“– and then,” continued Olaf Chung, “then Sabbie told Ezra, who immediately ran off to tell Denver, who –”
Rhea Robinson exhaled, breathing through her nose like a bull. She’d never understood why Olaf, of all people, had been allowed to become a Hunter. How he’d made it this far without getting eaten. The boy was short and slow, not particularly strong, and a terrible shot besides – the worst shot in the whole of Sam’s Club, easy. His sense of direction was trash, he couldn’t tell a jackalope’s antlers from a chupacabra’s behind, and – and –he paid more attention to gossip than to what he was actually doing at any given moment.
She knew the rules, of course, that she was supposed to trust in Olaf, in her storemate, love him like – well, not like a brother, per se – maybe a distant cousin, or a friend’s pet xolo – but come on. His incessant yammering had already scared away their original game. He was the reason they were half-lost in this cornfield to begin with.
“– and then Nessie,” the boy, half a step behind Rhea, kept prattling, “you know Nessie, right? Vanessa Ignacio? Well, then she found out and –”
“For the last time, Olaf,” she grumbled, biting back on her frustration, “no one cares.” She pushed between two towering cornstalks with one arm, the other holding her black stormwood bow at her hip. A cracked leather quiver and a full complement of arrows hung off her back. The case strapped across a cowl-necked wrap cardigan, copper-colored and hand-knit, the cables loose and fraying.
“Right, sorry,” said Olaf. “It’s just such a juicy –”
“Are we close?” asked Tran Thompson, adjusting the crossbow sling digging into her shoulder. She was taking up the rear, practically leaning over Olaf.
Tran was maybe an inch shorter than Rhea, broad-shouldered and mostly muscle. Seventeen to Rhea’s sixteen. Her silky black hair was in a single, thick braid that hung down her back to her waist. Her canvas shirt was tied around her hips, over camouflage cargo pants. A heavy bandolier of bolts crossed her grungy tank top.
“It went underground,” Rhea answered. She narrowed her eyes, barely making out daylight between the towering green and gold. The cornfield was dense, ready for harvest, the three of them squeezing through the part you weren’t supposed to squeeze through.
“I’m having a hard time –” she started. “Wait. You hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Olaf.
“AAAAAAAAAAAA”
“That,” Rhea answered.
As the screaming intensified, a girl Rhea couldn’t recognize sailed over the trio’s heads – a shadow arcing through patches of lime-colored sky, flailing her arms like she was trying to swim – before disappearing entirely. Rhea heard the crashing of corn, a thud, and then a symphony of swear words.
“That has to be it,” she said. She lowered her head, her black wool gambler hat, and started shouldering through the coarse leaves, toward the flying teenager’s point of departure. “Come on,” she called behind her.
“How big do you think it is?” Olaf asked.
“Big,” Rhea replied. “It’s an Alpha.”
“What?!” the boy shrieked, stopping cold. “We’re going after an Alpha?! You didn’t tell me we were going after an Alpha!”
“What did you think we were tracking?” Tran asked in return, shoving ungently past him.
“Not an Alpha! There’s only three of us!”
“Like I said,” Rhea said, already putting distance between herself and him, “you’re free to go.”
“You did not say that,” Olaf replied in a huff, shouting after the girl, “just like you didn’t say it was an Alpha. And I know that because if you did say either of those things, I wouldn’t be standing in the middle of a cornfield hunting down A LITERAL MONSTER!
“Do you know where I’d be?” he continued, finally trundling after his storemates, gracelessly shoving aside cornstalks with his wooden longbow. “You know where I’d be, Rhea? I’d be safe and sound hanging back with the horses and the camels, and not putting myself into easily avoidable mortal danger!
“You see? This is why you talk!” the boy shouted. “This is why you tell people things, Rhea! Sometimes talking is good!”
The trio of Hunters arrived on the edge of an almost perfectly circular clearing, maybe sixty-feet across by Rhea’s estimate. Hard, tramped-down dirt surrounded by towering ramparts of corn, the tallest stalks stretching close to twenty feet into the air. A pathway bisected the rolling field, a shadowy alley cut between the stalks on either side of Rhea.
To her right, just past the path, was a heavily modified forklift, off-roaded and solar-fitted. A dozen burlap sacks, bulging with picked ears of corn, were piled into the rusted mesh deck. A pair of flannel shirts were draped over the cracked vinyl seat, and a wide-brimmed straw hat rested on the dashboard.
“Grangers?” Tran asked.
“They shouldn’t be out on a Hunt day,” said Olaf.
“And we shouldn’t be this far west,” Rhea mumbled. She stepped into the clearing, turning like a slowing top, hoping, futilely, for a better landmark than the sea of half-harvested vegetables surrounding her.
“I thought we were maybe at the edge of the Farm,” she said, “but this –” She shook her head. Her brown hair, a barely-considered half-braid beneath her hat, brushed against her neck.
The Farm had, at best, a couple acres of corn, not the endless maze of maize they’d been hiking through. Most of the reclaimed land was devoted to wheat and alfalfa; the rest was a hodgepodge of other crops, small patches here and there – variety and all that. All of it planted in wood ash and corpilizer, built over old trailer-camp foundations. The crumbling stubs of walls and fences used as boundaries and markers, old plumbing as stakes and supports – but Rhea hadn’t seen a single ruin since they’d entered the field.
And then there were the Grangers, the farmers and harvesters who worked the Farm: they shouldn’t have been out today, shouldn’t have been out now. There was a strict schedule, set by the Calendars, to keep the various groups of Getters from overlapping, from being shot or scythed.
In short, to keep something like this from happening.
Rhea furrowed her brow. Something wasn’t right.
“I don’t think we’re –”
She was interrupted by a tremendous rumbling. The ground quaking hard beneath her boots, stalks shivering a sound like storming rain. The ‘runner, her quarry, coming up from underneath the earth.
“Right, at the ready,” Rhea ordered, all her uneasy feelings evaporating. She pulled an arrow from her quiver – an ancient serrated broadhead with black-and-red fletching – and nocked it to her bowstring.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Olaf asked, his voice small and trembling. His bow useless at his side. He was trying to shrink, to hide inside his overalls, even as he was already retreating. Inching toward the tractor and the way out. “Because I vote that we –”
A scream, the bad kind, erupted from the other side of the cornfield. Coming from inside the stalks, near the epicenter of the tremor. Swears and shouting followed, and then a clamor of competing voices: “Everyone out! Out! Run! RUN!”
The ground began to shudder again, dust shaking and skipping across the clearing. Cornstalks rustled, a susurration intensifying and nearing. The air went thick with dread, a hurricane about to hit land.
Rhea raised her bow, set her feet. Her fingers tensed and ready on the bowstring. Tran was beside her, crossbow nestled into her shoulder.
Ten more teenagers Rhea didn’t recognize exploded from the cornstalks. All of them running and stumbling and shouting obscenities, rushing sideways past the Hunters. Not looking at Rhea or Tran, at the weapons pointed in their general direction. To a one, the Grangers’ heads were craned over their shoulders, eyes on the crops from which they were decamping.
One of them ran square into Olaf.
“Oof!”
Both boys staggered, bouncing off one another. Olaf’s arms swung together in front of his chest like a clumsy t-rex; he hit himself in the head with his own longbow. The other kid – a scrappy, brown-haired boy who seemed to be made entirely of dirt – went all the way to the ground, landing on his rear.
He shook his head, looking around, looking up, and only then saw the Hunters.
His eyes were wide with panic.
The boy got to his feet quickly, grabbing Olaf by the shoulders. “What are you doing here?!” he asked, shouting straight into Olaf’s face. “You can’t be here! You shouldn’t – there’s a –”
“Rattlerunner,” Tran said calmly, finishing his sentence. She was, like Rhea, still scanning the corn, the strangely silent field the boy had just fled. Crossbow still at the ready. “We know.”
The Granger made a face.
Rattlerunners were a mutated mess of rattlesnake, roadrunner, and atomic runoff, born from the Obliteration, the Fallout that had long ago wasted the world. They were the apex predators of the Deprimida, the sprawling desolation that surrounded Las Estrellas.
Monstrous and mean, ‘runners were carnivorous to a fault, and roughly the size of a delivery truck. Alphas were even worse. They could reach thirty feet from teeth to tail, could swallow a javelina whole. Rhea’d even heard they killed for sport, for nothing but shits and giggles.
But – and this, every Hunter knew, was the important part – the gargantuan snake-birds were also delicious. Wasn’t a better cut of meat anywhere out there. A single ‘runner could feed the store, and well, for weeks.
“You know it’s a rattlerunner,” the farmboy said, clearly hoping that hearing the words out loud would make it make more sense. “You know it’s a – so why aren’t you running? Away? Why aren’t you running away?!”
“Because we,” Rhea answered, grinning sideways, “are trained professionals.” She removed her gaze from the cornfield just long enough to wink at the boy. “Don’t try this at home, kid.”
“Pretty sure we’re the same age,” he replied. “That is incredibly condescending.”
“Agree to disagree,” Tran said, not bothering to look at him. “Not our fault you’re a plant-eating coward with no actual skills.”
“Okay, wow,” the boy said flatly, his shoulders falling as he let go of Olaf’s. “Wow. That was just mean.” Then: “Wait, do you not eat vegetables?” He narrowed his eyes. “How are you still alive?”
Tran shrugged. “Spite and coffee, mostly.”
“And potatoes,” Rhea said. “We like potatoes.”
“Potatoes?” the Granger said. “We don’t –”
But he didn’t finish. The boy’s words had turned into little more than incoherent screaming. He was gripping a bloody stump where, significantly less than a moment earlier, his left arm had been.
The ‘runner, Rhea reckoned, was faster than she’d been expecting. And infinitely quieter than something that big should have been capable.
The armless farmboy didn’t make it two steps before dropping, before toppling face-first into the dirt. Beside him, Olaf was covered in a fine, red spatter. Eyes wide, mouth open, body trembling. His denim overalls growing darker by the second. He was actively wetting himself – and that was it, that was all he was doing.
That was all he would do for some time.
“Looks like we’re down an Olaf,” Tran said.
“That should make this easier then.”
Bow at the ready, Rhea returned her attention to the cornstalks, searching for any sign of the ‘runner, any movement. Despite disarming a Granger right in front of her, the endeavor was proving more difficult than it should’ve. She began to wonder if she’d lost the beast, if her quarry had turned tail or disappeared underground again.
Then she spotted it.
The ‘runner was near the edge of the clearing – not opposite her where the Grangers had run from, where she’d been expecting it, but to her right, to the left of the path. Hiding. Hunting. The snake-bird’s squat midsection, its earth-toned feathers, brown and black and beige, blending in, barely visible between the stalks and shadows. A long, serpentine neck was stretching skyward, perfectly parallel to the corn, hiccupping and choking down the boy’s arm.
“Gross,” Tran said.
“On my mark,” Rhea said back.
The rattlerunner was forty feet away – neck up, chest exposed, attention elsewhere. Wasn’t going to be a better opportunity than this.
Rhea drew back her bowstring, fingers brushing against her cheek. She closed her eye, lined up the shot. Straight and clean, right to the monster’s heart.
“Now!” she shouted.
Tran’s repeating crossbow fired three blunt bolts in quick succession, the barrage punctuated by Rhea’s broadhead. Every arrow hit its mark. Every arrowhead buried deep and dead-center, clustered across the width of a coffee mug, in the animal’s chest –
– the still-expanding, still-breathing, still-very-much-alive chest of what was now an extremely unhappy rattlerunner.
An alive, extremely unhappy rattlerunner that was also now fully aware of the two Hunters standing entirely exposed in the open clearing.
“So, uh, this probably isn’t great,” Tran said.
“Nope,” Rhea replied, pulling another arrow from her quiver.
The beast started forward, towards them, slow and purposeful. Bone-white talons, gnarled as ancient tree roots, slammed against the dirt like dropped anvils. Its wide, flat snake-head dropped low to the ground. Eyes cold, as black as night, ringed by white.
With a high-pitched screech, a crest of brilliant blue and orange feathers unfolded, a tiara made of frozen flames. The rest of its plumage followed, bright feathers ruffled and raised. Fangs slicked with venom, each the size of an overfed chihuahua, slid down into the ‘runner’s opened maw. Its rattled tail, curved into the air like a scorpion’s stinger, shook a sound like a swarm of locusts.
Then, in less than an instant, the monster’s entire manner changed. Aggressive to defensive in less time than it took to blink. The ‘runner’s long neck coiled back, into a knot of diamond-tough scales, protecting its soft, avian underbelly. It leaned forward, too, chest feathers brushing against the dirt.
“Great,” Tran said, lowering her crossbow slightly. “Frigging great. Now what are we supposed to do?” She shook her head. “I was going to kill this thing, I was going to make a dress out of its insides and a crown out of its scales, and then I was going to be the prettiest girl in all the land.”
“I’m no expert,” Rhea said, “but I don’t think that’s how dresses work. I mean, you do know that would smell real bad, right?”
“I would stink with the stench of victory.”
“You say that, but –”
“The Sam’s Club will know their queen by her odor! They will smell me coming from a mile away and make preparations for my reign!”
Rhea laughed, small, shaking her head – even as she was already reassessing the situation. Plotting new tactics, digging into contingency strategies.
Forget the heart, she thought, go for the brain. Precision. Speed. Land the arrows as quickly as possible, within the same fraction of a fraction of an inch, enough to crack the creature’s impossibly hard scales. Don’t think about the odds of that actually working. Don’t think about all the reasons this is a terrible idea. All the people who told you not to do this. That you weren’t ready. Don’t think about all the stories of ‘runner Hunts gone wrong, about the midnight screaming. The Granger boy gurgling in a pool of his own blood. Don’t think about the literal nightmare creature coiled and hissing and staring into your soul with black holes for eyes.
Don’t think – and don’t miss.
“Right,” Rhea said, already drawing back her arrow. “New plan. Aim between the – wait.” Her bow dipped; her brow furrowed. “What in the stupidest of hells –”
There was movement in the corn, behind the ‘runner. Stalks rustling raggedly, feathered golden husks twitching as a haphazard path was forged on the fly. Something fast, and small, comparatively, rushing toward the monster.
A person, probably.
A Granger, if Rhea really had to guess.
Tran saw it, too.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” she said.
“What are they trying to –”
A mangled shriek cut through the air, the ‘runner screeching in pain and surprise. Spittle stretched like stalactites between its monstrous jaws. Then its serpentine neck snapped sideways, backwards, trying to see the farmer that had attacked it. The rest of the beast turned, spun, following its head –
– and swinging its massive tail at the Hunters.
Swearing, Rhea threw herself to the ground, dropping her bow and spilling her quiver. Losing her hat. Less than inches from the warmth and wrath of the rattled tail, the angry breeze flustering her hair.
Tran wasn’t fast enough. Her sixth sense for impending peril not as finely honed as Rhea’s. The girl took the full force of the swing in her midsection, crossbow shattering against her chest. She was knocked clear across the clearing, sent sailing past Olaf and into the cornstalks.
Sprawled on the dirt, Rhea wiped the dust from her face. Hard brown eyes already seeking her foe. The ‘runner remained near the edge of the clearing, revolving and stomping down cornstalks like it was making a nest. Still fruitlessly pursuing its own side, searching for both its wound and the idiot Granger who’d caused it.
On knees and elbows, Rhea crawled, scrambling for her bow, her spilled arrows. Not looking away from her quarry. Not daring to, not again. Not even for a second.
That’s when she saw it: obscured by the undulating neck of the ‘runner, half-hidden behind the ruffled, razor-edged feathers, was the Granger, a boy, hanging from the creature’s side. Clinging to what looked like a pair of knives plunged deep into the monster’s flesh.
His clothes were in tatters; he was bruised and bleeding all over. Countless cuts, small and thin, from the creature’s plumage. His sneakered feet kicking and climbing, trying to find a purchase. To hold on.
The Granger was turning his head, this way then that, looking around, trying to get his bearings. The knotted look on his face suggested he understood how screwed he was, how outmatched. But there was no fear.
For a moment, his searching eyes – deep and pale green, like unpolished emeralds – met Rhea’s. And for a moment – for the most gossamer sliver of a moment – the rest of the world fell away.
Then the boy smiled at her.
“Not really sure what your plan was,” he shouted from the flank of the man-eating monster, the beast bucking beneath him, “but this definitely did not work.”
Rhea sighed.
Guess this is a rescue mission now.
She grabbed her gambler from the dust, setting it on her head, wide brim angled up. Then she climbed to one knee, nocked an arrow, and immediately loosed it. She whistled loud and long as she did, enough to get the ‘runner’s attention.
She nocked the second arrow.
The rattlerunner turned toward the sound – and the first arrow. Through luck or skill, or probably both, the broadhead buried itself square between the rattlerunner’s cold, lightless eyes. The knife-like edges of the arrow sliding, perfectly, between two diamond-hard scales.
The feather-spiked head of the ‘runner rocked briefly back before snapping forward again. Before lowering all the way into the dirt, inching and stretching forward, slithering slow toward Rhea. The monster roared, a high and bone-rattling shriek-shout somewhere between stuck machinery and an injured dinosaur.
She definitely had its attention.
Now came the hard part.
Rhea drew back the bowstring: fingers, cheek. She closed an eye. Lined it all up. Focused on the quarter-inch she needed. Focused. Then she exhaled, hard and short. Let her fingers go, released the second arrow. And then she watched that arrow warble across the clearing, through twenty feet of dust and desperation. Watched it, over the course of the world’s most interminable second.
The serrated tip of the second arrow caught the end of the first arrow directly, splitting the wooden nock and splintering the back of the shaft. The broadhead working its way ever up, trying to tear the other arrow all the way in two. Pushing. Pushing that first arrowhead just a few fractions of an inch deeper into the ‘runner’s skull.
It was enough.
With a shudder, a silent shriek that died as it did, the rattlerunner – the Alpha rattlerunner, Rhea reminded herself – the monster, the apex killer she would be crazy to try and take down without three entire experienced teams – that rattlerunner tilted to one side and collapsed to the ground.
Rhea didn’t stop herself from smiling. Couldn’t. Even as she heard the green-eyed Granger boy shouting and grumbling from somewhere beneath the slain beast. Even as a cloud of dust and dirt billowed up around the carcass, around the tractor and Olaf and the boy missing an arm. She only turned a shoulder, pulling down her hat and covering her grinning face as the dust rolled over her, too.
________________________________________________________________________________________
After a secret rendezvous goes fatally awry, store-crossed lovers Rhea and Wren, sixteen-year-olds from opposite sides of the last truck stop in existence, find themselves hunted and on the run, forced to survive in the post-utopian wreckage of an alien-blighted civilization. They’ll need to face down the impossible threats of a neverending desert, the atomic insects and sandstorms and the barren nothingness of a world rusted sharp, in search of a city that shouldn’t be.
The nights are long and the odds are bad, but Wren and Rhea wouldn’t have it any other way. They’re finally free, reveling in being alone, and together. But happiness is never easy at the end of everything, and soon enough – and with some unexpected help – the teenagers stumble upon a series of cascading discoveries that upend everything they thought they knew, leaving them reeling, reconsidering, and forced to reckon with what they owe the ones they left behind.
Pre-orders are pre-ordering now,
straight from my Square store!
Paperback
eBook