The Superiors (34 page)

Byron laughed. “Everyone experiences the world differently, Draven.” He took a drink of wine from the bottle. His voice sounded thicker than when he’d started drinking. Neither man said anything for a long time. Byron drank the wine, and Draven sat looking at the fire, wondering if he should let himself drink more sap. He thought his hunger would never end, and he’d slept enough for a week and still felt exhausted.

When Byron spoke, Draven started. He’d been so lost in his own thoughts he’d almost forgotten the drunken man on the other side of the fire. “You can’t understand, you can’t know what it was like,” Byron said, his voice almost a sob. “You don’t know. For you it was easy and civilized, and I know, because I evolved some of you and I monitored the ones I changed, and I helped them to get through it, Draven, I helped so nothing would happen like it happened to me. It was terrible, I did a terrible, terrible thing and I didn’t know.”

“What…what did you do?” Draven asked, not sure he wanted to know.

“When they did it, the First Order, they did it so fast, and without any preparation, and we didn’t know. Most of us didn’t even know such a thing existed, what we are now, people didn’t know about it. I didn’t know. I’d heard stories, but they were legend, tall tales. And they came in the night and they killed all of us, they killed everyone, or we thought they were killing us. Except the children. They killed everyone but the children, when we were sleeping or sitting at home watching the news, they came in silent like armies and they killed us, and some of us killed them too, and that’s why most of the First Order are dead. That, and the War, and not many of them to start.”

“How…I mean…they didn’t really kill you. They just evolved you. I thought it was a good thing.”

“It is, now. But then…we were humans, you know, stupid and scared and weak. They came and they killed us, or we thought they had, but they’d just changed us, the ones they wanted to evolve, mostly the men and some women, the ones who looked strong or pretty, and then they let us go. I didn’t know what happened, I didn’t know what I was. I thought I’d been killed, but then I woke up, so I knew I hadn’t died. I was mad, crazy, you know. And others, the other new Superiors, they were mad, too, everyone was running mad and scared because no one told us what was happening. And we all wanted something, we were hungry and we wanted to eat but we didn’t know what it was we wanted. That’s how they planned it, you see. They changed enough of us and let us go to kill everyone else. And we did.”

“You killed Superiors?”

“No, not until later, not until the Hundred Year War. Then I killed a lot of people. But then, we only killed the humans. They owned the earth. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what the world would be like if the saps ruled everything?”

“I’ve heard about it, of course. But no, I can’t quite imagine.”

“It’s true. We didn’t even know there was something above us, you know? We didn’t know about Superiors. Not until they came in the night and changed us. But we didn’t know what they were, we didn’t understand what we were. Not until later. They just let us loose to kill all the homo-sapiens. And we did.”

“All in one night.”

“No, that part is just a myth. But it did happen fast. So fast. We were younger, and not as strong, but we were a lot stronger than the saps. And you know there were no rations, no limits. We just ate as much as we wanted, and we got strong fast.”

“How much did you draw from a human though?”

“All of it.”

“You drained them completely?” Draven couldn’t imagine drinking all of a sap. It didn’t seem possible that one person could eat that much.

“Yes. I guess you could say we should have known better, but the truth is, we were like animals, even more than they were. That’s why the Superiors let us loose—they knew what we would do, and that’s exactly what they wanted. And when everyone around us was doing the same thing…it just got to be like a mob mentality. It wasn’t pretty, but that’s what happened. We went into houses, or waited for them to come out, or tricked them into coming out, and then we killed them.”

“How many sapiens did you kill?”

“All of them.” Byron took a drink of wine. “Except the kids. The First Order told us not to, and I’m sure some people did anyway, but a lot of the kids were saved. And we’d been told we’d be killed, so if we had any control we stayed away from the kids. The First Order, they tried to go into the houses with kids there and get them out before we went in. Of course that wasn’t always possible. There were a lot more of us. But no one wants to get a baby, and whatever humanity we had left might have given us pause. And we were rewarded for bringing the kids out, too.”

“And what of your children?”

“Ah, yes. We changed them later. But yes, we had kids. We were both changed at the same time, my wife and I. We lived in a city called Phoenix. It was destroyed in the War. It’s north of here, out of the Funnel and west.”

“So how long did it take?” Draven asked.

“Not long, I’ll tell you that much. They hit the cities first, and the small towns they invaded more slowly, evolving everyone in a town over a few days or weeks. They would bring one person through the evolution and then put them back, and soon enough everyone had joined or died. It took…I don’t know exactly. It wasn’t a night. But maybe a few years.”

“Years? Really?”

“Yes. To get everyone from all the secluded spots all over the world…it took a while. But we were already ruling by then, of course. I mean, the First Order was ruling. I’m getting more wine, my friend. Do you want some?”

“No thank you, sir.”

Byron stumbled to his feet and retrieved another wine bottle. “Cheers, my friend, here’s to our successful capture of the man Ander, and to our safe journey home.”

“And getting paid for it,” Draven added, nodding to the salute.

“And that,” Byron said, laughing. “I guess you’ll have your money for traveling now.”

“I guess so.” Draven was quiet, thinking. Thinking about telling Cali, about going to the Confinement and getting her and taking her home. She would be his, finally. It seemed like such a long time he had worked for her, although he knew that in reality, it wasn’t long at all. It would have taken a lot longer if he had only his bouncing earnings, if Byron hadn’t taken an interest in him. Catching those extra saps, and especially catching Ander, had turned a far-fetched possibility into a reality. He would have enough for her right away, as soon as he received payment for his service. It would all be worth it then.

Byron laughed. “Hated Superiors, huh? No, I wouldn’t say that. I just wanted to let you know how lucky you were to have evolved in such a way. Your transition was easy. Of course, a lot of that was due to necessity. If you had gone crazy on the sapiens like we did, none of us would be here. There would be nothing left to eat and we’d all have starved by now.”

“That’s true.”

“That’s why those of the Second Order are much stronger than you. Also our generation’s evolution was slower, you know. Over a few years and then even after that, we could take a human we wanted for whatever reason and take them through the evolution process. It wasn’t until later when we started running out of food that it became illegal. In fact, all through the Hundred Year War, humans evolved. All the time. Just to be sent into war, of course. That’s all they were meant for, and hardly any of them lived. They’re more the Second Order and a half. There’s only a few of them left, though, and they are counted with the Second Order since there are so few of them. Ander was one.”

“Ander? I did not know this.”

“Yes. Anyone changed before the Second Evolution is classified as Second Order, no matter when they evolved. The later ones had a better experience than those of us in the first wave. But we were all made for the same thing, really. You, me, Ander. We were all fighting different enemies, but we were all created to kill. That was our purpose. We’re killing machines.”

“Yes, I would know. I killed many men in the war, and in the line of duty, and I don’t know how many saps. But they don’t count. They aren’t people. Just vile and filthy creatures that unfortunately can evolve into one of us. The only thing good that can ever come from them is their sap, and if I can get it without thinking about where it came from, all the better.”

“Then why do you own them, and not just buy canned sap?”

“It’s just easier, especially with the family, not to have to go buy it. Plus, we get more from them than we would through the rationing program. Ah, I’m afraid I’ve drunk too much and spoken too much. You must be bored with my stories of the old days.”

“No, no. They are quite fascinating to me. I try to imagine that world, but I cannot.”

“It was a scary time, my friend. I could have died instead of evolving. I’m only lucky that someone decided to help me out, and my wife. I think it was only at random, mostly. First Orders, they just got whoever they could and let us loose until they thought enough of us had evolved to wipe out the rest of the city. It was a bloodbath, quite literally. Only later we found our children, months later, and got permission to evolve them. My wife wanted to, and I guess I did too, although I had reservations. But she insisted, and she can be insistent.” Byron laughed. “I love her now the same as I did then. I’d do anything for her. Never could deny her. In a way I didn’t want to change them, because I thought they’d end up getting shipped off to war, you know. Thought they’d be better off just getting bitten. But my wife, she said this way there was a chance they’d live and if they stayed sapiens, they were guaranteed death. So we did it.”

“You didn’t want to give them this life?”

“Not because I dislike being Superior. No, the only thing I don’t like is that I was ever human at all. Sometimes I look at them, and I just cannot believe I used to be one of those moronic creatures. That I was ever so pathetic and hideous and I never knew it at all. But then I guess that’s part of being stupid. They just don’t know at all how stupid they are.” He laughed again, and Draven did too, but he thought about Cali, that she didn’t seem stupid. Instead of not knowing her stupidity, she didn’t know her intelligence.

“Yes, that, and I don’t like remembering the change, the animal way we were when we were evolving, before we’d become truly Superior. I can deal with having killed all the sapiens—they needed to be killed, and it made me strong, and I needed to eat. It’s the way we did it, so savage, like rabid wolves. Disgusting. I don’t like to think of myself that way. I had misfortune, too, Draven. You can’t imagine how it was for us, not knowing what we were or how we got to be that way or what we were doing. The things I did… I did some horrible things without knowing what I was doing, and that weighs on my conscience, even though I still believe to this day I didn’t have a choice. And that’s the thing that weighs on me more than any of the choices I made that killed someone.”

“What thing?” Draven asked, not certain he wanted to know what could weigh on the conscience of a man as morally firm as Byron.

“A man like Ander… I could kill him and I’d take responsibility for ending his life. But I’d have a choice. Back then…we were just filled with bloodlust and confusion and fear and power. We didn’t know our strength or what we could do.”

“You have told me so many times that you didn’t know, that I can’t know. I believe you. I can remember the way I felt after the evolution, and I believe I would have killed a sapien, even a Superior if he tried to stop me from getting at the food. I’m glad for the way I was treated, even though at the time I was mad with anger at being chained up and restrained that way. I took a bite of the flesh of the first person I bit. I didn’t know how to do it at all, even though of course I’d been drawn from myself. I just wanted it so much.”

“Yes, I suppose that part was the same for you. They say if you don’t eat long enough, you’ll go into a form of sleep, a coma, and when you wake you feel that way again. But I don’t think it’s ever like that, not once you’ve known how to control yourself and how to draw correctly.”

“All this talk, it’s making me quite hungry,” Draven said, and both men laughed.

“I’ll tell you what I did to my first sapien, and you won’t want to eat for days.”

Draven poked the fire and thought about the sapien from Estrella’s sleeping somewhere undisturbed, and he didn’t imagine anything could make him not want to eat.