Garrett Cold and the
Liberty Keepers
Chapter Five – The
Wall
After witnessing a decade of atrocities
by the militia, being thrust into a fight on the militia side, while wearing
the uniform, seemed about as improbable as my discovering a doorway back to
Thebes hidden inside my shoe. Any doubts I held as to the intentions of the
dozens of emaciated, crippled, and wounded convicts surging toward us shattered
when they unleashed the first volley of broken concrete, rocks, and scrap metal
in the green-hued, late morning light.
Cassie,
the LT in charge of our band of our not-yet-brothers, shouted orders.
“Parvenu,
follow me. Cypher, I need smoke, lots of it. Chevy, shoot a few rounds over
their heads. Bastards need to know we’ve got serious firepower here.”
I’d
almost forgotten my militia alias, Edmund Parvenu, when Cassie grabbed the
front of my fatigue jacket, yelled at me to keep my head down, and dragged me
out of the street to the remnants of a wall separating a crumbling building
from the burned out lot next to it. I could hear the pop and hiss of smoke
bombs as Cypher lobbed them in front of the advancing wave of attackers.
Cassie
threw me to the ground, surprising me with her strength. When I started to peer
over the top of the structure, hearing the firecracker reports of Chevy’s
shots, she grabbed my collar and yanked me to the corner where the wall met the
building.
“I said
keep your head down. You want to lose it? Wait here,” she said, dashing back to
the others. Despite her strong injunction, I crept back toward the road and
cautiously peeked through a rift in the wall. The street was shrouded in a
thick, white haze fifteen meters beyond Cypher, who was now flanked by Chevy
and Cassie. A few more chunks of concrete
and a couple of sharpened pieces of scrap metal flew out of the smoke cloud,
which completely obstructed any view of the convicts. Chevy replied with two
more bursts high in the air. A punctuated series of whistles from the center of
the haze was followed by silence.
There
was no wind to speak of so the smoke from the grenades settled slowly. Cassie
was in a crouch twenty meters ahead of me, her automatic pistol gripped with
both hands. I held my breath as the smoke billows continued to rise. I wondered if Cassie had ever led troops into
a skirmish. The soles of her boots grating on sand and gravel as she sought
surer footing caused me to grit my teeth. Deep
breaths, everybody just keep on breathing. My palms were sweating and I
wiped them on my pants. My legs were trembling.
Cypher stood upright in the middle
of the street, his posture reckless, verbally taunting the attackers. Cassie
hissed at him to knock it off. He ignored her, shouting for the convicts to
keep coming. It’s the stims, I thought. He’s
out of control. He’d taken off his jacket and was wearing a sleeveless
white shirt. A wet ribbon of sweat ran down the center of his broad back. He
held something in each closed hand, though from this distance I couldn’t tell whether
they were smoke grenades or something more lethal.
Chevy had unpacked the monopod
built into the stock of his high caliber automatic rifle and stood behind it,
his eyes fixed on the narrow beam of the laser sight as it speared the
smokescreen. Sweat dripped down his forehead and he wiped it on a sleeve that
was already soaked.
Cassie
looked back over her shoulder in my direction. I gave a half-hearted wave and
she frowned before turning back to study the smoke. Seeing it linger she
gestured for me to come forward. I unsheathed the truncheon she’d given me and
in a crouch, ran to kneel beside her.
“What
now?” I whispered.
“I told you to keep your head
down.”
“Yeah, like you told Cypher to shut
up.” He continued to yell curses at the cloud.
She put a finger to her lips and pointed at
the smokescreen. I squinted, trying to see what she was looking at.
Chevy
had been sweeping the cloud with the laser, the beam like a red thread of
starlight disappearing into whiteness. The burnt chemical smell intermingled
with the odor of rot that always filled the north quarter, a stink as pervasive
as the green xenon lights perched atop tall steel poles every hundred meters or
so. Even in full daylight, the quarter seemed to sit beneath a dirty green dome,
the stench of decay exaggerating the affect. I watched Chevy, who swept the full
width of the street, starting at his eyelevel and working down to the ground
before reversing direction. Whenever the laser hit something solid, the thread
of light expanded, enveloping the shape of the interfering object. Nothing
seemed to be in the cloud except debris – rocks, pieces of metal, chunks of
concrete and earth.
I
turned to look behind us and Cassie, who must have eyes in the sides of her
head, put a hand on my shoulder. Without
moving her feet, she leaned in close so that her mouth was against my right
ear. “I need the map,” she said, her voice as faint as the sound of the smoke
wisps passing around us.
“What
m…” I started to say only to be interrupted by her hand covering my mouth. She
was sweating. “Don’t talk, don’t even
whisper. The map in your pocket.” My ear tingled from the touch of her mouth.
I
remembered. The map from Grampa’s pack. The map of the quarter. I gave it to
her and she quickly unfolded it, placing it on the street in front of her as
she traced a line with one finger. I tried to see what she was looking for but
the smoke had started to drift over us and she hurriedly folded the sheet and
handed it back to me. Cypher, who had occasionally glanced at our position, finally
stopped yelling and raised his hands. He held a pair of grenades, larger than
the smoke bombs he’d thrown previously. Cassie shook her head, pointed at
Cypher and Chevy and then back to the wall where she’d originally stashed me,
before resuming her crouch, her pistol pointed toward the silent haze.
Moving
with such fluidity that he seemed to flow with the smoke, Cypher eased over to
Chevy, returning the grenades, after some hesitation, to his pack, and pointed
toward the wall. After checking our position, the two soldiers ran in a crouch
without looking back. In a moment, I saw the laser sweeping the smoke-bound street. Cassie
tapped me and we both hustled back to join the others. The smoke was starting
to clear, mostly settling before dispersing in tiny curlicues that
disintegrated after a few seconds. Chevy continued his laser survey until we
could begin to see shapes through the smoke. Dark rectangles and amorphous
lumps, buildings and rubble, and a complete absence of any moving or living
thing. Every convict, it seemed, had disappeared.
“Gone
to ground. Yellow dogs,” Cypher said, kicking at crumbled bits of the damaged
rammed earth wall. His eyes moved constantly, from Cassie to the map in my hand
to Chevy and back to me. Our eyes met once. His gaze narrowed and at the same
time he opened his mouth and flashed his upper teeth in the beginning of a
snarl that never came. I quickly looked away, feeling a hard spot of anxiety
beneath my solar plexus.
“Map,”
Cassie ordered, speaking in a low voice. I still held it in my hand. She used
her foot to clear away some broken bits of wall, creating a clear space in the
dirt to spread it out. Chevy and Cypher looked over her shoulder as she put her
finger onto the third ring of Lust. “Here’s the shelter,” she pointed at a dark
rectangle. “There’s another here. We’re in between them.” There were only two
shelters on this street. The second lay beyond where the convicts had been when
we first saw them. “If the other units did their work, that one is useless too.
So, where did they go? Parvenu, you think like a convict. Take a look.”
I
squatted beside Cassie to study the map, feeling Cypher move in close behind me.
His knife was still in its sheath in his right boot.
“Hard to see with you hovering like
that Cypher.”
“Too bad,” he started to argue.
“Back off,” Cassie commanded. He
did, but only a step. A rivulet of sweat
ran down from my left temple and dripped on the paper, up near the ninth ring,
smearing the ink. The printing was Grampa’s. The map, hand drawn and incomplete,
nonetheless contained many details. I could see symbols for water spigots, loudspeakers,
and the xenon light poles. A rough outline of every building in the first five
rings with a tiny ‘X’ marking vacant
lots and burned out structures, along with trash dumps, alleyways, and even the
low walls separating the shallow spaces between the building fronts and the
street in each of the rings.
“Are
you saying they couldn’t have gone into the other shelter?” I asked.
“Rheynstadt
ordered every shelter in this quarter to be bombed,” Cassie said. “Ceiling
charges, enough to cause a complete collapse of the structures above.”
“But
why?”
“Anyone
left in this quarter is of almost no use to him. But he won’t kill them
outright, at least not yet. We weren’t told why. Just ordered to clear out the
shelters and blow them up.”
“Grampa,
I mean, Amos, claimed that everyone was moved to this quarter during SixKill.”
“That’s
true. But most are in the garrison now.”
“The
garrison?” A sudden thought arrested my attention. “Does this have anything to
do with Ella Cantor’s escape?”
She
looked at Cypher, expecting, it seemed to me, some reaction from him.
“Ella…Cantor?”
I
looked at Cypher too. His face had colored and his jaw muscles tensed.
“I saw
her escape. No sense pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said,
genuinely disgusted with being the last one to know anything.
Now
Cassie looked at me, her expression changing from one of surprise to the cold
stare of command. I was still holding my truncheon.
“Put
your weapon away, Private Parvenu.” I did as she ordered. “No, this has nothing
to do with Ella Cantor. And it’s best you refrain from mentioning her name
around militia.”
I felt
like arguing but even Chevy nodded in agreement with Cassie so I let it drop.
“Then
what? What’s Rheynstadt up to?” And what
is Ella Cantor’s role in this? The predictable routine on the planet ceased
with her escape. And the sLOD boss made sure I saw her before she got cleanly
away. Now, out of touch with him, I had no idea what I should be doing. In the
absence of communication my life had dissolved into chaos.
Cypher
moved off a couple of paces, peering around the low end of the wall at the
empty street beyond, one hand beating a fast pat-a-pat-a-pat on his hip.
Cassie
seemed impatient. “Look, I need you to figure out where a hundred crippled
convicts could have gone. Our only way out of this quarter is through Violence
and into Anger sector, a long haul on a good day. You’re the only one here who
thinks like they do.” She glanced over her shoulder at Cypher who was looking
intently down the avenue. She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Ella Cantor dropped
out of sight completely, so maybe there is a connection. But neither she nor
Rheynstadt are available for me to ask, and from what I know of both, they’d
probably kill me if I raised the issue.
That leaves me with you. So, where do you think that mob went to?”
“Why
would they go at all? It seemed odd, them leaving just because of a little
smoke and a few bullets.” I talked about the convicts but my thoughts were on
Cypher and his reaction to Ella Cantor’s name when I spoke it.
Chevy
cradled his rifle and I saw the corners of his mouth turn up at my question. He
was watching Cypher, but obviously had an ear to everything Cassie and I were
discussing.
She
rolled her eyes before speaking, “They attacked us because Rheynstadt left them
here to die. Every able-bodied convict is in the garrison by now. All running
water supplies have been diverted there. All the food lockers in Leaveton are
either empty or bombed out, all at Rheynstadt’s orders. That mob spent a
hundred hours packed into a shelter like shells in a magazine without any sort
of relief. And, as far as they can tell, there is no way out of this sector, ”
Her tone grew increasingly strident with each sentence and at the last she
stood up and kicked the map aside, grabbing me by my lapels and hoisting me to
my feet. “I asked you a fucking question, Private Parvenu, and you answered
with another. I’m not here to bandy words with a convict in a costume, do you
understand?”
I felt
flecks of spittle. Her hands were shaking but her eyes didn’t waver. They were
wide open, darker and with longer lashes than I’d noticed. She shook me.
“Answer
the question, Private!”
“Aside
from looking to k-kill whoever arranged things, I have no idea where they went.”
“Then
get down on your knees and look at the map. Amos made that map for a reason.
Look at it!” She had me by the neck and was forcing my body down. Cypher had
come back in close and Chevy had set his rifle down and was ready to jump in
between us.
I shook
Cassie off and picked up the map. It had torn when she kicked it and I took my
time flattening it out on the ground. My hands were shaking. I knew they could
all see it and I felt as vulnerable as ever around militia. Even if these were
supposed to be the good guys. It pissed me off.
I
studied the map again, tracing the alleys and avenues leading from the third
ring, looking for spaces large enough to hide a hundred convicts.
“Maybe
they just ducked into the buildings ahead,” I offered. “Waiting for us to move on.
You gave them plenty of cover to go anyplace they like.”
Cassie,
who was standing behind me, kicked me in the backside. I caught myself on my
hands and pushed back up to a squatting position. “That smoke saved all of
their asses. I gave them cover so we wouldn’t have to kill them in
self-defense.”
“Pity you did that,” Cypher said.
Cassie ignored thewisecrack and
grabbed my right shoulder, twisting my body to face her. “Did you hear the
whistles?” she said.
Cypher gave a low whistle followed
by a series of short chirps that disintegrated into clicks and clucks and
finally he just opened and shut his mouth so I could hear his teeth coming together
over and over. I could smell the sour stink of his sweat. He was definitely
using stims, lots of them. I wondered how long he’d been at it and what it would
be like when he ran out. I hoped he had enough to keep it together until we got
back to the garrison. If he started to lose control as Digit had during my
interrogation, it seemed like things might take a violent turn. I doubted that
all three of us were strong enough to handle him without using weapons if his
crash ended in psychosis.
I looked up and took a deep breath
before turning my attention back to the map. Thoughts kept intruding. It was
almost impossible to believe this was still the morning of the day after
SixKill. Thoughts of what Bundy might do to Grampa, and of Digit, I still
couldn’t lose the name I’d known him by for so long, shaking and barely able to
control his movements as the stims flooding his system weakened over time. I
looked at Cypher who gave another whistle and flashed his teeth at me again. Was
Cypher about to kill all of us or just me?
“Sure,
I heard whistling. What was it?”
Cassie whacked me on the shoulder.
“A special
code, used by miners on Freelife Four. It carries further than a voice and with
less possibility of being misunderstood.”
“Unlike
words,” Cypher said, a little too loudly.
Cassie
looked at him, a bit of her irritation with me seeming to transfer to the
jittery giant. His jaw muscles worked furiously. “And I’ve had enough words
from you, Cypher.” She turned back to me. “That whistle means get out of here. Probably
to meet at some pre-arranged safe zone or rendezvous. They use it in the event
of a cave-in in the mines on the asteroid.”
Freelife Four was Grampa’s base. The asteroid that
tumbled erratically throughout its orbit was a warren of natural tunnels, the
walls of which were lined with a dozen rare minerals and chemical compounds
found no place else in the system. Mining it was the most profitable and
dangerous work in all of Freelife. The profit was all for the sLOD’s, the
danger exclusively granted to convicts. I knew from other convicts there were
frequent cave-ins. Lots of deaths. But I’d never heard of this whistling code.
Something else to ask Grampa about, if I ever saw him again.
“But
this isn’t Freelife Four, and with the shelters gone where could they go?”
“That’s
what I need you to tell me, Private. Where would you go?” She had me by the
collar, lifting and swinging me so that I hit the wall hard, back first,
followed by my head which set off a terrific ringing in my ears. I was confused
and disoriented from both the lack of and excess of so many things: food,
water, rest, fighting, being hit, always the physical abuse. I tried to push
her away but she pressed against me, her forearm at my throat with Chevy and
Cypher close behind. The tips of our noses touched as her eyes darted back and
forth between mine.
“Quit wasting
time and show me where they went. Where you would go?” She pulled me around and
threw me hard on the ground next to the map. I felt a sharp pain in my left
knee and shin where I landed on a jagged bit of broken block. “Show me now!”
she said through clenched teeth. Had she taken stims too?
The
answer to where they went came to me like a nova exploding inside my head. I didn’t need the map anymore, never did
really. The fourth quarter had lots of hiding spots, but only one that might
work in this very special circumstance, one that despite its being here for
decades, the militia didn’t frequent. With
good reason, an inner voice warned.
“The Arena.”
“The
what? Remember, I’m new here. Show me,” Cassie said, kneeling beside me. Her
face was flushed and her hands clenched into fists against her thighs. I looked at the map, trying to remember the
exact location.
Chevy
gave a low whistle and shook his head. Cypher gave Chevy a look that I had
trouble reading, as if he were angry about something. Then he stared at me,
beads of sweat streaming down his forehead, his jaw muscles swelling with such strain
that I thought he’d crack a tooth.
I
looked at Violence sector, counted out to the sixth ring, one of those where
Grampa had sketched in just a few details.
“It isn’t here,” I said. I wondered
if Grampa had run out of time or if he’d not thought we’d need to know
everything about that space. The absence of the Arena was a significant
omission in either case. “It’s the largest
bordello in the quarter, maybe on the planet and Amos left it off the map.”
“Maybe he didn’t know about it,”
Chevy offered.
“Or maybe he didn’t want us to know
about it,” Cypher said, whatever was irritating him causing a tightness in his
voice that made him sound years younger than he looked.
“You
mean they went to a whorehouse?” Cassie asked.
“You
said the whistle meant go to a safety zone, right? Well, the safest place in
the quarter, especially if you’re not from the quarter, is the Arena.”
“What
makes it so safe?” Cypher spit a little as he talked and I looked from his
flushed face to that of Chevy and the LT.
“For
one thing, it’s a labyrinth. Only above ground access is on the north side.
Streets in that area are mostly impassable and to get to the entrance you have
to climb over a mountain of trash and rubble. If you don’t know what’s there,
you’d probably pass right by.” I pointed to the spot on the map where the
structure should be. “Only one floor above ground, and four below, but all
built choc-a-bloc over the last century.”
“Choc-a-bloc?”
Cassie was studying the map, tracing lines out toward the sixth ring from our
location. “What’s that mean?”
“It
means there was no real plan for it. It started as a dormitory for miners back
in the early days of the colony. When the mines on Seven were abandoned and the
quarter changed, they started adding to it. Nobody knows, or at least they
don’t say, whose idea it was, but the nastiest whores, both men and women, the
ones who were so crazy and submissive that literally anything goes with them,
began to lodge there. As demand for their services increased, more room was
needed. The miners all go at least once. Those with the stomach for it go
again.”
“Stomach
for what?” Cypher asked, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth. He was
losing it. I looked to Cassie but she was watching me, studying my face, probably
trying to figure out if I knew this from personal experience or was just making
something up to pacify her.
“There’s
a spectator level, a continuous loop that runs around the center of the
labyrinth, looks down to a sandy clearing at the very bottom. They have special
shows there.” I hesitated, not sure if I should say more.
“Convict
justice,” Chevy said. I looked at him, surprised that he knew. He shrugged and
looked disgusted. “How come you know so much about this place, Parvenu?”
“I went,
once. You can probably find out all you want from an old convict I know. Actually,
he’s not a convict at all. Senior Militia Intelligence man posing as one,
that’s who told me. Name is Akyron, Dominicus Akyron. Goes by Digit among the
cons. I guess he didn’t report the place to his superiors or you would have
known about it.” Cassied looked as if she didn’t believe me. I wondered myself
why Digit would keep something as defensible as the Arena to himself.
They
all looked at me now. Apparently Digit’s, or rather Major Akyron’s role wasn’t
yet common knowledge among the militia.
“Never
heard of either one,” Cypher said, clearing his throat and spitting over the
wall. I looked at him but his attention seemed to be on something in the burnt
out space beyond.
I
turned back to Cassie and continued, “Anyhow, the place just kept getting more
and more traffic. The sixth ring in that area is mostly deserted. Since the
action, the real action, is all underground, the militia, either through
ignorance or caution, have left it alone.”
She
still looked skeptical, as if the possibility of any part of what I’d said
being true could not fit into her world view. Still, she looked thoughtful,
studying the map before her next question.
“You said there’s only one above
ground entrance. But there are other ways in, is that right?”
I nodded, “It’s really best to go
in underground rather than risk getting killed climbing the rubble mountain in
front of the place. There are a handful of tunnels from the fifth and seventh
rings that lead inside. Whores ask for more space every year. A lot of what you
see torn down around us was to salvage materials to expand the Arena.”
“And
the randy convicts who patronize it are only too willing to lend a hand? Is
that it?” Chevy looked accusingly at me, as if the outrage he felt at the idea
of the Arena could be blamed on one convict, specifically me. “The whole idea
is sick. We ought to burn it, LT.”
“Chevy,
you’re a self-righteous prick,” Cypher said, laughing. “But, LT, if we’re going
to burn it, I’d like to sample the goods first. Shake the dust off my little
friend and get a hoochey massage.” He leered at me.
“I
doubt we’ll be welcome there,” I said.
“We
aren’t going,” Cassie said, looking at the map. “It’s not part of our mission.”
“Why
Cassandra, don’t you know, I’m Cypher. The ladies always welcome me.” He leered
at Cassie who held her finger steady at the egress of an alley near
Lust-Violence Road at the northeast corner of the fifth ring. Cypher tried
another tack, “How about just I go, you know, scout the place out for a future
incursion. LT? How about it?”
She
ignored him instead turning toward me. “So, you think the convicts might have
gone to the Arena, because …”
“You
asked where I’d go. That’s it. You can get lost, or lose a pursuer very easily
in the labyrinth. I’d be surprised if
there weren’t quite a few others in there too. You can survive a mild solar
storm in the lower to levels. And if there were any contraband food or water
stores, I’d look there first for such.”
She pursed
her lips as a slow frown emerged on her face. “I was going to say that if they
went there, so much the better for us. We can get out of the quarter without
ever meeting up with them again, if this map is right.”
“Why
can’t we just go out the way we came in?” Cypher asked; disappointment heavy
even in his stim-affected hyperactive voice.
“Listen
up, all of you. The way we come in is now closed.” She stared us down. Cypher
started to say something and she turned all of her attention on him and shook
her head. He shut up. “And if what our rookie says is true, then our mission
isn’t finished. And we,” she inhaled and let out the breath in a sigh. “We have
to go to the Arena.”
She
stood up and stretched. I watched as she closed her eyes, lacing her fingers
overhead. She was stout and strong, still, her breasts showed as two soft
globes beneath the heavy fabric of her uniform when she reached skyward. I
became conscious of the tingle I’d felt in my ear as we crouched in the street
and she whispered instructions to me. Chevy was watching me out of the corner
of his eye. His look was not one of approval. I looked back down at the map
when Cassie lowered her arms to massage her neck.
Cypher
was nearly dancing. “Now you’re thinking like a soldier, LT. What are your
orders? Do we go straight there? Want me to take point? I’ll do recon first if
you want.”
“What
do you mean by ‘closed’ LT?” Chevy asked.
“The
last squad out before ours was an ordinance detail. Every route but one leading
from this sector is now fresh turned earth packed full of APM’s.”
“What’s
an APM?” I asked.
Cypher
was holding his head in his hands, shaking it as if it hurt. Saying “fuck me”
over and over. Cassie went to stand beside him before answering. “Anti-personnel
mine. Nice little plastic package with a couple of pounds of thermal globules
in it. Touch the ground within a meter of the thing and you and everything in a
ten meter radius gets incinerated by it.”
I was
stunned. “Why?”
Cypher
was really affected now, though I couldn’t tell if it was the stims or
something related to this new bit of information. He was on his feet and
holding his head as he walked in a slow circle.
Cassie leaned wearily, her back against the wall, arms folded.. Chevy
had his eyes on me. I wasn’t moving, in fact, I was holding my breath, waiting
on the LT, but it was Cypher who broke the spell.
“Ass-fucking
whore! Rheynstadt. Everything about this mission is a clusterfuck. Do you hear
me, LT? When we get back I’m going to kill him with my bare hands. I don’t care
what happens to me. I’m not letting him do this. Not again.” He was losing it
and it could no longer be ignored.
“Cypher,”
Cassie moved suddenly to grab the big man by the shoulders. “Get it together.
Whatever it takes, get it together.” She let him go and he paced away, hands on
the sides of his head and making small grunting noises in the back of his
throat, shaking his head from side to side as if arguing with some inner voice.
After a moment he crossed to and opened his pack. Turning his back to us he
took something out and put it in his mouth.
Cassie turned back to face me, a
question on her face. “If you’re right, Parvenu, and there are food and water stores
in the Arena, we have to go there. Any chance you’re wrong? ”
I
looked at her and shrugged.
“Always a chance of that,” Chevy
said. He was repacking the brace for his rifle. Cypher had sat down on the wall
and was taking deep breaths, waiting on the Stims to kick in again. I didn’t
want to be anywhere near him when he ran out.
“If
there are convicts in there who haven’t been screened, and we’re the last ones
home, Rheynstadt will hold us accountable,” Cassie said after a moment, nodding
her head as she made her decision.
“Screened?”
I asked.
“Orders
were to take every able-bodied convict to the garrison,” she said.
“We’re
the cleanup crew, here to pick up stragglers,” Chevy said, shaking his head. “I
can’t believe we volunteered for this detail.”
“Why did you?” I wondered aloud.
“According to the LT here, it was
the only way to be waiting in that shelter for you and to have a chance at
getting you out of the convict population.” He picked up his rifle and opened
the action. Cypher seemed to be watching him closely. “Took some real fast
talking on Cassandra’s part to make it happen since the word came so late. I
hope to hell you’re worth it.” He closed the chamber and shouldered the rifle,
deliberately flashing the laser across my face for an instant as he swung the
sight across the buildings on the opposite side of the road.
“I’ve
got no idea what I’m worth to anyone, or why I’d be worth anything,” was all I
could say.
“All
right, enough,” Cassie said. She had
picked up the map and was leaning against the wall holding it with both hands.
Motioning us closer she began to explain her plan. “We’ll take this alley…” She
was interrupted by an animal-like roar, right before she screamed.
The
wall we crouched behind was made of rammed earth. At some point in its past it
had been nearly three meters high, but over the years accident and neglect had
reduced it to a jagged simulacrum on a much smaller scale of the Eastern
mountains above the Anglehorn. The highest remaining section, where Cassie was,
stood a little less than two meters tall and dropped down to knee-height nearest
the street. The thickness was uniform, about a quarter-of-a-meter.
Cassie
was in mid-sentence when that terrible
roar sounded from the other side of the wall and a piece of rebar, sharpened to
a brilliant, deadly point exploded through its center, piercing high up on her
leg, just below the curve of her left buttocks. The spear missed the bone,
tearing all the way through her flesh as she screamed, dropping the map and
grabbing at the steel.
In the
instant I heard the roar, I felt a sudden surge in my whole body, the same
sensation as when I’d been kicked off the Anglehorn, only this didn’t have a
point of origin, it was just an outward thrust from deep inside as if every
cell had suddenly expanded to five times its size and grown a rocklike shell. I
leapt over the wall, not so much thinking as reacting. On the other side, a thick-bodied,
red-haired convict, whole but for an eye patch and terrible burn scars down the
left side of his naked body, was bent low, withdrawing the spear through the
wall. I landed on his shoulders, grabbing him under the chin and jerking
backwards with more force than I’d imagined I could ever muster.
His
whole body seemed to lift in a spasm as his neck snapped and his eyes, still
alive, looked right at me before I felt the last bit of resistance from his
cervical column give way and he fell backwards, dumping me off and ending up
lying spread eagled, on his back, his neck double the length it should be and
his face at one hundred eighty degrees to his feet.
As I scrambled upright I heard
sounds of a struggle and a muffled cry from the other side of the wall. Cassie
screamed again as I vaulted back over in time to see Cypher, holding Chevy in a
headlock, thrust his dagger up ender the rifleman’s rib cage and tear it out,
taking most of Chevy’s heart and parts
of his lungs with it.
I
pulled my truncheon free of its sheath as he dropped the body and came toward
me, red-faced and with a horrible grin. “Ready to dance, little playmate? Want
to play with Cypher, do you, convict?”
He
didn’t even feint, just came at me almost at a run, the dagger close to his
body, ready for a rising thrust as soon as he got close enough. I threw the
truncheon at his ankles and he stumbled once before falling toward me. I jumped
back and he fell hard on the dirt and rubble, throwing his arms out to try and
catch himself.
Cassie
was bleeding heavily from her leg wound, which she held with both hands. She
was screaming at Cypher, mostly unintelligibly. I stamped on the hand that held
the dagger but his latest does of stims had boosted his strength so that he
pulled his hand out and took a slashing cut at my leg that caught me just below
the knee. I felt the knife scrape the front of the bone and tear at the long
nerve running down the front of my leg. I dropped onto my backside, grabbing at
the knee and biting my lip. I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of
hearing me scream, only I landed on my right hip, the useless pistol in its
holster bruising the bone so that the two agonies came out in one cursing yell.
If only Cassie had trusted me with a loaded pistol. Choking back a second cry I
scrambled to my feet and backed away.
Cypher was up too, looking around and winking when he
saw Cassie. “You next, LT, okay?” And then he came at me again, this time
taking a wide swipe with the blade that barely missed ripping me open across my
abdomen as I jumped backwards. He didn’t even pause, just kept coming, forcing
me into the street. I kept retreating, but whatever unnamed force had given me
the strength to kill Cassie’s assailant had left me trembling, nauseous, and weak;
I knew Cypher would see that eventually. When he did, he’d stop his methodical
march and charge me again. I didn’t have a truncheon to throw this time.
He whooped
like a wild man, jumping and slashing until all at once he leapt forward toward
me, bringing the dagger down from overhead. To my amazement, the nausea
disappeared and the same sensation of swelling and propulsion filled me. Bracing
on my back leg, I stepped toward him, lifting and crossing my arms above the
wrists, palms facing inward, sot that I caught the descending blow, closed my
hands around Cypher’s forearm and pulled down with all my strength, twisting to
the right and lifting my back knee. It caught Cypher in the rib cage, I felt
and heard bones crack, and rolled my hips around to take him off of his feet. He
landed hard, face forward, his arm twisted so the elbow locked vertically in
front of me. I fell against the arm and felt his shoulder joint pop, saw the
dagger fall, and heard the scream ripped from his throat. It was cut off by my
knee hitting his broken ribs for the second time as I dropped onto him in with
as much force as I could muster.
He
began to kick and buck, every movement bringing another agonized cry from him.
Stims might boost strength and quickness, but they don’t do a thing to stop
pain. Cypher’s body had become his worst enemy now. The stims brought on the
aggression but the more he fought the more damage he did to his shoulder. I
rolled away, dragging myself to my feet and staggered over to pick up the
dagger, leaving a trail of blood from my wounded leg while Cypher tried to hold
his useless arm and get off the ground. He made it to a crouch and I braced
myself for another round.
“Don’t
do it, Cypher,” I heard Cassie’s voice, faint behind me and turned to see her
lying on her side beyond the end of the wall, holding her pistol pointed
directly at Cypher. “Stay down or I will shoot you. Parvenu, there are
restraints in Chevy’s pack.”
I
looked down at my leg, where he’d cut me. It hurt like hell but to my surprise
the bleeding was already slowing. I was sure the knife had hit bone and when I
looked, tearing the leg of my fatigues open, I could see the white beyond the
puckering skin. I must have had a curious look on my face because Cassie called
my name again, asking if I were able to walk. As I looked, the blood stopped
flowing and the cut began to close on its own. I’ve always healed quickly but
this was something else, something almost supernatural in its speed and
effectiveness. I tore a strip from the
torn pant leg and tied it around the wound.
“I’m
fine, you said Chevy’s bag?”
She
nodded, pale with hints of purple and gray in her face. She’d lost a lot of
blood, was still bleeding heavily, but held her weapon steady. Cypher’s eyes
moved from her to me. If he found the strength to come at either one of us, the
delay in dealing with it might cost her life. I no sooner had that thought when
I saw Cassie lapse into unconsciousness. Her tense posture sagged and the
pistol barrel dipped toward the street as her head lolled to the side. Cypher
made his move, leaping toward Cassie’s inert body.
This
time, when the surge came, I was more aware of it. It emanated from my spinal
column, but moved rapidly to the tips of every limb. And there was a language
of sorts to accompany it, at least I felt like something or someone was
speaking to me, but from the lower regions of my mind. Not words, but instructions
that moved me to do things I’d never consciously attempted before.
I was
holding Cypher’s dagger by the hilt, but when the surge hit I felt my grip
change as my right arm drew back, extending almost straight out behind me, the
dagger in my right hand reaching back too. When the arm whipped forward I saw
the flight of the heavy dagger an instant before it took place, as if time had opened
in my mind, to show me the reality being created by my actions.
“Follow
through,” Grampa had told me over and over when it came to striking a blow,
swinging the hammer against the anvil. “Let the tool do the work.” As I released the knife I followed through,
my hand and arm free of their cargo swinging upwards while the deadly steel
flew true, striking Cypher in the neck just below the left jaw hinge point as
he crossed the flight path. The force of the blow knocked him off his feet and
the blood filling his throat choked off his last roar of rage. He flopped like
a dying fish as his face turning red, then white, then blue-gray while a dark
pool of crimson flowed onto the uneven ground, seeping through cracks in the
world to herald Cypher’s arrival in the house of the dead. His eyes remained
open, gazing at eternity.
I knelt over Cassie, who was pale
and still, and felt for a pulse on her neck. Faint and fluttering, like a tiny
moth caught beneath her skin, I found the tiniest indication that she was alive.
I dumped Cypher’s pack, which was against the wall – a reckless move
considering the ordinance he was carrying – and found a small med-kit. Pouring
clotting agent into her leg wounds and wrapping them with strips torn from my
shredded pant leg was all I could do before the increasing nausea and weakness
overtook me and I had to sit down. I knew Cassie was in deep shock and probably
would die before help came, but I felt something special for her that I was able
to articulate. She’d given me a chance, allowed me to wear a uniform and to
prove that I could be useful in a fight. At least no one else would die by
Cypher’s hand. Had I said something like that before? A strong wind arose from
the southwest, in the direction of the garrison, and the dust that battered my
exposed face and limbs also carried away the warm, coppery scent of death.
Placing myself between Cypher’s corpse and Cassie’s still living body, I curled
protectively around her as my vision narrowed and my consciousness once again
fled.
Whether I lived or died, I’d given
service to a comrade in need. That counted for something. It was bullshit, but
it was comforting for that moment. Cypher, Cassie, and Chevy would all be found
dead. I thought I was dying too. Tiny was dead. Grampa was probably dead. Digit
and Rheynstadt and that prick Bundy would win whatever prize they sought. The
image of Ella Cantor’s braid filled my mind an instant before the darkness
closed around it.
