Matilda nods, understanding. “I’d forgotten,” she says. “Sacred Cinteotl bless me, I’d forgotten how idealistic I once was.”
I’m sparing her life, and she’s mocking me?
A scream—a battle cry—makes me jump.
El-Saffani, racing away from the base of the ramp, leaving Farrar and Coyotl to stare. The red-gray-caked twins, screaming, waving bone-clubs over their heads, sprinting toward the archway. There, a pair of wrinkled, coal-black monsters walking in, each step a twitching, jittering, painful effort. One monster carries an axe. The other a jeweled scepter.
They have found us.
“El-Saffani, come back!” My shout echoes through the room, but if the twins can hear me over their own violent howls, they don’t respond.
I start down the ramp, make it two steps before a boy’s hand locks down on my arm. O’Malley, holding me, but I yank my arm free and hear my shirtsleeve rip. The ramp’s hard points dig into my running feet. Bishop thunders along behind me.
I’m halfway down when Spingate’s shout stops me. She leans out of the shuttle entrance.
“Em, get everyone inside! We can see the hallway, more of them are coming! Gaston thinks the shuttle will protect us!”
Down the ramp. My feet slap against the metal floor. El-Saffani halfway to their target. I look to the archway: my heart turns to ice.
The two monsters weren’t alone.
Hundreds of them pour through, their movements stilted and halting, as if each step brings a bolt of agony. An army of ancient darkness, of diseased bodies that should have died centuries ago.
And on some of their arms—silver bracelets with a long point that ends at their wrist.
I stop. Bishop stops next to me, Matilda still in his arms.
“It’s about damn time,” she says, her voice full of appreciation and—possibly—hope that she might live through this after all. “Captain Xander finally broke out the guns.”
Bishop’s roar makes my best sound like a whisper.
“El-Saffani, stop!”
His voice echoes off the floor, the ceiling, the walls. Again, the twins don’t hear. They charge, bellowing, brandishing their clubs.
The pieces click together with a nearly audible snap. We beat the Grownups in the Garden because they didn’t bring the weapons, because they wanted to take us alive. But now we’ve got the shuttle, their only way to reach Omeyocan. How could I have been so stupid? They would rather kill most of us than let us strand them here forever.
The monsters raise their arms. Bracelets glow with a white heat.
The twins almost make it.
A crackling sound I’ve never heard before, like a living animal boiled in oil, then narrow cones of shimmering energy blaze from the bracelet tips. A white flash silhouettes El-Saffani: their backs are black shadows against a blinding light. I see this for a split second, then I can see through their backs.
The El-Saffani battle cry ends forever—a hundred bloody pieces scatter across the floor, rolling and flopping to a wet stop at the monsters’ feet.
A howl rips from my lungs, launched so hard and so instantly that my throat shreds and burns.
Those butchers murdered my friends.
Tears well up. Despair crushes me, compresses me, but I clench my teeth and force it away. There is no time.
I grab Matilda’s wrist, yank her out of Bishop’s arms. The ancient creature falls hard to the floor.
“Everyone, back inside!” I sprint up the ramp. The circle-stars are so fast they pass me by. O’Malley and I rush in. As soon as I’m through the door, I scream to my right. “Gaston! Get us out of here!”
Coyotl and Farrar run to the coffin room. Bishop and O’Malley stay with me in the corridor.
The floor vibrates: shuttle doors closing. Through them, at the base of the ramp, I see Matilda Savage. She’s lying on one hip, looking at me with her single swirling red eye.
My creator’s stumbling, shambling people close in. They point their arms at me, the white glow of their bracelets building to a blinding shimmer.
The shuttle doors hiss shut. One second I am at the edge of death, the next there are red metal walls a hand’s width from my face. I hear something hit the shuttle with a sizzling sound, but nothing comes through.
Gaston’s voice booms from everywhere and nowhere at once, comes from the shuttle itself.
“Get in those coffins! Get in and lie still!”
I’m being pulled—Bishop drags me toward the big room.
I won’t go into the darkness again, I can’t.
My hand is a fist: my punch drives square into Bishop’s eye. I think of Latu in the fraction of a second before Bishop grabs my forearms so hard I feel bones bend.
Gaston’s voice, roaring: “Hang on, we’re going home! Get in the coffins or you’ll die!”
I try to yank my hands free, but Bishop’s grip might as well be the metal bars that once held me in my coffin.
“Bishop let me go I can’t go in there I can’t!”
I am lifted, thrown over his wide shoulder. He carries me into the coffin room.
I punch at him, try to kick him. I rake his back with my fingernails.
“Don’t you dare, Bishop! Don’t you leave me in the dark!”
I rake him again, feel his blood on my fingers. I’m in the aisle now, coffins on my left and my right. People who aren’t already in coffins are scrambling to find empty ones.
Hands grab my wrists—it’s O’Malley.
“Em, stop it! It will be all right!”
I lift my head, see deep-blue eyes drowning in helpless fear. I feel my face twist into a wicked snarl. I hurl my hate at him.
“O’Malley, kill Bishop! He’s trying to trap me in the dark and I’ll die I can’t go back there!”
I fight and kick and twist, but the two boys are far stronger than me. Why don’t they understand? Things bite in the darkness; the shadows want to hold me down and suffocate me. I’ll be trapped again, trapped forever.
This is a trick of Brewer’s. He’s working with Matilda to capture us all, to capture me and erase my mind. They will overwrite me, but that’s not enough for them: they are going to put me in the dark first, to punish me, and—
The world spins. It takes me a second to realize what’s happening, to understand what the padding under my back means.
My friends put me in a coffin.
Hands hold me in place. I’m thrown to the left, smashed up against the padded wall—that wasn’t the boys, it was the shuttle itself, moving. An instant of realization cuts through my blinding terror, lets me think straight for a brief moment—Gaston and Spingate…the shuttle is leaving the Xolotl…they are getting us out of here.
Bishop and O’Malley pin me down, using only enough strength to stop me from sitting up or lashing out at them. I’m in a coffin, I am going into the darkness, my friends have betrayed me, I have to fight, I have to kill.
A face close to mine, peering in at me. A small face. A girl. She’s wearing a clean shirt. She has dark skin, jet-black hair, dark eyes. There is a jagged circle on her forehead.
It’s Zubiri.
“Em, it’s going to be okay,” she says. “Don’t be afraid.”
She smiles.
The girl is so calm. None of this frightens her? I am older than she is…shouldn’t I be the one comforting her?
“I can’t be in here,” I say to Zubiri, as if the tiny girl can overpower Bishop or give orders to O’Malley. “I can’t be in a coffin again. Tell them.”
I want my voice to sound angry, dangerous and threatening, but what comes out is a pathetic whine. I’m not commanding anybody: I’m begging.
Zubiri shakes her head. “It’s not a coffin, Em. It’s a bed. You have to be in it right now. Do you know what g-forces are?”
I don’t. I’ve never heard those words. I shake my head.
“It means that if you’re not safely protected, you’ll be thrown all over this cabin.” Zubiri’s voice is soothing. She isn’t worri
ed at all, not even a little bit. “When this shuttle flies, Em, if you’re not inside you’ll probably die.”
She wants to help me. But to let her help me, I have to stay in this nightmare box.
I look at Bishop.
“Be still, Em,” he says. “It will be all right.”
I look at O’Malley.
“You’re safe,” he says. “You got us out. Now lie back so we can leave. I don’t want to die up here when we’re so close to Omeyocan.”
Omeyocan.
We’re going down to the planet. That’s what we were made for.
The world lurches again, so violently that O’Malley, Bishop and Zubiri tumble away, fall over and slide into other coffins. For a moment, no one is holding me down. I could run…but I do not.
If I don’t stay here, in this coffin, they will try to catch me. If Zubiri is right, the boys could die trying to keep me safe.
Better I go mad in the darkness than see any harm come to Bishop and O’Malley.
I close my eyes and force myself to stay still.
The coffin’s padded sides press in on me. My neck tingles, waiting for the needle sting that I know is moments away. This time it won’t be clogged, the poison will give me a fever cleaver and I will die, burning and screaming—but I remain still.
Gaston’s voice rips the air.
“Last warning, people. We’re leaving!”
I hear O’Malley scramble into the coffin on my right. Bishop lunges into the one on my left.
On either side of me, a boy’s hand reaches over the coffin’s edge.
My fingers seek out theirs. They intertwine.
O’Malley holds my right hand. His skin is warm and soft.
Bishop holds my left. His hands are rough and blistered. He squeezes so tight it hurts, but I don’t mind—it makes me feel protected.
I hear something, lift my head to see. A lid is sliding up from the foot of the coffin, slowly sealing me in. It moves past my knees, my thighs, my hips….
I let go of both boys.
I rest my hands on my chest, left over right.
The lid slides past my face.
All is dark.
There is a click, then a hiss. The coffin presses into my sides, my back, my chest and my face. A scream builds up inside me, unstoppable, the product of my body’s instant and futile need to move, to fight my way free.
Then I smell something odd. Almost instantly, my body starts to relax.
The world shifts again. No, not the world, the shuttle. I feel a hard pull to the right, then left, then up…if the coffin wasn’t pressed tight against me, I would sail through the room, smash so hard against a wall or a door or the ceiling that my bones would shatter.
Zubiri was right.
The coffins once promised death: now they are life itself.
The pulling sensation eases…then it’s gone.
We are floating.
My eyes droop. That smell…it’s nice. I’m not stressed anymore. I’m tired…so very tired.
I blink, or try to, but once I close my eyes they won’t open again.
There is a moment before sleep takes me, a moment where the events of my impossibly short life play back in my head. We saw so many horrors. I killed Yong. We lost Latu. We lost Bello. We lost El-Saffani.
Tears flow for my dead friends. There is nothing I can do now, no reason to battle against the waves of despair coursing through me. They are dead, and I will never see them again.
But despite our losses, our tragic and stupid losses at the hands of creatures who should not exist, I know my friends didn’t die for nothing. I am proud of them all, and the survivors as well, because together, we won.
We woke up in a prison. We were made to be erased. The Grownups said we were property. They said we weren’t people.
We showed them they were wrong.
The Grownups, or monsters, or Cherished or whatever they are, don’t care about us. They don’t care what we believe in, what we stand for, they don’t care what we like or who we love or what we think—they just want copies of themselves. They would kill the children so they could live forever.
We were made to be like them, but we’ve earned a different path. They can’t follow us. We can be whoever we want to be. We can make a new future now. If we make mistakes, at least those mistakes will be ours.
As the darkness within my head swells to match the darkness without, one last thought fills me with peace before I drift away.
We are the Birthday Children.
We are on our way to Omeyocan.
We fly.
AN OH-SO-POLITE REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader:
Thank you for spending your time with my novel. I hope you enjoyed it thoroughly.
Not to be presumptuous, but I have a favor to ask—consider the people after you who want to experience the story’s twists and turns for themselves.
In other words, my request is this: no spoilers.
Pretty please.
In this world of blogging, Goodreads, Amazon reviews, Twitter, Facebook and whatever social media powerhouse comes next, it is disconcertingly easy to amplify your affection or distaste for a piece of work like this one. If your broadcast to the world includes key plot points or reveals, other people lose their chance at the moments of discovery that can make fiction so special.
A reader only gets one chance to be surprised.
So if you tweet and blog, if you review and share (and I hope that you do!), please avoid giving away the good stuff. You had a chance to enjoy this story spoiler-free—I’d appreciate it if you’d preserve that same chance for others.
Thanks,
Scott
For my mother, who loves and leads by example
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Scott would like to thank the following people for their research expertise:
Dr. Joseph A. Albietz III, M.D.
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci, Ph.D
Dr. Phil Plait, Ph.D
Sydney Sigler
Maria Walters
And these peeps for story feedback:
Julianna Baggott
Byrd Leavell
Rebecca E. Rae
Holly Root
Jody Sigler
Special thanks to Justin Manask, who put me on the path for this book, and to A Kovacs, my business partner, without whom none of my stuff would ever get finished.
BY SCOTT SIGLER
THE GENERATIONS TRILOGY
Alive
NOVELS
Infected (Infected Trilogy Book I)
Contagious (Infected Trilogy Book II)
Ancestor
Nocturnal
Pandemic (Infected Trilogy Book III)
GALACTIC FOOTBALL LEAGUE SERIES
The Rookie
The Starter
The All-Pro
The MVP
The Champion
GFL NOVELLAS
The Reporter
The Detective
Title Fight
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Blood Is Red
Bones Are White
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling author SCOTT SIGLER is the author of fifteen novels, six novellas, and dozens of short stories. He is also the co-founder of Empty Set Entertainment, which publishes his YA Galactic Football League series. He lives in San Diego.
scottsigler.com
Facebook.com/scottsigler
Twitter.com/scottsigler
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Scott Sigler, Alive
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