by Tara Brown
Chapter 16
Nine months later
Lou
Lee’s smug grin flashes at us across the field as we make our way to her with the riders behind us.
I’m trying to take it all in but the image of Erin telling me to kill her sister if I have to runs through my head on repeat. Despite every sound echoing in my ears: the crunching of the grass, the guards’ horses breathing too heavily, the heartbeats amongst us blending and mixing, all creating a tempo. I take a deep breath of the warm breeze, noting the sun feels hotter even though we’re more north.
The bots in my blood are working hard to save me from the anxiousness I’m drowning in. I’ve wanted to see Lee, rescue Lee, help Lee from the moment I tried to convince her not to become one of us. I was angry with her for choosing that fate, but I never imagined this would happen. That she would change this much, or this would be how we’d find her.
She doesn't appear to need any saving. Or want it.
The glinting crown on her head and the way she welcomes us, as if this is her house and we’re coming for dinner, is creepy. It’s ominous for sure.
“Princess Lee, your guests have arrived,” one of the guards on the horses shouts at her as we get closer, as if our arrival isn’t completely obvious. She’s right in front of us.
“Welcome, friends and family.” She holds her arms out as she walks to us. She’s so different I would think Erin had taken over her body. Cocky and confident and weird. The glint in Lee’s eyes is not her own. Liam has done something to her and I’m going to kill him for it.
“Look, pod bitch, give me back my sister,” Erin says bitterly. She is ready to fight.
“Erin, don't.” I put a hand on her tensed arm, nervous of how her fingers ball.
“Listen to Lou, Erin,” Lee teases, trying to rile her sister up.
Erin’s vibrating, probably with the desire to choke and kill. It’s her MO and something that’s hardly altered since the changeover. Her desire to end lives barely dulled after the bots. She has mellowed just enough to control some of her rage.
“Lou, why don't you come with me?” Lee offers her arm as she gets close enough. “King Liam wants to see you. The rest of you should tour the grounds. It’s pretty awesome here. You can pick out a spot to build your house. I have some pull with the man.” She winks. “Maybe I can get you bumped up the list.”
“Why would anyone want to live here?” Erin scoffs.
“I want the tour too.” I stop walking and change the subject before they fight over building locations. Everyone else stops too. We’re in some weird standoff that's making my stomach tingle with alarms.
“Oh, you’ll get the tour. King Liam can’t help but brag about it.” She rolls her eyes and for a second I see Lee. Old Lee. Maybe she isn’t completely lost in her Stepford body. Maybe I don't have to kill her. Maybe if I just get her alone, I can try to figure out how to get him out of her head.
“Fine,” I agree and follow, not taking her arm.
“Lou,” Kyle warns with his tone.
“I’ll be okay, trust me.” I turn back to everyone, shaking my head at Kyle who has that gleam in his glare, the one suggesting he will be following me.
“We’ll wait for you.” Leah grabs Kyle’s arm, holding him back.
Miles almost takes a step forward but I scowl. “For reals, give me a minute.” I put a hand up and quickly dart my eyes to Lee, hinting that I’d love to be alone with her.
“A minute,” Leah agrees. “The rest of us will take the tour. I’ve never seen a castle before. This is kinda awesome. A castle in Canada, who knew?”
“Right! I’ll see you in a minute.” I turn and follow Lee, hurrying to catch up with her.
“So what’s new?” Lee asks, as if this is a hallway at school and life couldn't be simpler—instead of a field in front of some half-built castle behind a huge wall with the large gate doors open. It reminds me of something you’d find in the middle of Scotland or England, not Canada.
“Lee, why are you with Liam? Why didn't you want to come home with us? He’s in your head—”
“What home, Lou?” She laughs, sounding completely bitchy. “King Liam said you guys would go to some place called Cashmere, and you would stay there, but that it wasn't a safe place for us. And he knew you would eventually find your way here to see us. I mean he did invite you after all.”
“Lee—”
“Lou.” She stops and turns, grabbing me by both arms and squeezing slightly. “Just give him a chance, okay? Promise? Actually listen to what he has to say!”
“Why is he building a castle?” I ignore her questions and change the subject.
“Because he’s a king, why else? And this is the new republic. Canada and the US will be one, with one leader and no more party politics or voting or costs to the people or corrupt senators. He’s the only leader we need.” She says it all with a laugh, maybe thinking it’s a common-sense explanation.
As we near the gate, my stomach tenses as the bots try to soothe me. I stop walking and gape at the army in front of us. He wasn’t kidding.
They’re zombies.
All of them.
They’re building the wall and the castle beyond it.
“He’s actually controlling the zombies?” My mouth dries with the hot wind seeing so many of them surrounding us. It’s exactly how he said it would be. He has done everything he said he could and would. The hum coming off them is incredible. My skin ripples with the mass recognition. I lift an arm and notice the hairs standing on end.
“Yeah. He’s a genius.” She sighs as though she means dreamboat. “He put out a call for them. They’ve been joining us for months. Coming from all over America.” She points to the left side of the castle where the tree line is, making my eyes widen to the point they strain. The edge of the forest is lined with the undead. A massive stream of them are slowly making their way here, staggering and stumbling and moving with whatever they have left in them. The bots driving them forward, all heading to one location. This one.
“What the hell?”
“It’s a siren call. Jacquard made it up and blasts it from the towers at the perimeters of town at night for twenty minutes. The bots hear it and blast it too. They share it, spreading it with their mouths. Eventually, he should be able to make it so the bots all update and communicate with one another better. Instead of recognizing the hum or the signal, they’ll share information.”
His plan, Liam’s evil scheme, hits me like a piece of wood to the side of the head.
It’s as he said, he controls the bots.
He controls us.
He is controlling Lee.
She is a pod bitch. He is actually controlling her.
Holy shit.
He is bringing back the internet, but we are the connection. We are the modem. And the joke he made about it all wasn’t a joke.
My brain does laps, moving in a way it never has before, finding truth in her words and almost justifying his actions with common sense that adds up too quickly. The bots want me to like this plan. To see the merit in it. But I don’t. I see slaves and mindless victims. Including my friend.
“Smart, huh?” She smiles and starts walking toward the large dark gates built into the arch of the doorway.
“Smart,” I agree but I’m not happy he’s so clever. I want to be terrified but that emotion isn’t really available to me.
I know I need to see Liam and assess how to end this, but when we get inside the gates, I almost turn and run.
The grounds are flooded with the undead and dead and the smell is unbearable.
A mountain of dead animals sits in the middle of what might someday be a courtyard. A circle of biters is around it, eating, gnawing at the carcasses.
“He has them rotate. They eat every five hours. Drink every two hours.” She nods at the trough where the undead are drinking with their faces in the water, like some kind of freak show.
My skin crawls but I can’t stop staring a
t what’s before me.
It’s insane and yet completely brilliant. Horribly genius.
“He’s caring for them—you see that, right? They eat and drink and rest. No one hurts them. They build and clean and hunt. They’re smart and it’s not their fault they’re this way. It’s not any of our faults.” She loses some of that smugness and sounds like normal Lee. She might actually believe in this without his Stepford programming. “Why shouldn't they have something resembling a life? They were all people once. They deserve to be taken care of. So there are massive barns being built where they will live. And this will be a beautiful courtyard.”
We pass them unnoticed, as always. We are one of them in some twisted sense.
“Where’s Harold.” I ask snidely.
“I don’t know. He left one day and we haven’t seen him since.” The lack of care in her voice is opposite mine. I wanted to kill Harold, which I’m sure is why he left. He knew eventually I would be here and I would want blood.
The front steps to the castle are decorative concrete, poured and formed to look almost like brick but not. It’s smooth and has no real seams.
The front door is elaborately carved wood with cast iron hardware.
She points at the doors. “The bots made this art. Jacquard can program them to do anything he wants, but they have to be connected. We’re working on the wireless. And that’s not all. The clean ones cook and clean and are inside.” Two of the biters dressed in regular clothes, not tattered at all, open the heavy dark wooden doors for us. They make a slight creak as they expose a bustling interior.
Maids, builders, cleaners, and normal people like Lee move in a constant stream, almost like traffic in the old world. They ignore the others around them, doing their work only. But something is off. They move too fluidly.
It dawns on me what’s missing. Personalities.
They’re nearly dead inside, expressionless and cold, unable to see the others around them, stuck on their tasks. They’re robots. Ants. This is an anthill.
“Come on!” Lee hurries inside. She’s the only bit of color and vibrancy in this castle. The only animated person besides the guards who rode out to us. It’s as if Liam left some of Lee’s personality behind when he changed her. Or maybe he tried to make her programming as accurate as possible. That’s even creepier.
She rushes up some stairs to the second floor. I lose her as I slowly climb, taking it all in.
The shadows of the corridors and stairwell are creepy, maybe haunted by the silent screams of the people trapped in their bodies.
Where Lee’s heart sounds calm, my own heartbeat makes attempts at racing, but the bots lower it, giving me a shiver. Light floods the top of the wide, winding stone staircase as the first part of this level is open and airy.
The floors are plywood and not all the windows are in, so the warmth of summer penetrates the space.
Lee strolls casually, so comfortably, to where he is.
Liam.
Seeing him again almost causes a reaction in me but I fight to control it.
Part of the problem is he’s so damned hot, he draws the eye. He reminds me of a model, leaning on the thick stone wall and staring out an open space where a window will likely go. He’s so different from everyone else. He feels different. He hums in a way that draws me to him, not me but my body. My bots. They want to be near him, as if they have chosen him as our leader, and I have no say in it.
But why him?
He doesn't appear to be anything more than a smoke show in his early twenties. He’s a regular guy in a white tee shirt and light denim jeans. His dark hair is lighter than it was before and his skin is more tanned, no doubt from a summer here, spent building this place.
But technically he’s just a dude.
So why him?
His eyes remain on the grounds below, but he speaks to me, “I have missed you, Lou.”
“Why, Liam? You don’t even know me.” I don’t mince words with him. There is no point. I suspect he’s smarter than all of us, and maybe that’s why the bots have chosen him. Leah’s description of him makes him sound like he’s a genius, and he likely was before the bots ever came along. Perhaps the combination is perfect.
“Because you’re like me,” his tone softens suggesting he isn’t happy about that. In fact, he sounds the opposite. As if maybe he feels sorry for us both. “Leave us please,” he says and Lee nods, turning on her heel and stalking away, annoyed perhaps. There’s displeasure in her eyes as they flicker to mine as she walks past me. Her footsteps on the stairs are noisier going down than they were coming up.
“I’m not like you,” I defend myself, taking a few steps toward him across the expansive room, noting the large hallway being framed to the right, leading somewhere with doorways off it.
“You are.” He turns and smiles at me and something inside pulls me forward more. “You’re special.”
“I don't know about that.” He might be right. I might be different, but I haven’t told anyone about sucking the other bots into me. I think it’s why my lights glow a little brighter than everyone else’s. “What’s so special about you?” I ask, genuinely curious why he thinks he’s fit to be king of the undead. “Why are the bots so convinced you’re the rightful leader?”
“Unwavering confidence in myself, my abilities.” He pushes off the wall and walks to me, taking long strides until he’s right in front of me, looming over me. “Intelligence, beyond what the bots gave us. The ability to read people. The ability to act with no emotional ties to anything trivial like guilt. I see what the greater good is without bias. My connection to my bots is exceptional and I’m accepting of the knowledge they’re trying to bestow on me. I remain humble, as their servant. Together we’re able to see the bigger picture and do what is necessary.” He scowls as his eyes lock on mine, holding them hostage. “There are too many reasons I think I’m special. I think my whole life has been bringing me to this moment. And I think together we can ensure the world will never get to where it was when it ended. Never again.” He’s being honest, he believes this. He’s not tooting his own horn; he’s genuinely convinced he’s mankind’s greatest chance at survival. “Do you like the castle?”
“It’s weird,” I answer too quickly, his words still ringing in my ears. The bots believe them too, I can feel that. It’s not the first time this has happened with him.
“Weird?” The answer baffles him. “How?”
“You don't think it’s weird that you’re building a giant castle in Canada in the middle of a field using the biters?” I point over my shoulder at the wall as if the biters are right there. “You don't see that if you said that sentence before the world ended, you’d think it was about some dark fantasy novel?” I can’t look away. I’m held hostage by his eyes.
“I guess.” He smiles and too many things in me light up. “Why do your eyes glow, Lou? No one else’s eyes glow, just yours. Not even mine.”
I blink, wondering if they’re glowing now. “Why don't yours, if you’re so special?” I too crack a grin, but I mean for him to take offense to it.
He doesn't answer, just takes my hand in his and traps it beneath the other, sandwiched. He stares at me as he gently cups my hand between his. My fingers grow warm and my body tightens.
“You and I are meant to be together and everything in our lives has brought us to this moment. This crescendo. And we will rule this world together.” It’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.
“What—what are you talking about?” I snatch my hand from him, turning and taking a step back. “I still have a boyfriend and you don't even know me.” My back hits the wall behind me.
“I told you before, I don’t care about him.” He takes advantage of my inability to move and steps into my personal bubble, hovering over me like a bad cloud. “And we don't need to know one another. We hum the same. We glow brighter than anyone else. We are the same. Your eyes glowing is a sign that you are meant to be my queen.” His words are as intense as
his stare, and both soften at the same time. “Give me a day to prove to you that we are meant to be together. Please.” He almost begs. “Just one day. And if you don't feel it, I’ll let you and your friends go.”
“I came here to take Lee home and stop you from changing all the humans. That’s all. I don't care if you want to live up here in the middle of nowhere and call yourself king. I don't care about how you rule the world. I just want to live in my small corner of it, free of this craziness.” I hold my own but deep inside I know against him I might not be able to. “I also want you to leave the people alone. Don't go after the normal people. Just let them live on their own.”
“Why would I do that?” He doesn't step back or move at all. He’s so close I can taste him in the air and feel the heat of his body making mine work harder at staying cool.
“Because we don't know what the bots have done to us. What if we can’t get pregnant? The normal people might have to repopulate the world.”
“Why on my green earth would I ever want them to repopulate?” He wrinkles his nose and I realize his evil plan is more diabolical than I imagined. “Why would I want them spreading their inferiority? Their free will is why we are here.”
Oh God.
He’s going to repopulate the world with us?
He’s going to infect everyone with bots and get us to breed and the babies will be bot babies.
I don’t know what to say about that. Beyond, I have to stop him. At any cost.
“Now, let’s get to the tour.” He links his arm in mine and I don't think I can pull it away. I don’t think my body will let me.
Chapter 17
“And this is the southern rampart.” Liam acts so smug I can barely stand near him without having homicidal thoughts. That or running away as fast as I can with Lee over my shoulder.
Unfortunately, my bots are buzzing with something else. It’s like a Disney movie where the two main characters couldn't be more different, and the woodland creatures are trying to get them to see that they’re a match made in heaven. Except, in this story the woodland creatures are played by tiny robots and the match they’re trying to make leads to death, not mine though. I’m ready for him, I think. I hope. If I can get my bots to agree.