How We Became Wicked

by Alexander Yates

  Be careful, Eva whispered in her mind. You can do this.

  “Don’t you think you’d be better off babysitting the new guy?” the man asked, shoving his arm ever deeper into the device.

  Natalie shifted Eva to her left arm. She took a long step toward the open backpack, reached inside, and pulled out the revolver. She peeled off the holster with her teeth, checked the cylinder to see that it was loaded, flipped the safety, and then sighted it square at the stranger’s back.

  “Be quiet,” she whispered.

  The man only cocked his head. Then he pulled his arm out of the guts of the device, hoisted himself up, and turned to face her.

  “Son of a . . .” He trailed off. He didn’t exactly sound shocked—more sort of bemused. And certainly not the least bit frightened, which Natalie found unsettling. The man made a movement as though to run a hand through his hair, but his glove only bounced dumbly against his helmet.

  “Well, now,” he said. “It’s been a little while since I’ve seen one of you. I mean, out in the open like this. Free-range.”

  “I told you to be quiet,” Natalie said.

  “Yup, you sure did,” the man answered. His tone had gone soft, almost velvety. “Heard you loud and clear—message transmitted and received. I’m Reggie. It’s super to meet you.” The man named Reggie offered up his rubber palm for a handshake. “Probably be easier to make friends if you set that gun down,” he offered.

  Natalie stayed exactly where she was. After a long moment of silence, Reggie dropped his outstretched hand. Then he tilted his visor up toward the trees and pointed. “Oh—wow! There’s a big owl up there. Take a look!”

  Natalie just stared at him, baffled.

  “It’s got a—what’s that?” Reggie went on, shifting his weight excitedly from one boot to the other. “It’s eating a rabbit! Holy cow, you’ve got to see this. There’s a big owl, right behind you, eating a freaking rabbit or something!”

  “No there isn’t,” Natalie said. “Please. Be. Quiet.”

  “Oh . . . yeah,” Reggie said. His body tilted forward and back. His gloved fingers drummed his thighs. Why the hell was he so relaxed? “You’re totally right—that’s just a branch, isn’t it? Branch.” He bopped the palm of his hand against the top of his visor. “Hey,” Reggie continued, “you know what would be maybe a lot of fun? How about we start a fire? I’ve got some butane in my bag, if you just—”

  The man took a step toward his open backpack. Natalie’s arm tightened. “If you get any closer, I promise I’m going to shoot you.”

  “Ah. Okay.” Reggie eased his foot backward. “But it’s just . . . I know a cabin nearby. There are people sleeping inside. We could burn them all up and everything. They might try to get out, but, like, we could shoot them. You could shoot them. I bet they’d scream,” he added, as though this might seal the deal.

  With that grim offer, the man’s behavior finally made sense. He was treating Natalie the same way she would treat her own grandfather.

  “I’m not wicked,” she said.

  For a long while Reggie said nothing. There was a moment of deep, unpleasant silence—no voices, no birds, no singers, no song.

  “What do you want?” Reggie asked.

  “I want to not shoot you.” Natalie intoned the words slowly, deliberately. “I really don’t want to do that. But I need you to understand that I will if I have to.”

  Reggie’s arms hung slack at his sides. Natalie could see the shadow of his head tilting this way and that within the dark cavern of his bonnet. Unable to believe what he was seeing and hearing.

  “What do you want?” he asked again.

  “I want to get away from that cabin,” Natalie said, “and all of you.”

  “What do you—”

  “Listen. You can ask me that question all day, and I’m not going to say anything awful. Because I’m not wicked.”

  “But you’re not . . . You’re naked out here.”

  “I’m vexed,” she said.

  At this Reggie went still. It was freaking Natalie out that she couldn’t see his face.

  “Take your bonnet off,” she said.

  “My what?”

  “Your bonnet—your helmet,” she said. “Take it off and throw it here.”

  Slowly Reggie lifted his hands up to his collar and unzipped the seal on his bonnet. Then he pulled it off and tossed the rubber thing on the dead grass between them. He was younger than Natalie had expected. He had a soft, pale face and a beard so blond that it was almost invisible. And just like the other stranger back at the cabin, Reggie bore a color tattoo of a singer on his neck.

  At first he just blinked at her, as though unsure of what he was seeing. The first thing he noticed was her eyes—he must not have been able to see their purple glow through his tinted visor.

  “What’s wrong with your—”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s a side effect.”

  “Of the vex . . . ,” he said, lingering over the word like it came from some forgotten, holy language. “You’re . . . vexed.”

  His gaze drifted to Natalie’s right hand, clutching the revolver. Then across to her left arm, holding Eva. He squinted, apparently unable to puzzle out what it might be.

  “You’re vexed,” he repeated, “and you have a baby.”

  “She’s my sister,” Natalie said.

  “Your sister . . . ,” Reggie said. He looked like he needed to sit down. His hands reached blindly behind him, groping about until they found the edge of the generator-like device. He lowered himself to the dead ground, his knees shaking. “You’re vexed,” he repeated again. A broad, stupid grin was slowly spreading across his frizzy, pale face. “You have a sister.”

  Then a small, metallic voice erupted from inside his backpack. “Reggie!” It sounded like the woman—Miranda. “Reggie,” she repeated. “Check in.”

  Reggie just sat there, smiling. Keeping the revolver aimed in his general direction, Natalie hooked one of the backpack straps with the tip of her boot and pulled it close. Squatting down, she rested Eva on the grass and began rooting through the tools with her free hand. She pulled out a strange little radio that was no bigger than an oyster shell—identical to the one Miranda had worn on her belt. It had a brightly lit screen, dotted with colorful little boxes and pictures. This, Natalie knew, was called a phone. But she had never seen one that still worked.

  “Reggie!” Miranda called again, her voice slipping smoothly out of the phone. “Get your head out of the disperser and check in. Danny found a kayak down by the jetty. Somebody’s been here.”

  “Don’t touch the screen,” Reggie said. He’d tipped his head back and was staring up at the bare canopy, still beaming with joy. “As long as you don’t touch it, they won’t be able to hear you.”

  Natalie didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but before she could make up her mind, he spoke again.

  “Help me, Miranda!” Reggie said, his voice not quite loud enough to be called a yell. “There’s a girl holding a gun in my face.”

  “Reggie, I swear,” the woman said. “If you’ve got me on mute again, I’m going to whoop your ass.”

  “See? She can’t hear us.” Then Reggie repeated the word: “Freaking vexed.” He seemed to marvel over the very sound of it.

  Natalie slipped the phone into her pocket, careful not to bump the screen as she did so. Then she scooped Eva—amazingly perfect, amazingly quiet—back up, and together they crouched over the open knapsack to see if there was anything else worth taking. Meanwhile, Miranda continued to heckle Reggie from inside Natalie’s pocket.

  “You know . . . you really don’t need to be afraid of her,” he said. “Or any of us, for that matter.” Reggie looked directly at her. “None of us would hurt you. Not ever.”

  Natalie had been so frightened for so long that a part of her desperately wanted to believe him. From being locked up in the lighthouse, to helping her mother through the delivery, to escaping the island with the baby, t
o this. It would be so, so much simpler to take a leap of faith and simply trust this Reggie person. The fact that he looked only a little bit older than her and not the least bit scary made it all the more tempting.

  “I can’t take your word for it,” she finally said. Even to herself, Natalie sounded sad about that. But it was done, and she had to get moving. Now that Reggie’s group knew someone had been in the cabin, they’d no doubt start searching the woods. “Where are the singers?”

  Reggie seemed like he didn’t understand the question.

  “I need to find them,” she said. “These woods should be full of them.”

  “Not anymore,” Reggie said, tapping the boxy contraption that he’d been trying to fix. Natalie had already guessed that the device was the reason this forest had fallen silent. That blue gunk sticking to the top of the high rotor looked and smelled an awful lot like quiet. The recipe for this insecticide was repeated on every third broadcast of The First Voice, and Natalie’s father used to brew up a batch for himself whenever they made a scavenging trip to the mainland—he was the only one in their family who needed it, after all. This machine must have been designed to spray quiet out across the treetops. It kept the singers away, but it also killed all the trees and plants.

  “Where did they go?”

  Reggie shrugged within his bee suit. “There aren’t any close by. We have dispersers running every half mile or so. The woods around the highway are pretty safe too. You’d have to go as far as the bog before you hit a swarm.”

  Natalie nodded. He must have been talking about the swampland outside of Goldsport. “Is it far?” she asked.

  “Ten miles, maybe?” he said. “But why would you want to . . . ? Oh. Oh, shit.” Reggie pushed himself up off of his butt and stood. “The kid isn’t vexed,” he said.

  “Not yet,” Natalie said.

  “Congratulations, Reggie!” Miranda snapped through the phone. “You’ve just given up your next two leave rotations. Danny is coming to get you, and he has my permission to smack you in the head.”

  “I have to go now,” Natalie said.

  “You really, really don’t,” Reggie said, pleading. He leaned forward, as though he wanted to take a step toward her. Then, glancing once more at the pistol in Natalie’s hand, he resisted. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “I don’t know that,” Natalie said. “I don’t know anything about you.” Then she nodded toward the veiled bonnet for Reggie’s bee suit, lying crumpled on the dead grass. “Toss that to me,” she said.

  “Why?” Reggie asked. “You don’t need it.”

  “You will,” Natalie said. “You’re going to come with us. I can’t have you running back to the cabin and telling all of your friends where we went.”

  “Well, damn.” Reggie shook his head. “I should have thought of that.” He did as he was told, picking up the bonnet and tossing it to Natalie’s feet.

  “I promise you that I’m telling the truth . . . ,” he said, trying one last time to win her over. “I mean . . . you’re vexed, for heaven’s sake! Hurting you is the last thing we would ever do.”

  Again, Natalie almost surrendered to it. She wanted so badly to believe him.

  Don’t, Eva said.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Wilted Woods

  THEY MOVED SILENTLY THROUGH THE forest. Natalie made Reggie lead, and she kept the pistol tight in her grip. A short time later, they could hear hollering in the distance. Several voices, high and desperate.

  “Reggie!”

  There was a pause as the strangers waited for an answer.

  “Reggie!”

  “My friends must’ve found my gear,” Reggie said. “They’re going to think that somebody snatched me.” After a pause, he let out a stifled giggle. “Though I guess . . . they’re not wrong about that, are they? There’s a word for what you’re doing, girl. Kidnapping.”

  “It’s only until we get to the singers,” Natalie said, glancing quickly behind them. She saw nothing but bald, wrinkled trees.

  “And then what will happen?” Reggie asked. He turned around to face her, walking backward. All of his shock had melted away, and what remained could only be called delight. But Natalie couldn’t tell if it was real, or just an act. Just a way to keep her off-balance.

  “Will you . . . let me go?” Reggie asked.

  “Of course I will,” Natalie said.

  “Promise?” He cocked his head and gave her a look that was almost cutesy. Was he trying to be friendly? Or was this . . . Was it flirting? Either way, she didn’t like it.

  “Stop talking,” Natalie said.

  “Roger that,” Reggie said. Then, confidingly: “That means ‘understood.’ ”

  Moments later they came upon the small, crumbling highway. Here there was another disperser, looming over a grove of dry pine saplings on the far embankment. This one seemed to be working just fine—the rotor spun atop the aluminum pole, hissing out a faint blue spray of quiet in all directions. Natalie could smell the sharp, soapy tang as they approached. Eva must have smelled it too, because she began to twist about in Natalie’s grip. Her closed eyes clenched like little fists, and she whimpered.

  “You get used to the smell,” Reggie said, forgetting that he’d agreed to shut up only minutes before. “I hardly even notice it anymore. And when I do . . .” He raised his nostrils up into the air, sniffing it the way you might sniff a newly bloomed wild rose. “It just reminds me of home.”

  He’s baiting you, Eva said. He wants you to ask questions. He wants you distracted.

  “I know,” Natalie whispered back.

  “Are you . . . ? Are you talking to that baby?” Reggie asked.

  Shit. Natalie looked up at him. “I’m not interested in where you come from.”

  “That is a lie,” Reggie said. “But whatever. I for one don’t mind admitting that I’m curious about where you and your sister come from. I’m interested in a lot of things about you. Like . . . maybe your names, for starters?”

  Natalie stayed silent long enough to make a point. Then she asked: “Why the bee suit?”

  “The what?”

  “If you’ve chased all of the singers out of these woods, why do you people still wear bee suits?”

  “Oh, you mean my hazmat?” Reggie pinched at the yellow rubber hanging loose about his hips. “Well, it might be quiet here, but we’re on the move most of the time. And we can’t cover the whole world in quiet. So, you know, better safe than sorry. Speaking of that . . . When we get closer to the bog, I’m gonna need my helmet back.”

  “When you need it, you’ll get it,” Natalie said.

  Reggie turned south on the little highway, leading them down through the brittle woods. Just as he’d said, the way was lined with dispersers—within an hour they’d passed three. The shining rotors at the top of these strange devices spun rhythmically, hurling blue mist into the treetops. Meanwhile, scattered here and there across the highway embankments, there were older machines. Natalie saw everything from tractors to army jeeps, long since plundered for parts and abandoned to rust. A mobile home lay just off the highway, fronted by a shattered wire fence. White crescents of human bone lay scattered across the brown yard.

  Sights like this were a fact of life in the wicked world. Once, when Natalie was just seven years old, a drifting yacht had beached itself on the shores of Puffin Island. It had been a good day for her family—they’d salvaged enough equipment and preserved food from that ship to last a full year. But there were people on the yacht too. Twists of ragged cloth and withered fingers, entombed in the stately cabins. They had all died in their beds, skulls cracked open like crab shells. Natalie’s parents’ best guess was that one of the crew had fallen wicked and killed them in their sleep.

  It wasn’t the corpses themselves that had upset Natalie when she was a little girl. It was the sight of those bare, exposed bones. The jagged ridges of cracked skull. The leg sticking out from beneath a blanket, bald as driftwood. It was odd to t
hink that throughout their entire lives, these people had been walking around full of these smooth, hard bones. That same shin had swung and kicked and stepped. Maybe it had danced or been propped up on a table after a long day of work. Stranger still was the thought that Natalie was also filled with these things. One day she would be gone, but her bones would stick around. Maybe in a Natalie-shaped pile, the way they’d been on that drifting yacht. Maybe scattered like they were in this sad, brown garden. Little pieces of herself, lingering in the world. Bits of what she used to be, as foreign as wood or stone.

  And Eva? What about her bones, still soft and growing inside her?

  Get it together, her sister hissed, impatient.

  Natalie shook the thoughts away, and they continued down the road.

  • • •

  For a long time they passed nothing but the mournful shells of trees. Then, after a few hours of walking, Reggie’s phone began to speak again. “Hey there, stranger,” came the soft, kindly whispers from inside Natalie’s pocket. “We bet you must be lonely out there. We bet you must be hungry. Why don’t you bring our friend back, so we can cut him up for you? There’s plenty of meat on him for everybody.”

  Clearly, Reggie’s group had decided that he’d been taken by the wicked.

  “What are we going to do with all of these knives?” they asked.

  “We found all these knives, but we can’t carry them all!”

  “Do you want some of our knives, maybe?”

  “Hey, just wondering—did you kill our friend yet? Did you kill our Reggie?”

  “Gosh, we hope not.”

  “We want to help! Maybe with all these knives?”

  “We want to give you a back rub, too.”

  “We want to give you a really awesome haircut.”

  “Hey, guess what! Did you know that today is Christmas Eve?”

  “We bet you didn’t know that!”