Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

The man fell, and even if no one had heard the strange spitting sound of Celia’s gun, someone must have seen him go down. The element of surprise was gone.

I snatched the gun of the man I’d just killed, shouted to the others, and all of us sprinted for the shelter of trees. They would give us cover when the other gunmen came to see what the shooting was about.

We all reached the trees in time. I was with Brook behind the oak, which, high above, was already catching fire where it overhung the house. I gave her the gun and she frowned, studying it. Meanwhile, Wright and Celia were already firing. I could see men firing back from both the front and the backyards, but they could not aim very well because they lacked cover where they were. We had trees, but they had only the burning house. If they had tried to reach trees that might have shielded them, Wright or Celia would have gotten a clear shot at them. If we survived, I would get Wright and Celia to teach me to

shoot.

Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. I heard it and froze, wondering how we could avoid being caught either by the gunmen or by the police. Then Brook looked up from her gun, and I realized

she was beginning to hear the sirens, too.

And the gunmen heard them. The shooting from the other side dribbled away to silence. Wright and Celia stopped their very careful firing because suddenly they had no targets.

I could hear the remaining gunmen running, their footsteps going away from us, toward the street. I

showed myself, walking out away from the tree, providing a target for anyone who had stayed behind. No one shot me.

I ran to the garage, lifted one of the doors, and glanced toward the side of the house, where I hoped

Wright, Celia, and Brook were paying attention. They were coming, all three of them, at a run.

I opened the other garage door and waited until they were all in the cars. Then I got in and we fled.

We fled slowly. Wright said we shouldn’t speed, shouldn’t do anything that might make us memorable to anyone who saw us or bring us to the attention of the police. He was leading this time so his judgment kept Brook’s speed down. There were no neighbors near enough to see the house or report that we’d left it (and left several corpses) just after the fire began. In fact, the guns had made so little noise that I wondered whether human ears had heard them with the houses so far apart. It was almost certainly the smoke that had caught someone’s attention. That meant the emergency call probably went to the fire department. Firemen would arrive, begin to put out the fire, find the bodies, and then call the police. They would also find the gas cans. We had to avoid getting involved in the investigation that would surely follow. I had seen too many police programs on Wright’s television to believe there was any story we could tell the police about this that would keep us out of jail.

“Where are we going?” I asked Wright.

“God,” he said. “I don’t know. Back to the cabin for now, I guess.”

“No,” I said. “Your relatives are there in the front house. Let’s not lead anyone to them.”

“Do you think that’s likely? Whoever these people are, they don’t know anything about me.” He shook his head. What he had been through seemed to be too much for him suddenly. “Whoever they are ... Who the hell are they? Why did they try to kill us? I’ve never shot at anyone before—never even wanted to.”

“We’re all alive,” I said.

He glanced at me. “Yeah.”

“We should find a place to stop when we’ve gotten a few miles farther away. We need to talk with the others, find out if they know of another place where we can stay for a while.”

“Any place they know is probably as dangerous as the place we just left.”

I sighed and nodded. “We need to be far away fromall this,” I said. “I can’t believe that Brook was with Iosif for twenty-two years, and yet she knows of no relatives but my mothers, no friends or business associates.”

“I was wondering about that,” he said. “Do you think she’s lying?”

I thought about that for a moment, then said, “I don’t think so. I just think she knows more than she

realizes she knows. Maybe Iosif told her not to remember or not to share what she knows with anyone outside his family. I mean, as things are, I don’t know where to begin a search for more of my kind. I don’t even know whether I should be looking for them. I don’t want to get people killed, but I have to

do something. I have to find out who these murderers are and why they want to kill us. And I have to find a way to stop them.” I paused, then fidgeted uncomfortably. I already had the beginnings of a burn on my face and arms, and had left my jacket in the house. “Wright, would you be cold if I used your jacket?”

“What?” He glanced at me, then said, “Oh.” I helped him struggle out of his jacket, pulling it off of him while he drove. Once I had it, I covered myself with it as though it were the blanket that I had lost, probably leaving it beside the oak tree. The jacket was warm and smelled of Wright and was a very comfortable thing to be wrapped in.

“You and I are conspicuous together,” he said. “But you could go into a clothing store with Celia and

pass as her daughter. You could get yourself some clothes that fit and another jacket with a hood, maybe a pair of gloves and some sunglasses that fit your face.”

“All right. We should get food, too, for the three of you. It should be things you can open and eat right here in the car. I’m not sure when we’ll dare to settle somewhere.”

“I should be back at work on Monday.”

I looked at him, then looked away. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have any idea when this will be over.” He drove silently for a few minutes. We were, I realized, still headed southwest toward Arlington. Once

we arrived in Arlington, he seemed to know his way around. He took us straight to a supermarket where we could buy the food we needed. Once we were parked, we moved over to the larger car to talk with Celia and Brook.

“Don’t you need to sleep?” Brook asked me as soon as we got into the backseat. “Doesn’t the fact that it’s day bother you at all?”

“I’m tired,” I admitted. “You’re probably all tired.”

“But don’t you sleep during the day?” Celia asked. It occurred to me that they had been discussing me. Better that than terrifying themselves over the fact that several men had just tried to murder us.

“I prefer to sleep during the day,” I said, “but I don’t have to. I can sleep whenever I’m tired.”

Brook looked at Celia. “That’s why we’re not dead,” she said. “They came during the day, thinking that any Ina in the house would be asleep, completely unconscious.”

“Why didn’t it help her save her mothers?” Celia asked. Brook looked at me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Have either of you ever heard of a community being destroyed the way my parents’ communities were? I mean, has it happened before anywhere else?”

Both women shook their heads. Brook said, “Not that I know of.”

“Maybe that’s it then.” I thought for a moment. “If no one was expecting trouble, probably no one was keeping watch. Why would they? I don’t know whether I usually slept during the day. My mothers did, so I probably did, too, just because it was more convenient to be up when they were. I’ll bet the symbionts had adapted to a nocturnal way of life just as symbionts had in Iosif’s community. But I don’t

know. That’s the trouble;I don’t know anything.” I looked at Brook. “You must have spent time at my mothers’ community. Wasn’t everyone nocturnal?”