cull, I don’t have the medical knowledge it takes to heal a wound such as hers. Better she dies now than suffers a slow death by infection.
The Cull hurls acid spit at the woman, and it hits the length of her body. Bile rises in my throat at the resounding sizzle. With each drop of melted flesh that oozes from layers of bone and muscle, the urge to gag rises. Her screams make my skin crawl as they echo from the hollow buildings. The sound ceases when her vocal cords wither away, but even then she gargles through her liquefied flesh, choking until her lungs give up.
I press my shaky hand against my mouth, fighting the urge to empty my stomach onto the roots at my feet. The air smells of bitterness and burning flesh, making every breath fire in my chest. I know this smell better than any other. It’s the smell of Sanders’s death.
“No!”
A hoarse shout to my right startles me.
“Sarah!”
A boy barely in his teens stands watching the awful scene before him—the Cull sucking up Sarah’s dissolved remains through its long snout. His face is red with tears, and he looks broken, as shattered as the glass lining the streets and buildings. As quickly as he arrived, he bolts in the direction from which he came.
“Kid, wait!” I move away from my hiding spot.
He’s fast. Within seconds, he’s around the corner and out of sight. I run after him and past the feeding Cull. Distracted by food, it lunges for me with razor-sharp pincers, and I dodge at the last minute, but the tip drags against my injured shoulder. I cry out and stumble before regaining my footing, feet pounding even harder against the ground. I dodge trees and leap over roots.
“Wait!” I yell louder. I turn the corner just as the boy slips through the cracked door of a building. Wispy flora dangles from the frame, nearly hiding it from view.
Blood trickles down my arm.
Dammit.
I am running out of time. The sun is little more than a maroon crescent, and the Cull will smell my blood. Elite City is too dangerous, especially for a child. I want to leave him here. I want to forget he existed. But I can’t bear to leave another person behind when I have the chance to save him.
I slip through the cracked door with some difficulty. There are metal stairs in front of me that lead into silent darkness. Growling under my breath, I climb them. The metal is not kind to my footsteps—every shift of weight creaks and resonates through the concrete stairwell. I listen for any sound that might give away their presence—the vibration of wings or echoing cries.
I reach the second floor. The stairs continue upward, but rubble blocks the path. The room to my right is pitch black and completely open. There is no way to tell what’s in there or how many of them there are.
I listen.
The telltale sound of shuffling comes from within.
A shudder rises in my body. One could be right next to me, waiting, and I’d never know until I turned into Syl soup.
The ks-ks-ks of vibrating wings makes my heart leap into my throat.
“Ah!” a panicked voice cries.
My eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and I can see them, the Cull and the boy, their outlines barely visible in the distance. The kid is on the ground, and the bug is squeezing its shiny body out of a hiding spot, rising to its full seven feet.
The kid has approximately four seconds until he becomes bug food.
I sprint toward the sound of their struggle. The boy’s clothes scrape against the ground as he fights to get away from what is certain to be a very unpleasant death. The Cull squawks and trills, no doubt alerting anything else in the room to our presence.
I take a flying leap over the kid, momentum propelling me into the bug. My knife lodges in its open mouth, and it thrashes in anger, trying to throw me off. I drag the knife down and into its neck. My muscles burn in protest as I saw at the thing’s jugular. Acid cascades from its severed throat and down its front, the bitter smell slapping me in the face. I cry out, dropping the acid-covered knife and pushing away from the twitching creature. I scrub my hands on my clothes, checking to make sure all my digits are still there.
The Cull isn’t dead, just hurt, and we have mere moments to escape. More will come.
I fish around in the darkness for the boy’s collar, then drag him up by his shirt.
“Let go!” he yells, pulling against my grip. He’s young but strong.
Not strong enough, though. I grip his shirt harder, pulling him closer until my nose touches his.
“You do not want to die like her.”
“I don’t care!” Tears thicken his voice. Now is not the time for emotions.
“Listen here, you little shit. Do you want to live? Because I do. I’m not dying here tonight, not for you.”
His labored breath is raspy in m
y right ear. “Okay.” The kid relaxes, and I release him.
We rush into the stairwell and out of the building, the sound of fluttering wings constantly behind us.
The boy slips through the jammed door first and then me, cramming my tall body through the small opening.
But it’s too late. The sun has set. Darkness—and the Cull—now reign.
Syl
spit on my arm and scrub away the congealed streaks of blood as well as I can. The tattered dressing on my bicep is useless, so I rip it off and toss it away. The wound from Lucca’s bullet is split open, oozing pink-tinged liquid. That will make for one hell of an infection.
“What are we going to do?” The boy’s rapid breathing huff, huff, huffs in my ear, and his constant nervous shifting isn’t exactly quiet, either.
“Please stop talking.” It comes out harsher than I mean it to.
His breathing slows, and his fidgeting lessens. He relaxes into the thick tree roots our bodies press against. Little vines reach toward me, the ends of them kissing my skin and sucking away the sweat. I shrug them away.
Now that my knife is lost, my ears are the only weapon I have.
“If you hear wings, run. If you hear screams, run.” I glance back at him to make sure he’s listening.
He gapes at me in disbelief, dirty brown hair shading his eyes. I can see the protest rising on his lips. He’ll listen, whether he wants to or not.
“Don’t look back. Don’t stop running. Don’t wait for me.”
“Are you serious?” He spits the words. “You want me to run when I’ll just get—”
“Run or die. Those are your only choices.”
He glares at me. “More like die or die,” he mumbles.
“Let’s see if you’re such a smartass the next time you come face to face with a Cull.” I stand and step away from the enormous roots, leaving him crouched behind me. “Don’t forget I saved that smart ass of yours.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says as he unfurls his lanky limbs and dogs my footsteps.
I should have left him in the room with that bug.
The night is eerily silent; perhaps the Cull haven’t yet stirred. Something hangs on the air, waiting and making my stomach flip with uneasiness.
I take out the hand-drawn map I keep in my pocket, tracing the patterns with my shaky fingers. The manhole entrance to the Sanctuary is three streets over. It doesn’t seem like much, but taking one wrong corner can be the difference between solid body parts and liquid ones.
I sigh.
I wish Serge were here and hate myself for my cruelty. He would know what to do, which streets to take and how to take them without putting ourselves in danger. He’s the one who takes the survivors under his wing, the one who’s nice to them and talks to them. Not me.
I refold the map and cram it into my pocket, ripping it in my frustration.
“My home is three blocks from here,” I tell the boy in a hushed voice.
“That’s suicide,” he whispers.
“Running into a pitch-black room is suicide, you idiot.”
“Sarah said not to trust anyone.” His voice is full of quiet sorrow, lacking any of the sarcasm it held earlier. “Our dad was taken two nights ago.”
Goose bumps trail down my arms. Cull kill and maim and feed, but they do not take.
I glance at him then back to the foliage-infested streets, watching for any sign of movement around us.
“Taken?” I ask.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” His voice rises.
I press my lips together in frustration and leave the cover of the roots. The kid follows, his skinny arms crossed in defiance and a scowl on his face.
Zita is a ball of iridescent light, illuminating the cool night air. The openness makes me nervous.
To our right I see them, their carapaces shining in the moonlight. They file out of a small opening close to the ground, their bodies squeezing free of a space one-third their size. They push against one another, pincers scrambling and scraping against the ground as they drag themselves free of their nest.
I don’t think the kid has seen them yet. I crouch closer to the ground, leading us in the opposite direction. He follows in my wake. This isn’t the quickest way to the Sanctuary, but we’ll have to circle back to avoid the bugs.
There’s a sudden deafening crash to my right as something falls from the sky. The kid yells in surprise as he falls and lands on his ass, and I fall with him. Shards of glass fly into our faces, and I cover my eyes with one hand, supporting my sprawled out body with the other. There’s a bug, bigger than any I’ve ever seen, hunched in the concave top of a rusted metal machine. It must have been waiting, watching from above where we couldn’t see it.
It fixes a beady, black-eyed gaze on us, calculating. I’ve never seen a Cull look at me that way before.
Veins and muscles line its scaly skin. The wings on its back aren’t filmy or useless. They are thick with flesh and more muscle, able to support its weight.
It holds the torn-open carcass of a Cull in its three-fingered hand. The bug’s intestines spill out of its body in a cascade of stinking, yellow mush. The creature’s jaw tenses and then breaks open to show layers of jagged teeth, pieces of bug shell and intestine stuck in between. It roars, the sound echoing through the night. Fetid breath flows out of its snarling mouth and into my lungs.
“Run.”
The kid and I scramble to our feet, ducking beneath roots and under the stone archways of crumbling buildings.
The creature leaps after us, gliding along on its wings. The screech of its feet crushing steel is like a needle in my ear.
The kid scrambles around a Cull to our right, its pincers tearing at the air. I duck and slide on the grassy asphalt beneath it, the telltale sizzle of acid spit soaring past me. It follows close behind us. The Super-Cull bumps the other Cull, and it grabs the bug, tearing its body in half with rows of knifelike teeth. Entrails scatter; the bitter stink of the Cull’s insides twists my gut.
I don’t have time to decipher where we are. The streets and buildings fly past us as we run. The kid is panting and falling behind. I’m slowing as well; my muscles burn as though they’ve been set ablaze. But to slow down means death.
I see it ahead, a jagged piece of metal barely lodged in a heap of concrete rubble. I slow and grab the metal bar as I pass, crying out as it slices my palms. With all my strength, I twist and hurl the metal at the creature’s face. My strength combined with the thing’s velocity creates a fair amount of damage—the metal bar lodges into its shoulder. It shrieks in pain, and one wing sags beneath it. Wounded, it crashes to a halt behind us.
The kid and I burst into a clearing, the agitated cries of the creature echoing in the distance. Moonlight glistens on a thin layer of serene water. Several feet across into the stagnant pond is a shady aqueduct where the water seems to get deeper. Reedy shoots cover the marshy area, and corroded hunks of steel are half-submerged in deeper places.
I wade into the calf-deep water, dragging the boy with me.
“There,” I whisper. I gesture to the dark half circle ahead of us.
We slosh through the few feet of water. The chill stiffens my muscles, and the kid’s teeth chatter, but we climb farther into the duct. Darkness grows as the water rises. Now waist deep, we hover beside the icy concrete of the arched passage. Algae slither against my fingertips, and I try not to think about what else might be in the water with us.
I peer at the shadows twisting in the moonlight beyond the water. A few Cull amble about, but none of them would follow us into the water. They’re about as good at swimming as they are at flying. I check the tunnel behind us. It angles down, dropping into depths unseen. Maybe it leads somewhere, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there’s air in there, maybe there’s not.
There is no way to know.
“What’s your name?” the boy whispers.
“Why?” I ask, meeting his brown eyes. What does that matter?
“Becau
se I want to know who I’m dying with.”
I smirk. “My name is Syl.”
“David,” he says. He continues speaking, but movement beyond the water distracts me. Several figures push past the thick foliage.
Serge. My heart leaps into my throat, propelled by relief. I jerk, the movement sending ripples through the water.
But the figures come closer, and not one of them is Serge—or anyone I recognize for that matter. In fact, macabre masks cover their faces. They wear the visage of happy people, replicating plastic smiles, rosy cheeks, and wide eyes.
“Oh no,” David whispers. “It’s them.”
The four masked figures turn toward the duct where David and I are hiding. Two tilt their heads toward each other as though speaking. I press farther into the tunnel, trying to control the chattering of my teeth. Have they seen us?
The four split into two groups, one going to the left, the other to the right. One moment passes… two… three… four. I wait before allowing myself to relax again. Maybe they are gone; maybe we will live through the night after all.
A kerplunk hits my ears as an object lands in the water. A ripple cascades around us. At the edge of the pond, hidden by reedy shoots, is a small ball. A blinking light emits from it. It blinks slowly at first, but as I watch, the orb blinks faster, faster, faster. Until…
A jagged bolt of lightning races through the water, striking David and me. A scream rips from my throat. My body twitches in pain, and then my muscles fail and I collapse, the water holding me in its soothing arms.
The whole world is silent. David doesn’t move, floating facedown beside me. I drift out of the duct. Zita’s rings shine through the leaves above me, a pearly, shimmering vision. I don’t regret that it might be the last thing I see.
Something moves to block out the pale light. My eyes take too long to recognize the face above me: falsely lit eyes, apple cheeks, a smile that is absurdly large for a face.
My brain urges my mouth to do something, anything.