Ella sits in her musty recliner in her cramped apartment in the basement of the compound, knees pulled up to her chest, and flips through channels. Three news channels in a row report on the same things she’s heard over and over these past five years.
“—riots have broken out along the eastern seaboard in what officials are calling the largest uprising to date. We’ve got Greg on the scene to—”
“—food shortages have led some to believe the government is—”
“—another mysterious slaughter last night. This one followed the same pattern as the previous dozen. A few hours before sunrise, screams could be heard from one of the encampments outside the city, where refugees await admittance. Local officials are desperate for information, while survivors claim it was monsters.”
She flips to a new channel, a game show, and settles back to watch. It’s an update on Wheel of Fortune, where instead of hoping for cars and cruises and cash prizes, contestants are awarded the latest vaccines and a year’s worth of food vouchers. She lets the colors and the sounds lull her into a sort of wakeful dream, one where the constant sounds of the compound can be ignored for a while. The ticking of the clock on the wall that she can’t unplug. The gurgle of water through old pipes. The occasional screams of the animals above.
She still has a few hours before she’s needed upstairs again. She intends to spend them right here.
Nothing in the compound works quite the way it ought to. Lights flicker. The heat kicks on and off at odd times. The thermostats never read quite right. Doors squeal and stick, and sometimes they have to be kicked open. Sometimes no matter how Ella pushes with a shoulder or hip they don’t want to close all the way. It’s the dampness down here, the constant small acts of neglect that have accumulated over the years.
Ella shuffles down the hallway, pulling her sweater tighter, and ascends the grated metal stairs that lead to the main level of the compound. The steps are rusted at the edges and moisture trickles down the concrete walls. When she first arrived at the compound it reminded her of something out of an old black and white movie—one where the prisoner escapes his evil captors and enacts his revenge. But these days she doesn’t notice her surroundings much. She is not the prisoner, the main character. She is a part of the background, as influential as a piece of scenery.
The door at the top of the stairs is locked, and Ella presses her code into the yellowed keypad. It beeps one, two, three times, but on the fourth number remains silent. Ella mashes the last number again. Then again. The keypad stays resolutely mute. She huffs and tries her code from the beginning. This time the keypad accepts all four numbers, only to blink red and flash ‘incorrect entry’ at her.
“For fuck’s sake,” Ella grumbles. She counts to twenty, then tries again. This time a green blip greets her, and the door lock disengages with a low thud. She turns the wheel on the door and pushes, then hip checks it to get it to open all the way, the hinges squeaking in protest.
Once inside the observation room, she pushes the door closed, but not all the way shut. She’s always been afraid that she’ll be locked in here one day, given how often she has trouble unlocking and opening this door from the other side. The keypad within the room has never given her trouble, but she doesn’t like to think of the door sticking, even if her charges are held behind heavy iron bars. Better not to press her luck.
She stands in the center of the room and regards her charges.
They are wrong looking—their eyes too big, their teeth too long. The muscles under the skin bunch and pull as though they want to break free. Once, it may have been appropriate to call them mountain lions, but the creatures they are now barely resemble their predecessors.
When they see her, they grow still. She’s supposed to shock them with the cattle prod, to keep them afraid. It’s part of the program that allows their handlers to better keep them under control. But Ella doesn’t like to do it. Even though they’re barely recognizable as animals, she doesn’t like to hurt them. It’s the look they give her once she’s done—one of betrayal, as though they expected better of her.
Ella doesn’t like looking into their eyes.
They are Specimen 668, 541, and 237; each of them as identical and individual as humans. She is supposed to call them by their appointed labels, and she does, at least in front of the scientists, guards, and handlers. In her head, though, she sometimes cycles through other names for them, as if they are pets in her old veterinary practice. For the past week, she’s been calling them the same names and today, as she glances over their bodies to see how their wounds are healing, the names still feel appropriate—Tiana, Jasmine, Aurora.
One of the trio, the one Ella is supposed to call Specimen 237, paces in the back of the enclosure. She’s the oldest and the smallest, but no less fierce. She was injured two nights ago and Ella managed to separate and sedate her. She’d stitched up the gash in the creature’s side but now it bleeds freely again. Several of the stitches have ripped and Ella grimaces at the thought of it as she pulls a cracked rubber hose from the far wall. It’s too late for more stitches now, and the supplies she has here are woefully inept. She needs more antiseptic, more antibiotics, more of everything. ‘Supply chain issues’ is the refrain she hears over and over again, but part of her can’t help but wonder if it’s less the supply chain and more the lack of interest on the part of the higher ups. The animals have been engineered to be resilient to a fault.
“Status?”
Ella jumps and nearly drops the hose. Somehow Patterson always manages to sneak up on her. She’s not quite sure how he does it given he wears dress shoes in a concrete bunker—he ought to sound like a woman in heels. Instead, he’s like a phantom. A six foot two ghoul with a gaunt face and breath that smells like mustard.
“Specimen 237 has torn open some of her stitches.” Ella gestures halfheartedly with the hose. “I’ll need to examine the wound and perhaps apply some ointment.”
“That can wait, I’m sure.”
Ella bristles. Patterson always does this. He always asks for an update and then ignores what she says. The animals have been engineered to be resistant to most disease, but their wounds can still become infected. He doesn’t seem to understand the difference.
“The enclosure needs to be cleaned,” he tells her, his eyes roving over the observation room, searching for faults.
Ella holds up the hose in her hand, but he doesn’t see.
“We need everything in tip-top shape when the higher ups come on Friday,” he continues. “They’re thinking of expanding the operation.”
Ella hmms noncommittally, cranks the water spigot in the far wall, and begins to spray water into the enclosure. The three animals hiss and scatter. She doesn’t know much about the operation or its ultimate goal; the animals are an experiment, that much is sure. They’re taken out each night and the handlers and soldiers record ‘data’ that they spend hours discussing. Ella is not invited to the meetings. She’s just here to make sure the animals are treated whenever they’re injured, which is happening more and more these days.
“Our success here is going to set a precedent for the rest of the country,” Patterson says. He prattles on while Ella cleans the enclosure, the animals darting from left to right in an attempt to avoid the water. Soon, his words are no more than the buzzing of flies.
Ella glances at the calendar on the wall. Tuesday. The higher ups will be here in just a few days.
The news washes over her, a flickering lightshow featuring somber tones and aerial shots of one of the encampments outside a large city. Already Ella has forgotten which city it is. They’re all the same these days. Every large city in the U.S. has erected a wall around itself, to keep the refugees out. Encampments pop up outside these walls, full of people hoping for vaccines, food, water, shelter. The normal sorts of things. But the cities claim to have only so many resources. They can’t afford to be flooded by this human wave of the unfortunate. They promise that eventually they’ll be able to let everyone in, but it’s been years now and the numbers waiting outside have only gotten higher.
Ella tells herself she is lucky to be at the compound. She doesn’t have to worry about food or rent or the sky-high cost of electricity. The compound is about fifty miles out from the nearest city so she doesn’t need to fear raids or disease the way those in the encampments do.
But sometimes she misses her old life. Some nights she misses her veterinary practice and knowing all her patients by name and the treat bowl on the counter. She’d built the business herself and been proud and content in the sort of way that made one ignore all the warning signs around them. But eventually, as her patient numbers dwindled and supplies became impossible to obtain, Ella was forced to close her practice, then stay home and eye her bank account with increasing dread.
When the compound contacted her, Ella had been thrilled. The opportunity to work with animals again felt like a dream and she went through her interview the way one was supposed to—by giving the answers expected of her. By the time she reached her aptitude test she was too in awe of the fact that she’d receive room and board in addition to a small salary to think too closely about the questions on the test. She was hired, her work began, and she was too deeply asleep to realize she’d walked into a dream she couldn’t wake up from.
She flips through the channels until she finds a game show—one where people compete for a guaranteed spot in the next vaccine line—and leans back in her recliner.
The days pass as they always do. Ella splits her time between the observation room, the surgery, and her apartment. She stitches up her charges. Applies ointments to particularly stubborn wounds. Watches television. Sleeps in fits and starts, never quite knowing what time it is underground. She can’t remember the last time she went outside.
On Friday, the higher ups stroll in, bored and nonchalant, a few grimacing at the discolored patches on the walls. One woman wears pearls and perfume. Ella can’t remember the last time she’s caught that scent on anyone. She inhales deeply, the taste of the faux florals clotting at the back of her throat and making her jaw ache with nostalgia.
Despite differences in age, race, and gender, the higher ups are a unit. They wear dark maroon military dress—a signifier that they are in the newest branch of the military. The branches have morphed and reformed over the past five years and this newest iteration is focused on innovation. Innovation for improvement. That’s their motto. What it really means is beyond Ella.
She trails behind the higher ups as Patterson gives them a tour of the compound. He specifically asked Ella to join even though she won’t have anything to add, not until they get to the observation room. She’s pretty sure he asked for her presence as a way of telling her what to do, rather than trying to make her feel involved.
Patterson has moved on from trivia about the compound (“Built in the ‘50s as a bomb shelter, now refurbished into a scientific hub.”) and on to information about Ella’s charges.
“Genetically engineered, as you’re all familiar,” he tells the group as he leads the way to the observation room. “This lot is sterile, but we’re thinking we may not need to control for that in the future.”
“Should they be allowed to breed?” one man asks. He’s older than the rest, but his face is unlined. He looks like he’s made of plastic.
“We’ve experimented some with males, but we’ve had better luck with the females. They’re smarter, more amenable to the training.”
The women titter, as though this is a mark in their favor.
“We’re thinking cloning will be the way to go from here on out,” Patterson says. He punches his code into the door to the observation room and Ella grimaces, betrayed, when the keypad accepts his code on the first try. He leads the higher ups to the heavy metal gate that holds the animals in.
The animals pace in their cage. Back and forth, back and forth. They each wander randomly, at their own pace and angle, but when the higher ups arrive, they draw together in the center of the enclosure. Specimen 237, Aurora, is in the middle of the pack. She leads the others to the left side of the cage. Then the right. She paces just a bit ahead of them, only by about a foot or so, so that the tips of their noses are in line with the base of her skull.
“Tell us about the data,” the plastic man says. “We’ve seen the reports, but who has the time to read all that?”
A low rumbling laugh from the rest of the group. Patterson throws his head back and guffaws, and Ella leans against the wall beside the door, her arms crossed. She wants to go back to her apartment. There’s usually a game show on right now.
“The data is favorable, ladies and gents,” Patterson says. “More than favorable. Their speed is what we’d hoped for, and their muscle tissue shows a remarkable rate of recovery. They can go every night if we need them to. Out of this lot, the youngest is five years old and they show no sign of slowing down.”
“How do you control them when they’re on a run?”
“With the cattle prod. They’ve been conditioned to fear it.”
One of the men picks up the cattle prod and hefts it, testing its weight. Ella flinches and peers at the higher ups from the corner of her eye. None of them have noticed her reaction. The man gives the prod trigger a few pulls, blue electricity arcing at the tip. Aurora freezes, her eyes fixed on the man. Her lips pull back in a snarl, and a growl rumbles out of her, so low at first that Ella feels it in her stomach before she hears it. Aurora’s growl grows louder until it’s vibrating in Ella’s sternum. The man pokes the cattle prod through the bars of the front gate and swings it toward the animals.
Aurora flattens herself to the ground, managing to keep out of the way of the prod as the other two scurry toward the back of the enclosure.
“See how they cower!” one of the women laughs.
Aurora surges forward, her genetically engineered muscles reacting so quickly none of them see it coming. One moment she’s pressed flat to the concrete floor, the next she’s flung herself against the front gate of her cage, one of her paws stretched through. She bats the cattle prod from the man’s hand, then crouches and retreats, her cohort once again on either side of her. They resume pacing, their eyes fixed on the crowd in front of them.
The higher ups are silent for a moment. Stunned.
The man who’d held the prod whirls on Ella. “I thought they were supposed to be afraid of it,” he demands, his face a blotchy red.
“They…they are,” Ella says. It comes out strained. She forces herself to take a measured breath. Above all, she can’t appear uncertain in front of these people. They need to hear what they want to. And they want to hear that she’s been following protocol, that she shocks them every time she enters the observation room just as she’s been told.
Ella continues. “Animals attack for food or when they feel threatened. Her behavior was nothing unexpected. She knows the prod causes pain, so she attacked it.”
The man tugs at the bottom hem of his jacket, straightening it. His jaw works as though he’s trying to decide whether to argue with her or not. Clearly, he thinks Aurora was not frightened in the correct way, and he’s right. He expected anguish, mewling. He wanted to feel powerful and in control.
“They must cower before the prod, not attack,” the perfumed woman says.
“Twice the shocks from now on I think,” the plastic man says. He reminds Ella of a geriatric Ken doll—an approximation of a man. She squirms under his gaze, until he says, “Show us how they’re loaded on the truck.”
Ella turns, glad for a reason to break eye contact, and raises her hand to enter the code for the rear gate. The enclosure is a simple design—a front gate, a rear gate, and two concrete side walls. Her hand hovers over the keypad. The code is only one number different to open the front gate as it is the rear. The rear code, 3197, reverberates through her palm and down to the tips of her fingers. She’s typed it so many times she doesn’t even need to think about it.
The front code, 3198, she can’t remember learning, but it’s tucked away in her mind as securely as any of the others. Certainly no one ever told it to her. None of the security guards or the man who briefly trained her when she first arrived at the compound. Perhaps she read it in a manual somewhere, when she was first here. When she wanted to do a good job.
Just one number different. That’s all that’s needed. There have been times she’s worried she’ll open the front gate accidentally, given how little thought she gives to the numbers she types into the keypads. How automatic her days are.
The higher ups chat amongst themselves and Ella does her best to tune them out. Suddenly, despite doing it hundreds of times, Ella can’t remember which code she’s supposed to use. She hesitates. Her fingers tremble, then it comes to her. She punches in the code to raise the rear gate. Three. One. Nine. Seven.
The gate raises soundlessly, and as one, the animals still. They watch it rise, no longer any attention left to spare for their audience. Behind the gate, lights come on, illuminating an angled space—the walls quickly funnel in toward each other and create a narrow concrete passageway. Darkness sits, pooled at the end, hiding the interior of the waiting truck.
The aerial shot shows a crowd of humanity, so crammed together that they appear like a single unit, rather than individuals. The tops of their heads are pixels in a larger picture. Ella pauses, not sure why this time she lingers and watches rather than changing the channel.
It’s night, but people are still up and moving around.
The helicopter pans over, and it’s difficult to discern where the people end and the tents begin. Everything seems to be the same shade of dirty gray.
Suddenly, a wave seems to move through the encampment. It starts on the edge and ripples inward, the reverse of a stone falling into a pond. The camera judders, people seem to be running, more and more of them joining the wave as the seconds tick by.
A disembodied voice narrates. “Another attack tonight. City officials are asking anyone with information to come forward.”
It doesn’t matter if she watches; it’s all the same. Her viewing it won’t change things.
Ella clicks to another channel. The news never discusses what happens to informants. Sometimes they’re mentioned by name, sometimes just their photo is displayed briefly on screen. But that’s it. Once they’ve given up what they have, they’re never heard from again.
Ella flips to another channel. Another news station.
“Monsters!” a man yells, his eyes so wide Ella can see the whites all around. “It’s monsters.”
Another channel. They’re interviewing the mayor of a city down south.
“We’ve been facing this issue for some time, Melinda, as I’m sure you’re aware,” the mayor says, addressing the journalist holding the microphone. “What we really need is population control. Despite our best efforts to get accommodations for everyone, they’re multiplying faster than we can do anything about.”
“What assistance has the government offered?” Melinda, the journalist, wears a dull colored, ill-fitting suit jacket, the patch on the elbow barely visible.
“Little to none as far as I’m concerned.”
“What do you say to allegations that there are monsters in the area?”
“I’m an evidence man. Show me the evidence. It’s probably just some stray dogs or summat like that.”
“But dog bites don’t typically look like this.”
The man waves a hand and lets out an annoyed puff of air. “Maybe the dogs got everyone scared and then people mauled each other trying to get out of the way. It’s always people that do the worst things to each other.”
Ella draws her knees to her chest, the springs of the recliner squeaking with the change of her weight distribution. Above her the clock ticks, pauses, then resumes its incorrect telling of the time. She finds a game show and lets her eyes unfocus, until all that’s on the screen are colors and shapes.
When the animals return that night (specimens, Ella reminds herself, although the word feels as hollow as ever) they are in terrible condition. Each of them is wounded. All of them panting and pacing and glassy eyed. There is a darkness that clings to their paws that doesn’t appear to be mud. It’s more like a stain, like they’ve walked through dye.
One by one, Ella separates them, sedates them, and stitches them up as best she can. She knows they’ll heal quickly, but it takes all she has not to snap at the higher ups who filter through the exam room, talking amongst themselves. There’s an ache in her low belly that makes her feel as though she’ll be sick soon. These animals have been ill-used.
Aurora stirs and Ella presses a palm to the animal’s chest. She can feel the powerful heartbeat reverberate through her palm. Of all of them, she’s always been the most difficult to keep sedated.
One of the women’s eyes widen and she takes several steps back. “Is it waking up?” she asks. Ella can’t help but think that if this woman were wearing the pearls, she’d be clutching them right now.
“Not for some time yet,” Ella says. She adjusts the drip on the IV so that more sedative can flow through the tube and returns to her sutures. She does her best to focus on her work, to let the voices around her become the dull murmur of one of her game shows, but this time, she can’t block them out.
“Highly effective.”
“We’re very pleased, of course, with how quickly we’ve been able to get this project off the ground. It was just the seeds of an idea not six years ago, and now look where we are. I think we can chalk it all up to good project management.”
“It’s truly impressive what they can do. You’d explained it all, Patterson, but I couldn’t really picture it. It was a good show last night. Very entertaining. I think we may be able to monetize this in ways we hadn’t originally planned. I’d say we could televise this.”
They discuss plans to bring in five more specimens to the compound. They ruminate over how they can expand to the Midwest and then the East Coast. The timeline is favorable.
Ella bends her head closer to her work and adds more stitches to the flesh under her hands.
She begins to type the code. Three. One. Nine. She pauses, her fingertips hovering over the numbers.
“Well, what’s the hold up? Lift the rear gate.” The man crosses his arms and turns his attention back to the animals. His shoulders are tense. They haven’t properly loosened since the cattle prod didn’t have the effect he wanted the day before.
Aurora watches all of them through the bars. Blood trickles down her side. The stitches haven’t held. Beside her Tiana and Jasmine crouch, perfectly still, only the tips of their tails flicking every so often.
It is night again. Another day gone. Another round of game shows watched. The animals are set to go out, just as they do every night.
“Sorry,” Ella licks her lips. “The keys are sticking.” She waits for the code to clear, then begins again.
Three. One. Nine.
She pauses. Her hand is numb. Her vision narrows and grows dark at the edges. Behind her, the voices of the higher ups meld together and warp, like a television set turned down too low. She makes a fist and, before she can lose her nerve or think too long about what she’s doing, she pushes the last number.
Eight.
The front gate begins to rise. It screams with disuse. Committed now, Ella gives the wires that hang below the keypad a tug. They snap away with a small flash.
None of the higher ups realize what’s happening, not immediately.
Ella backs away, her heart hammering in her throat. The higher ups talk amongst themselves. One man grumbles that he’s hungry—lunch was inedible.
Ella turns and bolts through the side door, pulling it shut behind her; the heavy metal of the door slamming into the jamb. It doesn’t quite shut, not all the way. She tugs at the handle, then leans back, using all her weight to try to pull the door shut. It won’t work if she can’t shut the door.
In the observation room, someone shouts. There is a flurry of voices.
“It’s the wrong gate!”
“Shut it! Shut it!”
“Patterson, what’s the code?”
Ella strains against the door, she has seconds, less than seconds, to get it shut. She hears the roar of Patterson’s voice and, for the first time ever, the crack of his shoes across the concrete floor. The door gives, slides firmly into place, and Ella frantically spins the wheel to engage the lock just as Patterson’s face looms in the window above her. The door judders as he pulls from the other side.
“Open the door!” he screams at her.
Ella continues her frantic spinning. The wheel turns and turns, then stops, the lock now fully engaged. She scrambles away from the door and presses herself into the wall, her heart pounding against her spine. On the other side of the door, everyone is either screaming or shouting.
Patterson smashes his hand against the glass, demanding that she open the door. Telling her she’ll be reprimanded. That she’ll be imprisoned. His voice cuts off mid-threat, and he turns back toward whatever is happening in the observation room.
Ella steps forward, feeling as though she may be sick. She rests one hand against the cold metal of the door and peers through the square of glass into the observation room. The higher ups have all fled as far as they can—they’ve pressed themselves against each other in a huddle along the opposite wall. The plastic man’s face, seemingly so incapable of expression, is frozen in a silent scream. Patterson picks up the cattle prod.
The front gate has risen and the animals eye this newfound freedom.
Aurora is the first to leave the cage. She steps into the observation room, her feet sure, her gaze locked onto Patterson.
She’s the oldest and the smallest, but no less fierce.
Camille Winter (she/her) is a lover of dark fantasy and horror. When she isn’t baking cookies or crocheting yet another blanket, she can be found binge reading and dreaming up ways to retell old stories.