Talker 25 (30 page)

“Yeah, but she’s got that whiny-ass voice. And if she started screaming at the message board . . . have you ever heard her scream? Sounds like a dying whale.” She mock shudders.

The chatter from the other end of the table stops. I glance over to dare them to say anything, but it’s not our conversation that drew their attention. Twenty-Six and Evelyn are on their way back. Behind them, the boy talkers are clearing their table. I pretend to watch them, pretend that I don’t care, but my eyes keep returning to Twenty-Six and Evelyn. They look so damn happy.

I focus on my tray.

“Dying whale,” Lorena whispers, then makes a little squeaky sound. I want to laugh, but I can’t seem to remember how.

“Thank you, Sergeant, it was very helpful,” Twenty-Six says. Then, a smile entering his voice: “I’ll see you soon.”

I look up. He’s gone. But Evelyn won’t stop talking about him. His name follows me out of the cafeteria onto the bus. James this. James that.

James doesn’t exist anymore, I want to yell. James is gone!

Why can’t he just be gone?

“One, Seven, Thirteen, Twenty-Five,” Lester announces as we pull up beside the ER.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.”

“I think I’d be more useful in the call center, Sergeant,” I say.

My CENSIR shocks me. “I’m tired of your attitude, Twenty-Five. We go where Major Alderson assigns us.”

After putting on our filtration masks and goggles, my team heads for the Chemics station to finish off a Tabun regimen on a now-wingless Green.

A soldier retrieves a hatchet from the wall, points it across my face. “Looks like your boyfriend found somebody more to his liking.”

“Good for him.” I avoid looking at the Electrics slab until the A-B’s attention is elsewhere. Twenty-Six is crouched in front of a flickering Red’s scorched snout. Evelyn lingers close, no doubt giving instructions he doesn’t need.

“Pricklers are green for go,” Patch says from the Chemics control console. The mechanized syringe system extends from the wall and injects a needle of adrenaline into the Green’s back. Seconds later, its eyes pop open.

“Proceed, Twenty-Five,” Patch says.

My CENSIR loosens. I repeat the same question I asked a hundred times yesterday. “Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

“I do not know Diocletians,” he says. The subsequent growl that rumbles through my head comes out as harsh static from Patch’s speaker.

A talon gets hatcheted off. Velmar’s growl deepens.

“Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

“I do not know Diocletians.”

A lie, at least according to the drone video Patch showed me. Velmar was shot down in a recent ambush by the Diocletians on a supply convoy traveling through the evacuated territories. The jagged scar of glowless flesh along Velmar’s back is unmistakable.

After another talon amputation, Patch injects the Green with a high dosage of Tabun. Velmar dims, the growl becomes a whine.

“Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

“Open yourself to me, human, and I will show you the truth.”

Not the first time I’ve heard that from him, either. Other Greens have said similar things. Creeps me out. I asked Lorena about it once. She acted like she didn’t know, but I think it had something to do with her father.

“Do you know what he means?” I ask Patch as he ups the dosage.

“It’s just trying to scare you. Don’t worry, Twenty-Five, it can’t hurt you.”

I don’t know if he’s trying to be comforting or ironic. I assume the latter.

“Team Three, please proceed to Chemics. Team One, stand down and observe. You will remain after hours to account for the backlog.”

“Dammit, Twenty-Five,” Patch says. “Stop making my life miserable.”

“Feel free to transfer me at anytime,” I say, knowing very well that he can’t. He can, however, shock me.

I stifle a groan, which has less to do with the pain from my CENSIR and more to do with Twenty-Six sauntering toward me. At least he’s alone.

“Hey, weak link,” he says. “Can’t squeeze the juice out of this lime?”

“I didn’t need any help with Vestia,” I say. “She was beautiful, you know?”

I hope for a flinch, some sign of the farmboy I once knew, but his coldness remains steadfast. “Vestia was weak, with too much sentiment and not enough sense. Reminds me of a certain underperforming glowheart I know.”

“Bite me, asshole.”

“Control your emotions, Twenty-Five. They have a tendency of getting you in trouble.”

The soldiers laugh.

With another glare for me, Patch cedes control of the
Chemics console to Team Three’s Mengele.

“Watch and learn, Glowheart.” Twenty-Six turns to the dragon. “Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

Velmar’s words play from the console speaker. “Did I scare the girl away?”

“Perhaps.”

“Too bad. She smelled delicious. You smell delicious, too.”

“I’m sure I am. But have you ever tasted a human child?” Twenty-Six asks.

Velmar groans through his bindings. A purr almost. “Often.”

“Recently?” Twenty-Six asks.

Velmar doesn’t answer.

“The smell of their skin, the softness . . .,” Twenty-Six says, as if describing a delicious delicacy.

“Twenty-Six, what are you—” Patch starts, stops as Velmar brightens.

“There is nothing so glorious as fresh flesh,” Velmar says.

Whispered conversations end abruptly. Somebody gasps. Several A-Bs draw knives. A couple pull their sidearms.

Twenty-Six waves them off. “Surely you took some of these fresh kills back to your lair.”

“I surely did, but I will not tell you where.”

“Are you a good little dog, protecting your pack?”

Twenty-Six says.

“I am no dog. I have no pack.”

“Yes, but they know where you live, don’t they? That fresh flesh will be theirs. Your bounty.”

Velmar pulses. “Mine.”

“Show me where it is.”

“Open yourself to me and I will.”

“It is too late for that. You know how this ends, Velmar. Show me. The invisible monsters will bury your treasure in an avalanche, never to be shared.”

“You can promise this?”

“Yes, but you must hurry.”

An image appears on the console computer screen. Some mountain range. Then another. Inside a cave. I look away too slowly to avoid the corpses. Little corpses.

“That’s as close as we’re going to get,” Twenty-Six says to his Mengele. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to chop this bastard to pieces. I’m tired of looking at him.”

A soldier hands him a hatchet. The other A-Bs join the impromptu dissection. For once, I don’t mind.

After another long day in the call center, in which I came in last again and had to spend two extra hours to reach the new minimum daily standard—raised from two to four because of Twenty-Six’s successes—I return to the barracks to find
my
Kissing Dragons
episode playing.

The screen fades to the credits as I go apeshit with the sword on Old Man’s Blue head. Evelyn bounds to her feet. “Let’s put our hands together for Twenty-Five, who has turned the corner and helped make the world a better place. If only we were all lucky enough to be given the chance. How did it feel slaying that demon, Twenty-Five? Was it spectacular?”

“You want to know how it felt?” I say, closing the distance between us in three quick strides. She senses my fury an instant too late to raise her hands. After the first punch, I expect my CENSIR to shock me silly, but nothing happens. Must be Whiskey Jim running Big Brother patrol tonight.

I get in a couple more straight punches before Seven and Ten pull me off and shove me away. I glower at Evelyn. “That was spectacular.”

She wipes blood from her nose. “You’re in trouble.”

Lorena shakes her head. “Anybody asks, you fell.” She leans in, her voice little more than a whisper. “Otherwise, I’m going to let Allie know who took her Kit Kat the other night.”

“That wasn’t me,” Evelyn says.

Lorena glances at Twenty-One, who’s huddled in the corner, grinning at us. “Who you think she’s going to believe?”

“Thanks,” I say on the way back to our beds.

“You need to get it together,” Lorena says, taking me by the arm. I cringe. Her fingers probe the bump on my tricep where Trish injected me. “You should see one of the doctors.”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s not getting better. What if she poisoned you?”

I pull free. “Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore, will you?”

“Sulk on your own time, Twenty-Five.”

“Fuck you, Two. I’m doing the best I can.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve got to stop being a weak link. They already hate you enough without this.”

“This?”

Lorena waves at the screen. “I didn’t tell anybody why you went off base. They thought you were in trouble. That made them happy. But now they see you were hanging with All-Blacks and killing dragons.”

“You think I enjoyed it?”

“You don’t get it. You could have gotten us days off, better food, anything. But all you cared about was that stupid baby dragon of yours.”

“Be careful unless you want to get hurt, too.”

She steps back, disgusted. “You need to do better.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell Allie who really took her chocolate. She
won’t attack you like she would Evelyn, but she’ll hate you forever.”

Twenty-One had been sleeping in her corner. I didn’t want to steal from her stash, but I’d missed dinner again. “I’m going to replace it.”

“How you plan on doing that when you’re dragging your feet all the time?” She shakes her head. “You don’t have many friends, Melissa. Don’t throw us away over a boy who’s no longer here.”

As much as I hate her right now, I know she’s right. Tonight, as with every night since Twenty-Six showed up, I go to bed hoping that when I wake in the morning, James will be left behind in my dreams. I’m not sure he exists anywhere else, and I need to stop looking for him.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

“Teams
, please remain at your current stations. Team Three, please head to Electrics for dragon disposal.”

Terrific. Team Three is Twenty-Six’s death squad. And I’m at Electrics. “Shouldn’t we head for Station One?” I ask Patch.

“We’re supposed to wait here until this lightbulb’s taken care of,” he says as the ER door at the end of the facility retracts.

I glance at the flickering Red on the slab, praying he glows out before Team One arrives.

No such luck.

“We’ve got a live one, boys!” Twenty-Six says. The A-Bs split into two groups, dismemberment and collection, arming themselves with chain saws or large plastic bags.
Twenty-Six struts toward the dragon, a hatchet in one hand, an ax in the other.

He climbs atop the slab, then raises the hatchet. “Should we go with the piranha?” He lifts the ax. “Or the shark?”

Most everybody shouts for the hatchet.

“Just kill the damn thing.”

James sets down the ax, covers his brow with his hand, like I’m not in plain view. “Is that you, Glowheart?” He points the hatchet at me. “You want to come do this? We don’t have a sword, but you seem capable.” He grins. “Or maybe you want to roar at it some more.”

As several soldiers tease me with howls that are more wolf than dragon, I look toward the slaughter station. Men are unloading crates from a cargo van onto the slab where a dragon normally goes. The disposal trucks are nowhere in sight, which means Twenty-Six can take his time torturing the flickering victim.

I step forward. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Keep one hand on her CENSIR,” an A-B says.

“Can you wear that outfit of yours?” another one calls.

“I bet she can’t even lift the shark.”

“Sounds like a wager to me,” Twenty-Six says. “What will it be?” He feigns deep thought, then raises his finger. “I’ve got it. If she can get through the lightbulb here in ten strikes”—he pats the dragon on the head with the butt of the
hatchet—“she gets a reward.”

“What sort of reward?” someone asks.

“Does it matter?” another soldier says. “There’s no way she’s getting through that neck in twenty strikes, much less ten.”

“A day off for the barracks,” I say, glaring at Twenty-Six.

He nods to Lester. “What do you say, Sarge?”

Lester taps a message into his tablet. “I believe Major Alderson will find that acceptable.”

“Outstanding,” Twenty-Six says. “Now for the good part. What should her penalty be if she fails? Standard punishment would be the easy choice, but poor Twenty-Five’s been failing a lot recently, and that would be like adding a grain of sand to a mountain.”

The crowd laughs.

“No, we need a special prize,” Twenty-Six says with a smirk. He listens to several suggestions ranging from me wearing a necklace of dragon talons to doing something called a polar run. “Those would be outstanding, but how about something beneficial to us all?”

He waits for everybody to quiet. “If Twenty-Five is unsuccessful, she must become the official ER slayer.”

The crowd approves with rowdy enthusiasm.

Patch does not. “That will interfere with her examination duties.”

Twenty-Six snorts. “So what? The only monsters who ever talk to her with any consistency are the decrepit, and they’re information wastelands. She’ll be doing something useful for once, giving the rest of us more time to do the real work around here.”

He’s so damn sure I’ll lose. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Surprise, surprise. Are—”

“I want a week off for the girls’ barracks when I win.”

Lester taps at his tablet, gets a notification a few seconds later. “The major will allow you five days, but no more than two in a row. If you fail to sever the head in ten strikes, you will become the headsman of the ER until the slaughter slab area is made available again. Are we in agreement, Twenty-Five?”

I nod, then climb onto the slab and pick up the ax to whistles and catcalls. It’s heavier than I expected, but once I get it propped on my shoulder, I find my balance and shamble to Twenty-Six’s side.