by D L Frizzell
“That way,” she ordered him and pointed him down the road. Angry for being caught off-guard, he stood and began walking as instructed, putting his hand to the back of his head to see if he was bleeding. Thankfully, he wasn't. He moved away, hoping he could escape into the deep grass before she decided to take a shot at him.
When he was twenty meters away, she turned her attention to the bug mule. Alex ducked when she fired several shots, though it quickly became clear that she wasn’t aiming at him. The bug mule fell to its knees and let out a mournful cry.
Alex didn’t wait for another chance. He bolted into the tall grass and ran until he was beyond the pistol’s range. When the shots stopped firing, he spun around to see where Kate was.
She was no longer holding the gun. Having exhausted its supply of bullets into the bug mule’s scales, she'd dropped the weapon on the road. She now held the falcata in both hands and stood over the bug mule, which lay unmoving on the road, hacking into its back. She didn’t cry out maniacally as Alex expected but seemed almost detached from what she was doing. The only sound he heard was the falcata’s repeated, sickening thuds against the bug mule’s scales. After chopping at the motionless animal for a few minutes, she turned her attention to its neck, where she continued her brutal attack.
Kate eventually tired from her exertion and dropped the blade next to the pistol. With her shoulders hunched, she walked back to the other side of the road. She lowered herself to a sitting position and rocked gently with her arms pulled close to her body.
Alex waited. She made no moves for the weapons or his horse, so he quietly approached her from behind. When he reached the fallen bug mule, he walked around it to retrieve his weapons.
Kate sat facing the opposite direction, seemingly unaware of Alex. Not sure what to expect, he approached her cautiously. He holstered the empty pistol, keeping the falcata at the ready in case she tried to jump him again. She didn’t. She simply continued to rock, keeping her arms pulled in tight. When he got to within a few feet of Kate, he could see her quivering.
She looked up at Alex. “She was in pain. Couldn’t you tell?”
Alex sidestepped around Kate until the bug mule was behind her. Its mud scales were smashed and separated to reveal its coarse fur beneath. It was a mess, but there was no blood that he could see. When the bug mule stood up, Alex startled and fell backwards. He swore as he hit the ground.
The mule showed a sudden interest in the potato Alex had dropped on the road earlier. It coiled a single trunk around the vegetable, swallowed it whole, then sniffed around for more.
Alex turned back to Kate. “What the hell just happened?” he asked.
She nodded. “You don’t know anything about them,” she said, her words flat but accusatory. “Ranger Zand had her tied up in the mud and her scales got cemented together. I thought it was too late.”
“You were helping it?”
She nodded.
Alex felt a sudden pang of guilt. The mule had been in pain the whole time, constricted by a hardened shell of mud that must have been tearing against its underlying fur with every step it took. “I’m sorry”, he said.
Kate cocked her head to one side. “I can’t hear you,” she said.
Alex shrugged, understanding that whatever bad attitude she had was probably justified. He noticed she had worked up a pretty good sweat, so he pulled a necker out of his pocket and handed it to her. She didn’t take it at first, as if unsure what she would do with it. After considering his offer, she reached up and unclipped her goggles. She put them in her lap and used the necker to soak the sweat out of the eyepieces. When she was finished, she gave it back to him without wiping the perspiration from her face.
Even though she was a mess, her hair tangled and clothes rumpled, he found it hard not to stare. She had the most remarkable blue-green eyes he had ever seen. They were wild eyes, he knew, but not crazy. At least, he didn’t think so in that brief moment. Then, suddenly uncomfortable, he looked away.
“What’s your horse’s name?” she asked.
“His name?” Alex asked, mystified by her change of topic. He hadn’t thought to give it one. “I don’t know.”
“He’s a good horse,” she said. “He didn’t flinch when I fired the gun.”
“The gun,” he repeated, feeling the weight of it on his hip. “I guess that’s good.” He stood there, trying to decide what to do next.
“We can leave,” she said. “The mule can walk now.” After thinking another moment, she added, “I won’t hit you anymore.”
“That's very kind of you, Miss Runaway” he replied. “Now, if there aren't any other matters to deal with, we need to get to the train station before we run out of water. I didn’t expect this ride would take so long.”
“Water isn’t a problem,” Kate said. “It’s going to rain soon.”
He allowed himself a quick laugh. “Why do you say that? It rains here a few times a year at best.”
“I can hear it coming,” she said. She noticed a clump of mule scale in her hair. She fixed her gaze on it, but didn’t let go of her shirt to pull it out. Alex watched her. He remembered what Niko had said about her before they left.
“Did the voices tell you that?” he asked, hoping she would not take offense at the question.
“I don’t hear voices,” she said. “I just hear it coming.”
Alex didn't think an explanation would make sense, should she be inclined to give it. He saw she was still fixated on the scale fragment in her hair, so he stopped talking to see what she would do about it.
Kate seemed to forget Alex was there. She shook her head once, then again to dislodge the stubborn fragment. He expected she would reach up to detangle it, but she simply sat there shaking her head back and forth.
“We need to get going,” he told her, and reached for her shackles. As soon as he touched her, she recoiled in shock.
“No!” she shouted. “Don’t touch me!” She stared without blinking into his eyes. He backed away, tightening his grip on the falcata. Slowly, she pulled her hands away from her shirt and leaned on them to get up. She winced and nearly fell over. A moment later, she managed to stand without assistance.
Her hands, Alex realized, were covered in blood. Her shirt was stained red, too. As she turned to approach the bug mule, she grabbed her shirt with both hands again.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me see your hands.”
“I’m okay,” she replied.
“No, you’re not,” he stated as he walked around to block her path. “Let me see your hands.”
She stopped for a moment, then opened both hands and held them out for him to see. Alex saw the source of the bleeding. Her fingernails were broken and split. There were jagged cuts in each of her fingertips. Blood had congealed in some of the cuts but flowed freshly from others.
The cuts weren’t there when they left Edgewood, and they weren’t caused by her shackles. He reached out to take her hand. Though she pulled back, she did let him turn her hands over. He noticed coarse fibers caught in some of her fingernails.
“You were trying to dig through the mule's scales with your fingers?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Come on,” he ordered. “I’ve got a medkit.” After sheathing his falcata, he led her to his horse and retrieved his medkit from the saddlebag. He carefully pulled the fibers from the cuts and cleaned her hands thoroughly. He then applied ointment to each one and covered the worst ones with gauze. He clipped dangling pieces of fingernail away with a pair of trimmers he found, flushing with embarrassment when he realized he must look like he was doting on her. She didn’t fight him. Instead, she watched with stoic interest while he worked. When he finished, he repacked the medkit and put it back in his saddlebag. He checked her one more time, hesitated, then reached up and picked the scale fragment from her hair. Their eyes met again and, the heat of daylight notwithstanding, his face felt warm.
Chapter Thirty-One
They made better time once the mule was unburdened by fused scales. Its pace was still slow, as bug mules are normally ponderous creatures. Alex didn't mind as much anymore. He decided to ride next to Kate instead of in front. In part, it was because he didn't want to take his eyes off her. And for another reason entirely, he didn't want to take his eyes off her. Her hands were shackled directly to the saddle now, and they rode in silence.
"I got to ride the train on our way to Edgewood," he said, hoping to start a conversation. "It's a lot safer than it looks."
Kate looked back at Alex. "I still can't hear you," she replied.
Alex didn't know what to make of her. She didn't seem angry, just detached. He wondered if that's how other people perceived him. They continued along the road, riding silently again.
An hour later, he saw Maglev Canyon in the distance. Smoke was rising from the station master's office, and he realized it must be dinner time. "I'm hungry," he said to Kate. "How about you?"
"Can't you tell?" she asked plainly.
"No."
"That's not surprising," she said, and looked around at the grass along the road. "Your horse is hungry. So is the bug mule," she added, "but mules are always hungry. You should have noticed that."
"They have grain for the animals at the station."
"Mules are loud," she insisted.
"Mules are quiet." Alex was now getting irritated. Finally understanding Niko’s warning, he decided conversation wasn't such a good idea. He fixed his eyes on the smoke from the station.
There was too much smoke for a stove.
"Something’s wrong," he told her. "We need to hurry up,” he said to Kate. "You're going to have a rough ride, so hold on." He pulled a potato out of his saddlebag and held it out for the bug mule to see. It picked up the scent quickly and flailed its trunks in an attempt to reach it. Alex spurred his horse to a trot, holding the potato out where the mule could see it. It lumbered after him, and Kate had to grasp the saddle horn tightly to keep from falling off.
As they approached the station, it became increasingly clear that it had been burned down. Alex was tempted to leave Kate behind and speed ahead but figured she would take the opportunity to escape. He pulled the last potato out of his saddlebag and held it behind him. The bug mule’s sweet tooth had yet to be satiated, so it chased Alex with a fresh vigor until they finally reached the station. Alex tossed the potato to the bug mule and dismounted his horse to investigate the damage.
Some of the outside walls still stood. Everything on the inside had turned to ash. The train was charred black, another the victim of the fire. Inexplicably, it still floated above the canyon floor, even as the embers glowed hot within the wood. It drifted lazily away from the station, the remains of its moorings lying on the canyon floor below.
Alex glanced back at Kate to make sure she was still shackled to the bug mule. He ran from room to room in the station, looking for survivors. In the station master’s office, piled atop one another, he found the dead bodies of the station personnel.
Though it pained him to do so, he turned over one body and looked into the burned out eyes of one of the station workers he remembered seeing when the caravan left the station five days earlier. The man’s face was contorted into a grimace - his last facial expression cooked to a brittle cinder by the fire’s heat. His clothes were completely burned off, revealing a narrow hole in his midsection that looked eerily familiar to Alex. He covered his nose with his necker to filter out the smell of carrion and walked around to check the other bodies. They all had similar wounds, though some also had slashes in their necks or torsos.
He’d seen enough. Going back outside, he looked at Kate. "This was an attack," Alex said.
"It was a bad man," she agreed.
Alex didn't respond to her understatement but looked around for clues instead. As best he could tell, all the people were killed with a sword of some kind. Individual fires had been started along the boardwalk, burning meter-wide holes into the wood before spreading out to consume the rest of the station. There were a few dozen holes throughout the interior of the building as well. When he saw a sap log lying at the bottom of the canyon, covered with dirt and gravel, he knew the fuel had been used to set the fires.
“Someone started the fires to destroy the station,” he told Kate, though she didn’t seem to be paying attention. “I guess you don’t care.”
“Did they burn the grain?” she asked.
He didn’t reply.
Alex jumped when he heard a cough nearby. He pulled his pistol and scrambled to cover behind a heavy timber that still stood at the corner of the main building. The noise came from the train. Thinking the train would soon drift away, he decided to check it before it did. He ran along the canyon until he caught up with it, and then jumped the gap to land on the last car.
The train rocked a lot more than it had the first time he rode it. He thought he might slide off the far edge, so he dropped to one knee and grabbed a cracked deckboard. The train wobbled a few times but soon found a precarious, lopsided balance. He made his way over the burned deck and found Genedi propped against the steam engine, wounded and covered with soot. He was bleeding badly from a hole to his stomach. Alex pulled his shirt back and knew there was nothing he could do for the man.
Genedi saw Alex, looked confused first, then angry. "Well, do it then!" he wheezed. "Finish your job now, you amoral fursnake!"
"No, sir," Alex tried to sit him up. "It's me, Deputy Vonn. Remember?"
Genedi needed great effort to focus. “I remember you,” he rasped. “You and your militia on hunt for spies. You just too eager to find them.” He coughed again. “Not notice they behind you the whole time.”
“That's not possible,” Alex argued. “We left days after they did.”
“I know what Jovians look like,” Genedi whispered. “I see too many lately.”
“Can you tell me anything about them?” Alex asked.
“This one…” Genedi had difficulty holding his head up, so Alex helped him to a more comfortable position. “This one,” he continued, “was ugliest durk I ever saw. Fat, burned bad, nasty split on his mouth. That marshal brought him on the train. Said he was prisoner.”
"You can't mean Benac," Alex said. “He’s dead.”
“Never heard his name, but he was the one who killed everybody.” Genedi coughed into his hand, then swore when he saw spatters of blood on his palm. “He took sword from marshal.” He wiped his hand on his leg and stared at the station receding in the distance. "He slaughtered my friends. Enjoyed it."
“The marshal must have done something to stop him,” Alex insisted. Genedi was losing consciousness, so Alex shook him by the shoulder. “What did the marshal do when he escaped?”
“He’s big durk, too,” Genedi said. “Who you think shot me?” He put his hand next to his wound.
Alex saw that the wound wasn’t flat like the ones at the station. It was round, the kind a forty-five-caliber bullet would make. “The marshal did this?”
“Bullet went through me like arrow in snow,” Genedi wheezed. “After that, he jumped on horse and followed that Jovian onto the plains.”
“Chased him, you mean?”
Genedi shook his head. “Followed,” he coughed. Slumping over, he spit a bright red splotch of blood onto the scorched wood beside him. He felt the burnt deckboards and smiled weakly. “All that fire, and she still flies like a bird.”
Genedi’s eyes fluttered and closed. Alex tried to sit him up again, but knew it was too late.
Alex had come to like the crazy old man. Now he was lying dead on the burned husk of the train. Had Redland actually done this? Another look at Genedi’s wound was all he needed to be sure. After taking a minute to arrange the man’s body in a dignified pose, Alex looked through the burned supply lockers by the engine and found a blanket. He covered Genedi with it, and then sat on the deck. How could he have ever wanted the badge on his chest? It was old and worn, a reality hat he hadn't noticed t
hat earlier. He turned it over in his hands and saw numbers etched into the back. They weren't part of the badge, but something that had been scratched into it. They were so poorly inscribed that he couldn't tell what the numbers were. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to wear it any more.
Alex remembered what Seneca had told him about Redland. The marshal had his own agenda. It now looked as if that agenda had nothing to do with upholding the law. There was no way he could keep working for the marshal now. From what he saw, Redland had become the enemy. But Seneca had turned on him as well, refusing to let him fight against the Jugs.
It occurred to Alex that the train, though moving slowly, would carry him home eventually. It would have been easy for him to sit there and let it do just that. He could explain to someone at the garrison how Redland was working with the Jovian invaders and let it become someone else's responsibility. If Seneca didn't want him around, then that was fine too.
Then he remembered Kate sitting on her mule, still shackled to the saddle next to the station. He doubted that she had the ability to save herself, seeing as he put the shackles on extra tight. Instead of throwing his badge into the canyon like his gut told him, he put it in his pocket. He could still do the right thing and finish at least one assignment. After that, he’d decide what else to do with his life.
The trouble now would be to get off the train safely. It had picked up speed since he jumped on. With the cars as unbalanced as they were, he wasn’t sure if he could make the leap back to the side of the canyon. Knowing that even if he did make it off safely, he wouldn’t be able to get back on, he tried to think of a way to stop it from going any further. The steam engine wasn't running, but he already knew that wasn't the source of its power. Without understanding the science, he would have to figure out a way to stop it on his own.
Alex noticed the rock-nets in the ditches alongside the canyon. They hadn't been burned in the attack, and could still be useful. He would have to jump back across the canyon to get to them, however. The train wobbled with even the slightest shift in weight now, which would complicate his jump. The increased speed of the train would make his landing harder as well. After gauging the distance, he decided to run at a diagonal to keep from falling down when he landed. He adjusted his outfit, making sure nothing would impede his freedom of movement. He began rocking the train back and forth, figuring a little upward momentum during the jump wouldn't hurt. With a last look at the blanket-covered body on the deck, he ran toward the front of the train.