The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (9 page)

"But if something did happen..."

"My dragon guards those hens."  Diem's hands curled into fists.  "I train the hens and give them to you in return for extra portions for the Fly House.  That is our deal.  If something happens to me, then Forge will continue to raise the dragons."

"But the hens are not chained!"

"Exactly," Diem said.  "If something happens to me, then there are going to be loose dragons flying around and one of the other overseers is bound to notice that.  That's what makes our arrangement perfect, exactly how it is.  It keeps me healthy."

"The
gorne satisfies every need of the human body, to maintain its health," Phuck corrected.  "Hoarding dragons keeps you alive."

"Semantics," Diem said.  Phuck visibly bit the outer edge of his own lip.  Diem was sure the Plutian just realized he'd told Diem the truth, and that was the last thing he had ever meant to do.

CHAPTER SEVEN

7 Days Post Second Waking

Maeve was totally comfortable not speaking with Steven.  If Steven Burtman was the last man standing on Earth, he was going to stay that way until he keeled over.  She wasn't about to do one damn thing with him that might risk creating mutant offspring that were one-half utterly dazzling, awe-inspiring, superheroes and one-half utter fuckwads.  She learned to listen for him and head in the other direction.

Maeve had taken over the dusty suite that had her name posted on the door like a rock
star's dressing room.  Her parent's suite was at the opposite end of the hall.  She'd swung open the door and looked in on the palatial digs.  It seemed fitting that they would've been in a room so far from hers, that it would've been nicer than all the others.  She closed the door. 

Her own suite was really just a hotel room, without running water and a toilet that had a slide-mechanism instead of a flush, so waste just dropped into an abyss.  She kept it shut.  The bathroom door had a thick seal around the edge.  It had to be there for a reason.

There was a bed in the center of the room, a dresser with a mirror, an empty armoire in the corner, a useless TV suspended on the wall, overhead lights and lamps on the bedside tables that were all illuminated by a hand crank, just like the one in Supply. 

Maeve went about making her suite a home with the things she found while exploring the Archive.  She dragged back books from the library, which wasn't as huge as the brochures claimed; she rolled back a heap of clothing, from the Archive's wardrobe 'pantry', on an office chair.  She hadn't discovered the room with the lock boxes yet, but she was sure she would.  She wanted her old, buckled boots back and her jewelry.
She was sure that one glance at her septum ring, with the diamond hanging like a door knocker above her cupid's bow, would be the magic bullet to make Steven lose his mind.   

Even with that prospect, Maeve avoided the chamber room and Steven, both of which were looming and freakish parts of the Archive.  She locked her suite door when she was inside or when she ventured out and she toted a heavy metal flashlight she'd found.  She had to twist the end like a pepper mill to light the thing, but it was handy for bashing chamber bugs, or Steven, if either need arose. 

So far, she'd only run into Steven twice.  Once, when she had surfaced for food and he was already rooting in the pantry, and once when a hallway had led her unexpectedly into the chamber room.  Although the chambers kept any scent of the dead contained, the idea of it plugged Maeve's nostrils whenever she walked in the room.  Steven had found the cranks for the lights, so she saw him across the open space, hovering over one of the caskets.  It gave her the willies to see him there, doing what he'd probably done to her. 

She stayed back from him, but called across the room, "You shouldn't stare at people while they're...asleep."

Startled by her voice, his chair shrieked as he jumped to his feet.

"I'm trying to figure out how to save them," he said.  "I don't know why you and I were able to wake up, but I think it has a lot to do with the chamber bugs.  They're in a bunch of these chambers.  That's what kills them.  But some of the chambers don't have any bugs.  At least, not yet."

That made her feel like a douche.  He was trying to save some people.  All Maeve was doing was rifling the cache of supplies and making a nest for herself in one of the rooms.  She made her way over to him, standing in the glow of the chamber he was parked beside. 

"This might sound really shitty," she said, "but maybe they shouldn't wake up."

He stared at her then and by the misty light of the chamber window, she could see the dark circles around his eyes, as if his eyes were tree stumps and independent rings were forming around them for each night he didn't sleep.  He had the start of jowls.  His hair was greasy.  But the sadness that registered in his eyes from what she said left her throat feeling a little sticky and clogged with words of explanation.

"What do you mean?" he asked.  She cleared her throat.

"Well, for starters, the food supply sucks," she said.  "You saw it.  We can go for a while if it's just the two of us, but if we end up with even twenty people, all the food is going to be gone in a couple weeks.  I don't know how long we'll be able to go before we have to pry the outer doors open and take our chances."

"You're being dramatic.  There's enough food for us to get by."

"Not when you figure it in proportion to all the caskets in here."

"Chambers," he said.  "And these are human beings.  I'm not going to just let them die, if I can help it."

"That's the point, Steven.  You can't help it.  If you open up the boxes, they croak.  If you leave them shut, the bugs get in and kill them.  But if you figure out some way of waking up all these people," she whisked a hand around the room, meant to cover the entire warehouse of chambers, "we're all going to starve."

He slopped down onto his chair as if she'd shot him. 

"They deserve to live too," he said, staring at the chamber in front of him.  Maeve peeked into the window of the box.  She grunted, the sympathy dissolving away.

"You mean the pretty ones deserve it, Steve-O?"

"I just like to watch over them."

"I know," Maeve shivered.  She'd been one of the girls he'd watched, after all.  "You really are some kind of a perv, aren't you."

She said it gently, with understanding rather than malice, which made it all the more embarrassing, since they both knew it was true.  Even in the dark of the room, the chambers illuminated the tint of humiliation in his cheeks.  Maeve left through the door where she'd entered by mistake and detoured through Supply to gather some extra food to hide away in her suite.

***

"Go away," Maeve croaked.  She was lying face down in the utter blackness of her suite and it took her a minute to realize it wasn't her landlord banging, demanding rent.  Everything rushed back and she would've given anything to be back in her cramped flat, with Mr. Cregmen yelling through the door instead.   She stumbled to the door and opened it, the dim hall lights drizzling into her room.

Between eye slits, Maeve saw three figures.  Three.  What the hell?  She shielded her eyes a little with a hand to her forehead and squinted even more.  Were they Zombies?  An icy rod of adrenaline slid down her back and woke her up, though her pupils were slower to warm up in the light. 

"What's going on?" Maeve asked.

"They woke up!" Steven boomed. 

"Got it," Maeve wedged her eyes open a little more.  Two girls—not the ones Steven had been watching, but two far prettier—stood in the hall, behind Steven.  One brunette, one blond, they both looked a little spaced out and confused.  Still trying to get a grip on what the hell was happening, Maeve thought.  Good luck.  She'd been awake for seven days and still couldn't wrap her head around it.  Maeve gave them a little wave.  "Welcome to the afterglow."

"I'm Amber Harding," the brunette said.  

"Amy Harding," the blond added.

"Twins!" Steven's smile burst like overripe fruit.  Maeve rolled her eyes at the rise in his voice and tried not to think about anything else on him that might be rising.  She leaned around him to speak to the girls.

"When did you wake up?"  Maeve asked.

"About seven hours ago," Steven answered.  "They just came walking out of the shadows."

"He screamed.  Loud," Amber said.  "I'm surprised you didn't hear it." 

"This isn't like the brochures.  How come no one's around?" Amy's wide eyes searched up and down the hallway as she rubbed her arms.  "There was supposed to be a whole staff here to help us.  Where is everyone?"

Maeve rubbed her eyes.  "We don't know."

"Like I was saying," Steven said with a gentle lilt to his tone, "I was the first to wake up and everything was dark.  I believe something went wrong."

"You think?" Maeve grimaced.  Amy stopped rubbing her arms and squeezed them, as if it would stop her from crying.  Her twin moved closer and Maeve was struck with how frightened they were.  She realized she had been too busy to be as scared as maybe she should be.  She smiled at the girls.  "We don't know anything yet.  People have just started waking up and all we know right now is that the outer doors are closed."

Steven pursed his lips together.  "We know that there was supposed to be thousands of chambers and there are only about five hundred.  We know that the Archive welched on its end of the deal.  We know only a few of us have woken up, even if we have no idea why.  We know the outer doors aren't just shut, they're sealed," Steven said.  "Everyone on the surface may be dead.  We might be all that's left of humanity, ladies.  It might just be the four of us from here on out."

He giggled.  Jezus.  Could he be any creepier.

"But we don't know that, do we?" Amber asked.

"No, we don't," Maeve said.  "People have just started waking up.  Something's triggering it and there's probably going to be a lot more."

"I hope so," Amy said.  "It can't just be us and..."  She finished the sentence with a hasty glance at Steven.

"Hell no it can't," Amber added.  She turned to Maeve.  "Mind if we hang out with you for a while?"

Maeve pushed her door open with her fingertips.  The two young women walked over the threshold, but Maeve swung her arm down, hanging onto the doorframe to block Steven's entry.

"Sorry," Maeve said.  "Girls only, Steven.  I don't entertain men while I'm in my jammies."

He grunted, but took a step backward into the hallway. 

"That's reasonable," he said, wiping the tip of his nose with short, insulted strokes.  "Just let me know when you are decent then."

"Will do," Maeve said with a grin.  She closed the door on him, knowing she'd never been decent and he wasn't giving her any incentive to start now.  

***

Amber and Amy ripped off the name tag next door and took the suite next to Maeve's.  Within a week, Maeve's hunch about more people waking up came true.   Casper Bergen was next to wake, hours after the twins.  Steven had hailed the girls from Maeve's suite and they'd all gathered around to watch Casper clamber out of his chamber, fall on the floor, and finally hobble up onto his feet like a baby giraffe before promptly shitting his pants. 

"Oh goodness," he frowned, as the four onlookers stepped away from him.  "None of you had fecal incidents?"

Amber, nose plugged, shook her head to the negative.  Casper pushed the wire rims of his round glasses higher on the bridge of his nose, before fishing a notepad from his pocket along with a pen.  He flipped pages of the pad, clicking his pen to write.

"Well then, the conclusion on Experiment 34," he said, licking the pen tip when no ink came out, "is that my digestive tablet failed.  The vitamins and minerals were supposed to be completely assimilated by the body during the interim, rather than expelling them.  What a waste."

Maeve fanned the air between them.  "You can say that again."

Bergen slid his pad back into his pocket.  He looked around the room, twisting one way and then the other.

"Where are the Archival teams?" he asked.

"The staff, you mean?  Well, I'd certainly like your answer on that," Steven said, sliding his thumbs across the inner waistband of his pants in a small fit of indignation.  "I was the first to wake up, in the dark.  The pantry isn't properly stocked and there are no attendants, like the material promised.  My—wife—died.  I opened her chamber and—"

"Oh no no," Casper tsked.
"You shouldn't open the chambers at all.  There is a decompression element that could—"

Steven exploded.  "Well, someone should have been here to tell me that, as I was assured there would be when we sunk our retirement fund into this ridiculous enterprise!  Someone should've been here to save my wife!  Once we get those outer doors open, you can bet your bottom that this whole facility will be hearing from my lawyers!"

"I'm sorry for your loss," Casper said.  Steven snorted, folding his arms over his chest.  "But it's doubtful that anyone's lawyers will be doing anything."

"What is that supposed to mean?  Is that some kind of a threat?"  Steven asked.  He stepped closer, but must've smelled Casper's failed digestive experiment again, because he stepped back between the girls.

"Not at all," Casper said.  "But if the outer doors are sealed?  If that's true, then there might not be anyone to go back to.  The only reason the door would still be sealed is if the Earth is still so unstable that it cannot support human life on the surface any longer."

"What the hell?" Maeve groaned.  "Are you kidding me right now?"

"I wish I were," Casper said.  Amber's voice was just a whisper.

"We're stuck down here forever?"

"It is a possibility," Casper said.

"Whoa." Maeve put a hand to her forehead, trying to absorb what
he was saying.  "Why don't you look at the door first and make sure nothing's stuck or some spring isn't working or something like that?  It could be that they're just jammed."