Brave New Love (21 page)

“Stay behind me.”

“That was my plan.”

He saw a shadow—and stiffened, raising a fist ready for a fight—before he saw the figure itself. Then he saw the face and took two steps back, nearly tripping over Citizen-boy. That
face would not remain still, the robotic eyes rotating to and fro, the slack mouth full of tiny feelers, or maybe antennae, motioning like pistons in and out to test the air. It wore a
red-and-black State military uniform and one of its arms lacked a hand. Only for a moment, because the crazy spider-like thing they had just seen was now crawling up the figure and then finally
attached itself to the arm’s metal stump.

“Shit,” muttered Citizen-boy behind Tetch.

The figure’s head turned with a jerking motion. It spoke, or rather, a speaker inside the chest sounded:

“No. It can’t be. I know that,” said Citizen-boy. He sounded as if he’d been elbowed in the gut.

•  •  •

Allard wondered if he were dreaming. Although the figure standing in the hot sun before them belonged in nightmares, what it recited made the moment difficult to believe. Words,
lines of poetry with the same meter that had been pounded out on the metal walls of the van earlier. Lines of poetry that belonged to his mother’s most recent, most widely read post on
NationWeb.

His unshackled hand went to his trouser pocket and clenched the library stick he had found by his mother’s terminal early last night. Library sticks were contraband; the only texts
permitted by the State were on NationWeb. His instructors had showed Allard such sticks and warned him they usually contained sordid reading material written prior to the Founding Citizens. He had
not understood why his mother would possess one until he took it back to his room and slipped it into his terminal.

The stick contained poetry. Page after page of poetry. He had searched and found every line that his mother had ever posted, every one of which she claimed had come to her in seizures of
creative and patriotic fervor. Allard did not know what to call her. Not a traitor, but there had to be some black word worse than liar. A thief maybe.

Or worse. A troubling thought—his mother could have discovered the missing stick while he’d been in the capital. In a rage, she could have been so horrible as to take his
father’s v-comm and demand someone in the Party have a press gang pick up her son. Or maybe he was paranoid. Press gangs could have been stalking stations. Maybe it was just a coincidence.
But why then had they refused to let him prove he was a Citizen, why did they laugh when he promised that his parents would pay any reward or ransom?

A person could be betrayed by more than the State.

We are the Front Line
, the figure recited. It repeated the verses again.

“Do you understand what it’s saying?” Worker-boy asked Allard softly.

Allard nodded. He whispered into the Worker boy’s ear, “Now we know what they do to pressed people. Turn them into some machine soldier. Only, they’ve gone past their
programming. The poem . . . I think, inspired them to revolt.”

“Fuck the State,” Worker-boy muttered.

“More like the State is fucked.” It was the first time in his life that Allard had ever said such a thing. It felt as liberating as a kiss. Or so he imagined.

“So the reason we’re still alive is because it remembers that it was once like us?”

“I hope. It would explain why the press gang is smeared.” Allard held out the library stick.

“What is that?” the Worker asked.

“A key. Maybe. Or a conscience. Or it might be nothing at all. But they deserve it more than we do.”

He held the library stick out to the Front Line, which picked it up by growing fingernails that grasped the stick and brought it up to its strange mouth where it clicked and connected.

The Front Line extended one arm and, with one smooth and swift gesture between them, severed the manacles’ cord. It turned and began following the tire tracks of the van.

“Wait,” shouted the Worker. “What’s out there?” He gestured toward the horizon.

The Front Line’s head twisted around to face them even as it kept walking.
Others. Like you.

“Huh.” Allard kicked off his remaining shoe. He almost fell and had to grab hold of the other boy’s arm to keep steady.

“Others like me.” The Worker shook Allard’s hand. “Tetch.”

Allard smiled. “Others like us. Allard.”

“Us. That sounds like an invitation for a kiss,” Tetch said as he grabbed both of Allard’s hands.

“Or to recite some poetry.”

“No.”

And the kiss, such a marvelous kiss, was just the beginning.

A
MANDA
D
OWNUM

In the dream I’m in a garden. In the dream I’m not alone. A girl stands beside me, a girl with eyes red as poison apples. She takes my hand, and her skin is
cold.

“We have to go north.”

I wake with the taste of storms in my mouth and screams echoing down the hall. Slow and dream-sticky and for a second I don’t know where I am, but I’m on my feet with my gun in my
hand before my eyes are all the way open.

A second later I sigh, rubbing crust out of my eyelashes left-handed: it’s only Amber and her nightmares. I was dreaming too, but it’s already crumbling like sandcastles. Even
familiar screams shouldn’t be ignored, though, so I ease the door open and glance both ways before I slip down the hall.

Amber’s awake when I get there, sobbing and gasping while Kayla pats her back and murmurs soothing nonsense. Kay gives me a nod and I lower the gun. The metal is cool and heavy against my
thigh.

“You okay?” I ask, still foggy from sleep.

Amber nods, scrubbing away tears. Her hair stands in tousled cockatiel-spikes, the bright red of salvaged Kool-Aid faded now to dirty pink. “Yeah, sorry. It’s just—” She
waves a hand at the barred and shuttered window, at the hissing rain beyond.

“Yeah.”

“Everyone okay?” Dave calls from down the hall. He’s shy about the girls’ rooms.

“All clear,” I yell back.

Kayla lights a candle and I squint at Amber’s creepy Kit Kat clock—nearly eleven in the morning. Early for me, but I doubt I’ll get back to sleep, or find the dream again if I
do.

“Get some more rest,” I tell Amber. “I’ll do your detail today.”

Kayla gives me a smile, probably thinking of my good karma. She doesn’t call herself Wiccan anymore—
an it harm none
, didn’t last long after the end of the
world—but old habits linger.

I wash and dress in my room—I miss running water most of all, I think. A pint of cold water and a washcloth don’t measure up to a real shower. Kayla makes us oil scrubs and baking
soda shampoo and all kinds of hippie stuff, but it’s not the same.

The rain slackens, sighing against the window. The storm is almost gone. I glance at my door, double-check the flimsy hook. Just a quick look . . .

I ease the shutters open, wincing at every tiny squeak. The others would never let me live this down. It’s stupid and dangerous and puts the whole house at risk. But I have to see.

Crooked bars behind the shutter, glass cracked and streaked behind them. Beyond that, the storm.

The sky is the color of the space behind my eyes, red-black and shot through with distant lightning. The end of the world is alizarin and crimson, ruby and garnet, tangled streaks of scarlet on
my windowpane. The end of the world is beautiful.

The smell leaks through the chinks—copper and iron, bitter and salty and cloyingly sweet. Not exactly blood, but close enough. I remember the taste of it and swallow hard.

Distant thunder growls and its voice is the voice of my dream.
North
, it says. I shudder as images surface: a garden blooming with poison-red flowers, unfurling their creepers in the
twilight; a girl with eyes the same poppy red.
North.

My hands shake as I close the window tight. We forgive each other all manner of quirks to live as we do, but the others won’t forgive this. My secret, the taste of red rain on my lips. I
tasted the rain and I’m still alive—still human, still sane—but I feel the storms coming now, and the monsters that sprout like mushrooms in their wake. Kayla thinks I’m
psychic, and I let her. They’d kill me or turn me out if they knew.

I’ve lost two families already to the apocalypse rain. I can’t bring myself to give up this one.

•  •  •

Amber was on clean-up crew today, so I help Seb sweep and do dishes. There’s extra scrubbing—tomorrow we’re hosting a gang-meet. We check in with each other
whenever we can, but every three months one gang hosts the others for a formal get-together. I get a quiet nagging fear before every meet, and I know the others do, too: What if this time someone
doesn’t come?

Seb is probably disappointed about the schedule switch, but he doesn’t say anything. Seb doesn’t say anything ever, as far as I can tell. He’s certainly never said he has a
crush on Amber, but my intuition still works, even if the water and electricity don’t. He’s the youngest of us, still just a kid when the first storm came—now he’s callused
and hard-eyed, the fastest of all us on the draw. You’d never know he’s only fifteen.

Not even two years younger than me, but some days I feel a hundred years old.

Kayla comes down by the time we’re finished. I make coffee and we sit in the gloomy kitchen waiting for the red storm to blow out and the next to blow in. It always rains after, a real
rain. We don’t know why—new weather patterns, or maybe the world is trying to clean out the contagion. We don’t know much of anything, except to adapt or die.

After a long quiet, Kayla nudges my foot under the table. I look up, realizing I’ve been staring into the dregs of my coffee. “What’s up, kiddo?”

“I had the dream again,” I say, though I didn’t mean to.

“North?”

I nod and swallow cold coffee to keep my mouth busy. I’ve told her about the thunder, but not the garden. And not the red-eyed girl—that part is new.

“It comes with every storm, doesn’t it?”

If Kayla weren’t smart and perceptive, she never would have held the Orphans together this long. Still, sometimes I wish she were a little less smart. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. But it feels important. It wants me to answer.” I give her a crooked grin. “That’s probably a bad idea, though.”

It’s Kayla’s turn to frown at her mug. A familiar clatter and bang drifts in from outside—Nick and Geoff setting up the catchment. The clean rain is here.

“Probably. We’ll talk about it later. After the meeting.”

After the rain stops and the boys give the all-clear on the weather, I suit up and do the rounds. It’s been quiet lately, and it’s starting to bug me. Not the itch in my blood that
means something’s really wrong, but a vague distrust. Nothing moves outside, but my hand stays near my gun as I circle the grounds.

Home is a castle. A little castle on a hill in the middle of downtown Austin. A military school back in the 1800s. I don’t know what happened to it after that—it was closed and
boarded up when we moved in. It’s not as defensible as Las Calaveras’ headquarters, or as gorgeous as the Spooks’, but it’s got a great view.

The last rain clouds snag and tatter against the skyscrapers. Glass spires and ziggurats fade into the haze, their grimy windows reflecting the light in streaks and flashes, crackle-finished.
Below them, a young forest grows. Nature moves fast now that the world’s fallen apart.

Too fast, sometimes. The trees are pressing against the fence again and we had pruned only a week ago. Lately the plants have started to change, too, strange new flowers and fungi sprouting in
the shade. Kayla doesn’t like the look of them. She keeps a close eye on the greenhouse since we saw the first one, but so far we haven’t been menaced by bloodthirsty tomatoes or
zucchini.

Ivy twines through the fence, leaves and spiraling tendrils softening the harsh lines of the wire. I rip it away with gloved hands, trying not to think about the garden in my dreams. The
original fence couldn’t have kept out a lazy dog, let alone zombies, so we put up chain link and razorwire. Geoff and Dave talk about building a real bricks-and-mortar wall, but I like being
able to see what’s lurking on the other side.

Halfway through my circuit I get a shiver, the nasty kind, but it fades too quickly to figure out where it came from. I can’t see anything moving in the brush, except a couple of squirrels
that don’t seem any more vicious than usual. The gates are all locked, the tripwires unsprung. I’m less scared of shamblers than of other people, really. We have a sturdy truce with the
Spooks and Las Calaveras, but you never know. Things were ugliest during the gang wars, when you couldn’t trust anything that moved, living or dead. It calmed down after the Kings and Hammers
got slaughtered, but I worry. We’re still human, and even a good apocalypse can’t cure humans of stupidity. And I won’t feel humans coming.

I check in with Dave after my rounds. He’s the last of the Hammers, the only one who didn’t go down to monsters or to other gangs. He’s really not so bad, now that he
doesn’t call himself Thor. It took a while, but losing enough fights with Geoff finally knocked the racist bullshit out of his head. We don’t even flinch at his swastika tattoo
anymore—it’s just another scar. We’re all orphans here.

•  •  •

After lunch I take my knitting and sketchpad up to the tower. I’m halfway through a scarf that I think will be Amber’s birthday present, if I finish it in time. My
grandmother taught me to knit, another world ago—other than my middle name, it’s all I have left of her. And twelve inches of pointy steel are nice to have around. The sketching is just
for me, the last part of me from before the rain, when I was a daughter and a granddaughter, a sister and a girlfriend, a student and an artist. All the things I lost when I became a survivor, an
Orphan.