The Benders (24 page)

We sprint over broken concrete littered with tires, rusted metal, and thorny bushes. Running is tough, especially with one hand attached to Nada, but we work out a rhythm, pumping our connected arms at the same time as we jump over twisted rebar and skitter around sunken blacktop.

A
thwack
sound echoes behind us. A crossbow bolt smashes into the warehouse a few feet away, spraying particles at our faces.

He’s shooting at us.

“Hurry,” Nada screams.

I sprint, pumping my legs faster, dodging a stack of old tires, but Nada runs the opposite way and our connected arms snap taut like a wire. I cry out, more in shock than in pain and Nada tumbles sideways.

Another bolt cuts the air overhead. Where are they shooting from?

I crawl through the rubble and use my free arm to pull Nada up. “Come on!” Nada, her face scraped bloody on one cheek, scampers up.

We sprint the last few feet and dive into the warehouse, tumbling onto the dusty floor.

Hidden by darkness and thick concrete walls, we sit up and catch our breath. Nada touches her free hand to her cheek and comes away with bloody fingertips.

“You okay?” I ask, looking at her scratched cheek.

She nods. “Didn’t think he’d start hunting so soon. But what else can you expect?” She stares at the sparsely lit warehouse before us and blows out a breath. “We better get moving before they decide to hunt in here.”

I push up and survey the room. Broken windows with jagged glass teeth let in small beams of light. In the streamers of sunlight, the trash-covered floor looks like a clumpy swamp. Puddles of putrid water shimmer on the floor between mounds of debris. Standing water is odd because with the desert heat you’d think the water would’ve long evaporated. The sound of dribbling water, probably a busted pipe echoes from some deep reservoir. Too bad the water’s probably teeming with disease. I could use a drink.

Scaffolds cling to the brick above us, but the stairwells are long gone. Rusted chains as big around as my wrist drip down from the ceiling like snakes. At the far end, about a football field away, sits a solitary door, blue and bright as a beacon.

Nada points to it. I nod. It seems too easy.

We take a cautious step forward. Nothing jumps up at us from the dark shadows. There’s no sound at all except for the roar of Lord Merek’s four-wheelers outside. He’s hunting humans. That bastard.

Nada looks at me and we take another step forward.

Nothing.

“This seems too easy,” I whisper, unable to stop myself from speaking the obvious. Nada nods and chews her lip.

Footsteps pounding our way make me freeze. Someone’s coming toward the warehouse. And fast.

We whirl around and ready to dive for cover.

Michal and his partner barrel in through the open door at a full sprint. Blood drips from Michal’s forehead and both of their clothes are torn. When Michal spots us, his eyes go wide.

“What happened?” I ask as they run this way.

Michal shakes his head as he runs. “The other warehouse.”

“What?” I yell, my heart thumping. “What’s wrong with the other warehouse?”

There’s no time. We see what they’re running from. A four-wheeler skids to a stop outside the warehouse doors. A guard with a crossbow aims at us from outside.

We turn and run after Michal and his partner.

A bolt whizzes by, slicing the air above my right shoulder. On the other side of the building, a glass window explodes.

Nada yanks me sideways into the shadows along the wall. The debris is thicker and harder for us to navigate, but it’s also harder for the bastard guards to see us. Michal and his partner take the straight path down the center, both running like mad.

There’s a loud
zap.
Michal and his partner blast through the air as if thrown by some invisible hand. I skid to a stop and watch as both benders crumple to the floor. They twitch and moan. A smoky ozone smell fills the air.

“What happened?” Nada asks in horror.

I shake my head. Their twitching forms haven’t gotten up, but I think they’re alive. My eyes track to the puddle of water in front of Michal and his partner.

“They’ve electrified the water,” I say, pointing. “They got zapped.”

Nada and I stare ahead, taking in what this means. Puddle after puddle dots the path between us and the blue door. More pool probably lurk under the trash and debris. Terrified, my eyes flit from one puddle to another. We’re not going to make it.

Another bolt zings our way. The guard doesn’t enter, but he’s having a good time taking shots from outside. We skitter forward, afraid that each step might be our last.

When there’s no clear path forward that isn’t in the shooters’ line of sight or flooded with electrified water, Nada and I crouch low and try to think. Maybe the guards will give up.

Then from the doorway, “I’m coming in!”

I turn to Nada. “What do we do?”

She shakes her head, licking sweat off her upper lip. “If we try to run around puddles, we’ll be shot.”

My eyes trail upward. The scaffolding runs along the wall above our heads about eight feet from the floor. If we could get up there…

In the center of the warehouse Michal sits up. His hair is wild, standing straight out from his head. His partner is still moaning.

“Up,” I say to Nada, pulling. “Now, while the guard’s busy.”

She jumps up and begins scampering up my body as best she can. But with our arms connected, it’s impossible. I try to hoist her up, but get a boot toe to the stomach and a nice scrape down my shoulder for the effort. When she can reach the metal rungs, she can only grab on with one hand.

Nada falls down beside me, yanking my arm hard at the socket. “No good,” she says. “If I had both my arms…”

I look around frantically. My eyes land on stacks of rotting wood pallets. “Help me.”

We stack wood pallets as fast as we can. Splinters bite into the soft flesh of my palms, but I don’t care.

When I look back, Lord Merek’s in the doorway, watching from his four-wheeler. His new wife, clutching his waist, has a smug grin on her face. One of the guards has run around back. Maybe he’s disconnecting the power so they can come hunt us without getting electrocuted. Either way we have to hurry.

We set the last pallet on the stack. As Nada and I climb the wobbly platform, the whole structure shifts and slides beneath our feet, but it’s enough for both of us to reach the metal scaffolding. We pull up, grunting and sweating. Side-by-side, we pull ourselves onto the scaffold. Our footsteps thunder on the metal grate and echo through the warehouse as we sprint down the metal walkway. Below, Michal is screaming at his partner to get up. I glance down and see him dragging a still-moaning body toward our pallet platform.

Four-wheelers roar into the warehouse. Nada and I sprint to the end of the walkway, but we skid to a halt. The staircase is gone here, too. The fall from eight feet won’t kill anyone, but below us are jagged shards of metal, splinters of wood, and God knows what else.

But there, a few feet from us, is the blue door.

Merek roars into the warehouse and lifts his crossbow to his shoulder.

“Jump!” Nada screams.

The fall is short. The landing is hard. I crash through wood, feeling it break under my back. Snaps of pain flare up all over my body, but my adrenaline pumps it away. Nada shakes her head as if to fight off dizziness and begins clawing through the debris toward the door.

A scream cuts through the warehouse. I look back and a guard has his crossbow trained on Michal’s head. I turn away and reach for the door.

Four steps and we’re there. My hand circles the knob and turns. I push the door open. Sunlight greets me.

“Riley!” Nada screams. I turn to see what she’s looking at, and a bolt shoots toward us.

Nada jerks me forward. I fall through the open door after her as the top of the blue door is skewered and sprays shards. Pieces pelt my neck and shoulders. I tumble forward, rolling, rolling, until I stop in a pile of arms and legs.

When I can lift my head, I see we’ve made it through the first warehouse. We lie on the dirty blacktop in a dim alley. Nada drags me behind a rusted dumpster tucked up next to the second building. In this tiny crack, we can hide and assess the damage before barreling into the next warehouse.

I pant and wipe sweat off my forehead and try not to think about what just happened. Instead I focus on my injuries—cuts and scrapes, and a small shard of wood pokes out of my right ankle. My knee throbs with pain that will likely be howling in an hour or two. Otherwise, I’m okay. Nada yanks a shard of metal out of the meat of her forearm and winces at the blood. She begins ripping her sleeve off to make a bandage for her arm.

“Want help?” I whisper.

She lets me help her rip the shirt into strips and bind her arm. Then we sit for a few seconds and stare at the dumpster. Someone has tagged it with faded, red graffiti reading
Lil’ Gee
in big, puffy letters.

“We need to move,” she says.

I nod, but my legs do nothing. The throb in my knee is growing, but really it’s my fear of what we will find in the next building that’s keeping me stuck right here.

A four-wheeler engine rumbles up on the street in front of us. Even though we’re well-hidden, Nada and I both stiffen.

We creep around the dumpster, careful to stay hidden and silent, and slink along the wall of the second warehouse. This one seems taller than the first, jutting up into the sun-seared sky at least four stories. Above, there are plenty of busted windows to climb in, but on the main floor there’s no way to get in.

When we’ve skirted the length of the shadowed section, we stop and look at each other. If there is a door, it’s out on the street where the four-wheelers prowl. And the back of this alley ends in a solid brick wall. Glass shatters somewhere in the other row of buildings and a scream follows. I cringe, but inside a sick part of me is hopeful. Let it be done now. Let that be the last set of competitors they want to kill.

I’m rooting for someone’s death? This game has blackened my heart.

But, no ceasefire comes. Nada and I inch back into the alley and look up. We’ll have to enter on the second floor.

When we realize the dumpster we’ve been hiding behind is on wheels, we quickly come up with a plan. With a little squeaking that makes both of us cringe, we push the dumpster over to the second floor window. Then we haul our sweaty, aching bodies up onto the dumpster lid and help each other to climb into the warehouse.

Slipping in the widow together, we dangle and then drop at the same time to the floor blow. The warehouse is long and open like the last, but this floor is littered with broken furniture, rusty machinery, and crumpled paper.

“The skilled trades,” Nada says, reaching out and picking up a ball-point pen husk. Her eyes scan the desks and welding equipment. “Aha!” she cries, coming up with a pair of rusty shears. After a few attempts, we saw the zip-tie apart and we’re separated. For a moment we’re quiet, thinking about what this means. Then Nada speaks. “They said we can’t win without each other, so there’s no sense in running off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I try to sound light, but the comment falls flat. “We’re in this together.” I mean it, too. As much as I hate to admit it, I really like the little hard-ass.

“So, what kind of booby trap are we looking at?” I ask, staring hard at the long rows of decaying workstations.

Nada shrugs and then chucks the ballpoint pen out into the debris. We watch as it pings into a pile of old papers with no result. “Maybe nothing.”

“It has to be something,” I say, my anxiety building. The corners here are dark. The spaces for hiding are everywhere. “Lord Merek expects a show.”

Nada shrugs. “Maybe his show is out there.” She nods up toward the window and the road below.

“We can’t just sit here,” I say, standing. “Let’s go. Carefully.”

Nada rolls her eyes. There’s that sass she’s always giving Doc. For a moment, I wonder what Doc’s doing right now. Sitting in the cafeteria, praying to whatever God he believes in to save Nada? Praying for me?

We tiptoe down the length of the room, hugging the walls. My heart is in my throat and my legs are gelatinous. At least Nada is beside me.

“What’s that?” She stiffens, turning.

I freeze. “What?” My eyes flit to every shadow. Is something moving under that desk? Did I hear a slither in the dry paper along the wall?

“Over there,” Nada says, turning.

To our right, the hallway branches off into a long arm of darkness. We stop and stare into the blackness.

A noise, there in the darkness. I hear it.

“We should—”

A snarling cry cuts out from the shadows. A dozen voices answer. Human or animal I can’t tell, but they are loud and angry.

“Run!” I scream.

We run, but there’s no exit, no windows to climb out of. No escape. I whirl back toward the mob of horrible figures tearing out of the darkness.

When I see Clay’s face after the operation, I almost cry, but I push the sad and mad deep down inside. Clay would want me to be a man. That is, if he remembers me.

The bandages around his shaved head make him look like a mummy in the picture book Miss Nessa gave me to keep me quiet. Miss Nessa is always worried about me being quiet even though I don’t even say
boo
. She scares the pants offa me. But how Clay looks scares me even more.

The recovery room, as Betsy calls it, is dark, like a nightmare. I shrink down in the chair by the bed and try to focus on Clay. I put my eyes on him and send get-well signals with my brain.
Get well. Get well. Get well.

And remember me.

“Why do you look so sad?” Betsy says behind me. I like Betsy but she’s scares me, too. Her brain is broken. Just like Clay’s.

“He’s going to be fine,” she says through clenched teeth. One of her eyes is twitching.

I nod like a robot. I’m a robot a lot lately. Move. Talk. Eat. Sleep. Look at Clay and don’t cry.

I give Betsy a robot’s thumbs up.

She waddles around the chair and leans onto Clay’s bed. Her sausage fingers trail over Clay’s cheeks and chin. The mad comes up in me again. My sister gets to touch Clay like that. Not weird Betsy who farts at dinner and sometimes wets the bed in her sleep and I have to help her change our sheets in the morning before Miss Nessa comes in. And sometimes she blames it on me.
Poor boy peed the bed in his sleep
, she’ll say, her hands twitching something fierce. And what can I say? Betsy’s crazy robots don’t tattle.