“If you won’t change me, then you’ll have to kill me.” These words were not what she meant to say, but she was glad that that part of her that she could never control, nor understand, had taken over and was fully in charge.

  The memory of an eyebrow raised under its smooth, mottled forehead.

  “I can’t leave here alive. I know this. I knew it before I came.”

  “We do not serve compassion. We serve the needs. The hunger and the survival of the hive.”

  “I serve the needs, too.”

  A smile played across the creature’s sinewy lips, curling up the right side, exposing a yellowed incisor the length of an index finger. “Very well. But know this, to live forever, one must first die.”

  “I accept this.”

  “Death is never pretty, never painless. You will never forget.”

  “I accept this.”

  “Tell me your story,” it said.

  “Tell me yours first.”

  23

  The man drove the minivan. Hettie was huddled in the back on the floor, pale and shaking, arms wrapped around herself and feet drawn up tight underneath her legs. She pressed her hand against the wound on the inside of her thigh, the spot where the thing from the darkness had opened up her femoral artery and fed like a monstrous hummingbird. It wouldn’t give anything of itself to her, only taking from the girl.

  The man angled down the rearview mirror. “How do you feel?”

  “Like … death,” she said through chattering teeth.

  The man frowned, unsure is this was sarcasm or irony or just simply a truthful statement. Young people confused him so. All people did, if he was being honest.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “To a proper place. I will show you.”

  She looked out the window. The first rays of sunlight glowed behind dead buildings. Inside, she could feel herself falling apart, collapsing. She imagined an old black and white movie of washed out buildings falling down around ropes and horses after one of the world wars. “How much time do I have?”

  “Not much.”

  Hettie nodded, then shuddered so violently she moved sideways on the floor. “Can you turn … on the heat, p-please? I’m f-freezing.”

  “Maybe even less than I thought.” He didn’t turn on the heat. “There are many things you will learn on your own, but you must be told others before.”

  She caught the movement of a flock of pigeons that alighted from a hidden roost somewhere inside this graveyard city. They all moved together, without alert or planning. They just knew what the other was going to do, and moved as one organism. Hettie tracked how they moved, and could sense which way they were going to turn before they did a moment later. She would have pointed it out to the man if she hadn’t just lost the capacity to speak.

  “Find a safe place to die, and make sure it is away from the people and away from the sky.”

  24

  “They came to me as three boys. Skinny, unwashed, almost feral in appearance, but extremely well behaved. They showed up one morning at the edge of our farm. I saw them from the porch as I was dumping water from breakfast into the flowers planted around the stairs. They stood just beyond our fence, leaning on it, watching us. I sent my boy out to shoo them away, but he came back with them in tow, muttering something about being neighborly, and not leaving a good Christian soul to starve during terrible times.

  “The boys were polite. I offered them lunch, but they refused, saying that they didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, especially someone like me. I didn’t understand what that meant, and asked them to explain themselves, but they didn’t say anything. They refused our food and just stood in the yard at the foot of the porch, watching my son and me, taking in the details of the house and outbuildings. After a while, we went inside to set to the inside chores, hoping they’d move on. But they didn’t. They stayed where they were, standing in the grass, not talking to each other but nodding once in a while, like they were hearing something we couldn’t. The day wore on into the evening, and seeing that they were still out there standing in the yard while we were inside, I became uncomfortable, then agitated, without knowing exactly why. They were just boys, but there was something more to them. Like I could see the men they would become someday. Not exactly men, I reckoned, but something else. Anyway, I couldn’t put my finger on it, and even took it for woman worry, but didn’t like how it sat inside me. So I went back outside and told them if they weren’t going to leave, they could sleep in the loft, above the cows, but had to be gone by morning, as we were going to be visiting relatives the following day. It was a little white lie, but I was raised with manners, you see. That counted for something back then. Considering my invite, they just nodded, each in a different way but all with that same queer smile, and went off to the barn. My son, who was an only child, didn’t go with them. This was curious to me. His chores were done, and I’d have laid a pretty good wager that he would want to play some with these boys, as he didn’t have anyone else around that was his own age. Just his mother, who didn’t like to play much. I asked him if he wanted to go, but he just shook his head, and asked if he could go to bed early. It was like he was sick. I obliged, and turned in early that night myself.

  “Hours later, as the night turned in on itself at the midway point, I heard noises on the roof. Light footsteps. Too light for human of any size other than maybe an infant. The noises went up and down the roof. And I heard giggles. Little giggles, like when children are in on a joke that they don’t want the adults to know. That the adults wouldn’t understand anyway, and kill all of its magic if they did.

  “I got up and went to my boy, asking him if he heard the noises too, and he was under his bed, wrapped in his blankets, shaking. I was about to pull him up and out when the sound of the horses screaming took me to the window. The barn was dark. No lamplight or torch. I’d been inside that barn when it was that dark and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The horses screamed and screamed, like they were human and understood what was happening to them. Like they knew they couldn’t stop it and were afraid of death. After several minutes, the screaming ended. Just like that.

  “I grabbed my rifle and sat by the door until daylight. There was no way in hell I was going outside without the sun at my back. After dawn, I waited as long as I could to let the sun remove any shadows between me and the barn.

  “They came right before dawn. That must have been as long as they could wait. The door was closed, and then it was open. I didn’t see it move. Maybe I dozed off, but I don’t think so. The door was open, and the three boys were standing in the doorway. From the stories we all knew, I was certain that if I didn’t invite them inside, we’d be safe. The animals outside were gone, dooming us that winter, but at least my son would be safe. My sweet boy, the last of me.

  “They stepped inside one by one, moving slowly. I shot at them, squeezing the trigger until the gun was empty. I hit a few, but missed some, too. It didn’t matter either way. They took the bullets in like seeds pushed into butter. They fell upon me, stronger than boys that size should be. Stronger than anything I’d ever seen or felt.

  “Before they finished me, they brought out my boy, and the bigger one, the older brother, removed the night clothes from his tiny, shaky body. His skin was so white, his ribs sticking out as he breathed hard. The bigger boy moved behind him and wrapped his arms around my child like a backward hug, then he tore open my boy’s chest like an overripe peach. That’s what it looked like, sounded like. Everything inside him fell out onto the floor, and the two others dug through it, fighting over the liver. No one held me still, but I was frozen. The boy holding my son’s dead body like an empty costume stared at me, eyes wide and smile of joy on his face, like he was watching a carnival show. They got to me soon enough, but they did me a different way. They wanted a mother, they said, and I’d be that mother soon enough. Once I joined with them, they said, I’d be part of the tribe. Of the hive. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now, just as you will soon, too. And your friend. We’ll all be family.

  “After they were done, and as I lay dying, I remembered then that I’d invited them in the day before. The invitation was given, even if I’d forgotten. It was only later, far later, that I realized no invitation was needed. They would have come inside anyway.”

  25

  Hettie emerged from the tunnel down by the water just as the sun dropped below the horizon, backpack dangling from one hand. Blood was smeared on her face, the red standing out in sharp contrast to the bone whiteness of her skin, dripping down on the party dress that was soaked grey and dripping black rivulets of filthy water.

  The sickness was gone, cured by death. Her heart did not pound, nor did it beat much at all. But she felt alive with fever, consumed by it, a trillion of her new brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers coursing inside her veins, repurposing her genetic code and providing a new form of life that her body did not yet understand.

  Her chest heaved like the billows of a forge. Her ribs distended as lungs sucked in huge volumes of air, parsing the information from each new molecule she took inside to a brain that was rewiring itself on a subatomic level, firing up the old passageways to primal instincts humankind had left in the cave. In and out she breathed, her mouth watering. There was so much out there, waiting for her, not knowing she was coming.

  She felt ravenous with anticipation, frenzied with the possibility of everything and anything she wished to do. Sounds and sensations bombarded her newly powered receptors, and her parietal lobe exploded with the sensual nectar of hearing and tasting and sensing the physical world stripped raw for the first time, as if the safety plastic had been pulled off and she was finally getting to the real thing. She wanted to tongue kiss the universe. She wanted to eat every living soul on this tiny fucking planet.

  And Jesusfuck was she hungry. Starving down to the marrow that was feasting on itself inside her humming bones. She needed to eat something proper, she knew, not tunnel dregs. She needed to eat soon. Had to be strong when she arrived, so she could do what needed to be done without going too far. Without killing Avery. The control could only be achieved if she was suitably trained or properly fed. Hettie was neither.

  Running her tongue over her lips, she remembered old, towering trees, a large house and food in the basement. Dancing meat, screaming at a stage. She would go there first. It was on the way. Her family told her so.

  26

  Hettie walked, nearly skipped, could have hovered if she was in a movie and not in real life. She was wearing a new outfit that was moderately Victorian and stank of the incense of the basement church, but was clean. Her hair was damp with blood and water, and seemed to find a new style that was thick and unruly and glorious.

  She moved down the sidewalk at a brisk pace as her mind uploaded her new reality and her internal processes settled into position. The night teemed with life, and she saw and heard all of it, quickly figuring out what to ignore and what to assess. Every movement around her seemed to whistle through the air, announcing its coming before it arrived. She balanced this with the thoughts and movements from the hive, sent out from across the globe and picked up by her internal antennae that coated every nerve ending. She felt them, what they were doing, and could have mimicked the algorithms of each one moving as it happened, like a flock of birds. Or a swarm of insects. This filled her up with such a profound sense of belonging and connectivity that she felt the urge to weep, which was an act that she somehow knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t—do ever again.

  Familiar smells that came from a near forgotten childhood blossomed in her nostrils. She was near her old neighborhood, and felt the map of each home and place of business open up around her like stepping into a 3D hologram. A limousine passed by, with kids hanging out the sunroof, clutching bottles and each other, howling into the night. They were young and drunk and nothing could stop them from owning the world in just a few short years. They were on the verge.

  Up ahead was the hospital. Very few cars were in the emergency parking lot. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was filled, like it once was. Hettie was going inside.

  27

  Hettie took Avery’s hand in hers, holding it up to her chest. She couldn’t touch her like this before. With such intimacy and confidence. Now here, and every moment after this, she could. Now she was all hers. She looked at the girl’s hand, moving it back and forth like she was examining an artifact. Someone had painted Avery’s fingernails. Hettie held them close to her face, and noticed how cracked and flaky the nail beds were. How the cuticles were split. She put Avery’s hand into her mouth and rolled the fingers around on her tongue.

  Avery didn’t move, either not conscious or possibly in a coma. Didn’t matter, really. The machines that kept her alive made very few sounds. A slow beep. Her heartbeat. Faintly stirring. Waiting for the end. Hettie smiled at this, and Avery’s hand fell out of her mouth and landed limply on the bedding, glistening with Hettie’s saliva.

  Hettie put her finger in the spittle and traced her wet finger up Avery’s forearm, to just inside her elbow, where the catheter was attached to her veins, feeding her drugs and fluids to kill her cells in hopes of keeping her alive. The insane dichotomy of cancer treatment. She cocked her head left and right, trying to take her in from every possible angle.

  What are you doing? she heard Avery’s voice say, but she obviously couldn’t speak through the respirator, even if she was awake. What are you doing to me?

  “Your blood is killing you.”

  You don’t understand, Avery was trying to say.

  “Your blood is killing you,” Hettie repeated. “And so are the doctors. I won’t let them.”

  Hettie held up the skeletal left arm. Just below her translucent skin, the partially collapsed brachial artery snaked its way down from the armpit through the center of the arm to the elbow, where it split in two. She removed a syringe from inside her jacket and flicked off the cap. Without taking her eyes off of Avery, she cocked her head to the side and plunged the needle into the carotid artery of her neck. The plunger slowly pulled back, filling the barrel inside with burgundy blood.

  Hettie had eaten on the way over, but still didn’t trust herself. And her teeth hadn’t changed yet. And most importantly, she would have had to tear Avery open to get to her blood. That wasn’t the plan. The needle was the way to go, included in her overnight bag.

  When it was full, she removed the needle from her neck, licked clean the needle tip, then inserted it into the IV tubing access port leading into Avery’s arm. She let loose the blood inside the syringe, pushing it slowly into the dying girl’s veins, mixed into the solution that was her only source of nutrients.

  Hettie dropped the bed railing and pulled off the blankets. She removed the respirator from Avery’s mouth, carefully wetting the tape and gauze with a damp washcloth brought from the bathroom before pulling it away from her papery skin. She dipped the cloth into a bowl on the bedside table and dribbled water into her open mouth, then washed her face, removing crust from her eyes and pushing wisps of hair back from her forehead, which came loose in her hand. She ran her hand over Avery’s head, and what remained of her pageant perfect hair separated from her scalp. Storing these hairs in her jacket pocket, Hettie washed away the scaly build-up on her head like polishing a dusty egg. Avery was now perfect bald, doing an unplanned homage to the colony queen in the tall building.

  She then removed each of the sensors and tubes from Avery’s fingertips, arms, and her washboard chest. She once thought that these machines were hooked into a central system in the hospital, sending out alerts if there was any drastic change in the readers, but now knew that this was not the case. The shared wisdom of the hive told her so many things. No one would see Avery flatline.

  Hettie pulled a party dress from her backpack. It was to match the one she wore, but hers was ruined. Poor planning, as she hadn’t accounted for her own time of dying, and where that would be. No matter. She’d dress Avery up and take her someplace safer and cleaner to die. The basement boiler room. Or maybe the morgue. Maybe someplace deeper than that. There were holes in this planet, she now knew.

  She carefully ripped the blue hospital gown off of Avery’s fragile body, and then gingerly slid her into the dress. She replaced the blankets and laid the stuffed animal, dirty and matted and smelling of sewer, into the crook of Avery’s arm, where Hettie’s blood had entered her just minutes before.

  Smoothing out the blankets, Hettie stood back and waited. The hush of the late hour filled the hospital, allowing Hettie to hear into rooms three floors down, into homes several blocks away. This was her visiting time. It was nearly time for a shift change, and she hoped no overzealous orderly barged into the room. It would be quick and bloody, and it would be a distraction. These next moments were saved for Hettie, and for Avery.

  After several minutes, Avery stirred. Her mouth worked over her swollen tongue, then her lashless eyes fluttered. She turned her head slowly to face Hettie, a dreamy expression on her hairless face.

  “Wh-whooo … are … you?” Avery sounded like she was learning how to speak again. Her voice was dry, raspy, like the queen. It was a comforting sound. Becoming.

  “You don’t remember?” Hettie asked gently.

  “No … Where … aaam I?”

  “You’re with us.” Hettie took her hand and caressed it lightly with her fingertips.

  “Who?”

  “We—” She stopped herself, overcoming her new natural impulse. “I’m your friend.”

 

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