Stung (15 page)

Headlamp Man turns, his feet silent, and creeps away from the building’s entrance. The light outside the door dims and fades. Arrin sighs and I cover my nose and mouth against the reek carried on her breath, afraid that I might gag and wake the sleeping hive. Bowen grabs my hand and starts dragging me toward the doorway.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” Arrin whispers. Bowen’s hand tightens on mine and he doesn’t slow. Arrin materializes beside us. “
Where
are you
going
?” she asks again, through gritted teeth.

He pulls me to a stop beside the door leading outside and moves between Arrin and me. “What were you
thinking
?” he hisses at her. “You took us into a mapped hive? They could have killed us. They still might!”

“They rarely stir after sunset. And besides—it’s better than the
alternative
,” Arrin whispers.

“What alternative,” I ask.

Paper rattles, and the smell of Arrin makes me gag.

“What is that?” Bowen whispers. He drops my hand.

“The
alternative
,” Arrin snaps, her heavy breath lingering in the air like a thick fog.

Light flickers, a finger-size flashlight, lens pressed against Bowen’s palm. It gives off just enough light to illuminate a wrinkled piece of paper. Bowen hands me the light, pressing it
against my palm, and takes the paper from Arrin’s hand. Over his shoulder, I read the words and gasp. Bowen curses.

“See,” Arrin says. “I just saved Fo. Again.”

WANTED:

Fiona Tarsis

Female

Age: 17

Height: 5’ 9”

Hair: blond

Eyes: brown

Level: Ten

Reward: Life inside the wall with no age-limit extermination.

Below the writing is a full-color picture of me. My hair is long and clean, spread over a crisp white pillow, and my eyes are closed. Sleeping Beauty. I blink and look closer. A finely wrought gold chain is around my neck, with a gold treble clef nestled in the dip between my collarbones.

“Where did you get this?” Bowen asks, eyes flickering over Arrin.

“They opened the wall this morning and posted them all over the place,” Arrin says, dangling a pale-blue scrap of fabric in front of me. I take a closer look at the fabric and recognize the bottom half of my jeans. She grins. “I’ve been waiting for you to come out of that warehouse,” she whispers.

Bowen folds the paper into a rectangle and stuffs it into his
pocket. It is then I notice the jagged trail of black along his arm. I touch it and put my fingers into my mouth.

“Why are you bleeding?” I whisper, swallowing the coppery tang of Bowen. He glances at his shoulder. The sleeve of his shirt is torn and black with blood.

“The guy on the roof,” he whispers, peering into the building, eyes cautious, as if making sure the smell of his blood hasn’t disturbed the sleeping beasts. “Barely nicked me.”

“Why are they trying to kill me?” I ask, horrified that Bowen took a bullet meant for me.

“They aren’t. They hit their target,” he says.

My mouth drops open, and hot panic surges inside me, mixed with confusion. “You? Why?”

“Because if I’m dead, you aren’t protected. And if you aren’t protected …” Bowen looks at Arrin. “What’s your name, kid?”

She takes another step away and peers at Bowen through her bangs, a sly, devious smile on her face. A smile that makes my skin crawl.

“Arris,” she whispers, the
s
a slow, drawn-out hiss. She perches on the balls of her feet at the exact moment Bowen points his gun at her. Arrin drops the piece of denim, leaps behind him, and grabs me, clinging to my back, her nails digging into my flesh. “If you don’t let me leave, I’ll kill Fo,” she says, peeking her head around my shoulder. A blade jabs my spine, and I flinch. “And if you shoot me, you wake the hive.”

Bowen lowers his gun but doesn’t take his finger from the trigger.

“Bowen, this is the Fec who brought me to your camp,” I whisper, trying to placate them both while easing away from Arrin’s rusty knife.

“
Arris
brought you to the camp?” he says, eyes locked on Arrin, hands rigid on the rifle. “I thought you said you were brought by a girl.”

“Arris, Arrin … she
is
a girl.”

Bowen laughs a whispered laugh—a grating, miserable sound. “No. Arris is the most deadly, conniving, evil thing that lives in the tunnels. Arris is not a girl.”

The knife leaves my back, and in a heartbeat, Arrin is gone. Only the smells of crusty feces and rotting teeth linger in the air. Bowen’s gun is on his shoulder again, aiming into the shadows, but there’s no trace of the Fec.

We ease toward the open door and step out into starlight and fresh air.

“Hold this,” he whispers, thrusting the gun at me. “And don’t hesitate to shoot anything that moves,” he adds. I put the flashlight in my pocket, lift the gun to my shoulder, and let its weight settle, looping my finger through the trigger.

“You hold that like you know how to use it,” Bowen whispers, crouched beside his open backpack.

“My dad taught me to shoot.”

“Your dad?” The skepticism in his voice makes me stand a little taller.

“Just because he was partially paralyzed doesn’t mean he couldn’t shoot a gun,” I snap.

He chuckles. “I’d say the wafers are losing their effect.” He sets the first-aid kit on the ground and opens the lid. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect your dad. He was a good man.”

He takes out a packet and tears it open with his teeth, then peels back the sleeve of his shirt. In the starlight, a dark gash slices through the white bite-mark scar on his shoulder. Blood oozes from the gash and trickles down his arm in a dozen branches, like an upside-down tree. He pours a few pale beads into the open wound and sucks air through clenched teeth. His body stiffens and shudders, and then the air leaves his mouth in a swoosh. Sweat gleams on his shadowed forehead.

“You’d think that would get easier to bear with time,” he whispers through clenched teeth. He takes a water bottle out of his pack and rinses the blood from his arm. “We need to get out of here. But we need to talk first.” He takes my hand and leads us away from the building with tinted windows.

Pressing me against a white brick building, he puts his hands on my shoulders and looks right into my eyes. “Arris, the Fec, was wearing your old clothes?” he asks.

“You want to talk about clothes right now?” I ask.

“Was he or not?”

I frown. “If he was, they’re a lot dirtier.”

“He was wearing a pair of knee-length drawstring shorts and a V-neck shirt. Does that sound familiar?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Those were mine.”

Bowen’s lips thin and pull tight against his teeth. “We have to travel. To night. In the dark. We have to get away from
the militia. And that means we run the risk of intercepting raiders.”

The intensity of his voice scares me. “What are raiders?” I ask, my eyes wide.

“They’re ruthless slavers, rapists, and murderers. They keep beasts as
pets
, tied up, and beat them and then drink their blood. They take pleasure in other people’s pain and hunt—for humans—at night.” He hangs his head. “They’re the reason my mom’s dead.”

I put my hand over his. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“The militia has orders to shoot them on sight. Because the militia patrols the wall twenty-four-seven, the raiders typically avoid the wall,” he continues. “So if we stay near it, we probably won’t run into them. But if we do …” He stares at me, the whites of his eyes visible above the shadowed planes of his cheeks.

“If we do?” I ask.

“If you get caught …” He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “You
can’t
get caught. If they find out you’re a girl … a
woman
…” His hand leaves my shoulder and cups my cheek. “You can’t get caught,” he whispers, leaning his forehead on mine.

“Okay.”

We cling to the wall’s dark shadow, leaving its protection only when we are forced to—the militia are stationed every quarter mile—not standard protocol according to Bowen. They’ve upped security, probably because of me.

Every few minutes, Bowen pauses and listens to the quiet of nothing, as if he’s expecting … something.

We walk for what feels like hours, and I keep expecting the sky to brighten, the sun to rise. A slow, persistent ache grows in my lower back, and blisters form on both my heels. When I think time must have paused, trapping us in this forever night, the darkness takes on a different hue, like the fuzzy gray of predawn.

Light flickers and glimmers between buildings, turning slowly from gray to red, and I realize my mistake. Not sunrise. Firelight.

Bowen pulls me to a stop and drags me into the closest building—an old apartment building with a walkway between numbered doors and a few tattered doormats littering the ground. He eases a door open, number 1C, and we step inside.

A hint of firelight shines in through a shattered window, between a broken pair of blinds, illuminating an overturned table and the frame of a sofa. He presses me against a wall, his damp hands tight on my shoulders. Firelight glows against the side of his face, leaving the other side black and featureless.

“There’s someone out there,” he whispers. “We’ve got to get away unseen.” A wail, eerily human—yet not—echoes into the apartment building, and Bowen grapples with his gun, aiming it toward the window. “If they catch you,” he whispers, eyes glued to the window, “you’re a boy! But don’t get caught! If I give you this signal,” he pumps his fist three times, “that means run. Go to the north gate and turn yourself in. Don’t get caught!” He lowers the gun and looks at me again. “You stay behind me. Do not make any noise! And stay in the shadows!”

His hand goes to his belt, and he removes something, a Taser, and presses it into my hand. He shows me how to use it and sets it to
kill
. And then, our feet silent, my heart thundering like a bass drum in a symphony, we step back into the night.

We haven’t gone ten steps when the bass straining against my ribs is joined by more drums. Pounding. Throbbing. An entire bass-drum section being played at once. A sound that makes my throat constrict, makes me want to whimper.

Many footsteps, marching in synch.

Bowen whips around and grips my shirt, yanking me down
behind the nearest hiding place—a blue postbox cemented to the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. The two of us barely fit behind it, sandwiched shoulder to shoulder in a crouch, backpacks against the cold metal, waiting, hiding. Icy sweat drips down my back.

Shadows dance on the buildings around us, framed by the flickering, growing light of a moving fire. I peer to my left and see the light’s source. Men, dressed in a mishmash of jeans, shorts, T-shirts, tank tops, or no shirts, all filthy and holding burning torches, are coming down the street. They look like the kind of grisly men I remember from road-warrior movies, who wore metal spikes around their necks, had tattoos and piercings, and rode motorcycles. Only, these guys don’t have the spikes and tattoos and piercings. They don’t need them to give off an air of ferocity. Instead, each man has four thick scars on his left forearm—a marking as deliberate as the tattoo on my hand. But there’s a problem. The drumming feet? They don’t match the uncoordinated steps these men take.

I look to the right, past Bowen, and understand.
They
look like militia, these men walking down the opposite side of the street in perfect unison, toward the scarred gang of warriors. Well, they
almost
look like militia. Only, instead of the stripes shaved onto the sides of their heads, the sides of their heads are bald, below slightly longer hair, like peach fuzz, on the tops of their heads. But the dark uniforms, guns, Tasers, rigid backs, set mouths, and lockstep walk make them look like militia.

“Bowen,” a man’s quiet voice calls from the street, from the clean-cut marching men. My mouth falls open and I look at
Bowen, wondering how a man who has just arrived knows we are here. Bowen gasps and presses harder against the postbox, eyes scrunched shut, like a kid playing hide-and-seek who thinks you can’t see him if his eyes are covered.

“Company, halt!” a smooth, deep voice calls, and somehow it is familiar, like a song you never forget once you hear the tune, even after a long time has passed. “At attention. Tasers before guns,” the voice orders in monotone.

Bowen opens his eyes, and his eyebrows pull together. Sweat gleams on his creased forehead. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, he peers to the right, around the side of the postbox, and then eases back around, facing me.

“My brother’s out there,” he breathes. “That’s the Inner Guard.”

Feet shuffle to a messy halt on the left—the gang of men with torches—but even though they’ve stopped, something still shuffles in their midst. And growls. I try not to breathe, try not to blink, as I slowly peer around the side of the postbox. And then I try not to bolt. Or scream. Or pee my pants.

I gulp down the scream threatening to be my undoing, and an icy hand finds mine, squeezing an ounce of courage into me.

“What did you see?” Bowen whispers, eyes white-rimmed with fear.

“They have a beast!”
I mouth, too terrified to whisper. “
Bound with chains
,” I add, and close my eyes, seeing it all over again. A sleek, glossy, masculine body, the kind that used to grace the cover of fitness magazines—ripped with fine muscle and zero body fat. Only the smooth, taut skin is speckled and slashed with dark flaws. I see the rusted chains, barely glinting in the
torchlight, wrapped around the beast’s tethered arms, each ankle, and neck—the kind of chains you put on a dog. I see the four massive, muscle-heavy men giving the beast a wide berth while holding the chains. And burned into my memory are the eyes, looking straight into mine.

Chains rattle and a growl echoes off the building in front of me, and I force myself to take another look. The beast is yanking on its chains. Its muscles, marked with deep gashes that ooze blood, bulge in an effort to get at the postbox where Bowen and I huddle. I whip back around, too scared to take another look.