Garden : A Dystopian Horror Novel Read online

  Suzy sucked in her breath and whispered, “The library... I have a secret spot. I have a secret...” She didn’t finish her sentence before Lola pushed her to her feet. The three girls took off in a dead run for the library, only a couple blocks away. They might make it before the camera-equipped drones and lights flooded Old Town.

  Faster than the others, Lola ran ahead of them. She prided herself on being faster, faster even than Danny. On the library wall, Lola caught her breath and waited for her sisters. She felt panic trickle down her neck and rest on her shoulders, but she couldn’t give in to it. Instead, she steadied herself, knowing that her sisters would be there any second. Right now, the library was the best chance they had of surviving the night together.

  With Suzy slung over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, Jen ran into the library yard and straight to the wall. Lola gave a stiff smile of approval. Jen didn’t wait for Suzy to run on her own but had scooped her little sister up and ran with her bouncing on her shoulder like a rag doll.

  Jen handed Suzy to Lola and leaped onto the wall. Jen shoved Suzy through the broken window. Lola followed and found Suzy standing in the bathroom and holding the door open. Lola urged Suzy into the library and followed her.

  Jen peered through the broken window and saw her sisters were safely inside the library. A whirring sound of a drone came too close for her not to panic. Jen dived through the window, landing on the hard, bathroom floor. Jen scrambled for the door and slipped into the library as she heard a drone buzz by the window.

  She found her sisters sitting on the floor, pressed against a wall. Lola had Suzy well in hand. They had all agreed that if something like this happened, whoever could should save Suzy. Suzy was young and couldn’t care for herself.

  Suzy wouldn’t cry again, Jen knew. Suzy leaned against the library wall, panting quietly while wiping at her tears. An arm across Suzy’s chest, Lola leaned against the wall, eyes darting about the library, but Jen knew better. Lola was listening.

  Listening for the sound of whirring drones overhead, the thunder of loud motorcycle engines, and trumpets. The Hunters blew trumpets as they prowled for prey.

  And the sound of laughter. The kind of laughter that felt like cuts when heard. Not joy, not glee, but pain.

  Jen felt her little sister's hand in hers, a gently pulling. Suzy had stood and now pulled at her two sisters. They got to their feet, and Suzy led them by the hand down the aisle, through a rear door, and up some stairs to an abandoned office.

  Suzy quietly closed the office door and pointed to a bookcase. Above the bookcase Jen saw a small window. Lola picked Suzy up and boosted her atop the bookcase. Suzy slipped through the window. Then, Lola gave Jen a lift up. They had survived this long together by working as a team. No need to argue.

  Jen flattened herself on the top of the bookcase, legs through the window, and flipped to her stomach, reaching down to help Lola pull herself up. The bookcase was old, but heavy, solid wood, well made. Lola inwardly thanked the maker of the bookcase. Whatever person had crafted something so well made it might save them, she wished him or her well.

  “It’s the attic,” Suzy whispered, as the sisters huddled together in the dark. “My last-resort secret.”

  Jen smiled at Suzy, at her filthy face, sticky hands, knotted hair, and her secrets.

  Suzy sat between her sisters. Lola faced the bookcase, eyes on the window. Jen faced an outside wall. Both Lola and Jen pressed Suzy securely between them. That shielded Suzy if harm came from either direction. Lola had come up with the configuration long ago. Lola thought this was the position least likely to get all of them killed.

  Lola always placed herself facing wherever she believed the most danger would come from. Jen faced some ventilation slats open to the outside. She would be able to hear everything going on in front of the library and down in the street.

  That Jen could hear everything filled her with grief. If she could hear it, so could Suzy, so could Lola. Lola would swallow the sounds, bury them deep within herself, never allow them to see the light of day. But Jen knew Suzy would hold them in her head where she could hear them constantly, until she never had a peaceful night’s sleep again.

  Jen suppressed a sigh. She could shield Suzy from many things in her life but not from what they were about to hear. The terror had begun.

  At first, all was quiet. Each sister listened to the other’s soft breath, each wishing all that was happening wasn’t. They “heard” the ticking of a nonexistent clock like thunder in the attic and strained to hear what clues they could from the streets.

  The first sound that wafted through the vents was weeping.

  Lola squeezed her eyes closed and scrunched her face when the first trickles of sobbing came through the vents. The sound was like acid to her soul, as if the sound was a green and dripping toxic goo. She had to force herself not to scream through the ventilation slats, “RUN, STUPID! STOP CRYING AND RUN!” Instead Lola bit her tongue, rolled her eyes, and did her best to keep the silence in the room.

  When Jen heard the crying, she felt as if her heart stopped with each wail. The crying came from a young girl, she was sure. A girl, a teenager, maybe younger, sat crying on the library steps. Jen could almost see it: The girl was on her knees, bent over, arms clutching her stomach, maybe curled up like a baby in a crib, whatever position a frightened child would take when she knew nothing was left.

  Like her sisters, Suzy listened to the crying, but despite what she knew Jen would think, Suzy chose to un-hear it. Instead, Suzy thought of all the books in the library as stones. Stones that built a castle around her. Stones that would keep her safe.

  Suzy sat huddled between her sisters, nestled into them, hiding her fear in her imagination.

  The crying abruptly stopped and was instantly followed by a quiet so profound you could almost chew on it.

  Lola knew the silence wouldn’t last long. The Hunt was a spectacle, a bacchanalian party for the Nutri-Corp elite. Madam had told Danny The Hunt was a private thing, something that only a few select citizens in Nutri-Corp City were privy to, but Lola knew The Hunt was such a loud orgy how could the rest of Nutri-Corp City not know?

  In the silence, Jen wondered if the young girl had finally smartened up and ran or at least found a place to hide from The Hunt. She wanted to turn around, wrap her arms around Suzy, and hold her tight, but the rule was back-to-back. Instead Jen pressed her back against Suzy harder than necessary and waited for the silence to end. Nothing good would follow the silence.

  Suzy felt Jen push against her and relaxed into her sisters’ weight. Suzy was weary and wanted badly to sleep but was afraid of the noises that might wake her. Sometimes Suzy relished the protective shell her sisters kept her in. Sometimes she wanted to scream at them to let her breathe. Tonight, Suzy decided, was a night to appreciate that shell.

  The silence did not last long.

  Before Suzy’s eyelids could droop, the screech of motorcycles and cars coming in fast hit the sisters’ ears. The sound of a trumpet to signal the hunt occasionally overcame the roar of the engines. The vehicles roared toward Old Town and past the library with bursts of sound blasting into the attic. Each flare of engine noise made the sisters huddle together closer than before. Not one of them dared to move or speak. They took some hope from the fact the vehicles weren’t stopping here but speeding on toward Old Town. They truly didn’t wish for the young girl to be caught, but in this world Nutri-Corp had built, survival was the only thing they had left, the only constant in their lives.

  Survival was there when Nutri-Corp had taken their parents, homes, schools, and friends. They had each other, the Gardeners, and the skill of survival. No, they didn’t want this poor young girl to be caught, but they wouldn’t budge to save her right now. They’d let her keep the Nutri-City elite distracted so they could live to see another day.

  A motorcycle came to a stop, its engine burbling, the driver doing that odd thing where he twisted something on the handlebar to make
the engine louder. Another vehicle stopped, followed by the racket of car doors slamming shut. A trumpet blasted its vicious tune. People laughed, audible over the idling motorcycle engine.

  Collectively, the sisters leaned closer to the vents, ears straining for the slightest clue why they had stopped in front of the library. Had the drones seen the young girl? Worse, had the drones seen them head into the library?

  Jen bit down on her tongue. Had she dawdled too long? Had the drone seen her slip inside the library when it whipped past the bathroom window?

  “Here kitty, kitty....” bellowed a man down on the street. He sounded drunk. On alcohol and power. “Little tiny, kitty...so nice...so pretty...” His laugh thundered down the street and up into the attic.

  “She was a pretty thing, wasn’t she?” said another man chuckling.

  “You could have made her your pretty little wife,” said a female voice. “Could have asked Madam a favor and kept her in your house, washing your socks and rubbing your feet.” The woman laughed, hard, as if she had told the best joke.

  The laughter echoed in the attic, spinning around the sisters, terrorizing them, the fear striking their skin like sprinkles on an ice cream cone.

  Another man’s voice broke the chorus of laughing, “Best get on with The Hunt. Madam will want goodies on her table. That won’t happen standing around here.”

  “On her table...” Lola mouthed. She didn’t want the others to hear her, but she wanted to engrave that on her thoughts, to always remember The Hunt ended at Madam’s dinner table.

  After the man’s statement, the cheerful group of hunters went silent like a pack of spooked coyotes.

  Panic swelled in Lola’s chest. “Speak, damn it, speak,” she whispered, hardly able to keep silent. If the Hunters kept talking, laughing, blowing that malicious trumpet, she could know where they were and what they were thinking.

  Right when Lola felt she might slip and scream, another motorcycle approached. Louder than the rest, driven faster.

  “Well, here comes the Prince,” Lola heard a man say.

  “Ah, yes,” responded the woman. “His first hunt. How cute.”

  The motorcycle stopped with a squeal of tires.

  The first man’s voice blurted, “Does your mommy know you’re out?”

  “Well, hello to you, Carl,” came a response.

  Jen felt something in her brain pop when she heard it. Danny’s voice. He was “the Prince.”

  Jen closed her eyes and dropped her head grateful that her sisters couldn’t see her face. Jen started to tremble, so fiercely it shook not only her, but Suzy and Lola. Suzy turned herself around then, wrapping her arms tightly around Jen, doing her little kid best to quell the shaking.

  “Don’t cry,” Suzy said. “We don’t know…”

  “Cállate!” Lola scolded in a hissing whisper, spitting the word, angry that Suzy was not mindful of safety.

  A voice bellowed over purr of the engines. “I say, Danny, my boy, we break all the windows in this library and see if our dinner is hiding with all those books.”

  Cheers of acknowledgement went through the group.

  Danny gave the library a look somewhere between disdain and apathy with a good dose of disinterest, as if he balanced on the fine line of boredom. He sniffed the air, pulled his tablet from the pack on his motorcycle, looked at the drone video feed, and looked up at the group of Hunters who waited impatiently.

  “Waste of time. Our prey has gone north, up toward the old shopping center. There are plenty of windows to break over there.”

  Danny smiled at the group, hoping they’d take the bait.

  A roar of glee went through the group, and the trumpeter boomed out his tune without mercy. The sound of engines flared up, laughter cascaded around them as they sped off.

  The same laughter boomed up into the attic, into the sister’s ears, causing all of them to quiver while the Hunters drove away.

  The final sound was that one powerful motorcycle. The engine revved three times before it drove away, the sound trailing away to silence.

  For a long time, the sisters did not speak, did not move. Jen continued to tremble, so much so Suzy thought Jen’s heart was breaking.

  Lola pictured Danny’s face, not the man he was now, but the little kid she’d picked up off the street, the little boy she protected as best she could. Almost at once, she pushed him back to the world of Madam and Nutri-Corp because she needed a spy. In her world, she made Danny a spy. Because if he’d turned on them now, Lola knew it was her fault. He wanted out. She didn’t listen.

  “He did the motorcycle thing, three times.”

  Suzy’s whispered words broke the silence. She’d reminded her sisters of the signal. Three, for three sisters was the rule. Three taps, three pops, three anything was Danny’s way of telling the sisters it was safe.

  Lola stood and looked down at her sisters. She tiptoed to the air vents, peering out and listening. The Hunters were gone. She knew this, but there might be Old Town Poppers wandering around trying to see the show.

  Hearing only stillness, Lola walked over to Jen and sat next to her sister, placing one gentle hand on her shoulders, she said, “Piensa bien de él. No sabemos la verdad.”

  Jen rested her head on Lola’s arms.

  Jen thought she was the only one with dirty secrets. In her head, Danny was clean, devoid of the stains of Nutri-Corp City. Jen had believed Danny was nothing more than a prisoner of Madam his mother. Hearing his voice tonight, listening to Danny be on the hunt, forced Jen to acknowledge something in her heart she hadn’t want to believe.

  Danny was not one of them. Danny was not a Gardener. Danny would never be one of them.

  Jen wanted to retch, howl, chase after Danny and put an arrow through his skull, but she didn’t dare make a sound. There was no telling who or what still lingered out on the streets.

  Lola smiled; once again they had survived when others had not. She stood, taking off her backpack and jacket, the movement shaking off the last hour of panic and fear.

  “We’ll stay here until late tomorrow morning, around ten,” Lola said to her sisters.

  “I hear something...” Suzy said and stood. “Do you hear it?”

  Suzy crept to the air vents and peered outside. She waved Lola over to her.

  Jen came, too. When she leaned down to see, the smell of the dirt and sweat of her little sister’s hair crawled up her nose.

  “Oh, no...” said Lola looking at Suzy, knowing what she was about to do, before she said it out loud, before Suzy or Jen thought of it.

  “Come to me,” Lola whispered as loudly as she dared. She barely stuck her hand out from the shadows. She clung to the side of the library, ears straining for the sound of drones coming. There was no way for her to know if a Popper watched her.

  She heard a sniff and could see the young girl’s legs sticking out from the shrubs where she hid.

  “I’m safe. I’m a Gardener.” Lola said. “If you don’t come now, I will leave you, and they will find you.”

  She heard a faint reply from the girl. “Are you the sisters?”

  “Yes,” responded Lola not a hundred percent sure if she was or wasn’t. There could be another group living in secrecy away from Nutri-Corp City called The Sisters, but all Lola knew was she had to save this girl.

  The girl struggled but finally freed herself from the shrubs. She ran to Lola, flinging herself in Lola’s arms. Lola realized she wasn’t a young girl but a woman.

  No time to waste thinking about that, Lola thought. She grabbed the woman’s hand and, clinging to the corners of the library building, she pointed to the wall, a broken window, and gave the quiet signal.

  Once they were both inside the library, Lola crouched down on the ground, listening. All was quiet. Lola took the woman’s hand again and led her to the hiding spot in the attic, all the while hoping that she hadn’t brought about their doom.

  Suzy inspected the cuts and scrapes on the woman’s arm but loo
ked at her with the skepticism of an adult in a child’s body.

  “Are you the sisters?” the woman asked again, in a voice too loud for anyone’s comfort.

  Jen clamped a hand over the woman’s mouth and said, “Whisper.” Jen took her hand away.

  The woman furrowed her brow, pursing her lips and looking as if she had been scolded by her mother.

  “Are you the sisters?” the woman again demanded, though in a whisper this time. She looked at all three of them. Softer, she said, “He told me if I found the sisters to stay with them. He said the sisters are safe.”

  Lola eyes grew wide as she felt joy jump inside her. “Who told you that?” asked Lola, hoping the answer would be what she wanted.

  “I don’t know. Some man. A young man. He came to me this afternoon, told me he’d help me.”

  The woman started to cry but kept her sobs silent. Suzy almost cried herself. Fear and sadness were horrible things to hold in; she knew that too well. Suzy held the woman’s hand to ease her pain. She hated to see anyone cry.

  “I’m Suzy,” she murmured pushing her bangs out of her eyes as if to give the woman a better look at her dirt-smudged face.

  “I’m Chandler,” the woman said. “I’m from The Hills.” She stopped crying, gave Suzy an appreciative look, and did not let go of her hand.

  Lola, as if she had suddenly realized what the woman was saying, looked directly at Chandler and sharply asked, “The Hills? What hills?”

  Chandler looked at Lola. Lola thought that once the woman’s deep blue eyes had had a sparkle, but that sparkle was no longer visible.

  Chandler responded, “On the other side of Nutri-Corp City, past the mountains.”

  Lola waited for more: Was there a camp like the Gardeners? How many? Were there Poppers there? Did The Hunt go there?

  Nothing.

  “AND?” asked Lola, her whisper aggressive, aggravated. She had no time to be kind. She needed intel, and she needed it now.

  “The Hills is a city,” the woman murmured, “but Nutri-Corp does not own it. The people of The Hills have fought Nutri-Corp since the beginning, but I learned...” Chandler stopped, sucking in her breath, trembling in her struggle to control her fear.