The Social Scene and the Hate Machine
Chapter 7 — Scattered Bones Underneath the Fashion
The sun set over the football field, painting the sky a bloody red. Shannon and the rest of Summer’s top ten led the crew onto the field. They’d all done their jobs, whether it was simply being at the right place at the right time, protecting their brethren, or leading the jocks on a chase back to the battlefield. They lined up on the 25-yard line, fanning out until they reached back to the 20-yard line. Summer was nowhere to be seen, but Shannon and the rest of her closest circle knew what had been done, though the crew behind them did not.
Slowly, cars began to pull into the lots around the school, and athletes streamed out of them, caught up in seething rage. The neon green of Summer’s punks was like a red flag to a bull, and the jocks charged without hesitation. On the growling bear logo of the Glassville Grizzlies, the rumble began in earnest, jocks and punks alike relishing the chance to cut loose. The jocks had the physical advantage, but the pent-up rage of the punks kept them in the fight. The hive instincts of the jocks were countered by the teamwork of the punks; both sides knew how to attack each other’s weaknesses while shoring up their own.
Then a horrific buzz went through the sound system, filling everyone’s minds and forcing them to stillness. Both sides turned towards the announcer’s booth, waiting.
A figure emerged from the home tunnel—Summer, and the sight of her gave the punks enough strength and focus to ignore the buzzing in their heads. They gathered themselves and lined up behind the immobile jocks to cut off any attempts at escape.
“Hive signal. They’re one, completely attuned to the signal... and completely attuned to someone who is mine,” Summer explained. She walked out in front of the entranced jocks, raised her hand, and snapped her fingers. The Llewellyns came out of the tunnel, walking in perfect unison, and came to a stop next to Summer, where they went as still and mindless as the athletes they once controlled.
Summer reached into her pocket and took out a remote. With the press of a button, the buzzing stopped. The punks seized their targets, just to be sure, even though none of the athletes had moved.
“Now you’re going to know what we went through. Though there isn’t much in your heads left to understand or to think about it. But can you feel it?” Summer demanded, ripping the principal’s jacket off with rough hands. She saw the jocks shudder in sympathetic discomfort, but it wasn’t enough. She tore off the principal’s blouse; as the woman shook, the jocks wavered, the weakest crumbling to their knees.
Still not enough. Part of Summer quailed at the humiliation, but she shoved those concerns to the back of her mind and froze them in ice. The only way to conquer the hive was to show them their queens completely defeated, and only when she had seen the last of the jocks fall would she be sure the nightmare was over. With one hand, she shoved the principal to all fours, preparing the switchblade in her other hand. A single sharp slice severed the principal’s bra. For good measure, Summer followed that with a swipe of her sharpened nails.
Several more of the hive fell to the ground, but the majority stayed upright. Summer bit the inside of her lip. “Do any of you have anything to say for yourselves? Do you have a self to say anything for?” she shouted.
“Fuck you, you sadistic piece of shit!” Connie yelled.
Surprise warred with cold fury in Summer’s soul; she hadn’t expected any of them to speak, and certainly not for Connie to use a word like ‘sadistic’. But the predator in her relished at the opportunity to hunt her prey. “Shannon, strip Cassidy. Show no mercy. Have a little fun. One of the drones seems to have a stinger,” she said.
Shannon’s smile was as cruel as Summer’s thoughts. Summer didn’t look back at what her most trusted lieutenant was doing, and paid no attention to the psychosomatic pain around her as she walked through the lines to Connie. “Tell me, would-be queen bee, what do you know about peanuts?” she asked, grabbing Connie by the chin and glaring at her. For a moment, she thought there would be too little left for her to enthrall, that the hive mind was so strong that Summer would have to tell one of her Llewellyns to order the hive to submit. But the stock bully persona poured into each of the jocks’ minds was enough to rise to the challenge and immediately be stunned.
“You know I knew. I hated her retarded ass before she thought she had enough of a brain to be one of us. I had the guts to get rid of her after,” Connie said.
Summer’s face hardened, and Connie felt absolute zero fill her brain. “You... you made...” she said, forcing the words through lips that refused to move. Whatever else she was going to say was lost as she lost the last trace of control and stiffened.
“Join your former owners,” Summer said coldly, pointing towards the Llewellyns. Connie marched over to the front line, where Katelyn seized hold of her. “Katelyn, strip her.”
A dark smile twisted Katelyn’s angelic face, and she tore Connie’s shirt off so hard the fabric ripped. She was no more gentle than Summer and Shannon had been, and Summer could hear the cries and see the winces as the pain continued. Come on, break! she thought. Someone, break out! Remember that this isn’t really happening to you!
“Hey, Summer!” Evelyn called. “It’s not hijacking the innocent if they were always little shits. Then they’re just enhanced little shits.”
Summer recognized what Evelyn was trying to do and let the vampire’s smile come back to her lips. “Anyone else have anything to say?” she asked the jocks.
“Whore! Slut! Pretender! Cunt!” yelled one of the football players. Ron was more than happy to take care of him after the storm of Summer’s ice blue eyes overrode what was left of his will.
Still, more than half of the jocks remained on their feet—wavering, shivering, shuddering, faces twisting from the pain they felt and saw. She had to push them further. “Are you really the best that Glassville has to offer?” she asked with a sneer.
“You can’t even read our thoughts! You don’t know us! We are what everyone wants and needs! Why deprive the world!” Jasmine shouted, and she broke away from the skinny girl holding her to charge at Summer. She disappeared under a pile of neon green bodies; Summer had to push people away to get a clear look into Jasmine’s eyes.
“Priya, take Jasmine. Pick her up and knock her down.”
Another cycle of pain left seventy standing, but this time no one had enough strength to challenge the ice queen. Summer looked over the five she had taken, sitting back on their haunches like dogs in obedience school, shirtless, scratches swelling—but expressionless, staring forward, indifferent to the condition of their bodies.
“Stand,” she ordered. One by one, she stripped them naked, handling them roughly, trying not to listen to the gasps behind her. They only think I’m torturing them, she reminded herself. I haven’t laid a hand on anyone who didn’t speak up first. Everything they’re feeling—it’s because of the Llewellyns and their damned hive mind. I can’t let it get to me.
“Monique, show our defensive end here how you really feel about Glassville,” she said.
Monique obliged with a knee directly into his crotch. Summer kept her face expressionless at the high-pitched keens from the jocks—male and female alike—and seventy dropped to fifty. “Can you feel it now? Can you feel the pain of decades? We’re dishing it out to the ones who deserve it—if you feel it, some corner of your mind thinks you deserve it too. So can you feel it?” she screamed, letting a tiny bit of the rage she felt at Dawn’s death come into her voice. “Can you feel it?”
She stalked up to Connie and began twisting Connie’s bare nipples roughly, feeling her nails score the flesh. Shannon, Katelyn, and Priya followed her example with the Llewellyns and Jasmine. The screams brought ten more to their knees, but an anguished, “NO!” broke through the storm.
Summer felt her winter ending, the ice cracking, the light dawning. “Enough. Who’s broken down? Bring them here,” she said to her group, and those who weren’t otherwise occupied gathered up the fallen.
“Summer, I think you need to see this,” Vanessa said. Her tone was even more serious than usual, and that was enough for Summer to come to her. And as soon as Summer was there, she knew Vanessa had been right.
Phan’s black hair swept the ground as she twitched and thrashed, her eyes wide and her face twisted with confusion—but not with pain. “What the... so hard to think... so dizzy, sick, help...” she moaned, the words almost too soft to hear.
Vanessa looked at Summer with tears of joy starting to form in her dark brown eyes. “Summer! Did you... is she…”
“I don’t know yet, but I think, maybe, possibly...” Summer trailed off and knelt next to Phan, meeting Phan’s eyes and locking on. “Think! Remember! I know it hurts to think for yourself right now, but you have to! Let your mind come back, let the real you come back—I know you’re there, please come back...”
“Buh... ugh, everything’s spinning, make it stop,” Phan groaned.
“I will. You’re going to be okay. Sleep. Remember who you are. Dream of your past. Forget the hive,” Summer said.
Phan’s eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.
Summer looked away, blinking tears from her irritated eyes. “The answer is still ‘I don’t know yet’. Right now, she’s a little crazy. She’s going through the same thing Mr. McCaffrey went through. The pain brought out something buried deep, and her mind could only take so much manipulation of what she thought was reality before it went on vacation for a while. She’s individualized again, but she’s got a long way to go, and I’m part of the problem.” She stood up and projected her voice across their portion of the field to get everyone’s attention. “All of you! If you see anyone else who might be awake, bring them to the front. The ones standing are more gone than the ones lying on the ground. Do what you can for any of them. Mickey, take the standees to the principal’s office. There’s a secret door behind her desk; the button is on her desk under the family photos. That’s where all her equipment is. Make the jocks destroy it.”
That got a roar from her people. She went on, “As for the five I took, they were the worst of the worst, the ones so dedicated to creating and maintaining this sick society that even their scraps of individuality were twisted, they’re yours for the night. But only those five. They’re dolls now, broken toys that will be repurposed. The rest of them are still people. They might not be great people, but there’s still something left in them that could fight back. This isn’t going to be Pinkerton all over again. We’re not going to live down to the Glassville name. Let’s see what we can save of this mess. This is our night. This is our time to prove that we’re better than they could be!”
Summer’s people cheered again, and they got to work. Kylie bent back Cassidy’s legs for Priya to move in, and Katelyn did the same to Connie. Evelyn, Shannon, and the majority of the group started looking through the carnage, ferrying weakly crying people to edge of the field where Summer could work with them one at a time. It went on for what seemed like hours, and the sky grew darker both with nightfall and smoke from the school.
Sirens began to wail in the distance, and Mickey soon returned with the signal to scatter back to their homes.