Steven Santos - The Culling

Shooing away the buzzing flies swarming over his lesion, I press my locator next to his beacon.

There’s a harsh buzz and the locator’s light turns the same color as his soaked shirt.

Not a match. What a horrible way to die, out here, alone in such filth.

His icy hand locks around my wrist. Bloodshot eyes spring open the rest of the way.

My heart nearly erupts through my gullet.

“ Please … ” The word flows from his lips through a gout of blood. “ Help … me … ”

I pull my arm from his wrist and clasp his hand. “I’m sorry ,” I whisper.

Then we’re torn apart. Cypress shoves me out of the way so hard that a bolt of pain jolts through my arm. Her dark hair’s pasted wildly across her dirt-streaked face like poisoned veins.

One look at her eyes snuffs out my anger. Stark naked desperation, the kind bordering on crazy. She eyes the boy’s tracker and grabs it with muddy hands that smell of rot. This isn’t the first body she’s come across.

The moment her locator connects with his bracelet, there’s another harsh buzz and red flash.

She flings his hand down as if it’s shocked her. Her engorged eyes turn on me. “Not him either.”

Then she’s bounding off, crouching over another victim.

The boy coughs up another mouthful of blood. “ Please … don’t leave me. I don’t want to die … alone … ”

The weight of what’s at stake crushes the air from my lungs.

I can’t help him.

Fog shrouds my brain, as if I’m in the throes of some terrible nightmare my mind’s trying to filter so I won’t break. This can’t be real. I back away …

My eyes sweep the field. Everything looks fragmented. Digory hunches over a clump of tangled limbs about ten yards to my right. Lifting wrist after wrist. Holding his locator to them. Hands reach out to touch him back. He bows his head. Pity-soaked eyes. Mutters unintelligible words …

To my left, Ophelia digs through heaps. Flings aside body after body as if she can’t figure out what to wear …

Only Gideon appears to be taking his time, strolling through the battle zone and occasionally stooping to check a beacon as if he were in a field searching for a particular flower to pick.

All around them, fireflies flit about, filling the air with their incessant buzzing even as they dot the landscape with bloody pinpricks of light …

Not fireflies- beacons . The thought burns through the mist clouding my head.

Then it’s like my brain’s launched into overdrive, careening forward until it synchs into real time. My breath comes in short, shallow bursts through my dry mouth. I squeeze slower breaths through my nostrils until the landscape stops spinning and the dizziness passes.

I sprint over the unnamed boy without even a glance back.

Beyond him lies a pale middle-aged woman, crumpled like a wad of paper.

The faces.

Don’t look at their faces.

I grip the beacon, trying not to touch skin. But the hair on my body prickles when my little finger grazes icy flesh.

Buzz . Red light.

Letting go of her, I scurry through the human wreckage, dodging past Digory, skirting Gideon, leaping over a crouched Cypress, knocking into Ophelia, scavenging through body after body, groping through torn rib cages and steaming piles of entrails until I’m covered in gore and reek of the living dead myself.

But still I push on and on, gulping down the bile and vomit. A part of me dies with every body I desecrate. And through it all, the moans and wails sear into my brain.

I’ll never stop hearing them until I fester in my own grave.

Soon, I’ve lost count of the running tab of bodies I’m keeping in my head. Why haven’t I found anything yet? I risk a fleeting glance around at the others. They’re all still searching, too. Could the Establishment be cruel enough to not have fitted any of the bodies with matching beacons?

Then a worse thought hits my brain, with the same ferocity as the inner fist trying to beat its way out my chest. What if Cassius deliberately disabled just my locator? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tampered with the Trials. After all, didn’t he have Digory recruited and Desiree Morningside murdered just so I could take her place and provide him with two pawns to play his sick little game with?

I grab another wrist lying in the rubble. It’s so small the beacon nearly slides off the bony hand.

A child’s hand.

“It hurts,” a tiny voice moans over and over again.

My eyes squeeze shut against the molten river about to burst free. I clamp my free hand against my ear, trying to muffle as much of the agony as I can. If I can’t see them, they’re not real.

Bleep.

The sound startles me.

I finally found one.

Scooping the child in my arms, I hug its head against me.

But when I look down, the tracker’s still blinking red, sending a vibrating pulse burning into my chest.

I spin.

Digory’s a few yards away, cradling a frail-looking woman in his arms as if she were a newborn.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re going to be okay,” he coos. The green lights of the flashing locator and beacon reflect on both their skin like the hushed lightning of a distant storm, illuminating their faces with a shared gratitude and relief.

Skeletal fingers clutch his collar. “My daughter … please … you have to find her … ”

“Let’s get you out of here first.”

Then he’s scrambling off toward the safety zone with her.

My heart swells-then bursts with the realization of what Digory’s heroism means to the four of us still struggling to make it through this.

A flash of green to my right blinds me, accompanied by a steady bleeping that matches the rhythm of the blood battering the arteries in my brain. For a second I’m disoriented.

Someone else found their beacon.

Obscured by a veil of smoke, Gideon’s silhouette props the green-flashing arm of a stick-figured woman over his shoulder and stumbles with her through the battlefield, disappearing in the same direction that Digory took off in.

Two down and only three to go.

I hunch my head and bury my face against the small head nestled against me. Whatever I’m going to do it has to be done fast. “Please forgive me,” I whisper into a tiny ear.

Bleep.

What the-?

Cypress’s eyes lock with mine. Her locator and the kid’s beacon are both flashing green. She tries to pry the child from my arms.

“ Don’t let Goslin have the girl, Spark!” Ophelia kicks a body out of her way and scrambles toward us, eyes flickering like wildfire. “If she takes her, we’ll both be tied for last place.”

My arms tighten around the faceless girl. She’s right …

Cypress tugs harder. “ Give her to me.” Her words are drowned out by the wailing child held hostage between us.

An invisible force slams Ophelia to the ground. “Ungh!” She doubles over, clutching her side.

It was a taser mine.

I lurch toward her, dragging Cypress and the child along with me. “Ophelia! You okay?”

Cypress’s fingers dig into my arm. “There’s no time.”

Ophelia stirs, rising to rest on her hands and knees like a crouching beast. “We can both save our families, Spark. You hold Goslin here while I hide the girl.”

She lurches to her feet and sprints closer. In that instant I know that if she reaches us, she’ll stop at nothing to make sure Cypress doesn’t rescue the child.

I can’t bear the weight of any more blood. Even if I made it all the way through this, I’d never be able to look in Cole’s eyes again.