Page 2 of Free Beast Mate

Tom frowned. “How old is Celia?”

“Eighteen.”

“And the other two?”

“Maybe twenty. Not sure.”

“Let’s try Whitney and Celia first.”

“Yes, but they need to be in heat.”

He nodded. “Preferably in heat, not necessary so.”

“Ah, okay. I’ll go and…”

He stroked my cheek. “You remind me of him, you know. Gingers, the two of you. He was a good man. I miss him.”

I cleared my throat. My dad had died this past winter from the flu one of the girls from Above had brought to our community. Tom had incinerated the entire Sector Eleven to prevent the flu from spreading to the rest of us. Though I’d grown up in Sector Eleven, Tom had placed me in isolation for a month so that I might prove healthy. Otherwise, he’d have incinerated me as he had the other folks from my sector, dead or alive. He’d sealed the doors, then set them all on fire. Sector Eleven, my former home, was kept closed ever since. Viruses lived long lives, apparently, and Tom couldn’t take risks.

I hardly knew my dad, so I couldn’t say if he was a good man or not. Tom seemed to think so, and therefore, I nodded. “I’ll tell Adam,” I said and waited for Tom to open the doors. His eyes glazed over as if he was having one of his visions, so I spun around and walked to the back exit, leaving Tom alone.

Cole followed. “What now?”

“I don’t know. You can’t have half the knife, and I can’t have half the backpack.”

“But I get something. I guessed one of the girls.”

I pushed the back door open, and we walked out.

Cole snickered. “Man, this is gonna take some getting used to.”

“What?” I rounded the sanctuary, opened the small gate, and stepped inside Tom’s canoe. He let me use it all the time since he didn’t move out of the sanctuary much. Taking the canoe down the channel running through our community was way easier than walking over half a mile to the girls’ sector.

Cole settled behind me and picked up the other paddle. We weaved through the water.

“This place is so weird,” he said. “That’s what I was saying. I can’t believe I’m… How far underground are we again?”

“About one hundred feet.” Community X had been built in secret about two hundred years ago to hold the US president, his family and advisors, their families, and, well, the former White House staff. My great-grandfather was the house speaker, and most of us who grew up here were descended from someone important back in the day. At one point, before I was born, the structure had nearly collapsed, and people had fled up Above. This was when they met the beasts for the first time. It was a bloodbath, I’d heard. But our people managed to kill the six beasts housed in the outpost in Retreat, Texas, a small town situated on top of the Community, so news of humans living down here died with the beasts.

“And how big is it?”

“It’s a village, currently at about three thousand people.” Our population had quadrupled in one year, mostly with women, not a lot of children. The women regulated their cycles, and men respected Tom’s authority over who would breed with whom and produce healthy humans.

One of the lights under the water flickered and went out. I looked up. Dimmed neon shone on the ceiling. Last year, we didn’t ration the power. With all the new people and the lack of resources to accommodate them, we were in trouble. I wondered if I should say something about it to Tom, but knew Adam would handle it. Tom kept allowing more people down here, kept scouting for the beast mate, but I didn’t think we could accommodate any more people. The latest newcomers lived on the sidewalks, didn’t even have their own huts. Still, nobody complained that they had to sleep on the streets near the channel, because Tom, their prophet, lived here. I didn’t know how he got from Leader to Prophet, though I had seen with my own eyes the bright light of the Beast Father when he called to Tom. Perhaps they thought it was God. It wasn’t. God came of faith. No bright lights needed.

“We don’t have water in New Mexico,” Cole said.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen it on the map.”

“And we also don’t—”

Cole wouldn’t get a clue. I spun around and hissed, “You know the rules. You can’t yap about Above.”

He leaned in. “But why not?”

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