Limerence: Book Three of The Cure (Omnibus Edition) Read online

  Within the soundless world I get to my feet. Smoke swirls around the masked figure. A Blood appears and attacks. He isn’t prepared for the knife that sheathes twice between his ribs and drops him to the ground.

  As the smoke is sucked back up into the vents the figure removes the mask.

  Standing before us is a young woman with long black hair and impossible eyes. She’s lithe like a cat as she spins to take out a second attacking Blood with as much ease as the first. I see a finger missing on her left hand. I see a terrible, ugly scar along her throat, as though someone has cut it open and sewn it clumsily back together. I see disfiguring burns on her right ear and jaw. I am heartbroken by all these things that I see.

  Because what I don’t see when she looks at me is the girl I remember.

  “Is he with us?” she asks softly with a glance at Dave.

  I nod.

  “Let’s get on with it then.”

  I haven’t seen her in three months but she barely looks at me as she strides down the hall. There is something hard in the set of her mouth and chin, something broken in her dual eyes.

  We follow her through the impossible layers of security she has somehow managed to disengage. At one point she swings the enormous machine gun off her shoulder and takes out three more charging Bloods.

  “Who the hell is she?” Dave asks.

  And I say on a breath, “She’s my wife.”

  Chapter 2

  March 2nd, 2067

  Josephine

  I can’t even see the hand in front of my face. I stumble blindly forward and flail about until I manage to trip and land with my shoulder hard against the tunnel wall.

  “Owwwww! Dammit, where are you?”

  “That’d defeat the purpose of the exercise.”

  I whirl toward the sound of his voice. “Stuff your exercise up your butt.”

  He whistles low and soft. I follow it as he moves, and despite my lack of enthusiasm I whistle back.

  The idea is to keep track of each other through sound. We’re honing our ears because when you live in abandoned underground tunnels, ninety percent of which are pitch black, you have to be able to function without sight. Most days when we have time we come down here to search for and find each other in the dark. It’s even less fun than it sounds.

  In the silence I can hear my breathing and more faintly his. Something makes a light swish and then the clack clack of tiny scuttling rodent claws. The soft tread of footsteps picks up speed. He’s trying to escape me but he won’t get far. I hurry after him and realize too late that he’s stopped. We collide and I feel him trip into the wall. He catches me against him and our lips bump clumsily.

  “Hello, darling,” he murmurs against my mouth.

  “I could be anyone down here. You could be kissing a stranger.”

  “So could you.”

  I shake my head a little. Run my tongue over his lips. “I’d know the taste of you anywhere.”

  I feel his smile and then he kisses me properly. In the dark beneath the world. Even though in the tunnels above there are a hundred resistance members wondering where we are, wanting to ask us things, needing our help, our attention, our opinions. Even though our time is hardly our own and everything we do now is to create and build and maintain. Even though.

  Because this is why we fight. For these stolen moments together. For this search in the dark.

  Behind us I hear a new sound. This one is different. Scratch scratch scratch it goes.

  The Furies have smelled us.

  *

  The route back takes us past the northeast gate. I reach for the lighter to light the oil lamp hanging on the wall. It illuminates the snarling monsters in the tunnel beyond. They will never stop trying to reach us. We erected these gates to create a safe living space – we have sections of tunnel for sleeping, eating, cooking, bathing and training. None of the gates have yet been breached and I pray they never will, because if even one Fury gets into our home, blood will spill.

  Luke and I pause to watch the ravenous creatures. They’ve been down here as long as we have – they followed us here, after all, drawn by the scent of our flesh. Their skin has paled more than ours; the lack of sunlight has turned them even more to things of nightmare.

  Hal once said we all have wilderness inside us. We all have an animal to tame. I look at the Furies and think they must live so deep in their wild that they’ll never find their way out.

  I try often to spot the humanity in their bloody eyes. I never do, and I hate them for it, even though it’s not their fault.

  “Come on.” Luke takes my hand and pulls me down a different tunnel. I carry the torch aloft to light our way and it flickers against the concrete walls.

  I miss the daylight. But I’m glad to have a home we’ve built for ourselves, a safe place the Bloods won’t find us. The thing about living amid the Furies is that Blood technology doesn’t distinguish us, so they have no idea that the rebel fighters they seek are hiding right beneath them.

  Up a ladder and into the next level of tunnels we climb. To our right stretches the labyrinth of tunnels that makes up the sleeping barracks. Lumpy mattresses, either made or stolen, line the floors, more than a dozen in each stretch. To our left curves the long dining hall and the kitchen we built from stolen materials and a hefty dose of ingenuity. Most of these tunnels we live in connect to the abandoned subway – presumably there was once an industry down here, one made to keep those trains running. But the rusting carriages have long since been discarded to decay; like the skeletons of giant metal beasts.

  Above us is dead farmland. Old uninhabited homesteads we picked clean in our first weeks here, endless sloping land with nothing left in its soil to grow. It’d be nice to live in those farms, but the Bloods would find us before we could even think to utter home, sweet home. Farther north is the city wall rearing up into the sky. The boundary of where human souls are allowed to stray. We lived beyond that wall last year, way out west, but we dare not now – not with thousands of Furies waiting out there for us.

  Luke and I head now to a place we named the arena. We have to climb almost to the surface to reach it.

  The kids are gathered and waiting when we arrive. A loud rabble of boos sounds at our tardiness.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Luke laughs. “Positions.”

  The arena is a massive water silo, long since abandoned like everything else in this rural area. It’s as wide as a city block and four floors high. We’ve drilled tiny holes into its roof to allow natural sunlight to stream in, plus we built seats up around its edges. Spectators can watch our training bouts from above like in one of the old coliseums.

  This training session belongs to the kids. Not only the few who survived the Fury attack on the Inferno, but those we plucked from the city above. A month ago we destroyed a holding facility containing a dozen fifteen-year-olds waiting to be given the cure. They’ve all dealt with it differently, being snatched from their lives and their families. Some pine for home, others haven’t missed it for a second. But they are all, without exception, in agreement: not a single one of them would choose to return to a city that would cure them of their feelings.

  Luke starts running the warm-up on the mats. I spot Teddy standing apart from the others and walk over to him. “Yo.”

  “Hey.” His fist clenches. I’ve noticed he does this a lot.

  “You should participate, Teddy.”

  “I can’t.” He’s small and wiry. At fourteen he looks twelve. But there’s something interesting hiding beneath his surface, a mind ravenous for knowledge. Most of the time I find him tucked in a corner with his nose in a book, or tapping away at the computers in our tech room.

  “It’ll keep you alive.”

  “I wasn’t built for this.”

  We watch the scuffling teenagers throw each other about on the mats. I should force Teddy to join in, but I don’t have the heart to. I sort of know what he means. None of us should have been built for this but I guess we were,
some more than others.

  I get Teddy to help me with the drums. Since the cello Luke and his father Tobias built me was such a hit, they have taken to building more instruments. I requested a couple of drums for the training sessions and Tobias worked painstakingly until they were perfect. Together Teddy and I make a beat on the bongos and as the thumping sounds fill the silo I feel the energy lift. Luke and I worked out last year that music is a good way to help you get out of your head and into your body. Sometimes it’s the best way to learn to fight. I still remember the bruises I had from those first few months with him and don’t envy these kids. The least I can do is whack some drums for them.

  Luke giggles as two boys – Alo and Lawrence – attack him simultaneously and try to wrestle him to the ground. He flips them both onto their backs and crows with victory.

  Henrietta asks him to show her the floor work and I roll my eyes. She’s sixteen, her hormones are running rampant and she fancies herself madly in love with Luke. He wisely gets Will to show her, much to her disappointment. Meanwhile poor Will hops to the task eagerly: everyone in the tunnels can see how much he adores her, except Henrietta herself. Oh, the delights of adolescence.

  Teddy and I pound away, making up new and more complicated beats. We glance at each other and grin. I like the boy and it’s not rocket science to figure out why: he’s an outsider even amongst the outsiders.

  “Do you miss your family?” I ask after a while.

  Mutely he shakes his head.

  “Why not?”

  There’s a long silence. “They forgot how to love anyone but themselves.”

  I sigh. “Do you miss above?”

  Another head shake. A hesitation. “I like it down here. Except for training.”

  “Would you get rid of training?”

  “No. I’m not a complete moron. But I think we need more classes.”

  I consider this. We recently set up a few classes for the kids. We only teach what we can, of course. I give classes on history because I can remember reading a bunch of it. Tobias runs a workshop on building and engineering. His wife Claire does first aid. Brigit and Luke run the cooking shifts and Pace does a very rudimentary class on basic science with the occasional guest appearance from bio-chemist Dodge, who mostly just ends up further confusing everyone.

  “What would you add?”

  “Computer sciences? Basic IT training? Chemistry, mathematics, physics, philosophy, economics—”

  I snort. “And will you be the one kidnapping university lecturers from above to teach these classes or will I?”

  He shrugs. “I could. Teach, I mean.”

  I look at him properly and forget to keep drumming. “Seriously?”

  Teddy blushes and can’t look at me. His fist clenches. “A bit, at least. It’s gotta be better than nothing. I don’t really want to be surrounded by a new society made up entirely of moronic thugs who only know how to beat each other up.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Not you.”

  I smile. “Okay. You’re on. Write up a proposal for the classes you want to teach and I’ll set them up for you.”

  He ducks his head but the edges of his lips curl. “You, too. You could be doing more than you are.”

  My eyebrows arch. “I can’t remember the last time I had five seconds to myself but it’s really gratifying to know I come across as a lazy ass.”

  “Just with your class, I mean.”

  “How so?”

  “You tell us facts. Heaps and heaps of facts. And don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty cool that you can remember them all. But nobody else can – not when they aren’t applicable to anything. And anyway what good are facts about the past unless you’re using them to help plan the future?”

  “Whose plan would that be?”

  “Yours.”

  “Why mine?”

  “Because you’re the leader of the resistance.”

  “But why should I be teaching my plan to anyone?”

  He frowns. “You want it to be secret?”

  “No, Teddy, what I mean is – shouldn’t you be allowed to develop your own opinions on what future life should contain?”

  “Yeah, but you aren’t challenging us to do that either. Have you even been to one of your classes? You just bang on about the dates of this invasion and that war and when the vaccinations for polio or Spanish flu were discovered. Half the kids sleep through it.”

  I belatedly return to drumming. “You make me feel very inadequate sometimes, Teddy.”

  He chuckles and ducks his head.

  “Excusez-moi,” Luke interrupts us. “But would the two of you kindly get your backsides up here?”

  “We’re on music duty.”

  “Training duty trumps music duty. Come on.”

  I jump up and pull a reluctant Teddy behind me. “See? Philistine,” he mutters, then makes his body go limp so I have to drag him onto the mats. By the time we’ve made it the other kids are all laughing. Training isn’t particularly rigorous today.

  *

  March 3rd, 2067

  Josephine

  I walk through the dark tunnels and listen to the sound of my boots clipping softly on the ground. I listen to the drip drip drip echoing off every surface and the endless scratch scratch scratching. My skin prickles but I’m not sure why. My senses feel heightened. I can smell so much, all things I never thought to even have a scent. The air is unusually hot and it makes me imagine that the tunnel surrounding me has slipped incongruously down through the layers of the earth to its center without any of us noticing. We shall soon burn.

  When I reach the arena my kids are here, all thirty-two of them. They’re training with gusto, the raucous explosion of limbs a frenzied thing. As I look more closely I start to see that their faces don’t look quite right. One has the bloodstained muzzle of a lion, another has the enormous liquid black eyes of a seal. I turn to see a long gray elephant’s trunk curling from the nose of a boy and the sharply curved beak of an eagle where a girl’s mouth should be. From them come rabid snarls or monkey screeches or the call of a hooting owl. I watch feathers ruffle and scales ripple and fur scatter as terrible claws rake. They are beasts grappling and fighting all around me. I will them away but they grow wilder, the noise swelling until it forces me to my knees—

  *

  I wake disoriented. Quiet reigns. Except … The snarling is still there. As consciousness slowly returns I recognize it as the distant sound of the ever-present Furies. I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, which I can’t actually see in such heavy dark. Luke’s body is too warm beside mine so I disentangle his limbs from me and throw off the sheet. I can’t stop listening to the creatures at our doors, tap tap tapping to be let in.

  “We have to do something about them,” I murmur. “We can’t live like this.”

  Luke makes a muffled huh sound.

  “Pest control.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  But I can’t. Because on top of the snarling scratching hissing there’s another sound, even more grating. “Is that dripping?”

  “Josi, no. Just ignore it.”

  “Those little bastards!” I’m up and reaching for the lighter so I can light the gas lamp on the floor at my side. It illuminates a small circle, in which I can see Luke groaning and burying his head under the pillow.

  I climb off the awful homemade mattress on the floor and pull a pair of track pants over my undies, then I carry my lamp out into the tunnels. Sure enough, when I reach the lavatories I find that the hose has been left trickling a steady stream. When we first got here we built rows of pit-toilets over an opening that drops down into a lower tunnel, into which we do our business. But you don’t want that getting too full, for painfully obvious reasons, so we have to come in here every now and then and burn it all away. Only problem with that is the ventilation, so we use the same process we use for some of the cooking fires: a system of smoke flutes that divide and spread the smoke up through the ground at
various points, ensuring it doesn’t ever create a plume big enough to be visible to Blood surveillance.

  It reeks something fierce in here so we rigged up a flushing system to at least keep the toilet seats clean while we wait for the pits to fill up. With a roar of frustration I turn the trickling hose off at the tap and then stride into the kitchen.

  I grab a huge pot and a wooden spoon (both stolen, everything is stolen, we are the princes and princesses of thievery), then I take the garlic wreath from its hanging spot above the pantry shelves. As I’m heading for the barracks I spot a second circle of light near the entrance to the arena and take a detour, curious about who might be up so late.

  It’s Will, of course. He has his lantern perched on a wall bracket and he’s doing what he does best: painting. He doesn’t notice me peering at his art. The tunnel walls are littered with his work and I feel something immense in my chest every time I glance at one. This painting, like all the others, is a sort of impressionist work of light and shade and color, and amidst all this are two willowy, skeletal figures smudged in gray. I always think of them as ghostly landscapes and though many down here find the bleakness depressing I never see anything but hope in the luminous quality of them.

  “Nice.”

  Will jumps about a foot in fright and clutches his heart. “Jesus, Dual. Don’t do that!”

  “Sorry. This one’s gorgeous.”

  I perch my chin on his shoulder and we look quietly. I imagine we are the two figures in the endless landscape of browns and grays and ochers. Earth and sky are the same and I feel us fall into both and walk and walk and walk, never able to find their end. Even though I imagine this I know it’s not me at all that he paints. It is Hal. Always Hal, his truest friend, killed last year by the Furies.

  “What are you doing up?”

  “I’m about to interrupt your peace,” I warn him.

  Will laughs. “God you’re relentless.”

  “Only because the toilet bandit is too.”