Melissa la Cruz - Frozen

“You’ve got your skin; take it, and get out of here! This one’s mine. She can hang the head on her wall and tell all her friends she popped a big white. You want this one, you’ve got to pay my fee, ’cause she sure won’t!” The guides studied Wes’s crew. The boys smiled broad grins. The tourists howled as their guides herded them back into the jeeps.

Wes turned. “You want the bear?”

She feigned a laugh, but the sight was too horrid. The creature had been truly beautiful. “You think they bought it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Who knows, I’ve run these cons so many times I’ve just quit worrying.” The boys shoveled snow over the fallen bear, a burial of sorts, then loaded back into the truck. Tire free and hunters gone, they started forward once more.

SHAKES HAD TO PARK THE TRUCK AGAIN to try to patch the hole in the gas tank. They weren’t far from what used to be called Korea-Town, a formerly jumbled neighborhood of barbecue restaurants and foreign embassies, but they might have to walk the rest of the way if he couldn’t coax out a few more miles. The team disbanded, and the boys wandered around snow-covered houses while Nat stayed close to the vehicle. It looked as if it would take awhile, so she took a book from her pack.

“You can read,” said Wes, noticing.

“Yes,” Nat replied with an embarrassed smile. “Mrs. A—the lady who raised me—taught me.” The book was one of the few possessions she had left, a poetry collection from the archives.

“Lucky duck,” he said.

“It passes the time,” she said, trying not to make a big deal out of it. Literacy was the lowest it had ever been. Truly, there was hardly any reason to read anymore—information was relayed through the net in videos and images, and if written communication was necessary, most people used an amalgam of symbols and acronyms that had replaced formal language instruction in schools. Supposedly textlish—which had been compared to Egyptian hieroglyphics by bygone intellectuals and academics—had been invented by a couple of kids with their handhelds before the Big Freeze. The latest RBEs, or “Reading-Based Entertainment,” were all composed in textlish, but Nat couldn’t quite get excited by a story called XLNT <3 LULZ.

The RBEs on the top download lists were all imports from Xian anyway—dull “work” novels about how to move up in the world, capitalist tracts about jerking the corporate chain. All the books Nat preferred to read were written by people who had lived long ago. No new songs, either—the current crop of pop stars were all cover bands, rehashing music from another era. It was as if even imagination had died when the ice came.

Wes peered over her shoulder at the cover. “Who’s William Morris?”

“He was a poet.”

“Read me something,” he said. Nat didn’t think he was the poetry type, but she flipped through the pages and cleared her throat before deciding on a passage.

“It’s a story—about a dragon—and a hero,” she told him.

“What happens in it?” he asked.

“The usual.” She shrugged. “The hero slays the dragon.”

Wes smiled and left to help Shakes with the engine. All around the white snow, Nat swore she could see small white flowers popping up everywhere. It had to be some kind of illusion. Flowers couldn’t grow in the snow and the garbage. She walked closer to a snowbank, sure that the illusion would disperse, but it didn’t. She reached down to pick a few flowers.

“Look,” she said to Wes, who was standing nearby. She handed him one.

“How is that possible?” he said, marveling at the delicate bloom in his hand.

She shook her head and once again, they shared a quick, shy smile.

The sound of thunder booming across the valley caused them to drop the flowers they held and forget about it for the time being. In a flash, they were crouched behind the truck.

“What is it?” Nat asked. Had the patrols finally caught up to them somehow? She’d heard too many bombs in her lifetime and could immediately recognize the sound of an exploding shell when she heard one. “Think the seekers found us?”

“Let’s hope not,” he said as a second explosion rocked the truck. “Shakes would have picked up their signal on our scanner.”

They were parked on top of a winding road—MULHOLLAND DRIVE, an ancient street sign read. The houses were still intact here, except they were buried to the roofline in snow. At least they were away from the black vines now, and the air was fresher up here and a new coat of pristine white powder covered the ground.

A third thunderous blast rocked the hillside, loud as a cannon.

“Wait a minute,” said Wes. “That sounds like one of ours—”

“What are you doing?” Nat asked as Wes crept along the side of the truck, muttering Zedric’s name as another blast echoed across the hilltop.

She ducked as a shower of snow rained down from the trees.

“Put it down! What do you think you’re doing?” Wes yelled, walking out from behind the truck.

She stood from her place and saw where Wes was headed. Zedric was perched on top of an old black Bentley. Its tires were flat and all the windows were missing. Someone had pulled out the seats and the engine was gone. Zedric laughed as he tried to steady himself on the hood of the car that was slowly collapsing under his weight.

“Watch this!” Zedric yelled, as he aimed his RPG at a pair of thin steel-and-wood beams that supported a big house across the hill. The long glass façade must have been beautiful once, but its windows were all smashed now and its roofline as wavy as a noodle. The neighboring houses were similarly perched out over the hill on tiny thin posts.

A loud smack interrupted her thoughts.

Wes had knocked the rifle from Zedric’s hand, which hit the boy’s nose as the gun fell to the snow. “What the hell!” Wes demanded.

Zedric glared at him. “I was just having a little fun!”

For a moment, Nat thought he was going to hit Wes, but the smaller boy seemed to think better of it.

There was a pop—another explosion—but different this time, and all of them turned around to see the long white house slide down the hillside and crash into the trash pile below.

“You shot out the supports, didn’t you?” asked Wes.

“It was fun,” Zedric repeated, reaching for his gun as he wiped a trickle of blood from his nose.

“Thanks a lot. You just let the seeker team out there know exactly where we are. Where’s your brother? We need to get out of here before they come.”

Zedric shrugged, but they all knew where to look.

“Once a scavenger, always a scavenger,” Wes muttered and Nat understood the temptation had been too great for Daran. Zedric’s hyena laugh echoed through the canyon as a second house disappeared down the cliff side.

“I’m assuming you weren’t dumb enough to shoot at the house your brother’s in?” Wes demanded.

Zedric glared at Wes as blood streamed out of his nose. “What’s your problem, man?” he whined. “Ain’t hurting no one.”

“Just get him already.”

“Daran!” Zedric called.

“Daran!” Shakes took up the call and Farouk did, too. Nat did the same.

After a few minutes Daran lumbered out of the house, his arms filled with a collection of junk: toasters, an electric fan, what looked like part of a blender. He ran, breathless, back to the truck.

“Shakes—we good to go?” Wes asked.

“Ready when you are.”

Wes barked his orders. “Everyone in the truck! Now!”

“What’s the rush?” Farouk asked, as they watched Daran hustle toward them, wading through the snow.

“These houses are packed with pop-cans, every single one of them. It’s common knowledge. Daran should have known better, he does know better,” Wes said, frustrated. “C’MON!” he yelled.