We Shall Be Monsters Read online

  His eyes moved a little as it studied her. The alligators made no move to attack. The Swampazazi Boys kept silent.

  “I know you’re smart,” Anika said. “As smart as I am.”

  It snorted. The other alligators inched closer.

  “Smarter. Smarter than I am. You beat me twice now. I know. You won. But listen. Please.”

  The alligators stopped moving.

  “I’m not from the lab where you were kept prisoner. My father owns it, but I was visiting there when you saw me. I’m just a kid.”

  It rotated its head slightly. Its inner eyelid closed.

  “We shut the power off, letting you escape. I was there as a spy. My father and his labcoats are wrong in what they did to you. But that’s not us. Not these people.”

  She pointed at the Swampazazi boys. Hopefully, it didn’t understand what they actually did for a living.

  Its mouth opened a bit.

  “I felt guilty. I let you out, and you killed the people that experimented on you. I felt responsible. Then the animals, pets people care for, were disappearing. I was worried that a little kid would be next, and it would be my fault. You see? I would be responsible for those deaths. That’s why I tried to capture you.”

  Its mouth closed again. It took a step closer and flared its nostrils.

  “I can help you.”

  It set its head in the grass and opened its inner eyelid again.

  “What do you want?” Anika asked. “We don’t have to be enemies. Do you want to get back at the scientists for doing this to you?”

  She studied its eye. The slit retracted slightly. Was that a yes or a no? She couldn’t tell.

  “Is that a yes?”

  It made a sound through its nostrils that sounded like a scoff. “No, then.”

  His eyelid opened wider. A yes!

  “Is there another alligator in the lab? Your mate? You want to rescue her?”

  Its inner eyelid closed. A no. Was it trying to communicate? The eyelid opened again.

  What could it want? Anika recalled the night the alligator escaped. It killed its captors. It escaped the lab. What?

  It opened its mouth again.

  It was free, didn’t have to stick around. But it was still here, forming an army. Why?

  “Do you want to attack the lab?”

  It closed its eyelid. A no? It opened the eyelid, and its front toes dug into the grass. It seemed impatient.

  “You are defending yourself?”

  Its eyelid stayed open. A yes. But that didn’t explain what it was doing.

  “You want something from the lab?”

  Another yes. What could it want? Anika tried to imagine herself in the alligator’s skin.

  “You want to be smart?”

  It hissed and inched closer.

  “You’re smart.” Anika scooted back. “You’re smart. Sorry. Smarter than me. Way smarter than me.”

  It opened its mouth again. What could it want from the lab? What could they still give it?

  She gasped. It kept opening and closing its mouth like it wanted to add to the conversation. Could it? “You want to be able to speak?”

  It nodded its head. Whether that was mimicry it was picking up from observation or an instinctual response, she couldn’t tell. But she could see it in its eyes. It wanted it more than anything else in the world.

  “I can help you.” The words flowed easily from her lips. “We can make that happen.”

  She lied. She lied through her stupid tiny teeth. Lying was her gift and the only thing that could save them now. It studied her, staring through her eyes into her soul. Its mouth closed.

  “I’ll have to break into the lab again, but I’ll do it. I’ll steal the technology. I’ll do whatever it takes, if you spare my friends’ lives.”

  It didn’t move. Seconds ticked by. An eternity.

  The gators backed away, heading for the brush.

  A man sobbed. Billie’s mouth hung open. Sasha shook her head in disapproval or amazement or both. Boulsour’s arm finally dropped to his side. She might have saved their lives for now, but her alligator problem was worse than ever.

  Anika studied the gator’s eyes. “You have to promise not to eat any humans.”

  The gators stopped their retreat.

  “I’ll explain.” Anika propped herself on her elbows. “We are isolated here. The people in this town expect strange things to happen. If people die, more people will come here. They will shine a light into this place. If they find out about you, and they will because you are amazing, they will shut down the lab for good. I won’t be able to help you anymore. Do you understand?”

  It nodded. Why didn’t it make this easy before?

  “If there is a war between alligators and men, more men will come, more than you can imagine, and they will have guns and armor, shells you can’t bite through, and they will try to kill you. I know you will fight them brilliantly, but they will keep coming and coming until you are destroyed. They will win.”

  His eyelids flickered.

  “You’re going to have to trust me. You’re smarter than me, but you don’t know how the world works. Not yet.”

  The gators retreated again, lumbering off toward the swamp. A dozen or so remained, ready to strike as the boss backed out of the blast zone.

  Anika held her breath as the alpha gator followed a hundred others, slinking into the brush.

  “One more thing,” Anika called out.

  Billie gasped.

  It hesitated at the tree line.

  “You have to send them home, the alligators you’ve brought here from other places. This habitat cannot sustain them. They will eat everything up within days and they will begin to starve. You have to send them home.”

  She could barely see its features through the moonlight, but it nodded its huge head and slipped away. The alligators were gone.

  The night was calm and silent.

  Anika buried her face in her arms and sobbed.

  Sasha let the club fall to the ground as Billie crawled over and threw her arms around Anika.

  Fine. Billie could be the one to console her.

  Sasha didn’t have time for Anika’s feelings. If Anika was going to play with people’s lives, sometimes they would die. Sasha was almost angry no one died.

  Almost.

  They all should have died. All except Anika, Boulsour, and herself.

  Boulsour stared off into the trees.

  The gator-catching boob picked himself off the ground and eyed Agatha sheepishly.

  “Oh, relax, you big baby,” Agatha said. “It’s not like we can ever tell anyone about this.”

  The old fogey pulled them both into a hug. The kid stood silent until Agatha shook off the guys and took his chin until he finally blinked.

  “What…?” The kid couldn’t get the words out.

  “We go home.” Agatha said. “This never happened, right?”

  She was talking to Sasha.

  “Right.” Sasha said. “You can’t talk about this with anyone. We’re in enough danger without reporters, hunters, and spectators crawling through the swamp for a looksee.”

  Agatha patted Sasha’s shoulder. “No one would believe us anyway.”

  The swamp people were all looking to Sasha for direction. Because she had the sword?

  No. Because everyone else was too scared to move.

  The kid set his gun on the ground. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  Sasha picked up the kid’s gun and handed it to Agatha. “Maybe find a trade school. Are you any good with machinery?”

  Darwin examined his hands. Maybe he was grateful to still have them. Sasha grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the trucks. She reached into her pocket and felt the key to the storage locker Dravovitch had given her. “I need a ride.”

  “Bu…”

  “Boulsour will get them home safe.” Sasha pulled him forward. “The alligator is not your problem anymore.”

  He watched Billie
and Anika, still on the ground crying—wasting time. If Anika wouldn’t concentrate on defeating Dravovitch, then Sasha would have to step up. In spite of Dravovitch’s praise of her parents, she knew they didn’t share his affection. The other parents were all mad scientists, right? Weren’t her parents just as likely to have some secret project? Perhaps something in their belongings could give them an advantage.

  Sasha tossed her sword into the back of Darwin’s truck and got in. He didn’t ask questions as he drove her to the storage shed. Sasha’s parents were good people. They didn’t just care about her family, though. They cared about people. About science, too, sure. But they wouldn’t put innocent lives in jeopardy.

  So why the hell did they work for Dravovitch?

  She wanted to ask Darwin to call Hawking but decided the stupid boy would find her, regardless. Sasha pulled a little power from the streetlights as they passed them, just to be sure he knew where to look.

  As Darwin drove into the storage yard, Sasha put a hand on his. “Don’t come back.”

  He nodded.

  She got out.

  He drove off.

  Sasha turned toward the row of storage sheds. She pulled energy from the lights and they dimmed. She let the energy flow out of her and the lights brightened. She repeated that process a few more times. There was no way Hawking could miss that.

  Damn, she missed cell phones.

  Pulling the key out of her pocket, Sasha headed toward all the unpleasant memories of her past life. She stopped in front of Unit 12 and unlocked the door. She yanked the door up and stepped inside.

  Her stuff, her family’s belongings, were stuffed inside. She gasped but had nothing to say with the air in her lungs. She exhaled, feeling the loneliness and loss she’d been dreading. The feels hit her throat, and she gasped, barely choking back the waterworks. She couldn’t cry anyway. Not anymore.

  She tossed her hat on the couch and searched. The first box held photographs of her stupid brother. She found a rag on one of the shelves and wiped her nose—from all the dust in the air. One year, she’d dressed him up as the mummy. It was Easter morning, and she thought the neighbors could use a little Lazarus cosplay to liven up their holiday.

  They weren’t amused. Dad had actually rolled in the grass clutching his belly as he laughed. The neighbors weren’t amused at Dad, either. Mom had rolled her eyes and cleaned up the paper as my brother fought his way free. A good day.

  She found another photo of herself in her cheerleader outfit with Claire and the Jennys. Finally, she’d decided to grow up and pretend her dad wasn’t cool anymore. That moment felt like so long ago. Two months later she looked more like Morticia Addams than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  She pulled out a photo of herself dressed as a zombie for a movie she’d made when she was twelve. Her father had always insisted that she should be able to take care of herself. The game they most often played involved figuring out how to stay alive in a zombie apocalypse. He would come up with scenarios and Sasha would have to decide how to survive. Her mother told them they were obsessed.

  The photo of her parents’ wedding would have made her cry if her tear ducts actually worked as intended. Still, her eyes got all puffy anyway. She squeezed the frame in her hands and the glass cracked. She let out an ugly sob.

  Sasha tossed the photos back in the box. They weren’t going to tell her any secrets. She needed to find a hidden flash drive or a secret compartment in their furniture. She had to find out what her parents had been up to.

  What were they planning before they died?

  She searched for an hour before Hawking showed up, climbing over the overturned couch she’d shredded looking for answers.

  “What are you doing?” He sat on the ground next to her as she ripped apart her parents’ mattress.

  “My parents were mad scientists, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, they were working on something on the side, like Jackie’s, Misty’s, and Blake’s dads. Probably every kid at the school. Except you.”

  He tried to put his arm around her.

  She tossed the mattress across the shed. Hawking’s eyes widened a moment, and she thought his brown eyes would show fear. Instead, Hawking grinned. She amused him with her antics? What did that say about him?

  He grabbed a box near his feet and rummaged through it. “Do you think they will have some kind of weapon for us to use?”

  “I hope so.” She put her head in her hands. Hawking didn’t need to see her puffy eyes or the heartache behind them. “I don’t know how else to keep Anika alive.”

  “Billie told me what happened at the park.”

  Sasha leaned her head on his shoulder. “Let me guess. Anika isn’t going to let anyone help her anymore. She isn’t going to put anyone else in danger.”

  “Something like that.”

  Sasha kicked the desk drawer over and over until the lock busted off and the drawer fell onto the ground. She rifled through it. “She’s wrong.”

  Hawking felt along the underside of the desk. “We’re the ones who are going to have to save Anika.”

  “I’m going to save her.” Sasha focused on her mother’s Historique organ. “You’re going to help from the van.”

  Hawking followed her gaze and walked to the organ, dusting the keys with his sleeve. “Do you play?”

  “No.” Sasha got up and opened the organ’s bench, searching through the sheet music for anything useful. “My mom loved to play. Every night after she put us to bed. The same tune.”

  “Every night?”

  “Not right away, but it was always the last thing she played. What was it?”

  The tune she couldn’t quite remember. Bum da ba bum da da bum bum. No.

  Hawking pulled over the bench and sat in front of the organ, placing his hands on the keys. “Sing it for me.”

  “I don’t sing.”

  “Close your eyes. Sing it for me.”

  She pictured her mother’s fingers flying over the keys. She had loved Chopin and Bach. “I always asked her to play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor ‘cause it was all spooky. Ugh, I was so dumb.”

  “No.” Hawking grabbed her hand. “Pretty sure you were always cool. Now I need you to sing it for me.”

  She closed her eyes again. Her mother stopped playing for the night, and turned toward Sasha, who was hiding in the hallway, watching. A memory?

  “Bum da da bum da bum da de do.” She sang the notes that her mother played.

  Hawking played them on the organ. Nothing happened.

  He played them in a slightly different way. Still nothing.

  “What about?” He tried a third time. Bum da da bum da bum da de do.

  A hidden door on the side of the organ popped open. Sasha reached inside the tiny compartment. She found a worn notebook and a small, fancy pink bottle with a hose and a squeeze ball at the end like in the old movies.

  Sasha took a useless breath. She’d never thought of her mother as sneaky or mysterious before. Did she even know her at all? Sasha wanted to scream out in anger and shout for joy at the same time.

  Hawking whistled. “Have you ever seen that before?”

  “Nope.” She handed Hawking the notebook and turned the bottle over in her hands. The bottle was fancy, but it was the contents inside that mattered. Maybe this secret was her mother’s attempt at setting things right, or perhaps it was her mad experiment to match the other megalomaniacs.

  “Well, we better start cracking.” Hawking settled on the displaced mattress. “Or we’ll be up all night.”

  Sasha spritzed a little perfume into the air, but the mist had no fragrance at all. She set the bottle down and sat next to Hawking. They read the notebook together.

  Every so often, Hawking would make a noise—an oh or an ah. She would glance over, but he would wave her off and keep reading. None of it made sense, but she’d read the notes in the margins, and was building a narrative. Her mother was trying to infiltrate Dravovitch’s
secret laboratory she was sure existed. She questioned what was actually going on in the lab. What the energy was for. But the disturbing part was her mother’s questioning of the secrets that Sasha’s father was keeping.

  Daddy was the best. She couldn’t picture him as a villain. He would sneak her into his study and they would watch Universal monster movies together. Frankenstein was her favorite, but she loved all his silly black and white movies, from The Invisible Man to Metropolis. She soaked it all in. They would watch zombie movies, and he would grill her on proper apocalypse survival.

  Okay, maybe he was a mad scientist.

  What the hell was he preparing her for?

  What would he think of her now? He’d probably get her a cape and help her fight crime from behind a bank of computer screens.

  She’d never know.

  “Hey.” Hawking shoved the notebook in front of her face. “I think I got it. That spray bottle is a mixture designed to alter the perception of a person’s eyes so that person can’t see a specific color.”

  “What? A color? That’s stupid.”

  “Why not a color? It’s ingenious. You could hide something in plain sight.”

  Sasha ran her finger over her mother’s notes. “I think this is formulated for one person. For Dravovitch.”

  “What was she going to do?”

  “I think she was planning to sneak into Dravovitch’s secret lair. She wasn’t positive, but she suspected he was up to something.”

  “Does this help us?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe we could hide Anika.”

  Hawking took the bottle. “This can only affect Dravovitch?”

  “I think so.”

  “That makes sense.” He paced around the storage shed. “She’d have to know everything about his eyes and the way he perceives colors.”

  “Like an eye scanner. My mom could have collected data every time he walked into the laboratory.”

  “I would say that this was crazy,” he said, “except for all the other insane things we’ve seen the last few months.”

  “We have to test it. We have to get close enough to spritz him and have something of the color around for him not to see.”