Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

The streets filled with them and the scrape of a thousand feet covered everything else. Even the hoofbeats went under it, somewhere ahead, lost in the noise.

The cart lurched and settled into a steady rhythm. The bars sang once against my shoulder and went quiet. Above the low roof of the cage the single star held its place and the dark between the street lights stayed dark.

I looked up at the houses as we passed.

Every light off. Every window dark. Curtains drawn. The particular absolute black of rooms that had decided the street no longer belonged to the living and were waiting to see whether the decision would hold until dawn.

And every one of them awake behind the glass, watching this go by.

Faces I couldn’t see. Hands on the edges of curtains. The continuous low sound of a thousand infected walking past locked doors while the people behind them held their breath and counted the seconds until the last of the procession cleared their block.

I turned left.

Ingrid sat with her eyes forward and didn’t move. Both hands flat on her knees. The open sky above her bald head. The welded chair faced the direction of travel. She occupied it the way she had occupied the edge of the roof—present, unmoved, already past the point of needing to acknowledge the prisoner beside her.

"Hey."

Nothing. Not a flicker. The letters ran down the far side of her neck where I couldn’t reach them. The cart continued its low continuous vibration.

"Are you deaf?" I said. "Or do you just not speak?"

She sat like something carved.

The infected moved past the cart on both sides in an unbroken flow. I couldn’t see what was pulling us. The front of my half was solid.

I let my eyes go out into the crowd, because I needed something to do with them.

And I found a face I knew.

Abuela.

Walking with the rest of them. Her old body carrying her along without any of the trouble it had given her yesterday morning, the hand she’d kept on the wall no longer needed for anything. The face that had opened the dark room for Venna and me. Empty eyes now. The same patient forward motion as every other body in the column. No recognition. No remnant of the woman who had glanced back once toward the door where two people were under and then kept going.

Thank God Venna isn’t here.

That woman has known her since she was four years old.

I let it pass with the rest of the faces and did not look for it again. The cart continued. The scrape of a thousand feet covered the hoofbeats and the residual sound of the capital holding its breath behind dark glass.

My comms vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out and the screen lit the whole cage—cold blue against the iron bars, against the metal floor, against the side of Ingrid’s face three feet away through the gap.

Melissa.

My eyes went to Ingrid.

She had turned her head toward the light and was looking straight at the comms in my hand.

Here it comes.

She orders one of them to reach through and take it. Or she takes it herself.

I didn’t answer it. I watched her instead. The blue light held both of us in the same small overexposed stage while the infected continued past the cart without adjusting their path.

She looked back at the road ahead like the whole thing wasn’t worth the movement it had cost her.

I answered.

"Hey." Melissa’s voice was low. "Any progress?"

"No."

"Where are you? That’s extremely loud."

The scrape of the feet filled the open line. The cart’s vibration. The continuous low wrong sound of the procession moving through the Capital.

"I’m in the middle of the infected."

"Wait." She stopped. "And you’re answering your comms. I should hang up."

"It’s fine. I’m a prisoner."

"You’re a what?"

There was no background noise on her end at all. Wherever she was, she was alone in it. The administrative building. A corridor. An office with the door shut while the rest of CGI continued its lockdown and Sinn continued being called Lord in rooms she was no longer invited into.

"Long story." I glanced at Ingrid. Eyes forward, hands on her knees. The young face in profile against the continuous flow of the infected. "But you need one thing from me. They’re coming to the headquarters. All of them. If Sinn is still awake, tell him now."

"That doesn’t sound good at all." Something tightened in her voice. "What are we supposed to do, Bram?"

"Lock every door. That’s a start."

"Okay."

"Do it now."

"I told Monica about the movement." The tightness got worse. "She looked straight past it. She wasn’t interested."

"Melissa." I kept my voice even. The cart lurched over something in the road and settled. Ingrid’s hands did not move. "Relax."

"I am relaxed."

"Go and see Sinn." I shifted against the bars. The iron was cold through the fabric of my shirt. The roof stayed a hand above my head. "You’ve got one advantage over that man and nobody else in the building has it. You can hear what he’s actually thinking. Don’t argue with what he says. Listen to what’s underneath it."

"All right." She breathed out. The line carried the particular quality of someone putting the next action in place before the fear could finish arranging itself. "Thank you. I’ll call you back."

The line died.

I put the comms in my pocket and looked at Ingrid again. The blue light was gone. The cage returned to the ordinary dark of the street lights and the continuous flow of the infected past the bars.

She had not turned her head during the call. She had not spoken. She had watched the light appear, assessed it, and returned her attention to the road as if a living prisoner speaking to the headquarters they were marching toward was not information that required a response.

"Hey. Why did you let me take that call?"

Nothing. The cart continued.

"You could have stopped it. You watched me do it."

Nothing.

"I don’t think you’re a bad person."

I was mostly talking to myself now, and the cart kept moving, and the infected kept walking. Abuela’s face was already somewhere behind us in the column. The dark windows continued on both sides of the street.

Max’s blonde head was somewhere ahead above the mass, and the radio unit that had belonged to a man in pieces on a roof was under his arm, and every speaker inside these walls was still available to whoever decided to use it next.

[ She doesn’t want to speak to you. ]

I’d worked that out.

"Ingrid."

Her name.

And she turned.

Her eyes came round and met mine through the bars.

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