The Mutants (2 page)

‘It’s just small fire,’ said Shyla defensively. She took the box back from Cora. ‘It’s so small that it won’t even be noticed.’

‘But fire grows and smokes,’ protested Cora.

‘Not this fire.’ Lyle returned to his drawing. ‘You’re a genius, Shyla. We can gather dead sticks on our way out to the nest and fill all the tunnels but one with them. Then we can light the sticks on fire. The burrowers will be trapped.’

‘Exactly,’ said Shyla, nodding in approval.

‘I admit, it’s a good idea,’ said Cora, though she still felt nervous about it. Fire attracted dangerous creatures. She hoped whatever fire those mysterious sticks created was as small as the others thought it to be. ‘Now let’s go catch ourselves some burrowers.’

They headed out of the hollow statue with the fire sticks and Cora’s club. She had made it a long time ago out of strong wood and sharp metal. Blood was still dried upon the top from her last hunting trip, which went fairly smoothly. She had caught two rodents and a lizard-bird. Not exactly a vast amount of food but she could have instead found nothing, so there was always a positive side.

The village was quiet at night. Everyone was either asleep or keeping watch over their homes for nasty creatures that liked to come out after sundown. Houses were mostly made from materials left behind from a lost era: scrap metal, shiny wood, walls with faded designs (those were Cora’s favourite), glass (if you were really lucky), and rough tiles used for roofs. No house was made the same. They were all different shapes and scattered around the town. It was like you took a handful of rocks and tossed them onto the ground. Wherever they landed, that was where the house was built.

There were other things in the village, too, though they were never given any attention. At the centre was something called a “well”, which apparently had been used to draw water up from the ground a long time ago. Nowadays water either came from the sky, the creatures you killed, or from the lake south of the village, though the latter was hard to get to and you risked becoming infected with something else if you drank from it.

There was also the tall metal pole at the eastern side of the village that intrigued Cora. It had a metal loop at the top and a square base at the bottom, rooting it to the ground. No one knew what it was for. Some villagers speculated that it was a whipping post for criminals and others said it was a sun tracker to tell the time of day by its shadow. Cora didn’t believe either theory. Children used it as a fun toy. They grabbed hold of the pole and spun themselves around in circles until they collapsed from dizziness, which was basically the only thing children had to amuse themselves with in the village.

Cora knew there were other places out there, cities that were more advanced than her little, dusty village, and they probably even had medicine, something Cora had only ever heard whispered by the traders. Medicine was no good against The Death Mark, of course, but there were other troublesome things out there to worry about, too.

The three made their way out of town and into the wilderness. Almost instantly after passing the village’s damaged fences, Shyla’s fingers wrapped around Cora’s arm.

‘I can’t see anything out here,’ she said nervously.

The moon was hiding behind the giant sky kingdom, letting the mutants know that even if the Utopians were not visible, they were still hindering them.

Lyle had an easier time than Shyla. He could not see in the dark, but his hearing was much clearer than the others. He followed the sound of Cora’s feet through the darkness and – when they grew closer to the nest – listened to the sound of the burrowers to guide the group the rest of the way.

They gathered the firewood on their journey to the nest, stocking in within the curve of their arms. Once they felt they had enough sticks collected, they finished walking the distance to the burrowers’ home. Stealth was essential to their victory. They needed to be quiet enough to not wake the creatures under the ground or the creatures that might be lurking above ground. Cora decided it was best for her to block the tunnels full of sticks (since she was the only one who could see well enough to do so), while Shyla handled the lighting of the fire. Once step one was done, Cora and Lyle waited for Shyla to proceed.

Cora watched closely as the other girl pulled the box out of her pocket and opened it once again. She pulled out a single stick and swiped it against the side of the box. At first Cora only saw a few sparks, but then Shyla gave the stick a stronger swish and the tip of the stick was engulfed in a beautiful red flame. Cora stared at it for a few seconds, amazed by the instant fire. Then Shyla covered the flame with her hand to hide it from the eyes of predators and began to light the wood blocking the tunnels.

Perfect
, thought Cora, as she watched Shyla work.
The smoke will drive the burrowers towards the last tunnel, and then
…

Lyle was patiently waiting by the last exit, his ears low to the ground.

And then we will strike
.

‘They’re coming,’ whispered Lyle.

The other two joined Lyle by the single tunnel. Shyla positioned herself in the middle to act as a shield. Lyle took the right side, and Cora the left. Whatever way the burrowers planned on running, they would stop and kill them.

Out of the tunnel ran the first three. They were furless with long, curved claws and black eyes. Their tails were usually tucked under their bellies but now they were swishing back and forth while the creatures ran. Cora swung her club, allowing the sharp spikes to dig clean into the neck of a burrower. It stopped, instantly dead, and she braced a foot against its dead body to give herself leverage to pluck the weapon out. She saw another creatures approach, zigzagging from side to side in an attempt to escape, but that one fell to her bludgeon, as well.

Shyla could not see very well in the dim light, but she managed to guide the burrowers either left or right to their death. Lyle had no weapon but he broke the burrowers’ necks whenever they grew too close to him.

Soon they had a dozen dead burrowers before them. They waited a little longer but no more came from the tunnels, which meant they had either chose to stay inside, had died from inhaling smoke, or had escaped between the hunters’ legs. Cora counted their hunting trip as a victory. No one would go hunger tonight, and what they didn’t eat or store for later could be used to trade for supplies. Cora remembered that her blanket was getting a little tattered and thought about trading one of the burrowers for a nice quilt. She had not owned a quilt in quite a few years and the summer was almost over.

‘We did it!’ exclaimed Shyla, clapping, and both Cora and Lyle shushed her. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Sorry, I mean, we did –’

The mutant girl was interrupted by a bright flash in the sky. The three hunters jumped in surprise and collected their kills before hiding behind the nearest rock. Cora looked around the massive stone to gaze at where the light came from.
Please not Utopian ships
, she thought warily, remembering the last time the soldiers came. They had strange vehicles made of metal that flew through the air using fire. Long ago, when Cora had listened to the elderly of the village tell stories of the old days, she had believed flying ships to be silly tales. It was only after a raid that she truly realized how real the Utopian aircrafts were.

Yet it was not a ship that the three hunters saw in the sky. It was a light that came from Utopia itself. A blast of fire had been set off underneath the floating city, and now half of the bottom was aflame. Cora’s heart was beating fiercely in her chest. What was going on above?

‘Is it … burning?’ whispered Lyle.

‘Yes,’ said Cora softly, leaning further around the rock to see. ‘The base is on fire. Has it ever done that before?’

Hair brushed Cora’s shoulder and she could only assume that Shyla was shaking her head, too terrified to speak. And it
was
terrifying. Utopia was a fortress in the sky. It was impenetrable. It had no weaknesses. If it fell from the sky … it would destroy the entire village and perhaps even villages miles away.

Then again, if it fell, there would be no more raids. No more Utopians. No more Utopia.

Cora felt strange thinking these things. Everyone on Earth hated Utopia, but everyone also secretly wished to become a part of it. There was not a single person infected by the sickness that did not wish to have been born a Utopian and live in the sky like kings or queens.

Even Cora felt that way sometimes. She was half-Utopian, though she was as far from being Utopian as she could possibly get. Once the sickness told hold, you became a mutant. Her father simply became exposed to the air and they branded him a mutant. Mutants lived on Earth and Utopians lived in the floating city. That was all there was to it.

‘Do you think it’ll fall?’ asked Lyle, perhaps thinking along the same lines as Cora.

‘No,’ she replied, finally standing up and moving from her hiding place. ‘It’ll never fall.’

Both Lyle and Shyla looked discouraged by this, though Cora knew it wouldn’t last. They’ll go back to pretending Utopia didn’t exist before too long, until the raiders came again. Then they’ll spit and curse on Utopians for a week, as usual.

‘Let’s get back,’ said Cora, grabbing four burrowers.

The others agreed and soon they were on their way back home, hauling their kills with them.
It was still dark when they returned, which was good because some people often felt the need to intimidate the younger citizens when they were carrying good stuff. Cora had her barbed club with her, though, and she wouldn’t let anyone take their profits. They had made a good haul and would gain much from it.

All three agreed that they would go to Shyla’s home to cook up the meat. The mutant girl lived at the far corner of the village, behind the ancient stone wall and inside a house of metal. It was outside the village’s fence and so no one wanted to live there. Shyla, being braver than most, decided to take the house after her parents died (no one lived to be very old anymore), before the tyrants of the town came snooping around for a new place to loot and steal for their own usage. They found nothing there except scraps of old clothing, too full of holes to wear, and the bones of the previous night’s supper.

You had to climb over the stone wall to get the metal house. There were no doors or windows on the lower level, just a strangely-shaped hole somewhere near the top. Lyle climbed the wall with ease and the girls passed the burrowers up to him. He took the dead creatures and tossed them into the house before offering a hand down to help. Shyla usually left a rope lying around with a hook attached to the end, but when Lyle was with her, he acted as a way up to the house.

After Cora was helped up, she placed her weapon against the outside wall and ducked through the hole to enter the building. It was always dark inside and cold, as well. Cora saw that nothing had changed since the last time she visited. The fire pit was still at the centre of the room, the pile of blankets where Shyla slept was against the wall, and the long, rectangular white thing where Shyla stored objects and food was along the other wall, half blackened like the rest of the house.

And then there were the pictures on the wall above her bed, the drawings with the funny shapes underneath. Shyla said they were written words that could be read, a skill lost to them. The drawings were strange, showing colourful bursts in the sky with people running underneath, smiles on their faces.

When Cora first met Shyla, the other girl had showed her these pictures, asking what she thought of them. Cora had not known what to say back then and she certainly didn’t know what to say now. The sky was only two colours: grey and black. Colour did not exist in their world, even if it had back then. Even the eyes of mutants were dull and washed-out, unlike the eyes Cora once saw in the mirror, the eyes of a half-Utopian girl.

They look so happy
, Shyla had said.
Do you think we could ever be happy like them?

Cora had badly wanted to say “no” but that would have destroyed her friend’s hope. Instead she had answered “yes” and went along with Shyla’s hopes of having a better future. She doubted the other girl felt the same way about the world any longer. It was as bleak as it was back then, and would continue to stay that way until the end of civilization.