Kings of Carrion

by Keri Lake

  “Yes.”

  “Then, it was real. It wasn’t a hallucination.” It’s disturbing, the way doctors at Calico screwed with our minds, until we didn’t know if things before our very eyes were real, or not. Even now, I question if Valdys was real, or some figment of my imagination, designed by the doctors to keep me in line. A lifeline. A hallucination that I’ll wake and find never truly existed.

  “Maybe. Could’ve been both. I saw your face, too.”

  “You might’ve mixed up what you saw in the tunnels with the hallucinations you had.” The comment is a reminder of what he told me about his tortures in isolation. How easily his mind tricked him into believing he raped me multiple times there.

  I’d had my own hallucinations of Bryani during my time spent in isolation, and could’ve sworn it was her voice speaking to me in that darkness.

  “I’m so fucked up, Cali, I couldn’t tell you. But you’ve seen them now. That part, at least, is real.”

  Metal clinks, as Brandon straps the last dogtag over his head with a shine of tears in his eyes, and he follows Kenny into a room across from the elevator and stairwell. The lack of screams on the other side of the door, after Kenny ventures inside, is a good sign there are no mutations there. Perhaps a place we can settle our nerves before going to look for Valdys. Beyond the door, I find Kenny sitting in front of a massive wall of small screens, and below those are a number of buttons and levers, more screens and equipment I can’t even begin to identify.

  “Take a seat. This is going to take a while to get the computer up and running again. I’m not even sure it will work.”

  “Please try, Kenny.” Plopping down against the wall, I set my pack out in front of me, tugging the small canteen of water from inside.

  Cadmus sits beside me, while Titus paces at the door, undoubtedly restless. Maybe spoiling for a fight. The Alpha never seems to sit still for long. Even after being shot multiple times, he insisted on getting up and out of bed. If not for his rapid healing, he would’ve been laid up far longer, or dead, I suspect.

  Also rifling through his pack, Cadmus grabs a couple of pieces of the dried meat, before drawing his knees up, resting his arms atop. “I never knew you had a sister.”

  Frowning, I glance at him, capping my water before stuffing it back inside the bag. “What brought that to mind?”

  He shrugs, ripping off another bite of meat. “Just something I realized I never knew about you. Was she like you?”

  “Bryani? No. Nothing like me.” I quietly chuckle, tipping my head back as my mind teases me with memories of her. “She was more social and outgoing. Everyone liked her. She was … absolutely beautiful.”

  “Aside from the outgoing part, sounds like you two had some things in common.”

  “Maybe some things.”

  “Sounds like I’d have gotten along better with her.” At my unamused stare, he snorts and elbows me. “Not like that.”

  Running my fingers over the bracelet I’d forgotten about, I smile to myself. “She had a way of seeing the best in people, so maybe.”

  A good half-hour slips by, the air in this room becoming stagnant and almost suffocating. I close my eyes and imagine that Valdys is somewhere in this building. So close I can practically touch him right now. My skin tingles and vibrates as I visualize his fingertips running over the surface of it, springing goosebumps with his touch.

  A beeping sound draws my lids open. The computer screens are lit up. Lights flicker on overhead. The sound of generators kicking into gear sends a tight feeling of excitement across my chest.

  “Looks like we’re back in business,” Kenny says, staring up at the wall of screens that blink to life and show different parts of the hospital. On some of the screens, I catch movement and see the mutations moving about rooms, perhaps frenzied by the bright lights.

  “We can see where they’re at from here,” he says, flipping switches that swap the view from one part of the building for another.

  “What about Valdys? Is he in his cell?”

  The pecking of the computer keyboard seems to correlate to the various shifting screens on the monitor in front of him, and after a few minutes, he arrives at a list of names, pointing to one that has my heart pounding. “Hibernation room.”

  A few more clicks, and he swaps one of the screens for an obscured view that’s mostly black.

  “Looks like something fucked with the camera.” Kenny flips three more screens adjacent to that one. “Here’s the path to get to the hibernation room. You’ll take the stairwell to the fourth floor. Cryogenics is there, too. There may be others kept alive. The ones in hibernation are given IV fluids, so it’s possible they’re alive, as well.”

  Hope blossoms inside my chest and I smile back at Cadmus. “Alive.” Swinging my attention back toward Kenny, I wring the fabric of my shirt, ready to crawl out of my skin with the impatience prodding me. “Okay, fourth floor?”

  “I’ll stay here. We’ll communicate through walkie-talkie.” He flicks his fingers, and I fish the piece of equipment out of my bag, handing it off to him. He twists a knob on it and flips it on, indicated by a green light and some fuzz that dies down. “Here’s the channel you’ll use. Push the button when you want to talk and release to listen.” Flexing his fingers around it, he demonstrates his instruction and twists a knob on the top of the device. “Keep the volume low, so you don’t attract the mutations.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. We’ll meet at the front entrance.”

  Cadmus, Brandon, and I pad up the stairwell to the fourth floor, leaving Titus and Kenny back in the computer room. As we round each new flight, we’re greeted by the mutilated bodies of Legion soldiers, and a few doctors who weren’t so lucky trying to escape. Brandon takes the opportunity to check each one of their tags, determined to find his brother--one way, or another.

  “Fourth floor corridor is clear.” Kenny’s voice comes over the walkie-talkie, as we climb the last stretch of stairs.

  Cadmus pushes through the door, but it drags as if blocked by something on the other side. Once it’s cracked enough, he peeks his head through and pushes harder, the muscles in his arms bulging with the toil. Brandon and I step through the path he’s created, and find a pile of bodies against the door. Along the corridor lay a few more bodies, but it seems most are gathered here.

  Strange.

  A sign just below the ceiling reads: Cryogenics. Below it, an arrow points to the right.

  “Follow the signs to Cryo,” Kenny instructs.

  In spite of the all clear, my muscles remain poised for an attack. Unless it’s just my nerves bunching me up that way. Excitement, perhaps.

  At the first intersection of hallways, a new sign on the wall reads: Hibernation Lab. We follow the direction of the arrow below it, and arrive at a door at the end of the hallway, which opens into an expansive room that’s made up of rows of glass cases, some empty, some covered in blood. The sight of them sends a sinking feeling to my stomach.

  “Valdys is chamber eighty-six, at the end of the fourth row.” Kenny’s voice offers a small bit of hope, as I hustle through rows of these chambers, as he called them, trying not to look at them as I pass. We reach the second row, skirting around a wall of capsules toward the back of the room, and I bend forward to read seventy-nine on one of the pods. An empty one, thank goodness. Eighty. Eight-one. Eighty-two. Eighty-three. Eighty-four. Blood stains on the outside of the chamber churn the nausea in my gut, and I notice pieces of bone sticking out from the half-mutilated body inside that chamber. Eighty-five. I lift my gaze to eight-six.

  My muscles turn weak.

  A cold hollow fills my chest.

  I collapse to the floor.

  No.

  Chapter 24

  Wren

  Tears gathered in my eyes blur the camera’s view, as Six, Ratchet, and Jed reach the end of the hallway. If I had to imagine, Six is probably mentally punishing himself for what happened to Tinker. And here I’m wallowing in the g
uilt of being thankful he was able to get away before one of those things snatched him up, as well.

  I’ve seen cruelty, have been on the receiving end of some of the most vicious monsters ever put on this earth, but watching Tinker’s body torn apart in sport is a vision that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It’s something that, in spite of the atrocities of this world, still manages to snake itself beneath the skin and strangle what’s left of one’s humanity.

  Jed peers into a window of the lab and clicks his flashlight on, making one sweep, before heading toward the door. He pushes through, and the scraping sound against whatever litters the floor is one that tenses my muscles. This whole place serves as a constant stream of stress and agony. I pray they’ve reached the lab that houses the sample, because I don’t think my gut can handle any more of it.

  The three of them enter the lab, which looks like every other in the building, with it’s rusted, dilapidated equipment and distraught appearance, as if something came through with a sledgehammer and swung without care, or consequence.

  Jed crosses the room toward a cupboard labeled: R1 Protein Isolates. “So, we found that, if we dehydrated the isolates, it actually preserved their form within the prion and, with serial dilutions, begins to produce the proteins again. A reactivation of the organism.” He clears a space on the lab counter and arranges a tray of test tubes he pulls from the cupboard. “I need you to keep lookout while I do this.”

  “Here?”

  “I don’t have a lab back in Szolen. As horribly septic as this place may be, it contains all the supplies I need. Besides, carrying all the test tubes, syringes, pipettes, sterile water … it will only make a bunch of noise.” Shoving a syringe-looking object into the mouth of a clear bottle, he holds it in front of his eyes and expels it into one of the test tubes. “In the time it takes to pack everything, it’ll be done.”

  Six huffs, and the camera pans toward the hallway, which remains clear. “Hurry up. My friend isn’t going to tide them over for long.”

  Thoughts of them consuming Tinker alive send a shot of panic through me, and I steal another sip of water, my hands trembling as I press the glass to my lips.

  “I’m sorry about your friend. His sacrifice will not be forgotten.” Jed goes to work on the samples.

  I only manage to catch a few seconds of his process at a time, while the camera remains mostly directed toward the hallway.

  “If you can hear me, Wren, I want you to know that Tinker knew the risks.” It’s hard to say if Six is saying this for my benefit, or his, but either way, it doesn’t erase the guilt twisting my insides. “I just need to stay focused on getting out of here. Starting a family with you, without these bastards continually interfering. Christ, I thought we eliminated the threats in our lives, but they just keep on coming back like a fucking nightmare.”

  I wipe the tears from my cheeks and force a smile. Part of me wants to tell him he’s right, but another part of me knows I was destined for this pain. It’s inevitable when one loves too much.

  A glance back at Jed shows him drawing up a liquid into a syringe, which he caps off and nestles into a case alongside two others. Perhaps it was a good thing he went along, as we really wouldn’t have any idea what we were looking for, let alone how to reactivate it.

  Across from Jed, Ratchet paces. Nervous, no doubt. Tall and silent, he doesn’t express much of anything, aside from these small gestures that offer a bit of insight. He’s afraid. And for a man who’s guarded and defended his hive for years, that makes me nervous.

  At the sound of a thud, the camera swings toward the hallway, and the view of the window widens as Six seems to move backward.

  “Think we’ve got company.”

  In the corner of the screen, I catch sight of Jed packing up the syringes into his bag and strapping it on his back.

  “Through the ceiling.” Jed hops up onto the counter in front of him, where a vent cover hangs by its hinges. Far too short to reach, he hops and swipes, failing to make contact with it each time.

  Six leaps onto the counter, and in one hoist, Jed is halfway into the vent.

  A crashing sound comes from the right, and on reflex, a scream rips through my chest. Abandoning Jed, Six turns toward the two mutations that have found them. “Fuck. Ratchet, get your ass up there!”

  The shakiness of the camera as he looks around the room only adds to the nausea stirring in my gut, and the moment the mutations charge for Six, my heart is pounding in my throat. I want to look away from what happens, but I can’t. As helpless as I am to do anything about this, I can’t look away from the fight.

  Unlike the mutations we encountered in Calico, these ones don’t seem to be deterred by him. In fact, they seem more aggressive than before, snarling and growling, snapping their jaws as they swipe out at him. One kicks Six’s legs out from under him, and the world slips past to the ceiling above, where Jed’s shoes disappear into the vent. Six lets out a hard grunt as the camera jostles. He rolls to the side, and over the edge of the lab bench.

  “Ah, fuck!” One of the mutations stands over Ratchet, tearing away at his hood. One swift kick to the face sends it tumbling backward, and Six reaches down for his friend.

  Ratchet cries out again, and the camera snaps to another mutation biting down on his leg through the suit. “Get it the fuck off me!” Through harsh breaths of panic, he kicks at the thing, until he manages to scoot away from it. Behind Six, another mutation approaches, blocking the men in.

  I have to hold my palm over my mouth to keep from throwing up, as I watch the two mutations corner him and Ratchet against the wall. Pressing the key that I saw Gregor press earlier, I unmute myself. “You fuckers get away from him!”

  My scream is loud enough to rattle Six’s head, but it brings the two mutations to a halt, and they tip their heads. Perhaps confused by the sound of my voice.

  Six steals the opportunity to tug one of five tanks lined against the wall beside him. Hard to tell what’s inside of them, but he hurls it across the table in front of them, and the moment it collides with the one mutation’s chest, it explodes, sending the beast crashing to the ground.

  The second advances, and all I see is its mutilated arm reach out toward what I estimate is Six’s throat. The ensuing gasps confirm it.

  As if it’s squeezing the air out of my lungs, as well, I can’t breathe watching these monsters attempt to rip him apart. Glass shatters somewhere in the room. Something flies out of the corner of the screen and comes down hard on the mutation’s head. An axe.

  It splits his skull open, but isn’t enough to stop him completely, as its arm doesn’t relinquish its grasp.

  Six dislodges the axe and strikes again. And again. Three times. Finally its hand falls away.

  “Get to the vent!” he bellows, and Ratchet doesn’t hesitate to jump onto the counter, pulling himself into the vent above.

  The second mutation scrambles to its feet, and I see another climb through the broken window of the lab. On a running leap, Six jumps up onto the lab bench and hops up after Ratchet, until the camera’s view is inside the vent.

  The lab flickers back into view, as something yanks him back down. “Ah, fuck!”

  “Six!”

  His harrowing outcry skates on my nerves.

  Harsh grunts give no indication what kind of torment he’s suffering. My whole body is in a frenzy of stress, roiling as I watch helplessly.

  The vent comes into view again. I hate this. Seeing from his point of view is absolute torment, not knowing what’s happening below him. He manages to pull himself up inside. And when he twists around, the head of a mutation is sticking up from the vent. Six slams his boot into the monster’s face, kicking it over and over, until falls away.

  A hard thump comes from below, and when he faces forward again, there’s the beginnings of a hole inside the shaft. As second mutation climbs in through the vent, he kicks at it.

  “You have to get out of there!” My pulse is racing so fast, m
y head is dizzy with the urge to pass out.

  He flips over and crawls past the thudding, where down through the hole, the mutation leaps up toward the ceiling, narrowly missing Six as he skirts around its fist. The hole widens, and Six seems to move faster. He stops to spin around, and a zap of pain strikes my chest at the face of a mutation coming at the camera.

  Knife in hand, Six stabs it in the skull, over and over, until bits of brain and blood coat his hand, and it collapses over the hole.

  Exhaling a shaky breath, I sit back in the chair, and when the feet of Ratchet finally come into view, I rub a shaky hand over my brow.

  “My God, that was the most unnerving thing I’ve ever watched.” Gregor’s hand is shaking, too, as he lifts his glass to his mouth and takes a sip of water. “Should I die of a heart attack, you’re welcome to have my house.”

  Not even his humor is enough to unravel the knots in my stomach. If not for breathing hard through my nose, I’d have vomited up all the water I’ve had to drink.

  At the sound of a harsh cough, I flinch and stare through the camera’s lens, where Ratchet, ahead, has slowed his crawling. The man pauses, hacking again, the wet sound of it a clear indication of fluids in his throat. I trail my gaze to the dark substance splashed over his hazmat suit at the leg, where the mutation bit him.

  “He’s infected,” I mutter to myself, the grim thoughts in my head mirroring my tone. Desperate to remember what Jed said about carriers being bitten, it’s all a jumbled mess inside my head, after the stress of just moments before. Every couple of feet, the ceiling thumps below them, letting them know they’re still being hunted, and I suspect Ratchet’s cough is like the marquee downtown, announcing their presence to all of the mutations.

  “Keep moving, man,” Six whispers, giving his friend a nudge.

  Ratchet doesn’t move, and his body is taking up the width of the vent.