Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel Read online

  Twirling the pen in her fingers, reading over the books listed as if they were the names of loved ones, Suzy felt contentment hug her tightly.

  Bringing her pen to the paper, Suzy straightened her back and looked forward to no one. “Yes,” she said brightly, “that is a great book. You made an excellent choice.” She nodded at the no one in front of her. “May I suggest something else?” She gushed, gave a broad smile, and lay a hand on her heart. Suzy answered the no one, “Oh my gosh, thank you. I do have wonderful taste in literature...”

  A loud tap from the direction of the library’s front door shattered Suzy’s play. She threw herself to the floor, huddled under the desk, listening and sniffing the air. Suzy’s mind raced with thoughts. She mentally reviewed the situation and answered herself, feeling panic trickle into her blood.

  It’s not The Hunt, she told herself; it’s not The Hunt; The Hunt happens late at night; it’s not late at night; it’s not The Hunt...

  The tap came again, as loud as before but not louder. Not louder. Not faster. Not closer.

  Crawling out from under the desk, Suzy flattened herself as much as she could on the floor and inched toward the noise. Her contentment had vanished, and now fear slunk into her. But she had to go see what the noise was.

  Using bookcases for cover, she crawled from one to the next. Suzy finally reached the front of the library where a new release cart was set up. There, she knew Poppers or Nutri-Corp police couldn’t see her from the front door since Suzy kept the cart stacked with books.

  Squatting behind the new release cart, Suzy dared peek over a shelf of books, seeking the origin of the taps, one of which had sounded a third time. She closed her eyes, not ready to see.

  Sucking in air that was more like a sob, Suzy forced her eyes open and snuck a look. A fourth tap. She hid again. A fifth tap came from a Popper lying outside the library’s front door.

  Suzy knew she had to look again, but all she wanted was to go hide on her couch, snuggled into the safety of her library. There was no way other than looking again to find out if this was a threat.

  “You must always assess your threat.” She could hear Lola’s voice in her ears.

  Kneeling now, Suzy slowly moved the books in the cart around until she had a small section she could peer through. She saw a Popper on the ground, its feet inches away from the door. One foot shot out, tapping the glass door with a long, gnarled toenail. Suzy almost laughed with relief, but stopped herself. Poppers were never funny.

  Studying the Popper, Suzy noted its bald head looked like toasted bread from the amount of sun it had seen. The Popper’s arms were at its sides, the wrists flexing and its elbows bending repeatedly.

  The Popper’s legs didn’t move, except for the feet. Maybe, Suzy thought, that meant the Popper didn’t have any tics in its legs. Suzy scrunched her face up as she wondered why didn’t it simply didn’t get up and walk away? She moved from her squat to sit on the floor, crossing her legs in front of her. Suzy watched the Popper.

  She thought about ignoring it, going back to what she was doing. Its head wasn’t moving, which meant it could only look up at the sky. This Popper couldn’t see her, and that could mean she was still safe in the library. Maybe, thought Suzy, maybe, I’m still safe.”

  From her hiding spot behind the cart, Suzy could read the billboard down the street that said “One YUM a day takes kitchen blues away – Nutri-Corp.” She looked at the Popper again. Lola had said the Poppers made their choice to take YUM even after it did these horrible things to them. Danny said the Poppers had no choice, that YUM was so addictive they could think of nothing else.

  Jen would say nothing about the Poppers. She’d only look at them with soft eyes, never letting Suzy know what she thought of them.

  Suzy thought Danny might be right. Maybe they could help the Poppers, but she was too afraid of making Lola mad to say that out loud.

  Movement beneath the billboard caught Suzy’s eyes. Squinting, she saw someone slowly walking towards the library. The worst of the Poppers lived in Old Town, the ones whose movements were too much for the elite Poppers of Nutri-Corp City to want around. Old Town Poppers were usually slow, but the one approaching the library was painfully slow.

  When the person got closer, Suzy slapped her hand over her mouth and held in a gasp. It was a boy, a little boy who jerked and twirled his way to the library. He would take a step, twirl, take another step, twirl, and step again.

  Suzy lowered her gaze. It was too painful to watch him walk. She wanted to tie him down, pour soup into his mouth, and wait for the YUM in his body to disappear.

  Looking out from between the books Suzy saw the boy had finally reached the man at the library door. The boy held a canteen. He sat by the man’s head, trembling violently, but got the canteen open. He poured brown water into the man’s mouth.

  The boy rocked while he watched the man gulp down the water. With one hand the boy attempted to get something from his pocket while trying his best to steady himself.

  Suzy saw a bright pink pill pinched in the boy’s quaking fingertips drop into the man’s mouth, and she felt like vomiting.

  Suzy waited until the boy left before going back to the front desk in the library. Suzy got all the books she needed for the Gardeners, careful not to make a sound or go near the front door. The tapping didn’t stop, but Suzy stopped paying attention to it.

  Before leaving, she grabbed three extra books for herself. She’d have to tell her sisters about what had happened. When she did, Suzy sadly knew that the library would be “no go” for a while. She’d have to wait for both Lola and Jen to give it the “all clear,” and that could take weeks.

  “How was the library, chamaca?” Lola asked, patting the floor next to her and inviting her little sister to sit near her. Her sisters always wanted her near them, Suzy sometimes wondered if they’d ever give her some space of her own.

  “The library... There was…” Suzy stammered. She didn’t want to tell her sisters about the Popper at the front door. She didn’t want to lose her safe place for weeks. It was the only place she was ever alone. “The library was perfect. No problems,” Suzy answered. She had never lied to her sisters before. She had a feeling this might be the first time she lied, but it wouldn’t be the last.

  Chapter Three

  Jen

  Jen felt as if a layer of dryer lint covered her brain. Her thoughts moved to a sluggish and repetitive drumbeat of doom. She wondered if the doom would completely consume her. Jen knew this wasn’t good. Keep it up, and she’d be stuck inside her head, caught in a spider web of her own making.

  Looking out through the stand of trees, Jen kept her hands in the pockets of her black pants. Her bow was slung on her shoulder, and her backpack rested in some shrubs near her.

  As usual, she was fighting to stay clean. If Jen could keep her hands covered for as long as possible, they wouldn’t get dirty. That was what she believed today. Belief to Jen was a choice. Today she believed she might keep her hands clean a bit longer.

  Jen loved being a Gardener, but being a Gardener often meant always being covered in dirt. She hated being dirty.

  When her parents had fallen into the trap of YUM, her big sister Lola took her and their little sister Suzy away to the Gardeners, a group back then on the fringe of society. Daily, Jen was grateful for her big sister’s actions. Seeing the results of what YUM can do to a body, not taking it was a no-brainer.

  Too bad her parents hadn’t thought that way. To them, Nutri-Corp was a good factory job. Their parents saw YUM as the thing that kept a roof over their heads. But the bigger picture of YUM was an evil seeping into their lives and the city never came to their parents’ minds.

  “Jen... señorita... señorita.” Her mother would mockingly bark, while lightly tapping the top of Jen’s head. Despite the dark cloud that always seemed to hang in Jen’s thoughts, the memory of her mom playfully yelling at her made her smile while she stood concealed in the shrubs in Old Town hidden
in the bushes peering out to the world. She thought of her mother often. Her mother was the only one who had never tried to change Jen.

  Jen the quiet girl, dressed in black, sullen, shrinking herself into a corner so she wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. That would not bother her mother; she’d sit by her daughter anyway, smile at her, run her hands through her hair, and for a few seconds blow away the dark rain clouds that followed Jen wherever she went.

  Everyone else always tried to “cheer” Jen up. Everyone except Danny. Danny was like her mother, he accepted her disposition, never bothering to feed her rainbows.

  The lights flickered on the Nutri-Corp billboard at the other end of the street where Jen scouted. The bulbs must be getting ready to blow out. Jen pictured the all mighty Nutri-Corp flickering out, but that she knew was impossible. Nutri-Corp was a giant, and they, the Gardeners, were nothing but ants scrambling for safety.

  Needing a better view of the street, Jen reluctantly stepped forward. She always knew where she was in her space, and she preferred to stay hidden. Hidden in plain view was the thing she aspired to be. Nothing more than an apparition, a ghost girl, something everybody wasn’t sure they’d seen.

  Jen saw Danny beneath the billboard, jumping over a wall, at the same moment her nose caught a whiff of his cologne. He must have been looking for her. She desperately wanted Danny to find her and pluck her from her hiding place, but Jen had seen a Popper crawling through the streets when she first arrived in Old Town this morning.

  She couldn’t let that Popper go.

  Jen knew that if she ran to Danny, held his hands, and listened to his voice rustle in her ears that the crawling Popper might slip out of her grasp. If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself.

  Danny would have to see her some other time.

  Readying herself, Jen held her rope in a firm grip. She didn’t bother to count the Popper’s movements like Lola did. She had an internal metronome for knowing when to shoot an arrow, when to throw a rope, when to... Jen stopped herself from over thinking. The Popper was in reach.

  The rope flew from Jen’s hands and caught the Popper in the neck. She pulled it tightly before it could make a peep that could alert not only other Poppers but also Danny or her sisters to her actions.

  Jen dragged the Popper from the middle of the street, past the curb and sidewalk, and into some shrubs. Feeling no empathy, Jen knew the grit of the street, the solid cement curb, and the shrubs’ thorns must have hurt. She didn’t care.

  She had a job to do, and feeling sorry didn’t get the job done.

  The Popper struggled as best it could in its situation. With its tics, it had no real control over its body. No way this Popper could defend itself.

  When the Popper lay at her feet, Jen didn’t bother to look directly at it. Making eye contact and pretending there could be a connection between them wouldn’t keep her from what she was about to do.

  What she was about to do was a mercy.

  When she finished, Jen stared down at the dirt on her black pants with scorn. She had tried, really tried to keep clean while digging the Popper’s grave, but she’d failed.

  Jen knew she should get over this distaste for dirt. What good did it do her to continually focus on staying clean, when she lived in a dirty world and had to do dirty things. Like digging a grave for the Popper she had hanged.

  Looking up at the night sky, Jen took several swigs from her canteen. She was late to meet her sisters, but she couldn’t help it. The job had to be done, and she was the only one to do it.

  Jen stood and attempted to dust herself off, while formulating a story to tell her sisters: She’d seen a deer, tracked it down a hill, but had no success in the kill. She’d apologize for being late and tell them the steep hill was a pain to climb back up again.

  Jen liked the story; it sounded like her. As a hunter for the Gardeners, everything in her fabrication was plausible. She had to make up these stories; no one would understand her secret, extracurricular activities.

  If she told them she killed Poppers because she wanted to free them of their pain, things wouldn’t go well. Lola would be angry because Jen had put herself in danger. Danny wouldn’t understand because he believed the Poppers could be rehabilitated and saved. Suzy, Jen knew, wouldn’t question her, but Jen worried Suzy would be afraid of her, afraid that Jen, given the chance, would do the same to their parents, both on YUM, both working in the Nutri-Corp factories.

  If Suzy were to ask Jen if she would do the same to their parents, Jen couldn’t lie to her. Jen knew she’d hang her own mother the same as she had the Popper today, out of love, out of charity. Death was the only way to escape the cage where YUM put people. Nobody, Jen knew, would understand.

  Because of that, Jen worked alone. She carried the burden of this work within herself, telling no one how many souls she’d saved by ending their lives. And she was okay with that. That’s what they would never understand--that the lives she ended didn’t burden her; she slept fine at night knowing she’d ended somebody else’s troubles.

  Nobody, not even Danny, the only person left in her life who really “got” her, would understand. If the truth of her activities got out, she’d be a monster to everyone. This work of hers was best kept secret.

  Chapter Four

  Las Tres Hermanas

  “You’re late, hermana.” Lola looked at her watch, at Suzy, and lastly let her eyes rest on Jen, smudged with dirt. Lola was sure Jen would have an explanation for why she was late and why she was covered in dirt.

  However, Lola never fully believed anything Jen told her. To Lola, Jen was a cup half full of truth, but Lola never wanted to tip that cup over. Lola liked not knowing everything when it came to Jen. She was content when her sister came home and didn’t hold any hostility toward her for whatever dirty little secret she kept hidden.

  Especially, Lola thought, if that secret is Danny, who Lola loved as if he was her own blood.

  “We’d better head back,” Jen stated and took Suzy’s hand without asking or needing to, but Suzy let that go. Jen needed to hang on to her even if Suzy was usually so filthy Jen’s nose would wrinkle when she looked at her.

  “Si, si...a la camita,” Suzy said this loudly, using the same tone and inflection as their mother would when she told her three daughters to go to bed.

  Suzy’s words stung Jen a bit, but she brushed it off, focusing instead on hurrying her sisters back to the Gardener camp. It was getting late. Jen looked at Lola squinting her eyes and wished she could read her mind. The Hunt happened late at night. They needed to get to safety now.

  The three sisters eyed each other in the abandoned house in Old Town, each mentally going over their own safety protocol for their long hike back to camp. The Gardner camp was well-hidden, deep within the woods and miles from Nutri-Corp City and Old Town. It would take most of the night to make it back. If all went well, they’d reach it by daybreak.

  Noticing that Suzy wasn’t wearing shoes, Jen squatted down, pulling a pair of shoes from her backpack and dangling them in front of Suzy’s face. She gave her little sister a pained I’m-over-this look and said with a biting tone, “You are such a cochina.”

  Lola looked at both her sisters with love. She nodded to agree with Jen’s last statement to Suzy. Her little sister was a piggy. She told herself that tomorrow she’d force Suzy into a shower and personally scrub her feet and knees.

  All at once, the three sisters smiled. That they were still together and alive was the last bit of wonderful left for them. They knew this, and each cherished it in their own way.

  Almost clear of Old Town, the sisters began their hike back to camp in silence. The Gardeners never went down the same path, street, road twice if they could help it. They planned each trip to Old Town with care, being mindful to never use the same path they’d used before.

  This often confused things, but Lola understood the need. Before heading out to glean, she and her sisters studied the selected path to Ol
d Town and the separate route home as if it were an important math test.

  Tonight, afraid to use their voices, they walked with only an occasional nod at each other and used hand signals. They did not want to attract attention.

  Suzy was content to saunter along behind, beside, or sometimes in front of her sisters. She did watch where she was going even though Jen never believed she did, but Suzy hiked as if she were Tinker Bell trying to do something serious. She fluttered here and there, eventually making her way to her destination.

  Lola marched along ever vigilant, on guard not only for herself but for her sisters and the Gardeners. In another life, she could have been a soldier. Jen often thought Lola would have made a great Marine.

  Jen walked at a steady pace, mindful not to trip over Suzy or annoy Lola. She felt as if she was the screw that held them together; she had to hold steady, keep the flow going and...

  Suzy stopped with a gasp that rang out in the quiet. She spun around to look at her sisters and pointed toward Nutri-Corp City.

  Lola and Jen stopped and glared at Suzy.

  Suzy said, “THE HUNT!”

  The rule was silence on the trip back to camp, hand gestures only, but Suzy’s hands trembled so much, there was no way she could use any signs.

  Lola signed for them to get low to the ground, as she looked around. There were small lights hovering outside Nutri-Corp City. From a distance, the sisters could hear the malicious whir of drones that would soon speed through Old Town and the surrounding woods.

  The girls huddled together. Suzy wept, but she kept her tears silent. Jen whispered, “Let’s run to the market.” Lola furrowed her brow, shook her head, and signed, “Too far.”