How We Became Wicked

by Alexander Yates

  What the hell are you waiting for? asked Eva.

  “Are we really going to do this?”

  Now you ask this question? Her baby sister sounded utterly disgusted.

  “We don’t have to,” Natalie whispered under her breath. “We can still turn around. Dad never had the vex, and he was just fine.”

  So Dad is a role model now? Eva was starting to fall asleep, but Natalie heard her voice all the same.

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “What I mean is that we don’t actually have to go through with this if we don’t want to. We could just—”

  Stop saying “we.” There isn’t any “we.” I’m just a baby. I don’t get a vote. Whatever you do, and whatever happens after that, is on you.

  “Thanks.”

  And stop talking to yourself! Walk in there, or don’t. But do it fast. Mom must already think that something horrible happened to us.

  “My God . . .”

  Reggie’s voice pulled Natalie out of her own head. She looked up and saw that the singers had already sniffed him out. At least a hundred of the little insects drifted over from the bog to form a bright purple cloud around his body. They bounced against his rubber suit, starving and insistent. But not a single one of them tried to approach Natalie. Even Eva escaped their notice—Natalie’s odor must have covered her baby sister.

  “I didn’t realize . . .” For a moment Reggie struggled to say anything more. “They don’t even try to bite you?”

  Natalie shook her head. “It’s like I’m not even here.”

  With that she took one step into the muck and then another. Her shoes sank, and her socks filled with muddy water. Before her, the singers parted like a curtain.

  “Hey!”

  Reggie rushed to catch up. He splashed from pool to pool, driving the singers into a frenzy of excitement. Before Natalie knew what was happening, he was nearly on top of her. But rather than grabbing for the pistol that was dangling limp in her free hand, Reggie snatched his phone from out of her pocket. Natalie made to elbow him away, but Reggie was already hopping backward and tossing out frantic apologies.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  Natalie raised the pistol, and Reggie’s whole body seemed to shrink. A gloved hand shot up to cover his dark visor. “I’m sorry!” he shrieked once more. “Don’t shoot! I promise I’m not going to call anybody. But I can’t—I can’t not film this.”

  “That was so stupid,” Natalie snapped, shocked not just by what Reggie had done, but by how close she’d come to actually pulling the trigger. “You could have asked for the phone back.”

  “You wouldn’t have given it to me,” Reggie said. “Listen, I know you don’t trust me yet. But we really are out here looking for vexed people. And now I’m seeing one standing in a swarm of singers like it’s no big deal. Not only that, but you’re about to expose your own sister. If getting this on tape means you shoot me, then . . . I mean, obviously I don’t want you to shoot me.”

  Natalie took a breath and lowered the gun. Just aiming the thing made her feel nauseous. “You give the phone back when you’re done,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” Reggie said. “The very second.”

  They continued deeper into the bog. Reggie stayed a few steps ahead of Natalie. He turned the little phone sideways and aimed it at her face, getting close enough to catch the purple in her eyes.

  “This Subject Record is being filmed by Reggie Schutt,” he announced, speaking up to be heard over the droning insects, “principal engineer, deployed searcher, assigned to the Second Research Expedition. Today is the ninth of July, in the twenty-seventh year of the quiet. The time is 18:24. I am filming this in the wicked territory of the Atlantic Northeast. Specifically, we are in a bog outside of the sanctuary of Goldsport, which I will geo-tag on the completed video. As you can see, I am here with a young woman who is demonstrably vexed. Could you say your name for the camera, please?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough,” Reggie said. “I will refer to her, for the purposes of this recording, as Subject U-39. Subject U-40 will be . . .”

  He continued narrating as Natalie approached the center of the bog. All the while, the singers grew ever louder. Their song thrummed through Natalie’s bones like a cat’s purr, and it pulled Eva out of her nap. She blinked up at the gathering swarms, a galaxy of purple stars.

  “No going back now,” Natalie whispered down to her.

  There never was any going back.

  “It’s not going to kill you,” Natalie said.

  Listen. It totally might.

  “Don’t say that.”

  I didn’t.

  Down in her arms, Eva’s eyes widened. Natalie had read that a baby this young wasn’t much more than a bundle of nerves and potential—a little pre-person. But it really looked like her baby sister was reacting to the sight of the singers. Eva’s tiny fingers opened and closed, and her ears seemed to tilt toward the melody. She didn’t cry or even fuss when Natalie set her down upon a clump of grass.

  The singers descended. Some landed on Eva’s arms and on her elbows. Others collected upon her knees and toes. Their little legs, thinner than thread, danced across Eva’s skin. Their mouths pressed and tested. But even when they bit her—even as their little bodies swelled with her blood—Eva didn’t cry, or make a single sound.

  CHAPTER 26

  Subject Records

  NATALIE BRUSHED THE BLOATED, GROGGY singers off of her sister’s little body. She pulled Eva close, and together they waded out of the bog. Reggie suggested that they rest up inside the abandoned bus. Natalie didn’t like the idea of lingering this close to Goldsport, but she was so exhausted that she had to agree. Besides, after what Eva had just been through, she was going to need her bottle. The singer bites were already turning red. Her eyes seemed slightly sunken, and her mouth and tongue were dry.

  Reggie entered the bus first. He’d been strangely deferential ever since they finished up in the bog, handing back the phone the moment the blood-fattened singers flew off. Now he checked the old seat cushions for exposed nails or shards of glass. Then he produced a tiny little spray bottle of quiet from one of the pockets of his bee suit and doused the shattered window frames. It pushed the singers back away from the bus, giving the three of them as much peace as they were likely to get.

  “All set,” he called.

  Natalie climbed up the stairs and settled into the first row, careful not to let Reggie get between her and the exit. The bus was filthy, but at least the seat was comfortable. Natalie set Eva down on the cushion as she made up a bottle. She wolfed down half of the remaining dried fish and tossed the rest to Reggie in the back.

  “I wasn’t going to ask . . . ,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Natalie let herself smile at him over the seat back. “I know. Big breakfast.”

  The baby was dehydrated. Natalie pressed the bottle up to her chapped little mouth. Eva seemed disinterested, barely gumming the rubber nipple. More formula spilled down her cheeks than seemed to go into her mouth.

  The sky darkened outside, making the singers glow all the brighter.

  “When will we know if it worked?” Reggie asked softly from the back of the bus.

  “I don’t know,” Natalie said. “The First Voice says a few weeks, but they’re—”

  “Wrong,” Reggie finished for her. “We guessed that . . .”

  “Yes. My mother told me that sometimes babies would die the same day. Other times it might take months. But you knew. You knew that it hadn’t worked. From the day they got bitten, the babies would be sick and weak. And you knew they wouldn’t ever get better.” Natalie paused, remembering once more the look on her father’s face when he’d learned that they were expecting another child.

  “What about you?”

  Again, Natalie looked at him over the seat back. In her arms, Eva squirmed.

  “I mean . . . when they gave you the vex,” Reggie said. “How long until your mother knew that yo
u were actually going to survive?”

  “Soon,” Natalie said. “As soon as I got these . . .” She tapped a finger just beneath her eye, indicating the purple shards of light pulsing through her irises. In full dark, on an overcast night, the lights made her eyes shine as brightly as a pair of singers in her skull.

  “And your dad?”

  “It took him a while longer.”

  This was an understatement. For the first half of Natalie’s life, her father had treated her like she was a dream that he could wake up from at any moment. It seemed like he’d only recently become convinced that she was actually sticking around. What a stupid joke it was that after so many years of worry and doubt, it was he who had disappeared. But the less Reggie knew about her family, the better.

  “So . . . you’re really sure that the people in Goldsport aren’t wicked?” Natalie asked. Through the shattered window she could just make out the high walls cresting a hill on the far side of the bog. The empty watchtower peeked above the wall like a boy’s face over a fence.

  “I really, really am,” Reggie said. “I trust our source.”

  Natalie still didn’t know what to make of Reggie’s odd story, but the notion that Goldsport might be filled with true people—even if they were nasty—was irresistible to her. More than that, the thought that there might be another vexed girl sent a thrill coursing through Natalie. Could it really be possible that she’d spent her entire life just a few miles away from her own reflection? Could it be that there was a girl underneath all of that glass, her eyes gleaming the same color purple as Natalie’s?

  “Who is it? Your, um, your . . . source?”

  “Someone who used to live there,” Reggie said. “We found him a little while back, wearing the rattiest old bee suit you’ve ever seen. He said that he’d escaped from the sanctuary—said that things had gotten real bad there. There’s a new man in charge, apparently. Not a good man, to hear him tell it.”

  “And you believe him?”

  From the back of the bus, Reggie snorted. “Come on. You’re too young and lucky to be so cynical. He described the whole place in detail, and from what we can tell, it checks out. Anyway, why would he lie about it? I mean, this poor guy is trying to escape from Goldsport. Why the heck would he tell a lie that would make us want to go there?”

  For a while they said nothing more. Reggie finished up the last of the dried fish, and Natalie finally gave up trying to feed Eva the bottle. Night stumbled over the treetops, collapsing into the bog. The swarming singers threw shadows across the trees. In the darkness, Natalie could just barely make out the giant white wall.

  “He’s still with our group, you know,” Reggie said. “He’s like an honorary searcher now. If you’d like to, tomorrow you can meet him. Ask all your questions face-to-face.”

  With all that had happened, Natalie hadn’t given a thought to how she would return home. Until now everything had been about getting safely away from the cabin and then finding the singers. But with those problems solved, the larger one remained. How would she leave these people behind? Also: Should she leave these people behind? Natalie still knew very little about the searchers. But so far she hadn’t learned anything that frightened her.

  “It was nice of you,” Natalie said. “Taking the man in like that.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled softly. “We’re a nice bunch.”

  That’s not something nice people say, Eva mumbled in her sleep.

  Natalie ignored her. For the first time, she was starting to feel comfortable around Reggie, and it caused the floodgates to crack open. There was so much she wanted to know, she could hardly decide where to start.

  “So . . . are there other sanctuaries? Other true people out there?”

  “Fewer than you’d think,” Reggie said. “In all my years out I’ve come across . . . maybe something like twenty different settlements?”

  Natalie gasped. That didn’t sound like a few to her. She’d grown up thinking that the number could be as low as zero. Twenty was a whole world. A universe.

  “Most of them are tiny, just a handful of families,” Reggie continued. “But we’ve come across a few that are as big as towns. A thousand true souls, maybe more. Goldsport would be on the smaller side.”

  “And the wicked?”

  Reggie sighed. “More than you’d think, unfortunately. The cities are all crawling with them. But that doesn’t mean the countryside is safe, either. You’re liable to bump into a wanderer almost anywhere. It’s worst out on the prairie. For some reason they seem drawn to the old farmland. They’re not great at . . . They can’t really get organized, the wicked. It’s not like they’re growing corn and potatoes or raising hogs or anything. I did see one driving a tractor once, but it wasn’t a minute before he got distracted and crashed it into a pond. But when it comes to basic stuff like picking fruit off trees or shooting a deer and cooking it up, they do all right. I swear there are a few places out west where you feel like you’ve gone back to the time of the hunter-gatherers. Except for all the old T-shirts and sneakers and baseball caps.” Reggie chortled.

  “And what about where you come from?”

  “Hey, now,” Reggie said, “this is getting a little one-sided, here. How about now I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Natalie said, her eyes still focused on the patch of darkness where the Goldsport gates were.

  “Thanks. This has been bugging me for a while, actually. Why the heck did you have to come all the way out here just to give your baby sister the vex?”

  “No singers on the island,” Natalie said. She realized, the instant the words leapt stupidly from her mouth, that this had been a mistake. She’d let her guard drop, and Reggie had caught her.

  “Oh yeah?” he asked, totally casually. “What island is that?”

  “It’s far away,” Natalie said, a breath too quickly.

  Not a great recovery.

  “That’s odd,” Reggie said. “You must be a really fast kayaker, then.”

  “I am,” Natalie said, wincing.

  • • •

  Reggie fell asleep soon after. His snores, amplified by the plastic and rubber dome of his bonnet, filled the bus. Eva squirmed atop the shredded seat. Natalie felt her downy little head and found it hot. Whatever was going to happen to Eva, it had already started. There were only two ways it could go.

  “You’re going to make it,” Natalie whispered.

  Leave me alone. I’m trying to sleep, Eva raged.

  “You’re going to be just like your big sister.”

  Sucks for me, Eva said. Then, in her real voice, she let out a soft whimper. Her fever was inching higher.

  Outside, the singers spread into the nighttime forest, looking for deer and moose and birds to feed on, winding through the woods in purple ribbons. Natalie listened to their song, to the wind in the trees, to an owl in the hills above Goldsport, to Reggie snoring away in his bee suit. She checked on Eva every few minutes, to gauge her temperature. It seemed as though time were passing very slowly, but then she checked the clock on Reggie’s phone and saw that it was suddenly three in the morning. Had she slept? Natalie couldn’t remember nodding off.

  She started to fiddle with Reggie’s phone to keep herself awake. The device was a marvel—the way light jumped around at the slightest press of Natalie’s fingers, reshuffling like sheets of colored ice. She knew that these things used to be everywhere in the world before. They had something like it back on Puffin Island, salvaged on a foraging trip to the mainland. Once, Natalie’s dad had managed to bring it back to life by connecting it directly to the solar rig on the roof on their bunkhouse. It didn’t last—the splintered screen sizzled, blinked, and died in less than a minute. Still, it was a hell of a thing to see. Even Natalie’s wicked grandpa, who’d been watching from the lamp room of the lighthouse, had applauded.

  “Text me your number!” he’d hollered.

  But Reggie’s device seemed different—this wasn’t some brittle antique. The
sides were worn, and there was a crack in the corner of the screen, but other than that it looked to be in excellent working condition. What kind of place did he come from that could make and sustain a marvel like this?

  Natalie opened the map again and traced the yellow line back across the old state border. She thumbed across singer swarms and radio towers. She followed the searchers’ path backward as it ducked and swerved, cutting across open country and keeping distance from big cities. It finally terminated somewhere in old California, deep in the heart of the Quiet Lands.

  She closed the map and was about to put the phone down when something else on the screen caught her attention—SUBJECT RECORDS. Natalie pressed on the little icon, opening a kind of list with pictures and text. She guessed that these must be videos, just like the one Reggie had filmed of her and Eva some hours ago. The videos were sorted into three categories: SUBJECTS, UNDETERMINED; SUBJECTS, WICKED; and SUBJECTS, TRUE. Natalie selected the most recent one and watched herself carrying her baby sister into the bog. She watched, once more, as the singers descended. The picture got wobbly at that point. Reggie had been so excited that he couldn’t hold the phone steady.

  Natalie scrolled back through the other records. By far most of the subjects had been categorized as wicked, but there were also a few others within the bunch. She tried clicking one of the videos marked “true,” and she was met with the sight of a middle-aged woman sitting on a metal folding chair. The woman held an open tin of peaches in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other. She wore a clean dress, a pair of tape-mended eyeglasses, and a look of profound relief. Her lips moved soundlessly as she answered questions from someone who was off camera.

  The phone was still on silent. Natalie stopped the video and glanced back at Reggie. He was slumped sideways in the last row, looking like a deflated yellow raft. This unexpected opportunity to snoop was too good to pass up, but Natalie couldn’t risk waking him by turning the volume on.

  She lifted herself up off the creaky bus seat as carefully as she could. Waking Eva would have caused a screaming fit, so Natalie left her on the tattered cushion. She padded down the stairs, stepped lightly upon the asphalt, and crept a few short paces down the road. Then she set the volume to low and continued playing the video.