Muts, page 14
“Sounds good to me.”, Carrie agreed readily. I wonder what Terrence would be like when he wasn’t all ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ as Maria called it.
“So, tell me about Matthais’s injuries.” Phoebe asked Carrie, and then they were off again. I had to tune them out while Carrie explained what was wrong with Matthais, it made me sick to realize just how hurt he was. Those two had been shooting questions back and forth for at least an hour, and it was starting to wear on me. Looking at Emilie, it seemed like their rapid conversation was starting to get to her too. This was exhausting. What else could they possibly have to tell each other? It was barely evening, and all I wanted was to lay down and think. I hadn’t had a chance to process all of this nonsense since I woke up in my room with Carrie delivering General Waldie’s message yesterday. How had it only been less than 24 hours?
Emilie caught my eye and shot a pointed glance at the door. Thank god. I nodded eagerly at her unspoken question and started to stand, cutting off Carrie's non-stop questions about how many natural muts were here.
“I’m going to show Sasha where she’ll be sleeping, you’ll be bunking with her Carrie.”, Emilie explained. Phoebe simply nodded without tearing her attention away from Carrie. I patted Carrie’s shoulder, and she gave me a quick smile before going back to her tirade. I followed Emilie’s straight, pale hair out of the room and down the silent hall.
“If there’s really over a hundred muts here, then where is everyone?”, I asked her after a few too many silent moments. Emilie seemed like a serious person, but from what I could see she seemed to have a softer core. I’d bet she only seems off-putting because she’s so reserved. She smiled softly as she swung open a door leading to a dim concrete stairwell.
“We keep the bottom floors completely empty just in case anything happens, so everyone’s upstairs. That’s why you haven’t seen anyone. Speaking of,” she began, as we started up the stairs, “It seems like you’re missing a mut since the last time you were here. Your count is off. Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
“Well…”, I hesitated. I couldn't remember if Carrie had mentioned the whole Maria murdering Richard at the dinner table thing to Phoebe, and I didn’t want to mess up if she wanted to keep that a secret for whatever reason. “Actually, Maria, the one with the dirt covering her arms, killed Richard over dinner last night.”
Emilie swung her head around, immediately at alert.
“And how long were you waiting to tell us that you brought a killer with you?!”, she shot at me angrily as she swung around to race back down the stairs.
“It’s not like that!”
She paused mid-step and swiveled her head back to glare at me.
“Explain.”, she bit the word off, her eyes daggers.
“Well, I don’t want to say it was justified, but…”, I paused again, hesitating. I wasn’t sure how to put this delicately and without alarming her anymore.
“Spit. It. Out.”
“She found out he was one of the people who worked here!” I’m not sure why or when, but I noticed that my arms had halfway raised in surrender. I quickly lowered them and straightened my spine. I looked like a weakling, and that was unacceptable. To my surprise she threw her head back and burst into gleeful laughter.
“So one of the bastards is really dead? That’s absolutely incredible. I’ll have to ask Samuel or one of the others about which one it was.”
She easily started back up the steps to join me with a wide smile on her face, I turned and followed in step.
“So how’d she do it? Was it gross? I hope it was gross.”, she asked rapturously, her tone eerily reminded me of Caroline last night.
“Uh, yeah. She can grow stuff using her arms, so she ate some hemlock and fed him stuff from when she was sick. I’m not sure how she managed it without killing herself, but I wasn’t really going to ask her for more info.”
“I like this Maria person already, she’s my kind of woman. She must’ve kicked some serious ass back in the day.”, Emilie gave another chuckle.
Come to think of it, I have no idea who Maria was before the bombs fell. Emilie must be right. She must’ve had a really rough life to just casually murder someone like that. How did I spend that much time with her trapped in the house and I never thought to ask? I fought off a deep shiver of foreboding. I’m just creeping myself out thinking about murder and secrets and such, I had other things to think about.
Even though our footsteps echoed in the concrete stairwell loudly, as we kept climbing I started hearing the buzz of conversation leaking out from under the final heavy metal door at the top floor. She swung it open, and my mouth fell open in shock. All we had seen of the institute made it seem dead and clinical, but up here, it was bustling with life. Granted, the setting was still depressing and grim, but everyone walking around was joking and laughing with each other without a care. It was safe to say that everyone here was genuinely happy. I guess they weren’t too hard to please after the hell they had survived.
I couldn’t take in everyone around me fast enough. They seemed normal at first glance, but then there were moments that shocked me to my core. I saw a young woman entertaining a group of young children by creating orbs of light and letting the kids chase them around the room. One man was playing a weird card game with another man where he tried to guess what shape was on the card. It had to be some kind of psychic game, and I wondered if they ever bothered trying that with Caroline. They’d lose immediately, so I doubted it. Another woman in the corner kept slowly passing one hand back and forth through a wall as if she was absentmindedly playing in a waterfall while she casually read a book.
As we passed by one room an short elderly woman with dreads like Samuel came out and smiled at Emilie warmly before stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of me, her eyes wide. Oh yeah, I’m a freak. Even by their standards. I keep forgetting that it’s especially obvious now that my antlers stood clearly over my hair.
“Wow…”, she muttered to herself, her eyes flicking from the tips of my antlers to my deformed pupils.
“Lois, don’t stare at Sasha like that. It’s impolite,” Emilie chidded her playfully. Lois waved her off and kept staring at me in concentration.
“Okay, tell me how this goes. I’ve been practicing,” her words still directed at Emilie. Rude. If she was going to stare at me openly, she could at least say something. She contorted her face like she was concentrating very hard, and I noticed her short frame was elongating until we were at eye level. Then her thin, white dreads darkened and curled tightly to match my kinky hair, and her coppery skin swirled rapidly to match my own inky shade. I could only stare in amazement as fur started winding down the sides of her face and small antlers sprouted out the top of her head. Then she popped open her eyes to show me that they were identical to my own, horizontal pupils and all. Within a few seconds, this strange woman had transformed into a mirror image of me.
“How’s that?”, she asked us with a wide grin.
“Wonderful! And your time is getting much faster.”, Emilie praised Lois warmly. I was definitely right, Emilie was one of those people that you think it’s cold as stone until you realize that she just has to know you first. Lois patted her on the cheek with a wide smile, then reached out to grab my hand.
“Everyone here knows you came all the way here for those little girls, and we’re so happy that Abby is doing better. We were all quite worried about her, hopefully being away with her brother helped settle her down.”, she turned back to Emilie, “Also, I heard a rumor that I was going to be getting a roommate, is that true?”
“Yep, a woman named Maria. I think you two will get along, you both have a violent streak.”, she said with a dark chuckle.
“Well, hooray for that!”, she said, clapping her hands in delight as she began shrinking and her face slowly melted back into her own, “Guess I better go and clean off the other bed.”
She began bustling off, but paused to swing back to the two of us.
“Oh, can you send Samuel to me if you see him? Expecting that child to be a dutiful son is like licking a tree and expecting maple syrup.”
“Of course, I think Samuel is just getting Abby all settled in with her brother, then he should be coming right to you.” She smiled at us again and then happily tottered back into her room.
“That’s Samuel’s mother?”, I questioned Emilie with wide eyes. I remembered earlier during Carrie’s inquisition they said that he was a result of a breeding experiment, but just I assumed he was a test tube baby. I couldn't imagine this type of place letting a mother take care of her own child.
“Yep. I think they thought if he got her mutation, she could teach him how to master it at a younger age. Instead, though, he can make anyone see anything but he stays the same. It was a weird play on her abilities.”, she shrugged as we continued down the hallway. I wanted to ask more questions, but I decided to keep my thoughts to myself and to continue studying everyone we passed. We finally stopped at an open, unmarked door. Within was a completely concrete room that reminded me of a jail cell. Even the window had reinforced glass like I’ve seen in shows about prison. I instinctively recoiled away, and Emilie noticed my reaction.
“I know it looks bad, but you’ll be able to scrounge around and find some stuff to make it homier while you’re here.”, she said with obvious pity in her voice, “At least you won’t be here too long, god willing.”
“Yeah…” I agreed, thinking that no amount of decorations could make this nightmare dungeon less nausea inducing.
“Hey Em!”, a teenaged boy called out from down the hallway. He had a sweet face with muddy hair and the brightest orange shirt I’ve ever seen. At least it matched the prison theme.
“What’s up, Jerry?”, she asked, turning to him. He gave her a cocky grin and lightly tossed a sloshy, red bag high in the air towards us. I instinctually moved forward to catch whatever it was, his toss was much too soft and he was at least fifteen yards away. Then the bag disappeared into a small dark hole in midair and it’s twin appeared above Emilie’s outstretched hand, and the bag plopped directly into her grip.
“Fresh from the tap.”, he chuckled before running up to us and high-fiving her. She smiled widely at him. “You’re the best! Thanks, man, I was starting to get hungry.”
“Don’t mention it,” he waved away her thanks as he kept moving down the hall away from us. I had a feeling he never slowed down. “Just give me a few days to recoup.”
Emilie actually laughed before she ran her tongue over her front teeth. To my amazement, long, slightly too-white fangs slid out from behind her actual canines with an audible click, and she quickly punctured the bag. Oh my god. That was a bag of blood. She was drinking actual blood. With actual fangs. Like an actual vampire. Emilie met my terrified gaze and held eye contact as she finished off the bag. I had a feeling she was giving me a chance to speak, but that was mainly because my mouth kept opening and closing like a fish out of water. We called Carrie a vampire because of her mutation, but Emilie was an honest-to-god blood drinker. Now it made sense why she wouldn’t elaborate on being a vampire when we first met, I just assumed she was as much of a real vampire as Carrie is.
“You’re...you’re...”, I stuttered, at a loss for words. She shrugged before stuffing the now empty bag into her pocket and running her tongue back over her fangs, causing them to retract again with another loud click.
“A vampire. Yep.”
“But- but… how?”, I had to ask. Every ounce of politeness I had was fighting my desperate need to ask her personal questions, and, unsurprisingly, curiosity won out. Her face clouded for a second, and her eyes slid away from mine.
“Let’s just say that they’ve been messing with ‘muts’”, she gestured with air quotes, “For much longer than you think.”
“Will you tell me what happened?”, I begged her. All exhaustion was gone now, and I was burning up with curiosity. I needed to know. After all, apocalypse or not, I was in front of an honest-to-goodness vampire, and I wasn’t going to lose a chance to learn more. Carrie was going to absolutely freak when I told her later. She hesitated, her pale hair swinging to hide her face as she looked down. After an endless moment, she gave a sigh of defeat, then walked into my cell and slumped onto my metal cot, staring at her hands.
“I will. However...”, she agreed before piercing me with a stare, “I don’t like talking about it so let me speak without interrupting okay?”
I nodded eagerly and sat next to her, tucking my knees to my chest and crossing my arms over them like a child anxious for a story. Although, that’s exactly what I felt like at that moment.
“Well, back in the 70s, I was working for the government in a place much like this, and needless to say, not a lot of women in the sciences back then.”, she confessed, “My husband was just a simple soldier, but we loved each other since we were children. When we invaded Vietnam, he was taken as a prisoner.”
I had to bite my tongue to stop from asking more questions about how this story started in the 70s, she looked like she was in her late 20s to early 30s. Was she really talking about the actual Vietnam war?!
“At the time, it wasn’t uncommon for me to go weeks without hearing from him, technology wasn’t nearly where it is today. So I didn’t worry about it, at first. Then one day I came into work, and there was a package addressed to me on my desk. I figured it was something from one of my colleagues, so I played the video…”
She paused, took a bracing breath through her nose, and continued.
“But, turns out they had not only captured his unit, but also a film crew that was with them to film the front lines. Shots of the war were big news back then, and they used the film equipment to their advantage. I watched them kill him. I watched every single second of that video. I made sure that I was with him every step of the way. Even though he was already dead, I needed to experience every agonizing second with him. I had to know exactly what he went through. We had spent every second of our lives together and I wasn’t going to miss his final moments. Then I skipped all of the stages of grief and went straight to anger. And I stayed there, biding my time. I knew that one day, somehow, I would get my revenge and I would do everything to them that they did to him. A thousand times over. It was just a waiting game. In public, I grieved like a regular widow should, and I hid my violence under a mask of tears. I didn’t know what I was waiting on exactly, but I knew I had to wait for the right moment. One day we had a new specimen come into the lab. It was a literal, actual vampire that had been frozen somewhere in the Swiss Alps. Perfectly preserved. We just started splicing DNA in humans, and it didn’t take very long for me to plant the idea of trying to create a vampiric soldier. Surprise, surprise, I volunteered to be their guinea pig. Who better than a scientist who knew everything about what they were becoming? Finally, I was going to get the revenge I had been dreaming of. The splicing didn’t work out exactly as planned though…”
She leaned closer to me and ran her tongue over her fangs again, causing them to descend with another click. I noticed a thin line over them where they must retract back into her teeth, her original teeth were slightly discolored from age, and I noticed that her skin didn’t seem exactly real when we were this close. She looked almost… plastic. She had a slight sheen, and I noticed odd tenseness on the contours of her face when she raised her eyebrows at me. I hadn’t been this close to her before, but I couldn’t help but wonder how I had missed this. She was a walking nightmare Barbie.
“What didn’t convert over properly we created. Fangs, blood consuming organs, new skin that could handle sunlight, the works. Then they sent me off to war.”, her face split into an evil smile at whatever violent thoughts were in her head, and I had to repress a shiver. She was unnerving when she smiled like that, especially with what I had just learned. “After I was finished wiping every one of them from existence, I returned here to America. But after the carnage I left in my wake overseas I was considered a ‘threat to national security’. My boss got the orders to put me down, but I managed to escape that asshat. He was young, foolish, and eager to flex what little power he had. I ran to the ocean and started swimming. I’m not sure how long I was out there, but it was long enough for the salt and sun to bleach me completely white. Not to mention the damage that had been done to my plastic skin.”
“So, what happened then?”, I spoke in an almost whisper.
“I decided to return the favor. The ending of my life for his. He keeps barely escaping me, but I have a much longer existence than Waldie does.”, she sneered as she said his name, “So, I’m not all that worried. He didn’t expect for the immortality rumors about vamps to be true, but my organic matter hasn’t aged a day, and my parts are easily fixable. Another perk of me creating my own robotics. I got a job here as a nurse trying to get close to him since I know he mainly deals with people like the ones here, so I knew how to create the perfect new hire. It’s only a matter of time until I run into him again, and when I do, I’m going to drain him dry.”
“Wait, General Waldie? Like the one from the broadcast?” I asked her, the name slowly registering in my head.
“One and the same. If there’s one thing that the broadcast gave up, it’s that he’s traveling. Which means he’s nearby.”, she nodded before standing and heading for the door. When she reached it she paused, silently speculating, with one hand resting on the door frame, “The only weird part about him doing the broadcast is that he retired and went into hiding like the coward he is when he discovered I was coming for him. He hasn’t had a hand in our government since realizing that, no matter how successful he was at such a young age.”
She gave me another pointed glance then swept out of the room. This was getting too complicated. It’s just too much, and I wasn’t going to think about her implications anytime soon. I extended my legs across my new bed and gazed out my window. Carrie was right on the money about not trusting the broadcast, and I shook my head at myself. If I kept worrying about everyone all the time, I would go mad. Now it was just a waiting game, it seemed.
