Stung (10 page)

“How long have you been the south gate guardian?”

His mouth thins. “I’ve been guardian since Sunday.”

“Only three days?”

“Two and a half days. It’s Tuesday.”

“So, why did you become a guardian on Sunday?”

He tilts his head to the side and frowns. “They shut the gate at eight p.m. like usual. And then, first time in the two and a half years since I’ve been posted at the wall, they rang the bell and opened the gate
after
eight p.m. Had a piece of paper signed by the chief medical officer dated that day, stating Dreyden Bowen was to become the new south gate guardian. I wasn’t aware the CMO even knew my name. But get this. They appointed a new
north gate guardian at the same time. Richard Kimball. Remember him? He was in a grade above us and lived a block away.”

A boy’s face flickers in my memory: blond hair, pale-blue eyes, and freckled skin. He tried to kiss me when I was in first grade and he was in second. “I remember him. So, what happened to the old guardians?”

Bowen shrugs. “I can’t say for the guy at the north gate, but ours was thrilled. Not only is he relieved of the worst job in the world, but he gets to live inside the wall. He was a guardian for only four days.”

“And the guardian before him?”

“Got his beating heart torn out of his chest. He lasted eighteen days.”

“Seriously?” I say.

He glowers at me. “Do you think I’d joke about something like this?”

I shake my head. “Then why don’t you resign? Or do a different job?”

“Because I am stuck in this job until I die. Or qualify to live within the wall.”

I start dusting pollen again. Bowen does the same, careful to always stay two steps behind me, always have me within view, and always have the remote in his free hand.

After we’ve dusted four more plants, I turn to him. “Why don’t you just run away?”

He looks over his shoulder, at the dead expanse of the world and abandoned buildings. “I have a better chance of surviving
as a guardian than out there. And besides, I want to live inside the wall one day, even if they do terminate their population at fifty-five. From where I’m standing right now, living to fifty-five sounds ancient.”

Pollen forgotten, I ask, “Then what are you waiting for? Go live inside the wall!”

He laughs, a dry, humorless laugh. “First of all, the gate is locked. You can’t open it from the outside—a safety precaution. And then there’s the fact that I’m not allowed to live there. Not until I either make enough money to buy my way in; get an education that makes me potentially useful; or meet some nice girl, get married, and start helping the effort to repopulate the—”

A siren wails. Before I can blink, Bowen jumps in front of me, rifle on his shoulder and aimed toward camp.

“Stay behind me,” he orders. We run toward camp, a good half mile away, but when it comes into view, I stop, my feet frozen to the ground. If Bowen wants me to follow him a single step farther, he’ll have to hit me upside the head again and carry me.

Bowen doesn’t notice I’ve frozen in place, or he doesn’t care. He throws himself into the middle of a swarm of brown-clad militia interrupted by patches of bare skin.

I crouch as low to the ground as I can get, an unassuming human rock, and stare.

Young, exceptionally healthy-looking men are tearing at the militia, flinging them, biting them, snapping their bones, splattering blood. They’re like Jonah, these freakishly strong young men—beasts. A gun goes off, and one beast staggers, looks down at its muscular chest, at the gaping bullet wound in it, and then
jumps toward the man who shot him. The man shoots again, and the beast jerks to a stop, falling lifeless to the ground.

There are four other beasts. Three are men, dressed in tattered rags, but the fourth is female, wearing torn pants and a thin tank top that hangs to her thighs and barely covers her small breasts and bulging muscles.

The female beast turns her face to the sky, and her eyes slip shut. Her nose wrinkles and her chest expands as she takes a deep breath. And then her eyes pop open and slowly travel to mine. Her lips pull away from her teeth, and above the din of the fighting I can hear the deep, guttural rumble that comes from her throat.

The three male beasts freeze, look at the female, and follow the line of her glare. And then all four are staring at me. As one, they face me, crouch, and balance on the balls of their feet. The militia surrounding them pause, their faces baffled.

The beasts lunge forward and sprint, flinging bodies out of the way to reach their target.
I
am their target. A target with fettered arms and nowhere to flee. But it doesn’t matter. They move like the wind and whirl around me before I have time to stand. Finally, as if it is a sound I have been waiting my entire life to hear, guns go off, a sudden, deafening explosion of a hundred discharged bullets that topples three bodies to the ground beside me.

The fourth beast, the female, is already on top of me, crouched on my chest, flattening me to the ground, fingers forcing my chin up. She opens her mouth and lunges for my exposed neck. Electricity hums in my electromagnetic cuffs. My forearms grow hot
and my body convulses, my jaw rattling with the force of it. The thing on top of me absorbs half of the current boiling through my flesh, leeching the heat away so it’s almost bearable. Her back arches and the grip on my throat loosens. She is yanked from me and the electricity stops. I stare at the blue sky, my body numb.

The cuffs on my wrists separate and release, and my burning arms fall limp to my sides. Bowen is beside me, face freckled with crimson, straddling the female beast, my cuffs in his hands. The female writhes beneath him, and he slams a cuff into her face, making blood splatter from her nose. She growls and lunges at him, her bloody teeth barely missing his chin.

“I could use a little backup here!” he roars, smashing a cuff into her face again. Three more men throw themselves onto the beast, and Bowen secures the cuffs on her arms. They lock into place, and he jumps off the writhing creature. Crouching by my legs, he removes my ankle cuffs, but before he has a chance to put them onto the beast, she throws the three men from her and is back on her feet.

She launches herself at me, mouth open, cuffed and fused hands reaching toward me. I lift my gloriously free arms and, using her momentum, push the female over the top of me.

A lone gun goes off and the beast hits the ground, skidding to a stop in the dirt. She does not move, does not blink her eyes. A pool of red forms beneath her and soaks into the dusty earth.

I look up in time to see Bowen lower his rifle.

“
That
,” he says, his voice trembling, “was a Level Ten.”

I am shut away in a tent, one of the few that wasn’t ruined in the skirmish earlier that day. My forearms are covered with burn blisters, and the hair is singed completely off. But I am not restrained in any way for the first time since I entered the camp. And the armed guards are throwing a fit. Every time I so much as breathe too loudly, they panic.

But it feels so good to move that I stretch my legs, point my toes, and sigh. Late-afternoon sunlight blinds me as the tent flap is whipped aside and four guns are thrust inside, inches from my face. I don’t blink.

“Did he touch the flap?” someone asks, and if I had to guess, I’d say his voice is hopeful. They’ve been given strict orders from Bowen: shoot if I so much as touch the tent flap—shoot
me
.

“No, the flap didn’t move,” Tommy says. “Bowen?” he shouts,
not taking his gun from my face. “You almost ready to put his cuffs back on? Because I can’t guarantee the Fec’ll live much longer if he isn’t restrained! The men are jumpy from the attacks!”

“I’ll take care of it,” Bowen calls.

The guns are moved aside and Bowen leans in. He pauses as uncertainty and fear dance across his face, but then he drops the tent flap behind him and crawls toward me, crouching at my side. He takes a small bottle out of his jacket.

“About your arms, the burns,” he says, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “I had to shock you. I didn’t know what else to do to stop her—the beast—from …” Face grim, he looks down, studying the tent floor.

From tearing my throat out with her teeth
, I think. “I’m alive,” I answer, voice as quiet as his. “My arms hardly hurt.” My arms throb with every single beat of my heart and radiate fire that goes all the way to my stomach and makes me feel like I have the flu. Bowen holds the bottle out. I take it and open my mouth to ask him what it is, but he presses a finger to his lips.

“
Aloe vera
,” he mouths, glancing at the tent flap.

“For the burns?” I whisper. He presses his finger to his lips again and nods. “
Did you steal it?
” I mouth, silent.

The corner of Bowen’s mouth lifts, and he says softly, “For militia use only. Not for Fecs. Took me an hour to find.”

I open the bottle, squeeze green goo onto my palm, and slick it over my angry skin. Air hisses through my gritted teeth, but then I sigh. The fire in my arm seems to seep into the aloe. I slather the other arm and give the bottle back to Bowen. He tucks it into his jacket once more and pulls something else out. Ankle
cuffs. I groan. Out loud. Feet scuffle outside the tent, rifles clatter to life, and then the tent flap is flung wide. The glossy black barrel of a gun jabs into the tent and hovers above my nose.

“You need me to shoot it, Bowen?” Tommy asks.

“Chill, Tommy. The kid’s just moaning about his arms,” Bowen says. Tommy drags the tip of his rifle over the burned flesh on my arm.

I whimper and jerk away. Liquid oozes from a popped blister and Tommy laughs. He swings the gun toward my other arm, but Bowen grabs it.

“Just leave the kid alone,” Bowen snaps. He shoves Tommy’s gun out of the tent.

“Whoa, man, you’re the one who needs to chill. You’re acting … sympathetic toward the Fec.” Tommy drops the tent flap and grumbles something I can’t quite make out.

Bowen shakes his head and crawls to my feet. Without a word, he pushes the hem of my jeans up around my knees and attaches the cuffs to my calves.

“Bowen, please don’t—” Before I can beg him not to restrain me, electricity hums and my legs snap together, the cuffs clicking against each other as they lock into place.

“I’m not going to cuff your arms. You’re welcome,” he retorts.

With my fingers I comb my hair out of my eyes and glare at him. “Thanks,” I whisper. He nods and tosses a wafer onto the floor beside me. And then he’s gone.

Anger and frustration bring the sting of tears to my eyes. All I want is to be back in my house, the way it used to be, inside a thirteen-year-old body, with Jonah doing his homework in the
music room while I practice the piano, and Dad in the kitchen cooking dinner, and Mom on her way home from work, and Lis coming home from college.

I glare at the wafer, feeling so sorry for myself I’m tempted to chuck it out of the tent and start the slow process of starving myself to death. But my stomach growls, feels concave, so I shove it into my mouth. It dissolves into the flavor of roast ribs and sweet potatoes and trickles down my throat. I close my suddenly heavy eyes and give in to the food-induced lethargy that steals the last bit of energy from my muscles and wipes the anger from me. My sated brain listens to the conversation going on outside the tent.

“Hey, guys. I’m going to try and get some sleep,” Bowen says, his voice spinning with my groggy thoughts. “The kid’s restrained again, and I gave him his ration.”

“Maybe you should double his dose,” Tommy says.

“Not funny, Tommy. The lab only pays for living beasts.”

“It was a joke, Bowen. Don’t worry. We’ll keep the camp safe from the kid,” Tommy says.

“Yeah. About that. Don’t let
anyone
in the tent, all right? And do not leave your posts.”

“You think he’s on the verge of turning?” Tommy asks, suspicious.

“Something like that,” Bowen says, his voice fading as sleep settles over me.

I am being touched, a warm hand caressing my cheek. The gentle touch reminds me of what I am missing—human contact—and
leaves me wanting more, wanting my mother’s arms around me, my father’s hand patting my back, Jonah bumping his knuckles on mine, Lis painting my nails, Bowen …

I sigh and lean into the touch, letting it fill me with comfort, with longing, with sorrow. Tears sting my eyes. I am so starved for affection it hurts. But I’m so tired, I can’t bring myself to open my eyes. The trembling fingers move from my cheek to my mouth, gently tracing my bottom lip. And then they clamp down, crushing my teeth into my lips.

Tiredness forgotten, my eyes shoot open. Dark surrounds me, as if I’m in the tunnels again. A firm weight settles on my hips, and breath pants against my face.

More hands touch me, sliding over my body, groping my chest. The bottom of my shirt is lifted, and cold metal touches my stomach. In one swift slice, the T-shirt is cut from my body. A flashlight flickers on, shining on my bound chest, and someone gasps.

“I told you it was female!” The voice belongs to the person straddling me. I struggle against the weight, but my head is still groggy from sleep, my muscles filled with exhaustion. Plus, both of my tender arms are locked beneath a pair of knees. And my legs are locked in cuffs.