Beyond These Walls (3 page)

“You sure?” He shifted the child in his solid arms and frowned.

“Yeah.” I kicked off my stiletto heels and pointed my nine-millimeter at our front door. “There is only three of them.”

Bam.

The door shook as the first reptoe slammed, what I assumed was his head, against the wood. The steel bar across the doorframe held, but a minute crack appeared just below the door handle.

“Watch your dress. Bloodstains are impossible to get out of silk.” Nobody nodded to my clothes as he and Caren vanished toward the back of the apartment and down the trapdoor. I did not want to know how he knew that.

Bang.

Again, the steel bar held, but the door in front of it shattered showering me with splintered wood. It dug into my flesh, tearing tiny holes in my pantyhose. I glanced down to assess the damage. Damn, all the nail polish in the world wasn’t going to fix those nylon runs.

The first reptoe head appeared through the fractured hole. Calling him ugly would’ve been an understatement. A normal Reptoe fell somewhere around a minus five on the looks scale. This one ranked about ten below that.

At seven-feet tall, he could’ve played forward in the MBA, if not for his green-colored skin, wide, flat forehead, and embarrassingly small tail. He wore a purple bandana around his head indicating his membership to the Loco Reptoe Seven. The Seven was a violent gang of thugs who occasionally worked for the HOA.

Ugly, as I’d nicknamed him, ripped the bar from my door and stormed through it. He growled, sending a plume of stale fly breath into the air.

I shot him in the head.

Blood sprayed my living room walls. Staggering once, the reptoe dropped to the floor, face first. A gooey puddle of brain mush circled his head. I gagged as a stench like spoiled milk and dead frogs erupted from his carcass. Tears burned my eyes, but I kept my gun leveled at the broken door.

A second reptoe, this one a little shorted than his cohort, pushed his way inside the room. I fired. It would’ve been a kill shot except he ducked as my finger squeezed the trigger. My shot went high, blowing off his right ear. Damn.

Grabbing the bloody stump of cartilage that used to be his ear, he yowled in pain. Much to my dismay, a few seconds later a freshly regenerated earlobe began to grow in place of his old one.

Shit.

My finger squeezed the trigger again, but Earless swatted the barrel away before I got the shot off. A burn like the darkest hellfire raced from my elbow to my wrist where his talons shredded my skin. Veins and tendons burst from the wound, rendering my fingers and most of my hand useless. I swallowed back a yelp ignoring the intense pain, as I searched the ground for the nine-millimeter that had flown from my hand. My mutated cells began to repair the damage to my arm as I scanned the floor. Give me an hour and I’d be as good as new.

As long as I survived the hour.

The third and final reptoe entered the fray, and my odds of an unscathed getaway faded. This reptoe meant business. His grey eyes and steel tipped talons glowed with evil intent. His desire to inflict pain radiated from his poreless skin. He’d enjoy watching me bleed. The sick fuck.

“Where’s the kid?” His cold eyes locked on me. “We want the kid.”

“And I want to lose five pounds and for you to get the fuck out of my house.” I let my mind go blank, switching from human emotion to binary assassin. My mutated cells hummed with focus. Primitive focus. Protect. Kill. Destroy. “But it doesn’t look like either of us is gonna get our wish,” I added for his benefit. After all, reptoes weren’t too smart, and I hated subtleties.

Steel Tips nodded, his flat forehead reflecting my own deadened stare in its shiny surface. He and the other remaining lizard crept forward, circling me with cold efficiency. I watched their every move, waiting for the chance to strike. Step closer, I thought willing the more dangerous of the two forward.

With surprising speed Earless tossed his body at me like a Frisbee. I sidestepped and he flew into, and through my wall, landing in the kitchen in a messy pile of broken lizard and dishes. A steak knife stuck out of his sternum. A dull steak knife at that.

Dumb luck, but I’d take it.

Indeara: 2, Lizards: 0.

Drywall dust obscured the air between Steel Tips and me. I lost sight of him and paid the price for my mistake. His talon scrapped across my midsection tearing through my sensitive flesh, puncturing a semi-vital organ or two.

Liver. Maybe my spleen.

“Your death is not honorable.” He twisted his talon deeper ripping away chucks of muscle and bone. “And it will hurt.”

I bit my lip to keep from screaming and stumbled back a few steps, but thankfully I stayed on my feet. His claw popped from my flesh with a wet plop. Pain tore down my nerve endings and chewed its way to my brain. I wanted to puke, to black out, to do anything to stop the icy burn inside my stomach.

Instead, I took a sharp breath and dug my heel into the floorboards. I threw my weight into a full-roundhouse kick, my aim centered on his greenish throat. However, he twisted at the last second, and my blow glanced uselessly off his right shoulder. But I wasn’t done yet. I followed the kick with a punch to the suprascapular nerve running down the backside of his scaled neck.

A direct blow like that would’ve felled a lesser man, but Steel Tips just grinned at me. I was in serious trouble. My blood soaked the front of my dress and splashed onto the floor. I slip twice, nearly falling on my ass, only to recover in time to ward off a barrage of flying lizard fists.

His talon pierced my left side, tearing a hole from my hip to my ribcage. “Where’s the kid?” he asked again.

“Fuck you.” I spat a glob of bloody saliva in his face. “When I’m done kicking your lizard ass, you’re gonna wish you’d never been hatched.”

He chuckled, thrusting his claw in deeper. The steel tip, already inches away from my heart, burrowed closer to the fast beating muscle.

Oh, I’d survive the wound, and the one in my stomach. My mutated cells had already begun to heal me, but a nick to my heart would be fatal. I knew it, and from the heated look in his eyes, he did too.

“You remind me of my momma. She was almost too pretty to die too.” He laughed as he plunged his nail further inside my body. “Maybe if you beg I’ll end it quick.”

Nice offer, but I’d never go out like that, even if I trusted the word of a reptile with mother issues. Grayness seeped into my vision. I was fading fast. It was time to end it. Reaching inside myself to the place where violence raged I found the will to fight, to live, if only to beat the stuffing out of Lizard-Boy.

I leaned into his talon and managed to slam my heel into the fragile patella of his right knee. His claw extended farther into my body, settling somewhere in my stomach, but his attempt at killing me was only half-hearted now. I kicked at his knee again, and he screeched.

Taking advantage of his distraction, I pulled away, scooped up Mei’s stiletto shoe, and jammed it between his bulging eyelids. He staggered back a step, his mouth opening wide but no words emerged.

I spiral-kicked high into the air, ramming the pump deeper into the reptilian cortex of his pea-sized brain. The crunch of heel breaking bone sounded in my ears, and Lizard-Boy dropped to his knees. A pulse of red brain goop spurted from his forehead. His eyes focused on me, going a little cross-eyed, but still his look sent a rush of adrenalized fear throughout my bloodstream.

“Killed by Shirley Fucking Temple,” he said. “Ain’t that a bitch.” His left arm jerked once and he crashed onto the floor.

Chapter 6

Four hours and twenty trash bags later, the only remnants of my brush with death were a stack of black bags filled with reptile parts piled high in the apartment dumpster, a reptoe-sized hole in my kitchen wall, and a ruined silk dress stained with lizard extract. I’d had worse days.

As predicted, my mutant cells healed my wounds in short order leaving me without a single scab or scar. Sure, my body ached in a few new ways, but overall, I was the picture of mutated health. I couldn’t say the same for my dress, so I slipped into Mei’s abandoned closet, and struggled to pour my size-eight body into her size-three clothes. I hoped Mei was all right, but after the visit from the reptoes, I had my doubts.

Until I could locate Mei, I’d do my best to protect Caren. Really, how hard could it be to raise a kid? Like plants, if you fed and watered them they’d grow. I winced, thinking about last year’s birthday present from Nobody, a once thriving cactus, now just a prickly dirt mound.

I glanced in Mei’s full-length mirror and held back a scream. My hair stood on end as if I’d licked a light socket and my carefully applied makeup had streaked down my cheeks, giving me all the appeal of Ronald McDonald after a one-night stand.

Who wouldn’t want me as a granddaughter, I thought, sticking out my tongue at the mess in the mirror. Oh well. No turning back now. I scrubbed at my face, patted down my hair, hefted my bag over my shoulder, and headed for life beyond the wall.

******

“Please scan your DNA.” The guard at the gate leaned against the wall, his board eyes flickering over my body. So far, the two-sizes too small dress I’d borrowed from Mei’s closet had worked wonders. My mutant cabbie had offered to carry my bag, a man at the gate offered me his place in line, and now the guard seemed to be paying my boobs more attention than he paid my faked DNA.

Dressing like a girl had its advantages, or so I thought, until my thong took a voyage to uncharted territory. I shifted trying to dig the offending garment from my butt without drawing the guard’s attention to my plight.

“Miss?” The guard nodded to the scanner. “Please scan your DNA.”

“Sure thing.” I smiled, passing my hand with its pilfered DNA chip burrowed under my skin across the glass. A beep sounded and a green light appeared.

The guard waved me through the gate. “Next,” he called without asking for my name or destination. It all seemed anticlimactic somehow, as if I’d spent my life waiting to pass through the gate, and in the end, it looked and smelled just like the other side. The grass was no greener and the air no cleaner.

Next to the gate, a group of humans waved signs warning of the forthcoming mutant apocalypse. A workforce truck filled with mutant day workers drove slowly by. The crowd jeered, hurling bottles at the helpless crew.

“They’re taking our jobs,” said a college aged kid, who’d probably never had a job let alone wanted to do the backbreaking labor fostered upon the mutant crew.

A bottle smashed against the side of the work truck, splattering a small boy with three arms in beer and glass. Blood dribbled from a cut above his eye. He stared at his attackers, confusion the only emotion on his face.

From the opposite side of the street mutant activists raised their own glass projectiles. A battle raged for a few minutes until the workforce truck slipped safely behind the gate. Once the truck disappeared, both sides retreated, tending their wounded and preparing for the next skirmish.

For the first time in my twenty-five years behind the wall I felt the fear that motivated the human population. It hung in the air, clinging to prejudice and lies. Lies founded in science and fairytales. You should be afraid, I thought as I swept undetected past the angriest of protestors. I’d remember each of their faces, and one day soon, I’d return to even the score.

I headed away from the violence and up the avenue to the center of the city. Humans rushed by me unaware a mutant walked in their midst. Ten blocks up Resden Enterprises sprouted from the surrounding skyscrapers and office parks, towering over the lowly buildings like an avenging god.

The mutant killing business must be good, I thought. Here goes nothing. Taking a deep breath of polluted air I gathered my courage and pushed through the heavy glass doors of the family business. A DNA detector bleeped in alarm and a scramble of rent-a-agents in brown uniforms swarmed me.

“Mutant!” one of the uniforms said, his gun pointed at my head. “Drop the bag and raise your hands above your head.”

Forgoing my first instinct to kick the shit out of all of them, I did as he ordered, dropping my bag and slowly raising my hands above my head. The babydoll dress rose up my thighs drawing more than a few stares. I cleared my throat. “You’re making a mistake. My name’s—”

“Resden doesn’t make mistakes, mutant.” The guard’s eyes roamed over my body, his eyes wrinkling with disgust mixed with lust. “Our mutant detectors are the best in the world.”

“Really?” I smiled. “I’ll make sure to tell my grandpa Resden all about your loyalty to his product.”

The guard’s face paled. “You’re Indeara?”

“In the flesh.” I winked at him. “Human flesh, I might add.” Slowly I tucked my fingers into the pocket of Mei’s dress and removed my fake human identification, and a letter of introduction from Grandpa Resden.

“I…ah…” He lowered his weapon and with shaking hands lifted the documents from my fingers. “I’m sorry, Ms. Resden. So sorry. I didn’t realize…”

“Ms. Adair.”

His brow wrinkled. “What?”

“My name’s Indeara Adair, not Resden.” I snatched the documents out of his hand and gestured to the elevators. “What floor is my grandfather on?”

“Forty-one,” he said. “Again, please forgive our error.”

I nodded and headed toward the chrome-decorated lifts. The soles of my boots squeaked on the overly polished tiled floor. Over my shoulder, I said, “You should get that machine looked at. I’d hate for a real mutant to get through undetected.”

“Yes ma’am. We’ll call the tech right now.” The guard gave a wave some of the color returning to his face. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” I pressed the elevator button for the forty-first floor and vanished behind the opulent doors.

Chapter 7

Seconds later, the elevator doors opened and I strolled into another world, a place where everyone and everything stunk of wealth and privilege. The lobby, decorated sometime in the previous century, gleamed with polish. Paintings by Picasso and Simone Degal hung on the dark paneled walls. Funny in a way since the artworks depicted pixilated human forms, much like my own genetics.