The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (28 page)

Even though there were over
thirty of us, it took us several days to bury them all. Not all of us were as
big and strong as Timo, and our shovels were old and worn. We scavenged for new
things when the old broke, but we couldn’t always find exactly what we needed.

We were pushing the last of the
bodies into shallow graves when Andrea cried out a warning. “Look! From the
river!”

Over two dozen Hunters, and
they had knives rather than just shovels.

“Scatter!” I yelled. “Run for
the trees and the ruins!”

Everyone ran, most heading
either for the nearest stand of trees or the Reichstag.

I couldn’t run as fast as I
wanted; I had to keep an eye on Timo.

And then he tripped.

“Timo!” I felt as if my scream
scraped the hard blue of the sky.

The Hunters were too close, but
I couldn’t leave him there, I couldn’t. I dashed back and pulled Timo up,
supporting and running and dragging and doing anything that would get us out of
danger. Luckily, many of the Hunters had stopped at the flying machine and were
climbing in and throwing things out to their companions—more interested in
scavenging than in us.

We reached the trees. I pushed
Timo down beneath some bushes and knelt next to him.

“Don’t make a sound,” I
whispered.

We could hear a Hunter nearby
trampling the bushes and branches and underbrush, but he didn’t notice us.

Timo and I stayed there long
after everything was quiet again, and the birds had resumed chattering and
chirping above. When I felt safe, I whispered to Timo that we could go.

He moaned and pushed himself up
on both hands. “Yasmina, I don’t know if I can walk.”

I managed to support and drag
and coax Timo back to our home beneath the Beast, but even now, with days and
days of rest, he still cannot walk on his own.

The Beast protects us, but she
cannot help me in this. When she comes to me at night, she folds her wings
behind her and shakes her head sadly.
I know nothing of medicines, Yasmina
.

I turn away.

I am growing desperate.

I have checked on the others
living on Unter den Linden to see if anyone knows what we can do about Timo’s
ankle. All of them are back in their hiding places except Kyrill and Verona, but
none of them knows what to do for someone with a leg that will no longer
support weight. I do not have the right memories to do what is necessary.

And now Timo’s foot is growing
huge and turning colors both bright and dull that scare me.

I am scavenging for medicines
in apothecaries on Dorotheenstrasse when I hear the strange whirring noise
again.

Strangers?

I throw boxes and bottles into
my bag. My treasures bouncing against my hip, I run between the ruins in the
direction of the Reichstag.

When I reach the corner of the
building, I see for the second time one of the bird like machines setting down
on the field, flattening the grass beneath it.

This time, the Strangers who
jump down into the tall grass are not wearing the round bubbles on their heads,
but they too have glistening skin so dark it is almost black.

As I watch, they walk around
the abandoned flying machine, inspecting the debris on the ground, the broken
pieces the Hunters left behind.

Then one of them, a woman I
think, notices the recent graves. She cries out and drops to her knees. Even at
this distance, I can see that tears are running down her face.

The rest run over to the graves
we dug. One of the dark people is counting, shaking his head. Another draws the
woman back to her feet and puts his arms around her. A third notices the
gardens we have planted near where I am hiding and begins walking in my
direction.

The man who died with his head
in my lap told me to trust them, told me to tell them to save the children.

I cannot. Trust does not come
easily.

I run back through the ruins,
keeping to the shadows as much as I can. When I get back to our home on the
shadow side of the Beast, Timo’s skin is hot to the touch.

“Yasmina, everything hurts now,
not just my foot.”

I dump the medicines I found on
the ground and start pawing through them, but the tears starting in my eyes are
blinding me.

This is too hard. Even though I
Remember, I still do not know enough to read all these strange words and find
whatever will cure my friend.

I cover my face with my hands
and turn away. Life would be no life without Timo.

“Yasmina? What is it?”

Squaring my shoulders, I look
at him again, smiling. But he sees the shape of my eyes. “Don’t cry, Yasmina,”
Timo says, stroking my hair. “You will take care of everything. You always do.”

But I cannot.

Tell them to save the
children.

I kiss Timo on the forehead.

A medication that describes
itself as relieving pain and reducing fever calms Timo and puts him to sleep.

I lean my back against the
stone wall of our shelter and watch Timo’s even breathing, the slight smile on
his lips as he sleeps. Despite how peaceful he looks, I worry. Timo seems to be
better now, but I do not know if I have helped him or just made him unaware of
his injuries for a time.

I am still afraid when I leave
our sanctuary where Quadriga guards us. Darting between ruins and trees, I run
in the direction I do not want to go, toward the field in front of the
Reichstag. Perhaps, if I am lucky, the Strangers will already be gone.

Perhaps, if I am lucky, they
will still be there.

There, just past the second
flying machine, they stand next to the graves we dug, gazing silently at the
freshly turned earth, their hands crossed in front of their bodies, their heads
bent. There is something about the way they are standing, quiet and intent,
that makes me slow down as I approach. By the time they notice me, I am
walking.

The woman closest to me pulls
something I know must be a weapon by the way she is holding it. “Stop!”

I do as she says. We all stare
at each other for a moment, silent, not knowing what to do.

I indicate the grave they are
standing next to. “He said to tell you to save the children.”

“Who did?” a man behind the
woman with the weapon asks.

“The one who was still alive
after the Hunters came.”

“Baleka,” the man says. “We
heard it on the transmission.”

“Hunters?” the woman repeats,
her voice still laced with suspicion.

I nod. “The ones we hide from.”

The black people speak among
themselves in the strange language, their voices rising. I understand none of
it. But when I sang the English song to the man who died, it made him smile.

I start to sing.

“Three blind mice,

“Three blind mice,

“See how they run,

“See how they run!”

The Strangers have stopped
arguing and are staring at me. “You sang that after the battle,” says the first
man who spoke, in our language now. “We heard it through the radio.”

“What is a radio?”

A reluctant smile flits across
the woman’s features. “You are the one who sang to him?”

I nod
again. “I think he liked it. That was after he told me to trust you.”

The woman finally lowers her
weapon. “And said to save the children.”

I begin to cry. “Yes, please.
My friend Timo, he was injured the last time the Hunters attacked. He is as big
as an adult now, but—can you save him?”

The Strangers look at each
other, and without me seeing it, a decision is made. “We will try,” a man who
has not yet spoken says. “Where is your friend?”

Lightness fills my chest. I
dash over and take the man’s gloved hand, pulling him forward. “He is in the
shadow of the Beast.”

The man smiles and shrugs and
allows me to pull him.

“Will you take us to Africa?” I
ask.

Cai and Her
Ten Thousand Husbands

Gord Sellar

Smoke in the air, a satchel
full of squirming crystalline brains trapped in bloody skulls near my bare
feet. I am
cai
once again. I kick the earth and turn my face north.

“
The calling springtime...
”
I manage to sing, before I double over in agony.

We all expected the same
things: husbands of our own to argue with, to walk beside in twilight, to make
love to. Pretty babies to grow inside us, to unfurl into themselves and play at
our feet.

It’s different for us
Hakka
,
my mother said.
Study hard
, she begged.

I did. Mornings, I hunched in
rice paddies in sweltering heat. Afternoons passed in the library until
sundown. Nights, my itchy eyes stared at a computer screen. Often, I woke to my
wristlet’s alarm with my head on a desk, and went straight to morning
rice-field duty.

We girls knew something of the
outside world from online newsfeeds and rice-field gossip. We followed the war
in the border states and imagined dashing hi-tech Genghis Khans riding in from
the Mongol Republic wastelands, or handsome Japanese and Euro CEO princes
waving victory flags from the backs of robotic tanks, rescuing us from the
onslaught.

Late one night my wristlet woke
me. I fled the library, out into the courtyard, breathless and terrified, for
stars still crowded the sky.

The other girls were already on
the dormitory roof, screaming, “Fire, fire!” I scrambled up, and from the roof
I could see it, too, off in the valley—a slim fringe of glowing orange light.

“That’s the city burning,” an
older girl said. “Soldiers will be coming here soon.”

Hours later, after sunrise,
they did.

Not Japanese CEOs or Mongol
princes. Just rough-faced footmen marching in tight, straight lines. They
reminded me of green carrot-tops poking up along garden rows. They looked
dignified, almost honorable, in their patchy green camouflage uniforms, and
many wore earpieces or carried little computers on their belts. Many carried
backpacks big enough to fit a girl into.

They spoke into machines that
translated their dialect into ours. “We have liberated the city and come to
liberate you, too,” the machines boomed. “The whole province is now under our
control.”

We asked, “Whose control?”

“We cannot understand you,”
they answered, “Now come with us.” They led us to a convoy of trucks waiting
nearby. “Get in the trucks.”

Our teachers stood there,
watching silently. One older girl waiting beside me began weeping. “We’re going
to die,” she kept saying. Another girl argued with her, told her to be quiet.
But the older girl couldn’t stop saying it.

“Why didn’t they take our
teachers too? Why only us?” another asked.

“Maybe there was a special
truck for them?” the older girl snapped.

But none of us believed that.

After hours of thumping and
rattling down brutal roads, of sleepless sobbing and prayers, the truck
stopped. Soldiers threw open the back and their machines translated their
command: “Get out.”

“Where are we? What’s
happening?” We asked these questions, but the men ignored us, didn’t even use
their machines to say, “We can’t understand you.”

They led us into a filthy old
complex. Inside were tiny rooms, each with a stained mat on the floor. One by
one, we were tossed into the cells, alone, to wait.

I’d always envied pretty girls
and wished I were like them. The other girls at the dormitory had said,
sneering: “You’ve got a mother’s face. A mama-face.” I’d always hated it.

But when they threw open the
door, looked me over, and muttered in their language, I was hopeful, thankful
for my ugly face. I could hear the girls’ shrieking through the walls, and the
men. For once I was grateful for my mama-face.

I thought it would keep them
away for a while, at least.

It didn’t. It wasn’t my face
that interested them.

Memory, for me, is all
fragments. Just tiny moments.

It’s not what they’ve done to
my brain—I think I’ve always been like that. I remember only brief, vivid things.
The bite of sugared ginger-root with jasmine tea. The feeling of a fresh, hard
persimmon in my palm. My mother’s voice at night, singing about the returning
cranes of springtime.

I cannot remember her face.

But I remember a dozen hands
holding my body down, slapping my cheek as one soldier pushed his thing into
me, then another, another. I remember that tearing feeling, as if I were about
to break into two pieces. And filthiness. The slick of blood and sweat on my
skin, and wanting to close my tired legs. Their voices howling strange, foreign
words I’d heard before but couldn’t understand, and the smell of their bodies,
thumping against me, them breathing their reek in my face.