Dee_Tats Zell Tatsakron

Chapter 1

The monsters only dwell in the darkness.

Because it’s the darkness where deception thrives, sprouted from seeds of fear and fertilized with lies; propagated, preened, and nurtured into something beautiful but also poisonous and deadly.

It is light that sows truth, and light that cultivates life, but light is exactly what we are short on this late in September. At early evening, heavy shadows slither further and further up the streets of Sector 10, where Auri skips several steps ahead of me with a carefree joy seldom seen in kids these days, especially one nearing ten years old.

He skids to stop at one of the spiderweb cracks that fracture the streets, the fissures wider and more numerous this close to the outer boundary than they are in the inner sector. Maybe if the city of Gethsemane prioritized maintenance as much as it does gaslighting, curfew enforcement, and arresting scrimpers, it would have money and men to tend to these things. Grainy white ash stains the worn asphalt around the rift, and the lava inside glows like a thread of fire. Steam seeps from within, rising to the sky in frail, wispy white plumes that slowly disintegrate, like the last desperate breaths of our dying planet. This is what war has won us; monsters and a city that is crumbling away into a lake of fire.

Small, perfect footprints fragment the ash where Auri ambles, cocking his head as he studies the fire. He backtracks several steps before taking a running leap over the crack with a giggle loud enough to send my pulse racing. I glance at the windows of the abandoned building next to us. The jagged, shattered glass jutting from the frames flashes menacingly in the bloodied light of early sunset. It’s the darkness where they hide.

I concentrate on the light as I hurry on, the reason I’d ventured all the way to Sector 10. The shabby, outermost sector of Gethsemane is teeming with Guards assigned to control the growing population of Scalati Monsters we all eventually turn into and to keep everyone else out. Citizens aren’t supposed to be in Sector 10, but I’ve never been very good at following rules. Sector 10’s off-limit status is exactly what makes it the best place to scrimp for specialized supplies like the UV light bulbs my garden needs to survive the winter. Any place closer was picked clean by survivors long ago.

Water, love, and light. Daddy used to say these are the three things needed for plants to grow, but all three are hard to come by anymore.

Auri barrels towards the street, unconcerned with the monsters likely creeping just inside the abandoned buildings around us, the Guards who would arrest us for going out of bounds if we are caught, or the consequences, specifically for him, if they do.

A vibration, a hint of voices on the wind, has me darting towards him, my heart thrumming a thunderous warning in my eardrums. I push him to a crouch behind a cardboard box that will do little to hide us if the approaching Guards even look this way. If we’re quiet and still, if we don’t give them a reason to look, maybe they won’t notice us.

Auri’s chest heaves in and out, his nervous breaths whistling like a teapot. The voices are louder now, growing closer, too close to risk shushing him. I suck in a gulp of air and squeeze his hand tighter as the Guards cross the entrance to the street, their pale gray skin and white hair a sign they are well into the Peccare transformation. Guards start the transformation in their early teens, younger than the rest of us, and usually complete it by age twenty-five, mutating forever into rabid Scalati monsters. Thankfully for me, being Peccare doesn’t seem to come with the same superhuman strength or stealth displayed by the full Scalati. Even as a somewhat small seventeen-year-old girl, I have a pretty good shot at winning a scuffle with two poorly trained guards, but with Auri, I can’t risk it. We can’t get caught.

The guards chatter, oblivious to us, doing what guards do best–nothing at all. Several very long seconds shrivel away before they disappear behind the building next to us.

“They’re gone,” Auri announces in a voice not even pretending to be a whisper, common Auri fashion. I pop up and race to the corner, afraid he’s given us away. The streets are empty now, the guards seeming to have vanished into thin air, but I don’t care where they are as long as they aren’t here. With the transformation starting so young now, Gethsemane has lowered the standardized testing age for kids to eight years old. Any boys who score too low are immediately recruited as poolees for the guard, and Auri was never good at sitting at a desk. They’d take him straight to the Citadel for recruitment.

Auri is standing behind me when I turn back around, studying me with sparkling brown eyes, his uncontrollable black hair sticking in every direction. “Did I do something wrong?”

Yes! But rebuking Auri will only end in tears for both of us. I swallow, the initial response still hot and heavy on my tongue, and smile instead. “Nah, man, but we should probably be more careful from here on out.”

He grins back, too ignorant to question it, and his shoulders relax. Before I can stop him, he bolts away, straight into the street. I roll my eyes and trail after him across to the empty hardware store. At least we’re here, this super exciting adventure over halfway done.

Of all the orphans, Auri is the most interested in my garden. Even with his immaturity, he has the knowledge and drive to care for it when I turn Scalati. Unlike the Guards and most people my age, I haven’t started the Peccare transformation yet, but it’s just a matter of time

I rub at my arms nervously. Hours from now, the crazed, hairless Scalati monsters with their deadly claws and soulless eyes will be scavenging these very streets, skittering around on all fours, looking to tear anyone apart who crosses their path. Which is why we need to hurry this along.

Auri reaches the greenhouse portion of the hardware store first, slipping through the sliding glass doors, eternally wedged open with a shopping cart with a grace I wish he’d displayed on the way here. I slide through too, my breath coming easier now that we are out of sight.

The shelves are empty inside, except the center aisle that houses a variety of garden decorations–not much use to people in an apocalypse. A bright yellow plastic bumblebee bound to a stake draws me to it. Extinct now, the winged creatures are as foreign as the dragons in Auri’s storybooks, even though I know from science class at the Academy that not too long ago, they had been very much alive. Turning away from the plastic statue, I scan the mostly empty room.

The hardware stores were the first to be ransacked after the bombs, gardening a popular hobby among the survivors before they figured out most of the ground was incapable of growing anything. Before the boundaries were established, the curfew enforced, the wall built around the city to protect us from the even more dangerous monsters outside Gethsemane, the Great One. Before, the government provided us with everything we need. Or what they determine we need.

The turquoise light filtering through the greenhouse ceiling rains down on us gentle and blissful as I sift through the debris, cardboard, broken glass that litters the floor. A big round shelf is tipped over near the front windows, and leaning my weight into it, I shove it aside. With a shriek of metal against concrete, it rolls just a couple inches.

A single white packet is tucked underneath, and I snatch it up, the excitement coursing through me making my hands shake as I hold it in the air in triumph: cherry tomatoes. The heirloom tomatoes in my garden are thriving, but I’ll take what I can get.

Squinting at the growing directions on the back of the packet, I wait for the letters to stop dancing, the words they form to relate to a meaning buried somewhere inside my head.

“Read it again, Vara.” Daddy’s voice is as vivid as it was ten years ago, repeating the phrase that kept me from giving up on learning to read altogether.

I cover most of the words with my hand so I can concentrate on just the few sentences under growing instructions and force my brain to focus. After several times reading it through, they begin to make sense; the definition weaving together.

Maximum sun exposure: 8-12 hours a day. Water daily.

Most of the plants in my garden require maximum sun exposure, but the couple of lights I have aren’t enough even now. With any luck, several UV bulbs will be left in the lighting section of the store. With even more luck, there will be enough to get us through the winter.

Another packet on the floor catches my eye, partially concealed under a scrap of plastic.

“Strawberries,” I cry almost as loud as Auri as I pick it up.

“Staaawwwbeeerrrrries?” Auri repeats the word low and slow, like it’s a foreign language.

“A fruit,” I say. “I haven’t had one since . . . “

I pause, the memory blackening my excitement. Holding the bag of seeds out to Auri, I tie the memory back up and stuff it in the back of my brain where it can continue rotting away. “Here, you hold on to these.”

Auri grins, his face blushing just a bit. Taking it, he bounces away.

Hoping to get lucky one last time, I drop to the ground, rummage through the remaining debris. Only garbage is left, but the tomatoes and strawberries make the trip worth it. My mouth waters as the memory of strawberries nudges its way to the surface of my thoughts again. If we can find a UV light bulb, this all will definitely be worth the risk, but next time, I’ll choose another orphan to train for scrimping.

Movement on the other side of the big greenhouse window snags my attention as I stand up. The same two bullheaded guards pause a couple feet from the entrance, but this time they survey the area attentively.

Crouching out of sight, I search the aisles for Auri, my quickening pulse muddying my thoughts.

Humming to himself, he skips and prances his way down the main aisle, completely unaware of the danger, as usual. Holding the seeds in one hand, he runs the other along the line of wind chimes hanging in the garden decoration aisle, sending them singing and dancing chaotically.

I launch myself at him–not to stop him—it’s too late for that now. The Guard’s feet are pounding the pavement rounding the building toward the door, but we have a head start.

I push him forward and he stumbles into a run, taking the hint. Lucky for me, running is something Auri is good at, and he matches my speed as we race into the main part of the store. Tripping over the garbage and various junk cluttering the aisle, we weave our way to the back, ominous and unlit by the sunlight floating in from the front windows. I hit the emergency exit at a full run, punch it open with a thump that slashes the silence.

Squinting at the cherry red sun that watches us from the edge of the horizon, we pounce on the six-foot fence lining the exterior of the store at the same time, but I’m overtop first, dropping to the other side.

Auri reaches the top as the guards burst through the door. He slides down next to me, but my eyes focus on the packet of strawberry seeds caught in the spiny metal at the top of the fence. It teeters for half a second before fluttering down to the ground on the opposite side, as gentle and entrancing as a dove.

Auri and I dive for the fence, thrusting our arms through the links with our bellies pressed into the dirt and our arms extended. Ignoring the sprouts of pain, I slam my shoulder against the metal again and again, but the tips of my fingers barely graze the top of the packet.

“Stop right there!” one of the Guards screams at us from a couple feet away. I snap to a standing, pulling Auri with me, and we’re running again, strawberry seeds forgotten, sacrificed for our freedom. Well, Auri’s anyway.

Too preoccupied with trying to escape the guards behind us to worry about running into more, we fly through abandoned streets at full speed, zig zag through alleyways, and jump over lava cracks until my chest heaves, vibrating an ache that extends through my entire body.

When the voices behind us have faded away, their footsteps not even an echo in the quiet, my numb legs finally stagger to a stop. Sparkling dew drops glisten on Auri’s tawny forehead, and he wipes them back into his thick black ringlets before crouching over to rest his hands on his knees next to me.

The shadows have devoured Sector 10, night winning the battle with day. What’s left of the golden light ignites the very tips of the surrounding buildings. With my lungs still dragging in breath after excruciating breath, I glance at the one next to us, a likely hiding place for the Scalati. We need to get out of here before it gets any darker. Grabbing Auri, I tug him around a corner.

The beast sees me before I see it, a growl rumbling from its throat and crackling through the silent streets. My heart wedges into my throat as it stomps a gigantic paw in our direction with its eyes reduced to angry slits, pinning us to the building behind us and cutting off any escape routes. Glossy golden fur layers its smooth muscular body, its pointy ears twitching like the cats in the alley behind the orphanage, but this thing is at least ten times the size. It’s not Scalati, though. Not in the daylight, and not with the incisive way it’s looking at me. It’s wild, foreign to Gethsemane. Not rabid like the Scalati, but it might be just as deadly.

The enormous cat-like creature steps closer, jowls peeled back, exposing fangs the size of my palm. Auri slips behind, clutching fists full of my sweatshirt as he buries his face in my back. I wrap my arms around him, pressing him to me, wishing my body was enough to protect him. A sob squeaks from him, jolting my brain into scrambling for desperate ideas. Auri can’t die here. He’s special, a flash of sunshine in a very gray world.

I need to fight this thing.

I twitch, the beginning of a movement, a piece of a pathetic plan that hasn’t completely formed.

“Don’t move,” a voice warns, and I freeze, my eyes flicking to the left. I scan the man standing there. He’s young, not too much older than me, with bright red hair, long-sleeved shirt instead of a guard uniform and not a single hint of Peccare. An apprentice or scholar, maybe? Or a doctor. They don’t start the transformation as early as the rest of us. No matter his MOS, if he’s an employee of Gethsemane, he’s no friend of mine. Just another enemy to shake if I can manage to survive this one.

“What?” I ask through gritted teeth.

He creeps forward, adjusting the pack on his back. “You just need to show it you’re not a threat.”

I glance back at the teeth, closer now since the animal is taking one slow step after another in our direction.

I’m a decent fighter, self-defense being one of my best subjects in school, but their training hadn’t included how to win out against those teeth. Its razor-sharp claws screech against the pavement as it flexes them in and out, and my arms prickle with goosebumps. This is not a fight I can win.

I press Auri even tighter to my back, scrunching my eyes closed. The creature’s breath caresses my face, hot and sticky as it teases the strands of rebellious hair that have escaped my ponytail, twirling them around my ear.

Then it’s gone, golden haunches disappearing behind a building when I open my eyes again.

Now it’s just the red-haired man staring at me with curious green eyes.

“Thanks,” I say, hoping whoever he is won’t result in more running. As good as I am at scrimping, I’ve had my fill of close calls for one day.

He smiles, looking as relieved as I feel. His mouth moves, forming the beginning of words when more guards barrel around the corner, one after another after another. A completely different kind of monster grabs hold of my shoulder, forcing me to my knees and my hands behind my back, and now I’m wishing I’d just taken my chances with the other one.