Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

“Wake everyone,” I said. “Wrap your Ina in blankets and be ready to get them out of the house. These people like to set fires. Watch. If they carry large containers, if they try to spread any liquid, shoot them.”

I was worried about innocent visitors being killed by frightened symbionts, but I was even more worried about the Gordons and their symbionts being killed in their sleep, perhaps because of me or something to do with my family.

I pulled on my hooded jacket and put on my sunglasses and gloves. The sun was shining outside. There were no clouds. Finally I ran down-stairs and found Wright in the kitchen. He hadn’t spoken to me at all today because I had spent part of the night with Joel. I grasped his arms. “This may be an attack,” I said. “Get Brook, Celia, and Joel. Get guns. Watch! Don’t show yourselves and don’t fire unless you see gas containers or guns.”

I needed to be outside so that I could keep an eye on things and take whatever action was needed. I went out the back door. I had my phone in my pocket—set to vibrate, not ring—but no gun. I would kill quietly if I had to kill.

The cars came down the private road that led to the Gordon houses. They stopped before they reached the first house—the guest house—and men spilled out of the doors. Each carried some burden in his hand, and at once I could smell the gasoline.

I phoned the nearest house—Wayne’s house—and said, “Shoot them. Now!”

There was a moment when I thought they would not obey me. Then the shooting started. The symbionts had a wild mixture of rifles, hand-guns, and shotguns. The sound was a uneven mix of pops, thunderous roars, and intermediate bangs. Somehow, most of the invaders went down in that first barrage. They were used to taking their victims completely by surprise, setting their fires, and shooting the desperate who awoke and tried to run. Now it was the raiders who were running—at least those still able to run.

I heard someone running my way, around the side of the guest house toward the back, away from the road. The runner was human and smelled strongly of gasoline. He was spilling gasoline as he ran. He never saw me.

I let him come around the house to me, let him get completely out of sight of his friends, and then hit him with my whole body. As he went down, I broke his neck. He was too slow to understand fully what was happening. He made no noise beyond the rush of air from his lungs when I hit him.

I left his gun and his gasoline can out of sight behind a garage, then I ran along the backs of the houses, hoping that if anyone saw me, I would be moving too fast for them to aim and shoot. I ran around the community, killing three more men as the symbionts went on shooting and as someone set fire to Henry’s house, then to Wayne’s.

I saw that Henry was being looked after—three of his symbionts were carrying him from his house thickly wrapped from head to toe in blankets. They took him into William’s house. The rest of Henry’s symbionts poured out of his house, too, and three of them found hoses and began to fight the fire. The other two guarded them with rifles.

I felt a particular duty towardWayne’s symbionts because he had gone up to Washington to help me. I made sure everyone was out of his house, checked with the symbionts flowing out the doors, and told them to count themselves. All were present and healthy, three of them carrying young children whom they took to William’s house. The rest got hoses and shovels and began to fight the fire. They needed no help from me.

I went through the community, looking everywhere. There was no more shooting. All the intruders seemed to be dead or wounded. Then I heard footsteps and caught an unfamiliar scent. I realized there was at least one intruder still alive and trying to get back to one of their cars. I spotted him moving behind the houses. He took off his shirt as he slipped past Preston’s house. He wanted to blend in, look, at least from a distance, like one of the male symbionts who had been awakened unexpectedly and were now fighting the fires or tending the wounded, shirtless.

Shirtless or not, this man smelled of gasoline and alienness. He was an outsider. There was nothing of the

Gordon community about him.

I ran after him as he sprinted from the back of Preston’s house toward one of the buildings that housed offices and studios. This did not take him closer to any of his group’s cars. He couldn’t have reached them without running across a broad open space. But the building was unlocked, and it would have given

him a place to hide and bide his time. It was his bad luck that I had seen him.

I caught up with him, tripped him, and dragged him down just as he reached the building. He fell hard and knocked himself out on the concrete steps in front of the building. I was glad of that. I wanted him unconscious, not dead. I had questions to ask him. I took a full meal from him while he lay there. I didn’t need it yet in spite of the running around and fighting I’d done, but I needed him cooperative.

He came to as I finished and tried to buck me off him. “Be still,” I said. “Relax.”

He stopped struggling and lay still as I lapped at the bite just enough to stop the bleeding and begin the healing.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go see how things stand between your people and mine.” I stood up and waited for him to get up. He was a short, stocky, black-haired man, clean shaven but disfigured by the beginnings of a big lump over his left eye and a lower lip rapidly swelling from a blow that had probably loosened some of his teeth.

He stumbled to his feet. “They’ll kill me,” he said, mumbling a little because of the swelling lip and looking toward the clusters of people putting out the fires, gathering weapons, moving cans of gasoline away from the houses, checking dead or wounded raiders, keeping children away from the bodies.

“Stay close to me and do as I say,” I told him. “If you’re with me and if you don’t hurt anyone, they won’t kill you.”

“They will!”

“Obey me, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

He looked at me, dazed. After a moment he nodded. “Okay.”

“How many of you were there in those three cars?” I asked, glancing back at the cars. None of this group should escape. Not one.

“Eighteen,” he said. “Six in each car.”

“That many and your gear. You must have really been packed in.”

I walked him back toward the houses, made him pick up his shirt and put it on again. Then I spotted

Wright. He came toward me, looking past me at the raider.

“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “Are Celia, Brook, and Joel all right?” “They’re fine.”

I nodded, relieved, and told him where to find the men I’d killed and their guns and their gasoline. “Get other symbionts to help you collect them,” I said. “There should be a total of eighteen raiders, living and dead, including this one.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why is this one still alive?”

“I’ve got questions for him,” I said. “Are any of the rest of them alive?”

“Two. They’re shot, and they’ve been kicked around a little. The symbionts were pissed as hell at them.”

“Good. Make sure the dead, their cars, and the rest of their possessions are gathered and shut up out of sight in case the noise or the smoke attracts outside attention.” The Gordons had no neighbors who could be seen from the houses, but the noise might have reached some not-too-distant farm. And the smoke might be seen, although there was much less of it now. The fires were almost out. Two houses had been damaged, but none of them had been destroyed. That was amazing. “Where are the survivors?” I asked.

He pointed them out in the yard where they had been laid, then he said with concern, “Shori, your face is beginning to blister. You should get inside. If it gets any worse, you might have scars.”