**Warning: Foul Language and Graphic Violence**
“But this is my home!” The words came angrily from the mouth
of the fourteen-year-old girl standing in front of me.
“I know, but you knew this was bound to happen. We don’t
have a choice. This isn’t easy for me either, but we’re out of time. We’ve got
to go, now.”
I hated playing “Mom” to her. I was little more than a child
myself at eighteen, but you grew up a lot faster in the new world. We all
remembered what it had been like, but those memories were fading fast as we
faced more new dangers each day. Besides, I would have been considered an adult
at eighteen even by the old standards.
“Ugh! I know why we have to. I just don’t want to, alright?
I’ll get my things,” she huffed, trudging off.
“I’ll help,” I announced, looking around the room for
supplies.
We began gathering the essentials. We both kept a backpack
stocked just in case, but there were always keepsakes and other things you
realized you needed at the last minute.
“Grab the picture,” Lidda pointed behind me.
I snatched the small frame from the countertop. I looked at
the picture of Lidda as a happy nine-year-old with her smiling parents, and
circled around the bar to the kitchen cabinets. I grabbed as many cans of food
as I thought she could comfortably carry in her backpack and found the can
opener. I noticed a small knife in the drawer as well, and I picked it up,
wrapping it in a towel for safe transport in Lidda’s bag. I hoped she wouldn’t
need it, but it was more likely that she would.
I rushed to meet her by the door. She was pulling the straps
over her shoulders as I unzipped the bag, hastily stuffing the items inside and
zipping it back up. We were ready.
Without another word, we were out the door, flying down the
peeling-wallpapered hallway, and taking the dilapidated stairs two-steps at a
time. It was hard to see the steps in total darkness, but we had done it a
million times, so we knew where to step to keep from falling.
My heart beat faster with each level we passed. We had
already wasted too much time. It felt like a week had gone by when we finally
saw sunlight peeking in around the exit door. We were momentarily blinded by
daylight as we burst out into the open street. We took off in a run to reach
the safety of a nearby alley. I didn’t like being out in the open, not with
headhunters after us.
Headhunters didn’t care if you were already dead or still alive
when they took your head, as long as they got paid. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure who had sent
them, but I had a good idea. It didn’t matter right then anyway. All that
mattered was getting as far away from there as possible.
We took a moment to catch our breath, and they were on us
before we had a chance to even scream.
“Run, Lidda!” I shouted as the first man came around the
corner, but it was too late. He already had her by the backpack, and another
one had backed me against the wall; his big grubby hands wrapped tightly around
a rusty machete as he grimaced toothlessly. Yuck.
I crouched down against the wall, trying my best to look
helpless. When he came close enough, I rammed my homemade shiv into his dick as
hard as I could. His pants kept most of the blood in, but it was still all over
my hands. His machete dropped to the ground with a clatter as he fell. I picked
it up and darted across the alleyway to help Lidda.
The other one was still busy fighting with Lidda, and he had
his back to me. He couldn’t have made this any easier. He was about a foot
taller than me, but the machete made up the difference. I slammed it down in
the curve of his grimy neck. The rusty blade was dull and I wasn’t strong
enough to kill him right away, but he let go of Lidda and dropped to his knees.
She kicked him in the face so hard she broke his front teeth. He spit blood.
“You little bitches will pay for that,” he gurgled.
“Too bad you won’t live to see it then,” Lidda’s voice was
acidic as she kicked him again.
I didn’t want to stay and play. There were sure to be more
of them coming. I reared back with the machete and finished him off.
The other one was trying to crawl quietly away, but I heard
his muffled groan as I looked up from Lidda’s attacker. I rushed over and
straddled his back, wrapping my hands around his throat.
“Who sent you, fucker?” I asked, holding his neck up from
the cement.
“Fuck you,” he groaned.
I slammed his head into the concrete with all my weight. I
felt his nose crunch with the impact.
“Come again?”
“I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
I slammed his face into the ground again, only slightly more
gently this time. I didn’t want to render him incapable of responding. Lidda
was standing in front of me, watching with a strange look on her face. I
gritted my teeth in disgust at my own deed. It had to be done if we wanted to
survive. I needed to know who else I was going to have to kill.
“Tell me and I’ll go ahead and kill you. You’re making this
harder on yourself than it has to be, dumbass.”
“No.”
I smashed his face again.
“Then just say yes if I get it right. K?”
He groaned.
“I’ll take that as you understanding. Was it Jefferson?”
He shook his head from left to right, and his breathing was
coming shallower now. I had to hurry for more reasons than one.
“Was it Coyote?”
He nodded.
“Shit,” Lidda’s voice startled me and I remembered she was
standing there.
I took another shiv from my boot and used it to slit his
throat, standing up as I let go of his shoulder. He didn’t move anymore after
that. I went and picked up the machete, wiped it off, and wrapped it in a strap
on my backpack for easy access.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,”
I said to Lidda.
She fell in step behind me as we crept close to the wall.
Jefferson, I felt like we could have handled, but Coyote was another story. He
started out as a low-level scavenger when the world first went bad, but when we
learned about the clingers and then the see-thrus, he had turned into a full-on
psychopath.
“Tess, why do you think Coyote is after us?” Lidda
whispered.
I bit my lip. I wasn’t exactly sure, and told her as much,
but I was keeping something from her. I had stolen something from Coyote a few
years back, and it had been so long, I hoped he had given up trying to find it.
I guessed he had figured it out. He’d probably killed everyone else it could
have been already. Now he was gunning for me, and if he really wanted me, I was
screwed. Coyote was relentless. Poor Lidda was guilty by association. Just by
knowing me, she was on his kill list. He wouldn’t take the chance I had given
it to her. He was a real son of a bitch. There was no way I’d be able to get close
enough to Coyote to kill him. Our only option was running.
Deep in thought, I almost stepped out in front of another
pair of headhunters. Lidda grabbed me by the backpack, pulling me back just in
time. I silently thanked her with a look and we backed out the way we had come.
The streets were probably swarming with them. I knew what we had to do, I just
really didn’t want to, kind of like Lidda didn’t want to leave her apartment
earlier.
I begrudgingly turned to Lidda and told her what we were
about to do.
“But that’s suicide!”
“Keep your voice down, Lidda! They’re everywhere. There’s no
way we can make it out of the city unless we take the sewers.”
“Did that asshole hit you in the head or something? You’ve
lost your goddamned mind. I’m not going down there.”
“Well let’s think about this Lidda. Stay up top and get our
heads sliced off by headhunters, or take the sewers, fight off a couple
clingers, and make it out of here alive. I like our odds in the sewers better
than up top.”
“Either way, we’re fucked, Tess. This really blows.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“Well if we’re going to do this, now’s as good a time as
any,” she said, pointing at the manhole we were standing over.
“Fuck,” I eloquently proclaimed.
“Yep, my thoughts, exactly.”
“Ok Lidda, I’ll go first just in case there’s a clinger down
here. Help me lift this,” I said, as we both grunted with the effort of lifting
the manhole lid.
We stood at the top, listening for a moment, then I took my
backpack off and sat it on the ground. It was the same backpack I had been
toting around since I started high school. It had been a deep purple at some
point, but now it was so dirty you almost couldn’t tell. There were still a few
legible patches and the monogram my Mom had commissioned before my first day of
ninth grade. It read, “TJM” from front to back, but my last name’s initial was
large and in the middle. I never understood why they did it that way. I always
read it wrong. It seemed silly to put the last name in the middle. Oh well, I didn’t
think modern society called for much embroidery, so it didn’t really matter.
I pulled a pair of flashlights from my bag and clicked them
both on, making sure the batteries were still good. I handed one to Lidda and
re-zipped the backpack, putting it back on as I stood up. I took the first
steps into the hole.
“Cross your fingers,” I said, slowly sinking into the
darkness. It was pitch black down there, even with the flashlight because the
light above was so bright. I couldn’t see anything accept Lidda’s worried face,
haloed by the light above. This was a bad fucking idea. I was nearing the
bottom, I hoped, because I’d been descending for like forever, when I missed a
rung and went flailing into the abyss. I covered my mouth with my hands to keep
from screaming, but the splash would be enough to attract clingers from all
over the sewer. Forgoing silence, I shouted up to Lidda to get the fuck down
there fast.
I couldn’t see her, but I could hear Lidda’s heavy breathing
coming down the ladder. She fell into the water like I did, and I felt for her,
helping her to her feet. I clipped my flashlight to the strap of my backpack
and helped Lidda with hers.
“Come on, we’ve got to run now. Every clinger in the sewer’s
going to be headed our way,” I said, pulling her by the hand in the direction
of the suburbs.
“This is fucking disgusting,” she complained.
“Yep. Let’s try to make this quick then,” I said, then I
stopped, “Wait,” I paused, putting my finger over my mouth to silence her. Our
eyes were adjusting to the light, but it was still difficult to see anything
but the brown water and the curved walls of the tunnel.
“I can hear something coming,” I whispered, “Take off your
bag and feel for the towel. I wrapped a knife in there. You’re going to need
it, so get it out and keep it in your hand. OK?”
She dug around in the bag, then announced that she’d found
it. I already had the machete in the hand that wasn’t holding on to hers like a
vice. We crept slowly, trying not to make much noise in the knee-deep water. The
smell was enough to make me vomit, but my nerves were about to send me over the
edge. I swallowed down my own bile and a shiver went through my body as I
suppressed the need to purge. Lidda seemed fine with all of it. She was way
more calm than any fourteen year old should be in this situation. I needed to
give her more credit. She was pretty fantastic in a crisis.
A loud splashing echoed off the walls of the tunnel. The
first clingers were nearing. This was going to suck balls.
They were attracted to the light, but we needed it to see
the fuckers, so we left the flashlights on. Without hesitation, a clinger was
running at me full-speed. A dry groan creaked out of its decaying mouth, and I
could see the grayish color of its flesh reflecting in the light. It already
had its arms out to wrap me in the death grip from which its name was derived.
Once a clinger got a hold of you, they squeezed the life out of you as they
sucked you dry. I always thought leeches would be a better name for them, but
that made them sound too much like vampires. I mean, I guess that’s kind of
what they were, but everything else about them was zombie. I used to watch a
lot of TV before the world went bad. I didn’t really miss it, since there was
so much worse shit in real life than anything I had ever seen on TV.
Then the news became the new horror movie just before the TV’s
went down.
Fucking clingers, man. This bitch was fast. It had been a
while since I’d killed one, and I was out of practice. She had me in a hold
before I could get a good swing at her with the machete. The clinger bit down
on my shoulder and started the horrible sucking. It fucking hurt.
Lidda had her knife out and was trying to saw the clinger’s
neck off while she was busy trying to drain me.
“She’s tough as a fucking log!” Lidda shouted in
frustration, but she kept digging. Finally, she had the bitch’s head off, but
the damn thing still wasn’t dead. She’d never be dead. That was the thing,
nobody died anymore, not really anyway. The ones that managed to leave their
bodies turned into see-thrus, and the ones that stayed, turned into clingers.
It wasn’t much of a choice if you asked me, but it was all we had now. Nobody
knew why it started or how, but Mom had been working with the team that was
trying to figure it all out when she died. The whole group had died. Some
asshole had gone in and shot them all up and stole their research, equipment,
everything.
I knew Mom hadn’t come back as a clinger. I assumed she was
some wandering spirit now, but thinking about it made me sad, and I had to
focus.
The clinger’s grip was loosening with the loss of its head,
but I knew I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I shook her rotten body off of me,
and set off in a run with Lidda in tow. I knew it was dangerous to run with a
rusty machete in my hand, but I wasn’t about to put it away. We came to the end
of the tunnel and had to choose left or right.
I chose left. It seemed like the right direction, and I
could see some light up ahead. Clingers didn’t really like the light. They seemed
to develop a sensitivity too it when they turned. That’s why the tunnels were
such a bad idea, but they were the only way out.
Sunlight was a good thing, so we picked up speed as our
morale lifted, only to have it shattered when we realized we couldn’t reach the
opening.
“Fuck,” said Lidda.
I didn’t need to say anything. I was just as disappointed.
We kept going down the tunnel, a little slower than before, until we came to a
wall of debris.
“Can we get through it somehow?” Lidda asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to climb up and see.”
I began the ascent. It only took me a few moments, since the
broken bits made a sort of jagged staircase. Once at the top, I could see an
opening just big enough for us to fit through.
“We can get through!” I exclaimed, but there was no response
from below. Lidda wasn’t looking up at me, she was looking down the tunnel.
Then I heard it, loud erratic splashing and chalky dry groans.
