Feral (23 page)

When she opened her eyes, she saw some of the others dancing like jungle savages around the entrance of the cavern—spinning, jumping, bumping chests and shoulders.
 
Toni and the group he left with were there, the center of activity.
 
His spear was gone now. Two gun belts hung crisscrossed low on his hips.
 
The guns slapped against his thighs as he danced.
 
His hands were covered with blood.
 
A shiny badge hung crooked from the front of his old T-shirt.

A cop
, Charity thought.
 
He killed a cop
.

She stood warily, afraid.
 
The truth came to her then.
 
They were killers, all of them, and if she were going to stay, she would have to become just like them.

She walked toward them, slowly, clutching her scissors in front of her chest like a crucifix.
 
They seemed to warm in her hands.
 
Around her the children began to settle, kids standing alone or in clusters watched her expectantly, sensing something to come.
 
She felt it too, a tension in the air that hadn't been there a few moments before.
 
At the mouth of the tunnel the dancing continued, but seemed to slow, like a magic trick.
 
She realized that the dancing had not slowed at all, her perception of it had sped up.
 
She felt her senses open all the way; her skin itched, her mouth felt dry, her head began to pound and every sound was suddenly too loud.

It's time
.

Jenny's voice drowned out everything else, but the Brat Queen had not spoken aloud.
 
It was in Charity's head.

She saw Ginger in the crowd, the only body not spinning and slamming in the slow-motion frenzy.
 
Ginger lifted the gun toward Charity, a smile on her pudgy face, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing, the gun was empty.

Around them, the others realized what was happening and stilled.

Thank you
, Charity thought.
 
The gun was empty; she had counted right.

The sly smile didn't leave Ginger's face.
 
She dropped the gun and lunged at Toni, snatching a gun from his low-hung holsters and shoving him aside.
 
She raised the gun toward Charity and fired.

There was a deafening
twang
as the slug hit stone behind Charity and ricocheted, sending shards in all directions.

Toni shouted, lunged at Ginger, but the others held him back.

There was another loud report and Charity heard the whine of the slug as it passed her.
 
Strangely, she also saw it from the corner of her eye as it passed.
 
Another bang, distorted, like a record played on its lowest speed, and she saw the ball of lead flying toward her.
 
She ducked and watched it fly over her head.
 
It seemed everything had slowed except for her.
 
When she looked back to the crowd she saw Ginger standing alone, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
 
Gun still raised, she fired again, and again.

Charity dodged them easily and charged with a cry of rage.
 
She held the scissors over her head like a dagger.
 
The cavern became a blur of gray stone dotted with staring pink faces and the sluggish dancing of torchlight.
 
All sound melted together into a low, liquid buzz.
 
Only the sounds of her enraged shrieks were real.
 
At some point, Charity's feet left the ground, but she didn't notice.
 
The only thing she saw was the round, freckled face of the girl who was so casually trying to kill her, eyes wide and fearful, mouth hanging open in a dumb O of surprise.

Charity saw this through a shrinking tunnel of gray, and then the sound of Ginger's shrieks of pain brought everything back into sharp focus.
 
For a second everything froze, and then in an instant the rest of the world caught up with her.

There was total silence, no music and no dancing.
 
Then Ginger screamed again, and this time it was a red, bubbling sound.
 
Blood dribbled slowly from the corner of her open mouth.
 
She looked down, and Charity followed her gaze to her own hand.
 
She still clutched the scissors, stabbed to the handle into Ginger's chest.

Ginger screamed again, this time feebly, barely audible, then fell away.
 
The scissors pulled from the wound with the scrape of metal against bone.
 
She fell and rolled across the stone like a rag doll, and was still.

No one spoke and the room went darker as Ginger's torch flickered and died.
 
A second later the cavern brightened again as a new torch appeared–Charity's torch.

Charity stood over Ginger's body, wanting to feel happy that she was alive, wanting to feel angry that the others had let this happen, wanting to feel horrible about what she had done.
 
But she felt nothing.
 
She bent down slowly, switching the bloody scissors to her left hand, and searched Ginger's coat pockets.
 
She found the cell phone and put it in her own pocket.
 
Now she was a killer too, and she realized she didn't care.

I guess I'm one of them now
.

She rose to her feet and the others shrunk.
 
Even Toni stepped back from her a little fearfully.

Charity left them without a word, walked toward her new place by Jenny's throne.
 
Her torch burned with an angry intensity before her stone seat.
 
She picked it up and ran to the far end of the cavern, through the tunnel, to where she did not know, but away from all the staring eyes of her new family.

S
he found nothing unusual in the narrow tunnel, just rock and shadow.
 
There were several openings in the wall along the way, low to the ground so she would have to get on her hands and knees to crawl in to explore them.
 
After several minutes of running, the tunnel did not narrow.
 
It did not turn or peter out.
 
When she tired of running, when she felt enough distance between her and the others, she slowed, and then stopped.
 
A few feet ahead of her to her right, low to the rough floor, was another of those dark egresses.

She wiped the scissors across her shirt then stuck them through her belt loop again.
 
The shirt was new a few days ago, but now it was ruined by dirt, grass stains, and blood.

She crouched before the opening and stabbed the torch in, lighting a small, amorphous room.
 
It was empty so she crawled in on her hands and knees.
 
She
propped
her torch (which should have burned her with its radiant heat in such close quarters, but did not) between a pair of large stones, and rested against the wall.

She wasn't hungry anymore; the thought of food made her want to puke, even though her stomach was empty.
 
She had just killed a girl, had done so without a second thought.
 
She had done it as easily as one would squish a spider even though Ginger had a gun and she did not.
 
How
had she done it?

“What's happening to me?” she asked aloud.

She closed her eyes and played the murder back in her mind, over and over like something she had watched from outside her body.
 
She had seen another kill like that—with the speed and thoughtlessness of a natural, or supernatural, predator.

She pulled the Bogey Man's weapon from under her belt and regarded it dourly.
 
She cast it into the shadows at the other end of the room.
 
It landed, blades open and shining in the torchlight.

“Charity!”
 
The sound of Toni's voice startled her.

She considered whether to answer him.
 
Toni was her only friend down here, and he had tried to help her when Ginger pulled his gun on her. He didn't give her the time to decide.
 
She saw the flicker of his torch in the passage a second before he poked his head into the opening.

“Room for two?” he asked, and crawled inside without waiting for her answer.
 
“You kicked ass,” he said.
 
“How did you do that?”

“You sound happy about it,” she said.
 
“You wanted me to kill her, didn't you?
 
Is that why you chose me?”

Toni recoiled, a look of surprise plain on his young rogue's face.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“I didn't want her dead.”
 
He settled against the wall across from Charity, his gaze turning briefly to the gleaming crimson blades of the scissors, then back to her face.
 
“She started it though.
 
She didn't have to take the contest that far, so it's her fault.”

He was a terrible liar.
 
He knew Ginger would take the contest deadly serious, and even though he said he didn't want to see her dead, he didn't answer Charity's other question.
 
Charity knew he liked her, had a crush on her almost the same way the Bogey Man did.
 
He had wanted to see her kill, and was thrilled at how good she was at it.

She tried to ignore him, pulled the cell phone from her pocket and played with it.
 
She found the Power button and turned it on, its sudden green glow painting the walls around her.
 
She read the menu displayed on the glowing screen with a forced indifference.
 
She had never been to school, and no one had taught her to read.
 
Like other things, she had just picked it up somewhere along the way.
 
The way she knew lots of things, like her father's name being Gordon.

She
scrolled
down to the contact sub-menu and pushed Select.
 
There were close to a dozen entries in his contact list.
Gordon's Cell #
was second down from the top.
 
She thought her father's number might be there—it was his friend's phone, after all.
 
But actually seeing it there, and knowing she could talk to him and Shannon with the push of a button made her heart flutter.
 
She wanted to talk to them again, but she was mad at them for abandoning her

“What's that?” Toni asked, scooting toward her for a closer look.

“Nothing.”
 
She pushed the power button again before he could get closer and shoved the palm-sized phone into her pocket.

“You have to go back, Charity.
 
They're all waiting for you.
 
Jenny is waiting for you.”

“Do I?” she asked indifferently.
 
She looked away from him, eyes resting on her bloodied weapon.
 
The scissors were gone; Toni had taken them while she was playing with the phone.

Good
, she thought.
 
He can have them.
 
I don't care
.

But she did.
 
She hated them, hated the way they warmed instantly to her touch, hated the way they had helped her kill. But they were hers.

“Don't be mad,” Toni said.
 
His voice was reproachful but laced with guilt.

“I am,” she said simply, then grabbed her torch and crawled for the exit.
 
“C'mon,” she said.
 
“We don't want to keep them waiting.”

W
hen Charity and Toni stepped back into the main cavern, it was as if nothing had happened.
 
The children talked and played.
 
They ate hamburgers and tacos from a cluster of bags on a small stone pedestal next to the radio, and despite Charity's previous disgust, the sight of food made her stomach gurgle.
 
The radio was silent; she guessed the batteries had finally run out.

Ginger's body was gone, and so was her extinguished torch.

Where did they put her body
? she wondered, and realized she already knew.
 
Where they had put the body of her father's friend and the cop Toni had killed.
 
In the Never.
 
She wondered what
the
Never really was, what might be inside of it.

You fall into the
never
and you'll never come back
, Toni had said.

Some of the others saw them coming, Toni leading the way toward Jenny's empty throne.
 
There was no sign of Feral Park's Brat Queen.
 
Charity knew that meant nothing; she was there somewhere, watching.

Toni walked to his lesser throne to the right of Jenny's and slid the butt of his torch into the niche at its foot.
 
He motioned Charity to do the same, and she did.