Malefactor

by Robert Repino

  He followed the scent to the rear of the engine room and into the first passenger car. His foot squished in a patch of blood on the carpet, now cold and beginning to stick. From there, the red streak in the aisle showed where the wolves dragged their human friend out of danger. Claw marks tore open the seats, and the foam stuffing spilled out like organs. To his right, the female wolf with the patchy fur lay on her side, bleeding out from multiple wounds. An omega if he ever saw one. Her rib cage rose and fell, and a tear bubbled in her eye. She lacked the energy to blink it away. In the darkness of her pupil, that tiny black spot, Mort(e) recognized the permanent gaze into the unknown. She had stepped outside of time, like he had. Anyone who dipped a toe in that whirlpool found themselves carried off in it, circling again and again past the same set of events before finally going under.

  She wheezed. He wanted to give her water, but he had none. Her thirst became his. And surely she could taste the salt building in his mouth, adding to her misery.

  “The human,” she said, her voice struggling. “The human was right.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I see it,” she said. “Like . . . Augur did. I see the wolf queen. And her prince. And . . . peace.”

  The train wobbled. The wolf groaned as her weight shifted. Mort(e) reached out and held her hand. The saltwater in his mouth drained away for a few seconds, replaced with the scent of a fertile deer running for her life. Like a ripe fruit hopping through the forest. Another chance to live for this tired, broken wolf and her pack, now long gone.

  “I see you,” she said. “In the . . . tomorrow.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You will be reborn.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those.”

  “No.” She struggled. “You happy again. In the time you have left. Like me.”

  Mort(e) could not say that he was happy. Then again, how would he know?

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She acknowledged him with a blink. Her chest sank with one great exhale, and then did not rise again. Her hand slipped from his and rested on the floor.

  Mort(e)’s ear twitched at a sound coming from his left. He turned to see the Sarcops looming over him, her tentacles slithering along the seats. Cracks had formed in her scales. She needed to get to the water.

  A tentacle reached out and landed on his shoulder, then brushed his whiskers against his cheek. She spoke to him in her language. “Cross into the cold water,” she said. The Sarcops had no words for thank you. But this was something better. It meant good fortune. For them, the frigid depths signaled food, life, safety, family. A chance to live.

  Outside, the trees cleared away. A wide, blue expanse filled the windows as the train crossed a bridge. The Sarcops’ gills flared out like a pair of hands opening. She turned and headed for the rear exit, her tentacles trailing behind her.

  “Wait,” Mort(e) said in their language. “I want to go with you.”

  The Sarcops ignored him. She stepped outside into the howling wind and straddled the gap between the two cars. A forty-foot drop would get her to the river.

  “I want to go with you,” he repeated.

  The Sarcops turned to face him. “You are not a fish,” she clicked.

  Mort(e) tried to think of a snappy comeback.

  “Stay,” she said. “Be at peace.”

  Mort(e) lowered his gaze to the floor. “Peace,” he said in English. “I’m not sure if I—”

  She was gone. He ran to the doorway in time to see her splash into the river. The bridge ended, and the forest blocked the view, swallowing everything again.

  He leaned on the doorframe for a while.

  As the sun climbed over the trees, Mort(e) noticed a terrible stench. Not even the wind could disperse it. An unnatural decay, mingling human-made chemicals with decomposing plants. The trees thinned out to a random few, stunted and sickly. Shiny puddles dotted the ashen earth. This was the dead zone, the Damnable, the place that turned the wolves mad. A fitting place to die.

  Mort(e) made his way to the flatbed car. As the last surviving member of this rolling sarcophagus, he made sure to reverently step over and around the fallen warriors clogging the aisle. He looked away from the ones who fell faceup. In death, lips would curl, gazes would wander. A tongue could pop out. No one should see them like that, no matter which side in this war they chose.

  At the shattered passenger car, which had been reduced to a platform with a jagged wall, Mort(e) found an empty seat facing the rear. He sat and stared at the flatbed, where the trash truck swayed. The bomb inside would cause no damage out here. No way to kill what was already dead.

  He leaned into the headrest and watched the sky. A convertible train, he thought. For all their ingenuity, how come the humans had never come up with that? D’Arc would have laughed at the idea, right before scolding him for asking something so ridiculous.

  “Old Man,” she’d say, dragging it out.

  He heard her voice next to him, the breath tickling his ear.

  Old Man.

  Old Man.

  Sebastian.

  PART V

  REVELATION

  Chapter 27

  An Early Spring

  They put a muzzle on her, a device that Hosanna had supposedly outlawed in the name of peace and tolerance. Someone—most certainly a human—had made it from the hide of some poor soul, another violation of the law. The sharp edges cut into D’Arc’s snout. The humans forgot many things from the days before the Change, but keeping dogs in their place never went away.

  Two days had passed since Tranquility arrested D’Arc and Falkirk. After the train left, the soldiers did not believe her when she revealed her identity. She demanded that they contact Grissom, the former chief’s assistant. The humans claimed that no such person existed.

  It did not take long for them to recognize Falkirk. Before the Vesuvius disappeared over the Atlantic, it sent a warning to Hosanna about its captain going rogue. They took him away for questioning. It was the first time that D’Arc saw true fear in his blue eyes. His ears drooped. But he held himself together. “Don’t worry,” he told her with a trembling voice as they marched him away.

  They used an empty trailer as a holding cell while they decided what to do with her. To keep her still, they tied a rope around her neck, and then connected it to her wrists and ankles, forcing her to sit with her head between her knees. With the doors closed, the light penetrated through the tiny gap in between, a single bright line from floor to ceiling. The inside smelled like fresh bread at first. By the end of the first day, when they fitted her for a muzzle, the scent had congealed at the top of her throat, like wet mud. The only relief came in the morning and at night, when a soldier opened the door and slid a tureen of bean soup toward her. After she finished, they would lead her by a rope to the side of the trailer, where she would relieve herself. It was then, while acting very much like a pet on a leash, that the hopelessness of it all crashed around her. Her son was gone, carried off to the same fate as all the others. As the rahvek wore off, a numbness trickled into her mind, draining into her muscles and bones, leaving her awake but trapped in a dream.

  On the afternoon of the second day, the engine started. Inside the trailer, the noise sounded like a lion roaring. Officers shouted orders nearby. More engines switched on. She heard a heavy vehicle rumbling beside the truck, spewing a greasy exhaust that seeped through the gap in the door. After two days of waiting, something was finally happening.

  The doors opened. The sunlight blinded her. Two men shoved Falkirk into the trailer and shut him inside. He wore a muzzle meant for a much smaller dog. The leather dug into his skin. His left nostril struggled to open as he breathed. With his hands and ankles bound, he fell onto his side. She wriggled over to him. With or without the muzzles, there was no need to speak. She held his cold hands, exhaling on them to make them w
arm again. After a while, his tail wagged, albeit with caution. He must have known. He must have figured out that she had ordered him to chase that train despite seeing him die in so many different versions of the future. Maybe they would talk about it someday. But as he lay here, the father of her last living child, she realized that she needed to keep this to herself. No, they would never speak of it. This secret, like so many others that made up a person’s life, would lurk in the background. It would occasionally skim the surface before sinking once more. She would have to live with that.

  The trailer began to move. D’Arc held herself in place while the vehicle did a U-turn and then exited onto a highway. More vehicles rode beside it, forming a convoy.

  With the truck’s tires purring underneath them, D’Arc cradled Falkirk’s head on her lap, stroking the hair between his ears. She hummed the song of the beavers. After the first verse, he recognized it, and hummed along with her.

  At least two hours passed before the convoy left the highway, moving single file through what must have been a narrow street. The asphalt ended at a lumpy dirt road, which rocked the trailer so much that D’Arc became nauseous. Finally, the vehicle stopped. The two dogs waited while the humans ran about barking orders, moving equipment. Troops marched in formation alongside the trailer.

  Someone fiddled with the lock. Falkirk sat straight. The doors opened to a row of soldiers, all wearing gas masks with large glass goggles, like an insect’s eyes. They pointed rifles at the two prisoners. One of them approached the rear bumper of the trailer. He outranked the others, judging from the chevron on his shoulder and the handgun on his belt. He motioned for D’Arc to get closer, and she scooted toward him. With a gloved hand, he plucked the St. Jude medal from her chest. The chain dug into her neck as he scrutinized the engraving.

  As he let go, she at last recognized this human. The nametape on his chest read Jackson—Carl Jackson, a field officer for Tranquility. He commanded the city’s patrol units. The last time she saw him, he’d sported a goatee, with thick locs tied in a bun that dangled over his shoulders. He had since shaved his head and face, leaving his chin and scalp perfectly smooth.

  “So,” he said, his voice muffled. “One of you fell out of the sky. The other washed in with the tide. Is that right?”

  He must have known that they couldn’t answer.

  “It’s them,” Jackson told the others. “That necklace used to belong to the Chief. She gave it to this dog.”

  The soldier beside him seemed genuinely disappointed to hear this.

  “Now get those goddamn muzzles off them,” Jackson said. One of his underlings handed him a pair of breathing filters. Jackson tossed them onto the deck of the trailer.

  “We brought you here because you might be able to tell us what the hell is going on,” he said.

  The soldiers hurried to untie the two prisoners. When the muzzle came off, D’Arc opened and closed her mouth to regain feeling. She felt it when Falkirk pulled the contraption free, dropped it to the floor, and kicked it away. The straps left behind an imprint. She pushed past the soldiers and rubbed his face. He winced at first, but then lifted his tail to show that he was okay.

  The humans led them outside onto a crumbling two-lane highway, where a row of troop transports and other vehicles were parked along the shoulder. The road cut through a barren, open space, an expanse of dirt the color of ash. The wind carried a lifeless scent, almost like wet concrete. A smattering of dead trees remained standing amid the wasteland that had once been a meadow. Others had collapsed, their trunks petrified, their roots clawing their way out of the broken earth. The wolves at the Mudfoot camp had warned her about this accursed place. Nothing would grow here. The poison in the water had killed off the children and the elderly. The grass had turned brown, then crumbled and blew away in the breeze. It was a forgotten country that gave birth to another war.

  D’Arc and Falkirk followed the soldiers toward a defensive perimeter consisting of ditches and sandbag forts. More troops arrived to dig trenches and mount machine guns behind the barricades. In the middle, a green tent with a table inside served as a command post. For the first time since her arrest, D’Arc saw nonhumans among the soldiers, including a few dogs who passed sandbags to one another in a line. She wondered what they had to do to prove their loyalty.

  The landscape elevated slightly. Near the top of the slope, the train tracks emerged from another clutch of dead trees before veering away over the hill. Here, the train had dislodged from the rails, moving too fast for the curve. It plowed through the earth, leaving a deep scar in the clay before coming to rest in a twisted heap.

  D’Arc stopped when she saw it.

  “Come on,” Jackson said, waving her toward the tent.

  She turned to Falkirk. The husky’s jaw dropped.

  The train cars were piled onto one another at odd angles. Bird patrols circled above, taking photos and scanning the area. Strangely, impossibly, a new forest had sprouted from the debris. Healthy trees, bustling with shiny green leaves, burst violently through the wreckage. The shattered train cars resembled hatched eggs, with the trees as their offspring. The explosion had scattered the rahvek throughout the soil, creating an oasis amid the wasteland.

  And it was growing. D’Arc could feel the vibrations through the earth. Roots expanded underground, forming a spiderweb of cracks in a slow-moving tremor. A new ecosystem had grown within a matter of hours. The Colony held so much power. While the Mudfoot saw this power as a weapon and nothing more, a crazy cat with a death wish was able put it to better use.

  “Old Man,” she said.

  Using stakes and yellow police tape, the soldiers marked off a trail from the perimeter to the crash site. Four people in bright white hazmat suits returned from the wreckage, walking single file, each carrying metal briefcases. One of them had a tail which bulged against the artificial fabric. As the group approached, the soldiers cleared out of the way.

  “Collecting samples,” Jackson said.

  The four scientists disappeared into another trailer, some kind of mobile laboratory.

  In the command tent, a private handed Jackson a piece of paper with an aerial photo of the crash site. He slapped it on the table beside another image taken an hour earlier.

  “Come look at this,” he said, waving them over. The image revealed the desolate landscape, with the train tracks to the north, the riverbank to the south. In the middle, the day-old forest bloomed like a desert flower.

  “The device exploded first,” Jackson explained. “About a mile from here. The train carried the chemical. Dusted the ground. Then it slipped the rails and landed here.”

  Falkirk leaned in closer, his finger tracing the outline of the new vegetation. “Is it . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “It’s getting bigger.”

  He handed Falkirk a pair of binoculars.

  “I’m told you took a really big risk to get on that train,” Jackson said. “You’re gonna tell me why.”

  D’Arc didn’t know where to start.

  “I’m asking you because Tranquility won’t tell me,” Jackson said.

  Falkirk tried to take a stab at it. “It was a weapons program,” he said. “I don’t think it even had a name.” He explained that the Toqwa got their hands on it, used it to disrupt the peace talks and divide the wolf packs.

  “But what is it?” Jackson said. “What are we dealing with here?”

  “It’s a chemical passed down from the Queen,” Falkirk said.

  “Is it viral? Is it airborne?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” D’Arc said.

  Jackson squinted at her. His human underlings backed away as if she carried some contagion.

  “What we’re dealing with,” she said, “is the Queen’s way of making sure the war keeps going forever. She leaves her mark on us. It warps time and space. Draws people in until they start fig
hting over something that will only get them killed.”

  “You’re saying she’s, like, a ghost?” Jackson said. “She’s haunting us from beyond the grave?”

  He was close. But he wasn’t quite right.

  “She’s a god,” D’Arc said.

  “So we’re doomed to repeat things,” Jackson said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  She remembered what the Old Man told her about his encounter with the Sarcops.

  “We can say no to her,” D’Arc said. “We could always do that.”

  Jackson folded his arms as he pondered this. The bug-eyed goggles reflected the overcast light.

  One of the bird patrols overhead squawked a few times. Jackson yanked the binoculars out of Falkirk’s hands and stepped out of the tent. He tracked the birds’ movement, then scanned the field beyond the wreckage.

  “Sir!” someone shouted.

  “I see it,” Jackson said, sounding exhausted.

  A row of dark forms appeared at the top of the hill. Marauders—both human and canine—poured over the ridge. In only a few seconds, they surrounded the wreckage, all while barking and howling. D’Arc had heard this pitch before. They taunted the soldiers, hopping about to give the illusion that they had no fear. While most of them walked on all fours, those who stood straight brandished their weapons, their full war paint, and their jewelry made of teeth and bones.

  A cat in a machine gun nest turned to Jackson, desperate for the order to fire. His sharp ears poked over the top of his ill-fitting gas mask. But then his slit eyes fixated on something coming from the west, from behind them.

  The bird patrols honked out a warning before darting off in the same direction, their feathers dropping like snowflakes.

  Jackson lowered the binoculars.

  “D’Arc,” Falkirk said. “Are you all right?”

  Her hands had balled themselves into fists. She couldn’t breathe. The mask felt like a hand clamping her face, squeezing tighter and tighter until she tore it off and spiked it on the ground.