Shadows (4 page)
Authors: Ilsa J. Bick
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Horror, #Young Adult, #Adventure, #Fantasy
Something slammed against her right temple. The blow was so vicious, so stunning, Alex’s mind blanked and stuttered the way a bad CD skips a track. She went down like a stone, the skull tumbling from her nerveless fingers. Through a swirl of pain, she saw Slash, the girl with the scar, standing over her, a cocked fist ready to strike again.
Even if Alex could have fought back, Acne never gave her the chance. He dropped onto her legs. A moment later, Slash straddled her chest and ground her knees into Alex’s shoulders. A surge of white-hot pain flooded her chest, and Alex let out an agonized shout as Slash forced Alex’s wounded left arm to straighten, tacking Alex’s wrist to the snow with both hands.
Wolf loomed. He made sure she saw the knife, too. But it was when he drew back and she saw where he stood and read the tilt and angle of his body that Alex finally understood what would happen next.
He wasn’t going to kill her, not yet. Oh no. Too easy. Too quick. First, he would chop off her arm.
God, no,
no
!
Her heart boomed. Frantic, she heaved and surged, but it was a waste of energy. The others were too heavy. She was pinned, and this was how it was going to end: in the snow, arms and limbs hacked away, her body emptying her life in a hot red river that would melt through the snow until there was nothing more for her heart to pump. She’d done enough amputations with Kincaid to know that you had to clamp off those arteries fast before they could spring back into muscle, or else you might as well just cut the poor guy’s throat. But what if the Changed were so good at this that they knew which arteries to pinch? What if they kept her from dying fast and made her linger, carving her up, eating her alive, one juicy, quivering mouthful at a time? She might last a long, long time, because she didn’t think anyone could die from pain. Maybe, for them, watching her suffer was part of the fun.
The corn knife flashed before her eyes. In her terror, the blade seemed a foot long and then ten feet and then a mile. Her vision was so keen that she picked out every nick, every scar where that razor-sharp edge had bitten into bone. The sewage stink of the Changed mushroomed and swelled—
And then she smelled something else, just behind that roadkill reek: not turpentine or resin, but a misty swarm of shadows from the deepest woods on the coldest, darkest night.
It was a scent she also knew, very well.
No, it can’t be.
This close, she could make out the boy’s eyes, dark and deep as pits behind that wolf-skin mask.
He’s got the same eyes, the same scent. But that’s crazy, that’s—
The knife hacked down with a whir.
The heavy steel blade buried itself in snow with a meaty, muffled
boomph.
A quick lightning jag of heat and fresh pain streaked across her chest and blazed into her jaw. Her vision flashed dead-white, then fractured, turning jagged as a single great talon of pain dug. Yet there was a clarity in her mind, like a brilliant pane of clear glass, and she realized that while the pain was very bad, it was not the bright agony she expected if Wolf had just hacked off her arm.
Her eyes inched left.
Her arm was still there. So was her hand. But Wolf held a scrap of something drippy and wet and very red and—
Oh my God.
Her breath, bottled in her chest, came in a sobbing rush. What Spider had begun, Wolf had finished. Horrified, she could only watch as Wolf inspected a flap of parka and skin and dying muscle.
Her
muscle. Her heart was banging in her ears.
Her
flesh.
With a delicate, almost comical daintiness, Wolf tweezed the shredded, bloody parka as if removing a scrap of butcher paper from a freshly carved steak. Then, palming snow, he swiped the meat clean of gore and held it high, studying that slab of her flesh with a curious, strained intensity, smoothing the skin with his thumb. Looking for . . . what? She couldn’t begin to imagine.
Satisfied, although with what she couldn’t guess, Wolf threw her a quick, speculative look, and she had the insane thought that in another time and place, he might even have winked as if to say,
Watch this.
And then he offered her flesh to Beretta.
Her gorge bolted up her throat. She gagged as Beretta teased the meat with his tongue, lapping her blood the way a kid licks the melt of an ice-cream cone. There was that queer, ripping sound of wet cloth again, and Beretta’s jaws worked and he began to chew.
This isn’t happening; this can’t be happening.
Numb, she watched as they ate, sampling her and licking their lips like those guys on
Top Chef
trying to decide if maybe the sauce needed a tad more salt. She felt her center skidding again. Soon she’d tumble off the thinning ice of her sanity altogether. Or maybe she’d just snap, her mind breaking like a dry twig, and start screaming. They’d have to cut her throat just to shut her up.
Now that they were so close, she also made out those weird, colored rags. They weren’t single pieces but a patchwork sewn together with crude, irregular stitches that reminded her of Frankenstein’s monster.
And the rags were not cloth.
They were leather.
They were skin.
Those colors weren’t
just
colors either, but designs. A withered butterfly. A wrinkled coil of barbed wire. A tattered American flag. In the leather knotted around Wolf ’s throat, she made out a faded red heart and frank done in a fancy, black cursive swoop.
Now she knew why Wolf had used snow to scrub blood from that flap of her skin. He was looking for a good tattoo. The Changed were wearing . . . people.
Oh no no no no no oh God oh God oh God!
A scream balled in her throat as Wolf took the last bit of her flesh and flipped back his cowl. So she saw his face. She got a very, very good look.
No.
Something shifted in a deep crevice of her brain.
No. That’s not right
.
I’m wrong
.
I have to be.
But she wasn’t. God help her, she wasn’t.
The eyes were identical.
So were the nose and the high plains of his cheeks. The face was a carbon copy. So was his mouth. Those lips were the twins of those that had pressed hers, and with a heat that fired a liquid ache in her thighs. The hair was longer but just as black. Even that shadowy scent was the same.
The only difference—and it was huge, because it was the margin between life and death—was a pale pink worm of a scar. The scar meandered from the angle of his left jaw, right below the ear, and then tracked across the hump of his Adam’s apple before its tail disappeared beneath the collar of his parka.
Her parents had enjoyed talking shop at the dinner table. Having listened to her mother, who’d been an emergency room doctor, talk about cases and her cop father chime in with his own, first-responder stories, Alex knew how some people went about suicide and, especially, where to cut and how. Of course, a freak accident—say, a car crash—or a fight or even an operation might have produced the same scar, but she didn’t think so. His skin was otherwise unmarred, too, though she would later wonder about his wrists and arms. Some people also scarred very badly. Thickness didn’t necessarily translate to depth. But working by Kincaid’s side as she had these last few months meant she now knew her fair share of anatomy.
To her eye, this cut had been wicked, a vicious slice long and deep enough to have slashed open the boy’s jugular and, maybe, his carotid. Maybe—probably—both. Cut the carotid and a strong, young heart can empty the body in a crimson jet in a matter of about sixty to ninety seconds. That he hadn’t bled out and had survived . . . well, his parents had probably seen that as a miracle and, maybe, some kind of sign.
By all rights, this boy should be dead. Once upon a time, he’d sure wanted to be. Call it an educated hunch. Later she would wonder what or who had saved him. Later still, she would find her answer, for all the good that would do, lucky her.
Other than the scar, there was no difference. Each could have inhabited either side of a mirror, albeit one with a crack. Each was a carbon copy of the other, perfect and identical in every detail, save that one flaw.
No wonder these Changed circled past Rule. No wonder. Wolf was Chris.
And now, finally, she began to scream.
She’d vomited before bed and then once, quietly, during the night, spitting and retching into a chamber pot until there was nothing left but watery phlegm that burned her nose. Sleep finally spidered over her brain, laying a gray, dreamless web so thick that when the door slammed and the dog started barking, Lena jolted awake in a confused tangle, only half-convinced she’d heard anything at all. What? Her mind was gluey, but the barking didn’t let up. Still druggy with sleep, she winced against the sound. Had to be Ghost. Why was Alex’s dog barking?
“Shut
up
.” Groaning, she rolled, mashing her pillow against her ears. “Lemme sleep, pl—”
“Sarah?” Someone was pounding up the stairs. “Lena? Wake up, wake up!”
“Tori?” Lena struggled to a woozy sit as her door flew open. Tori’s hair was frizzed as a used Brillo pad, and the girl’s eyes were wild. “What—”
“Girl?”
A man’s voice, roaring somewhere downstairs as Ghost kept up his yapping. “Girl, get down here! We need help!”
“What the hell?” Lena’s mouth was sour with vomit. The stink of it hung in a fog over her bed. “Tori, who is that? What’s going on?”
“Chris!”
Tori blurted. Her knuckles jammed against her teeth. “Chris’s
hurt
. They said he’s hurt real
bad.
”
“What?” Now fully alert, Lena swung her legs over the edge of her bed, grimacing as her feet hit hardwood. Even through socks, the floor was icy, colder than it should be. She stood up too quickly, and a sweep of nausea left her dizzy.
Oh God, not now.
Gulping back a surge of rancid bile, she gripped the mattress, steadied herself, and then grabbed her jeans from a bedpost. “How did he get hurt? Where’s Jess?”
“She’s
gone
!” Tori wailed, as Sarah, their third housemate, crowded into the room. “So is Alex!”
“Relax. Alex probably didn’t come back from the hospice, that’s all,” Lena said, shucking her nightgown. Her skin pebbled with gooseflesh and she shivered. Why was it so cold?
“No, no.” Tori shook her head in a vigorous negative. “Her door’s open, but her bed’s still made and—”
“Come on,” Sarah said, as Lena shrugged into a sweatshirt. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
In the kitchen, there were two guards, one bearded and one not, in winter whites. Through the window, Lena spied a third— she thought his name was John—staggering up the side steps.
With a body.
“Oh my God.” Lena’s heart catapulted into her mouth as John ducked inside on a pillow of bitter air. Chris was draped over the guard’s shoulders, and as John staggered across the kitchen, blood drizzled from the boy’s hair to ink the floor in thick, scarlet coins.
“Where can I put him?” John was sweating so much, steam curled from his head.
“This way.” Sarah threw open the wide double doors between the kitchen and Jess’s sitting room. Lurching after, John stooped to ease Chris off his shoulders and onto a couch. “Watch it, watch it,” John chanted as Chris’s weight shifted and his body slid to one side. “Don’t let him—”
“I’ve got him,” Lena said, cradling Chris’s head. His hair was tacky, and she felt the blood squelch between her fingers as she applied pressure. The smudged hollows of his eyes were brown as coffee while his lips were glassy, nearly transparent. A red tongue of blood slicked the right side of his face and dribbled down his neck, and at the sight, she felt her unruly stomach do another slow roll. “What happened?”
“Got kicked in the head.” John was puffing. A large splash of Chris’s blood stained the guard’s shoulders crimson. “Night shied and threw him, and then she let fly. Jess’s hurt, too.”
“What?” Sarah and Lena said at the same time. “How?” Lena asked.
“John, we got to go,” the bearded guard cut in. “We got to get Doc and we got to do it fast before—”
“Just call him on your radio,” Lena said. The battery-powered radios were pre-sixties relics, used sparingly and only in true emergencies, but this surely qualified. She nodded toward the bulky, olive-green handset clipped to John’s belt. “Kincaid could be here in—”
“Can’t do that,” the other guard warned. “Everyone’ll—”
“You think I don’t know that?” John snapped.
“What are you talking about?” Lena asked at the same time that Tori said, “I don’t understand. Why not use your radio?”
John ignored them both. “Nathan’s coming,” he said to the guards. “Someone’s also got to get Jess’s horse.”
“I’m on it,” the bearded guard said.
“Jess was out riding?” Lena said. “
Now?
It’s
freezing
.”
“All right, come on,” John said. He hurried from the room, the guards a step behind.
“Hey, wait a minute.” All Lena knew about head injuries was that they were bad, and Chris was still bleeding. “Chris needs a doctor!”
“And we’ll get him. Just hold tight. We’ll be ba—” But whatever else John said was hacked off by the slam of the kitchen door.
“Hold
tight
?” Tori echoed.
“It’s all we can do,” Sarah tossed over her shoulder as she ducked back into the kitchen. “Lena, don’t let up that pressure. I’ll be right back. Tori, get a fire started in here.”
“This is just wrong,” Lena said. Through the front window, she watched the men boost onto their horses. John’s rifle hung in a bright red scabbard secured to the off-side of a dapple gray, while each guard’s crossbow was fitted to a scabbard off-side and just behind the cantle. The men thundered off toward the woods, leaving Night, Chris’s blood bay, prancing on his tether.
“Wait,” Tori said. She hadn’t made a move toward the hearth. “Aren’t those archers?”
“Yeah,” Lena said—and that was very weird. The archers monitored the woods edging the Zone, which lay southwest of the village. So if the archers were
here,
did that mean Chris had been out
there
?
“Why would Chris be in the Zone? No one’s allowed out there,” Tori wondered aloud, echoing Lena’s thoughts. “The supply party was headed for Wisconsin, and that’s a straight shot
west
. Last I heard, they’re not due back for a couple days.”
“I don’t know.” Lena felt the slow, insistent leak of Chris’s warm blood through her fingers. Where was Sarah with those towels? “I guess Chris got back early.”
“But why would he go through the Zone?” Tori persisted. “He’s got to know that the guards would never allow him back into the village if he came that way.”
“Maybe he didn’t come that way,” Lena said.
“But then what?” Tori pressed.
“I don’t know,” Lena said again, and then looked over as Sarah bustled up with dish towels. “Do you understand any of this?”
“No. Here, let up a second,” Sarah said, slipping a balled towel against Chris’s head and then nodding at Lena. “Okay, hold that while I tie it down.”
“One of us has to go for Kincaid,” Lena said as Sarah twisted a second towel and then looped it around Chris’s head in a makeshift bandage.
“No, what we’ve got to do now is tend to Chris,” said Sarah.
“But you don’t need two of us.” Shuddering, Lena smeared her sticky palm on her thigh, painting her jeans with a purple exclamation mark. “I’ll get Kincaid. On Night, I could be there in fifteen, twenty minutes max.”
“I need you here.”
“More than we need a doctor?”
“Yes.” Sarah pushed up from the couch. “We’ve got to strip him down, see if he’s hurt anywhere else. I’ll get some hot water. I filled the reservoir last night, so we—”
“You can’t,” Tori broke in. “There’s no hot water. The stove’s out. That’s why it’s so cold in the house.”
“What?” Sarah stared. “Jess never lets the stove go.”
“Well, she did last night, which is strange, because I know she was up late. I came down for some tea a little after midnight, and Nathan was inside, with Jess. They were in the kitchen, and I kind of overheard them . . . ,” Tori fumbled. “You know, on the stairs.”
“You mean, you were eavesdropping,” Sarah said.
Tori flushed to the roots of her hair. “Well, I—”
“Oh, shut up, Sarah,” Lena said. “What did they say, Tori?”
“Nathan said that Greg brought in a boy, a Spared, and he was hurt pretty bad.”
“A boy?” That grabbed Lena’s attention. “When? From where? Last night?”
“No. Afternoon. And I think he came from around Oren, but I-I’m not sure. I didn’t get the rest because Jess must’ve heard me and she told Nathan to hush and then I . . .” Tori’s throat moved in a nervous swallow. “You know, I went back to my room.” “So you wouldn’t be caught spying,” Sarah said.
“God, would you give it a
rest
?” Lena snapped. To Tori: “Did you hear anything else?”
“No, but there was something else kind of weird.” Tori’s forehead crinkled in a sudden frown. “I could’ve sworn that Alex’s door was shut last night. So why is it open now?”
“Because Alex probably stayed to help Kincaid, and Jess got some clothes together for her, that’s why,” Sarah said, briskly. “There’s no mystery here, and we have things to do now. You get the fire going, Tori. I’ll see to the woodstove.” Sarah looked at Lena. “We’ll need clean cloths. Bandages, too, and whatever else you can find. The first-aid kit’s in Jess’s bathroom, linen closet, second shelf.”
Now Lena didn’t want to leave. If Chris regained consciousness and if they
had
found a Spared . . .
Slow down. You don’t know what this means. But Chris kept his word. He’s back early. He went to Oren, and maybe the boy he found—
“Lena.” She looked up to see Sarah studying her with narrowed eyes. “What?” Sarah demanded.
“Nothing.” She turned away before Sarah could ask anything more and pushed into the kitchen. Prancing up, tail wagging furiously, Ghost suddenly skidded to a halt five feet away.
“What is it, boy?” The Weimaraner’s body was rigid, and as Lena reached to give the pup a reassuring pat, the dog ducked away. She halted, confused. “Ghost? What—”
“Lena!” It was Sarah. “I need that kit!”
“Coming!” Brushing past the dog, Lena hurried to the connecting door, which led to a short hall and Jess’s room. The bedroom had a funky, frigid, old-lady odor of too-sweet talcum powder and musty farts. Lena’s eyes slid from bed to night table to an old-fashioned vanity. A long wool skirt and sweater were draped over a walnut rocker. Her gaze lingered on the neatly made bed.
Jess never went to sleep, but she changed, because those are the clothes she wore yesterday.
Which meant Jess went riding in her nightgown? Okay, just more weirdness on top of an already bizarre morning. Turning, she headed for the bathroom, but as she passed Jess’s open closet, her gaze dropped and snagged on a wink of brass. Her first thought was that Jess had dropped an earring. But then her brain caught up with what she was seeing.
And she thought:
What?