World After (19 page)

“I’m allergic to cigarette smoke,” says Alpha. “Look, we all need to work together to survive this.” He grinds out the words between his teeth, clearly trying to keep things cool.

“So I should put out my goddamn smoke for you? Piss off. No one’s allergic to smoke. They just don’t like it.” Tattoo takes a deep drag off his cigarette.

The third smoker quietly stubs out his cigarette, looking like he hopes no one notices him.

“Put the cigarette out!” There’s real command in Alpha’s voice that can be heard even over the shrieking alarm. This is a guy who’s used to being heard. A guy who used to matter.

Tattoo flicks his still-glowing stub at Alpha. For a moment, everyone relaxes. But then Tattoo pulls out a fresh cigarette and lights it.

The alarm shuts off but the plunge into silence feels worse.

Alpha’s face and neck turn a bright red. He shoves the other guy, looking like he doesn’t care if he gets beat to a twitching pulp. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe this is an easier out for him than what the angels have in store for us.

The problem is, he’s making that decision for the rest of us too. A fight in a cell the size of a coffin means a whole lot of injuries for everyone at a time when we can’t afford to have any.

People start backing up.

I’m in the front corner, beside Clara. Bodies are already jostling us against the bars. If the panic gets aimed this way, we could be crushed against the metal bars. We won’t be killed but bones could be broken. Not a good time for broken bones.

In the center of the cell, Mr. Tattoo whales on Alpha. Alpha, though, is not to be underestimated.

He grabs a guy’s jacket and swings the bottom of the zipper at Tattoo’s eyes. It hits a woman in the face.

Tattoo swings his arm back for a sloppy hit and his elbow smacks into an old man’s neck.

The man falls back into Clara, making her bang her head against the bars. I’m trying to mind my own business, but this is not going to end well for any of us.

I weave my way to the fighters and grab Tattoo’s shoulders.

I jam my knee into the back of his. I’m careful to make sure that I shove his knee straight forward so that I don’t knock it out. A broken knee in our situation is a death sentence.

As he collapses down to my height, I pull his shoulders toward me and grab his head in a sleeper hold. I grip his forehead with one arm and clamp his neck with the other.

I squeeze my arms, letting him know I mean it. I’m not trying to choke off his air. Choking off the blood to his brain is faster. He has three to five seconds before he loses consciousness.

“Relax,” I say. He instantly does. This man has been in enough fights to know when it’s over.

Alpha boy, on the other hand, doesn’t know when to stop. By the look of his bulging eyes and crimson face, his fear and frustration are still slamming around inside him. He swings his leg back, kicking someone else in the process, and gets ready to kick Tattoo like a soccer ball as I hold him.

“You land that kick and I swear to God I’ll let him eat you alive.” I lower my voice and try to sound as commanding as I can.
But Mr. Tattoo is most likely thinking about how skinny and short my arms are. It’s probably registering right about now that my voice is female.

I’ll be in a world of hurt if I don’t establish control while he’s on his knees. Because when he’s towering over me and looking down at the top of my head, he might start getting ideas.

So I do something I would never do in the World Before.

Even though he gave in, I choke him out anyway. His body crumples to the floor, head listing.

He’ll be out for a few seconds, just long enough for me to take care of Alpha boy. And when these two come back to their senses, lying helpless on the floor with me towering above them, they’ll get the message loud and clear: I am dominant here. You live or die at my mercy and I say when you fight and when you don’t.

It all sounds good in my head.

Only it doesn’t play out that way.

I’
M
 
ABOUT
to grab Alpha when we’re hit by a force so hard I can only describe it as a cannon full of ice pellets pounding into us. The force slams me back against the wall. But unlike a cannon shot, it doesn’t stop.

It takes me a second to realize that it’s a bruising spray of water shooting from a fire hose. So icy and intense, it freezes the air in my lungs.

When it finally stops, I am a battered piece of wet cloth lying limp on the floor.

Rough hands grab my arms, and I’m jerked up and dragged out of the cell. In my strained fight for air, I vaguely notice that men with grim faces also drag out Tattoo and Alpha.

I stagger up so that I’m shuffling beside my captors. It’s better than having my arms pulled out of their sockets. Once it’s clear that I’ll walk without resisting, one of the guys lets go of me and helps the two pulling Tattoo. He’s become conscious and is struggling in fear and confusion.

My guard walks up to Tattoo and slams a punch into his belly while the other two guards hold him still. I cringe in sympathy. After that, we all shuffle down the center hall without resistance.

The guards lead us into a brick passageway with peeling paint, and we pass through a metal door. A faded sign says:

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

The door opens to a narrow stairwell that makes a hollow metallic clang as we walk down. The space below feels industrial, almost factory-like. A lattice of giant water droplets hangs from the ceiling almost to the floor.

As we get closer, I get a better look. There are things curled inside the water droplets.

People.

Naked and curled in fetal positions. Unconscious and suspended in the water.

There’s something familiar and horrifying about them.

I keep expecting to see one sucking his thumb or twitching but none of them are actually doing those things.

“What’s this?” asks a man in the middle of the room, glancing our way. He wears a flannel shirt over jeans and holds a clipboard in his hand. With curly brown hair and hazel eyes, he looks like a college student doing research. I’d assume he’d be an okay guy in any other setting except this one.

“Troublemakers,” says my guard.

“Take them to the back,” says the distracted man with the clipboard. “The last row could use a little help.”

Tattoo, who is now walking on his own without causing trouble, is the first to be led into the field of water droplets. Alpha’s guard pulls him along next. Until now, my guard has let me walk on my own without touching me. Now, he grips my arm as if afraid I’ll make a run for it.

“Which ones, Doc?” asks my guard.

“Any of them will do so long as they’re in the last row,” says Doc as he walks past us toward an office with a window overlooking the droplets.

We enter the water-droplet matrix. The first row contains people.

As we walk to the back of the room, the people inside the droplets begin to change. It’s like seeing a time-lapsed video of fetal development.

By a third of the way into the matrix, they have tails.

By halfway back, they’ve started to grow gossamer wings.

By two-thirds of the way, they look recognizably like scorpion monsters.

The cavernous room is filled with scorpions in various stages of development.

Hundreds of them.

And they all start from humans.

When we reach the last row, the scorpions look fully formed, complete with hair down to their shoulders and teeth that have gone from human’s to lion’s teeth. The ones in this last row are shifting, alert, and watching as we approach.

This lab is several generations ahead of what I saw in the aerie basement. It’s more systematic, with the fetuses looking more robust and dangerous. How many of these scorpion factories are there?

Tattoo begins struggling against his guards again. There are three of them, and for all his muscles and attitude, Tattoo’s fighting skills are sloppy and untrained.

He yanks his guards, the muscles on his neck and arms straining against their hold. The guards are about to shove him into a droplet when he jerks unexpectedly, knocking one of the guard’s elbows into the droplet.

The thing in the water moves so fast I’m not sure what’s happening.

One second, the guard is holding Tattoo’s shoulder as his elbow breaches the water.

The next second, the guard is halfway into the droplet with his legs kicking the air and the water turning bloody.

We all stare in awe as the guard defies gravity—and I don’t know how many other laws of physics—by hanging there, partway in, partway out. Inside the droplet, the monster pumps venom into the guard’s neck while it sucks on his face. Clouds of blood swirl around them in the impossible droplet that somehow maintains its shape and contains the liquid despite being punctured by the guard’s body.

Tattoo’s eyes are huge as he realizes what’s in store for him. He looks at me and Alpha. He probably sees the same expression in our faces.

After him, we’re next.

Alpha nods to Tattoo like they’ve just agreed on something. I guess there’s nothing like a grisly impending death to make people overlook their differences. They grab one of the remaining guards still holding Tattoo. Ganging up, they shove his head into another droplet.

The scorpion in the droplet slithers around in the water to latch onto him. The guard frantically pulls back, instinctively pushing his hands against the droplet for leverage.

His hands slip right into the water.

Then, he can’t get them out either.

His back, neck, and arms strain to pull himself out.

His feet slide forward. But not an inch of him comes back out from the droplet.

The guard begins convulsing. Every muscle of his body trembles with his muffled scream as he pushes desperately against the scorpion fetus.

I can’t look any more.

The rest of the guards, no longer outnumbering us, run. Two run to the back door while my guard runs in the other direction.

The gurgling of the bubbles and scuffling of the victim’s shoes against the floor grates against my raw emotions. But before long, both victims quiet down as they become paralyzed.

The place is suddenly too quiet.

“Now what?” asks Tattoo. Despite his muscles, he looks like a lost little boy.

We all look around at the forest of monsters suspended in droplets.

“We get out of here,” says Alpha.

The hissing of a scorpion comes from the back door.

We run through the matrix toward the front stairs, careful not to bump into any of the droplets.

A
RUMBLING
echoes through the cavernous room. Rows of droplets sway, threatening to fall. I hate to think about what will happen if they drop. In my mind, the water is already splashing on the floor and the monster fetuses are uncurling as we run past.

The structure on the ceiling that dangles the rows of droplets slowly shifts back. Is that water splashing behind us or is that my imagination?

The matrix moves back one row, then stops.

The eerie feeling of running through transparent wombs makes me feel even more surreal as the scorpion fetuses change in every row back to humans. By the time we reach the new first row of empty droplets, a hollow clanging of footsteps echoes down the stairs ahead of us. We skid to a stop, looking around.

The only place left to go is the raised office that overlooks the monster matrix. We run up the few steps to the office and rush in.

Doc, the guy in the flannel shirt and jeans, looks up from taking notes on his clipboard in front of an ancient TV set.

Alpha grabs a pen with one hand and grabs Doc’s hair with the other. He points the pen near Doc’s eye, ready to stab.

“I’m going to poke this through your eye unless you get those monsters off our backs,” whispers Alpha. I still think he used to
be a company guy, but he looks like he really means it. Maybe life in an office is tougher than I thought.

“One human is as good as another to them,” says Doc staring at the pen. “They won’t be searching for you.”

As if to prove his point, he shifts his eyes toward the large window that overlooks the lab. A group is coming into the factory below us. Several scorpions usher in a line of dirty, naked people.