by Tom Abrahams
A large sailing vessel floated off the port side of the bow. It looked old and worn, but seaworthy. It was anchored several hundred meters off the black sand shore of an oblong island that elevated quickly from the coast to a pair of steep mountains.
Neither of the peaks was extraordinarily high, but the short distance between the breaking surf and the summits made them appear larger than they likely were. One of them was formed like so many of the mountains through which Zeke had sped his Superbird when running illicit goods in his previous life. The other was malformed. It looked as if a large chunk was missing. Both sloped to dense green forests before giving way to what looked like rocks and then black sand.
Lucius pointed at the ship, eyes wide with fear. “That’s it. That’s the Saladin.”
Phil checked him over his shoulder. “Are you sure?”
Lucius took a deep breath. His body shuddered as he exhaled. “Yes. I’m sure. That is the ship. This is the place.”
“How are you sure?”
“That ship is where Desmond Branch took me. It’s where I…died.”
The color drained from Lucius’s face. His glassy eyes replayed the final moments of his previous life in an all-too-familiar way. A tear dropped from his right eye and rolled down his gaunt cheek. Lucius made no effort to wipe it away.
Zeke knew what the man felt. The gut tightening. The acidic taste of bile in the back of the throat. He’d suffered the same reaction to seeing the place where he’d left his mortal life.
The image of his decaying body hanging on the front of his city’s government building haunted him. It was a constant reminder of his past sins, his failures.
Uriel clapped her hands together, startling everyone, then slapped Phil on the back.
“All right then,” she said. “Let’s go board the sucker and see what’s what.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Li was in the passenger’s seat of Zeke’s Superbird. The vibration of the engine rumbled around her. She felt its raw power in her bones. Zeke was behind the wheel; both hands steered them along a street. He drifted the car around a corner before his feet punched the accelerator to reestablish the lightning speed of the muscle car.
She relished his intensity, his focus, his sense of purpose. Despite the danger pursuing them, she felt safe. There was nowhere she’d rather be than at his side.
The Superbird, its red paint reflecting an orange full moon, weaved from street to street. Its shocks absorbed the uneven pavement. Its tires squealed around corners. Its gauges registered the changing speed, the heat of its engine.
Burning rubber stung her nostrils. She tasted it on her tongue.
In her side-view mirror, she saw the red of his taillights illuminating the places they’d dusted. It was angled for Zeke’s benefit though, and she couldn’t see those giving chase.
Her heart beat hard in her chest, pulse thick in her neck and at her temples. Breaths came in shallow bursts as if she’d sprinted a long distance.
This was good enough.
From the dim light that glowed on the instrument panel in front of Zeke, she saw the beginnings of perspiration beading across his forehead. He rubbed his hands along the steering wheel. His eyes danced from the road ahead to his side view to hers to the rearview and back to the road. When he maneuvered the car sharply, his face contorted, as if he could feel the change in course.
She reached over and put her hand on his thigh. “Are we going to make it?”
He shot her a glance. The tension on his face eased long enough for him to offer a comforting smile.
“Of course,” he boasted. “I’m Zeke Watson.”
He didn’t know what she did. That the pursuit was a ruse. That she’d told her handlers within the government’s Tactical Marine Force to let him outrun them.
Li also didn’t tell him she’d revealed the timing, location, and proposed route of the smuggling operation. That was how the clandestine operation was sniffed out at its inception, as Zeke loaded the last case of water into the back of his Superbird.
Zeke didn’t know she was a government spy. He didn’t know their relationship began as a sham.
Zeke slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel to put the car into a wide drift. He swung the wheel in the opposite direction, his magic hands working the car into its new course.
“There are three of them,” he said. His expression was hard again. The smile forgotten.
Li moved her hand from his leg and slid her thumbs under the fabric harness that held her against her worn bucket seat.
The Superbird wasn’t much to look at, despite its telltale spoiler, but its engine ran like a government clock. When Zeke wasn’t smuggling black-market goods, or snuggling with her in their shared apartment, he was working on the car. It was his lifeblood, his bread and butter—the one thing in the world he cared about other than Li.
She thought about that as he sped up hard enough to push her flat against her seat. Guilt washed through her, supplanting the adrenaline.
The strong desire to tell him the truth swelled in her chest. It tingled at the tip of her tongue. This water run was a chance for the government’s military to learn the location of a black-market supplier, to understand the routes bootleggers used to smuggle their goods, and to identify key players who worked for the primary black-market consortium, the Aquatic Purveyors.
But she didn’t tell him. Not then. Not ever.
Behind them, engines revved. The percussive blasts of the Marines’ M27 Automatic Infantry Rifles drummed through the air.
Zeke shot her a look. His eyes were wide. The glow from the dash illuminated the whites surrounding his dilated pupils.
“That’s gunfire!” he yelled. “They’re shooting at us!”
She wanted to tell him the shots were for show. She didn’t.
“Get down, Li,” he said. “Get down.”
“I’m strapped in,” she protested.
He swung the wheel to one side, and the car’s momentum shifted. Inertia pulled her against the door. “Undo it. Get to the floor.”
She did as instructed. With the harness unbuckled, she climbed out of it and slid to the space between her seat and the dash. It was uncomfortable and hot. She felt the road vibrating beneath them, the kicks of rocks and debris against the Superbird’s undercarriage.
Another quick move jostled her, and she banged her elbow against something hard. Her head rattled. Her teeth chattered. Li tried bracing herself with her hands. It didn’t work.
Zeke slammed on the brakes, which shoved her against the underside of the dash. She banged the back of her head and, for an instant, saw specks of white light dancing in her vision.
Another acceleration pushed her forward. The Superbird rattled like it was ready to come apart.
Zeke shook his head. “We can’t go to the original destination,” he said. “Not now. We’ll have to resort to plan B.”
Plan B? She hadn’t known about a plan B. Panic shot through her system like a bolt of lightning. What had she done?
“Hang on,” he said. “I’m going off-road.”
There was another burst of speed, and then, for the shortest of moments, Li’s body felt almost weightless. Beneath her, the wheels spun across the cracked earth.
They were beyond the gates of the city now, in the vast stretch of nothingness called the Badlands.
The air was different out here. Drier, with the distinct scent of desperation and hopelessness. The only people who ever spent a long time in the desert wasteland were the nomadic homeless called Badlanders. Otherwise, it was just bootleggers and the Tactical Marine Force moving from settlement to settlement.
Li squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Her vision improved. She leaned forward on the seat and twisted her body to better see Zeke.
“Zeke,” she said, “where are we going? What’s plan B?”
He checked his rearview then glanced down at her. “You know the petrified forest?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a tunnel there,” he said. “It’ll take us back around into the city. We can lose them there.”
The soft glow of the moon lit the side of Zeke’s face as he turned slightly. The grind of sand against the sides of the car grew louder. The suspension bounced with the ruts and grooves worn into the dead earth.
“They stopped shooting?” Li said, almost like a question.
Tension sharpened Zeke’s features. “For now.”
Without asking his approval, she climbed from the well and onto the seat. Using the harness to pull herself up, she peered over the hood of the muscle car.
The headlights illuminated a broad fan of bluish, white light. It made the desert floor look pale. The golden brown, monotone badlands was washed to a bone color. She imagined this might be what it was like driving across the surface of the moon, which now hovered straight in front of them.
Zeke cursed. He punched the accelerator. Her stomach tightened and it brought her attention back to Earth.
She shifted in her seat and looked out Zeke’s window and saw a TMF transport. The black, angular vehicle edged even with them. Sand and dirt kicked from its large tires in a spray that peppered the Superbird. She sensed something behind her and turned to peer through her own window. An identical transport ran alongside them. Its menacing shape bounded across the dry badlands. She stared at the darkened windows on the driver’s side, but saw nothing beyond the tint. It was as if the beast were autonomous.
If this was all a show, as her bosses had assured her, the Marines were first-rate actors. She’d have thought they long ago would have stopped their pursuit.
Zeke’s grip on the wheel tightened. His focus narrowed. He dipped a shoulder as he swung the wheel to the right then back to the left.
They were entering the petrified forest, and Zeke worked hard to avoid the stonelike stumps and arcing branches, which were at first sparse and widely spaced but became more densely packed as they drove deeper into it.
He slalomed the Superbird expertly. They wove around and between obstacles with little trouble. Ahead, she saw the thickening of debris. Li quickly reached up and slid her arms into the harness. She buckled it and braced herself.
Zeke hit a stump.
The jarring sensation of impact radiated down her entire body. She bit her lip. The warm, coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.
The engine whined as they arced meters above the ground before they landed with a bone-rattling thud. The wheels slipped and the tail end of the Superbird fishtailed. But Zeke maintained control and adjusted his course.
“Sorry!” he said. “Won’t happen—”
Li caught a glimpse of the wide trunk of a tree. They headed straight for it.
“Watch out!” she screamed.
Zeke slammed on the brakes and swerved. The car spun. Her stomach lurched. Her body slammed into the door despite the harness. Her vision darkened. There were grinding noises. Awful sounds of metal on metal, then metal on stone.
The symphony of noises was so deafening she tried covering her ears, but couldn’t find them. She was so disoriented that, even in the dream, she’d lost track of where she was.
And then they stood over bodies. Marines. Wide-eyed with frozen expressions of shock and pain. Black uniforms slick with blood. Body parts at odd angles or missing altogether.
Zeke had his arm around her. The sun was warm on the back of her neck. The air smelled like death.
She scanned the carnage, looking for answers. What had happened? How had these men died? Next to her, Zeke was crying.
It was a soft cry, the kind men try to hide. Tears ran down his cheeks, leaving clean streaks amidst the pancake of dust coating his face. He released her and wiped the tears with his knuckle. She’d never seen him like this.
His voice trembled as he spoke. “I did this. I killed them.”
She shook her head, her vision blurred by her own tears. Her voice was softer than his and she tried to comfort him.
“No you didn’t.”
“If I weren’t who I am, these men would be alive. They wouldn’t have been chasing me. I led them here. I killed them.”
“Zeke—”
“They wrecked because of me!” he snapped. “Don’t try to make me feel better about it.”
She saw the pain stretching his features. He’d never killed anyone before. Not intentionally. Not accidentally. In all his years of bootlegging, or working for the Tic, he’d kept his hands clean. Zeke was a driver. He was good at it and it was what he stuck to doing.
Li tried again, more forcefully. “It wasn’t your fault.”
It was hers. She was the one to blame for the surveillance, for the pursuit, for the crash. Li opened her mouth to tell Zeke the truth, but when she did, her tongue wouldn’t work. She couldn’t articulate. Nothing came from her mouth. She was mute.
Zeke regarded her with the strangest expression. A mix of confusion and sadness. The color drained from his face, making him as pale as the sand in the headlights.
He grabbed at his throat as if an invisible noose were choking him. His body convulsed. His eyes bulged. His tongue hung from his open mouth. As he struggled, a blotch of red appeared at his side. It leeched onto the thin fabric of his shirt and spread outward. He twitched and grabbed at his neck. Then his side. His eyes, those bulging bloodshot eyes, met hers. He reached out and pointed at her.
Suddenly, it was night again. They were in the darkness. They were alone. Fires burned around them. Large fires, whose heat came at her in thick waves. Smoke stuck in the back of her throat. There was a low chanting in the distance. The words were inaudible, but she knew what they meant. They were a condemnation, a chastisement, a banishment, a sentence.
All of this was her fault. She’d set these wheels in motion.
There was pressure at her chest, and she looked down. A tendril of smoke drifted from the black hole in her blouse. A hot, burning sensation clawed at her from the inside.
In front of her, Zeke held a gun. He was smiling.
Li shot up in her bed in the cantina on the verge of hyperventilating. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead and neck. She grabbed fistfuls of sheet and pressed her eyes closed, trying to slow her heartbeat.
The dream was the same one Li endured every time she closed her eyes. It was vivid. Exciting. Adrenaline pumping. Surreal. Maddening. As much as she willed herself to find something else on which her subconscious could dwell, it kept coming back to this same moment. The same one she’d experienced in her past life.
Despite no longer being alive, she couldn’t shake the habit of sleep. Pedro had told her she would lack the need for it, but it would take time for her mind to recognize it. He told her that many of her past habits were now like mental addictions. The body didn’t need certain things anymore, but her brain didn’t grasp it. It would. The dream would stop, but not yet.
The unnerving end to a restless sleep was a reminder of why she needed redemption, why she was here in Pedro’s Cantina. There was something about her life that needed tipping. She had to find her balance and set things right.
She drew a deep breath in her nose and a slow exhale through pursed lips. Then another. And another. Her heart rate slowed. The pounding in her chest lessened. The sweat on her brow chilled.
Someone knocked at her door, the raps short and quick.
“Yes?” she asked.
“It’s Barach. May I come in?”
She straightened herself and brushed her damp hair away from her eyes. “Okay?”
It was as much a question as it was an invitation.
The latch clicked and the heavy door swung with a creak. Barach stopped at the threshold and studied the door. He held onto the doorjamb with one hand, rocking it back and forth to recreate the noise from the hinges. It sounded like birds chirping.
His dimples pocked his cheeks as he made a show of examining the door. Li’s heart sped up again. She noticed he’d brushed back his straw-colored hair and parted it to one
side. He looked like a living version of a Roman statue she’d seen pictured in one of her books. Or was it Greek? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter.
As she admired his long, lean physique, she wondered if he’d lived during either of those epochs. Given how time worked in this place, either was possible.
“Needs some oil,” he said, stirring her from her daydream.
Li offered a weak smile and ran her hands along the rumpled sheets that covered the lower half of her body. She was self-conscious, realizing she appeared as though she’d wrestled with the bed in her sleep.
He must have noticed her discomfort. Crossing the room, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and motioned to the bed. He stopped a meter from her and stood flat-footed in his boots.
“I had nightmares for the first year I was here too,” he said. “Could have been longer. You know, time is relative. But it takes time to…time to…”
Barach searched for the words with his hands, like he’d find them floating in the ether. Something he could collect and hold. It must have worked. He snapped a finger and pointed at her. “Adjust.”
Li pulled the cover from her body and swung her legs off the bed. The thought of a year or more of these nightmares, her subconscious forcing upon her a reminder of her dark side, was too much. She swallowed against a swelling lump in her throat. She blinked at Barach, keeping tears at bay.
“How did you know?” she asked. Her voice was thick with suppressed emotion.
He shifted his weight, but his boots stayed planted. He shrugged and looked at his toes when he answered, “Everybody goes through it.”
Li swallowed again and eased forward on the side of the bed until her heels touched the floor.
“No,” she said. “I mean how did you know I was having a nightmare right now?”
His cheeks flushed. It made her own redden as well.
“I was outside your door,” Barach said. “I wasn’t standing there for long. I didn’t intend to be. I was coming from downstairs. Pedro wanted me to talk to you. I hesitated.”
“You heard me having a nightmare?” she said.