I flop into a mound of trash and the taste of rot fills my mouth.
“Get over here now,” a voice says.
There’s something hiding under the garbage, using it as camouflage.
It’s Naia.
She peeks out from beneath a blind of soggy cardboard boxes, overflowing trash bags, and the eviscerated corpses of at least three Dubs.
“Hurry,” she says.
She pries up the edge of an enormous cardboard box, what amounts to a flap on the blind and ushers me inside where I’m forced to belly through a slick of red and black filth.
There’s just enough space in the blind for the two of us, the pocket making me think of what it must feel like to be in the belly of a gutted animal: dark, hot, and sticky, with the overpowering aroma of burnt blood and spoiled meat.
“How many times do I have to save your ass?” Naia says, taking the shank from my hand and inspecting it.
“One of these days I’m gonna return the favor.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
I maneuver my body around until I’m laying aside her, peering back outside.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Too long.”
“Was Gus with you?”
She shakes her head and asks what happened to him, but before I can respond, things move outside.
She holds a finger to her lips.
Gaps in the blind allow us to see the cannibals that chased me, now only a few feet away from us. Up close it’s apparent that all four have suffered greatly. Indeed, the cannibal closest to us, a teenager with bushy eyebrows and a ragged scar on his cleanshaven skull, has had the flesh below his knees pulled down like the husk on an ear of corn. I can see the little ligaments and deposits of yellow fatty tissue peeking out from under the blackening flesh.
He turns and looks for us.
There are a few wet sucking sounds as another cannibal, a tall man who’s missing his teeth, sputters and moans. One of the others nods and moans back.
My gaze lifts up and I almost scream when I spot a pair of eyes gaping at me. Naia covers my mouth as I realize we’re lying under a dead Dub. I stare into the thing’s lifeless eyes. Time has freed the webbing of flesh near its peepers allowing me to see inside the sockets where a ball of worms has taken up residence.
I think good thoughts and fight the urge to vomit.
The cannibals fish through some of the debris, but my guess is the stink of the trash has masked our scent. They soon shuffle off.
We wait in silence, but there are no more sounds aside from the hum of machines rumbling again above and off in the distance.
“What the hell was that?” Naia asks, nodding in the direction of the cannibals.
“People who’ve probably been down here too long.”
A look of recognition washes over her and we’re silent for another few seconds, but thankfully, nothing stirs outside of our hiding spot.
“They told me they were going to let me go,” Naia says softly.
“You believed that?”
“Course not, but I wanted to buy some time so I acted like I did. Then they led me into this room and gave me something to eat and then the floor just fell out under me. You?”
“Pretty much the same.”
“I almost broke my neck during the fall.”
“You’ve got to go down on your stomach,” I offer.
“I’ll remember that next time.”
“Yeah, well, there won’t be one,” I say in disgust. “No next times.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
She points to her nose. “Know what that smell is?”
“Dead Dubs and shit?”
“Besides that.”
I shake my head and she smiles. “That’s the smell of freedom, Wyatt.”
Naia holds up a mold-blackened peeling from an old carrot.
“When I was little we lived on a farm in the sticks and my mom grew these and fed them to the three-dozen cows we kept.”
“For milk?”
She nods.
“One winter was wicked brutal, cold enough to freeze the gasoline in the trucks. So my folks, who were paranoid about the herd dying out in the fields, jammed all the cows into this big old rusted shed. I remember it was two days before Christmas when the bomb went off.”
“Bomb?”
“A huge one,” she replies. “Shook the windows of our house and set off the car alarms.”
“What was it?”
“Cow farts.”
My face falls. “You’re making that up.”
“Wish I was. Killed half the cows and blew the roof off the shed.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Methane. It comes from cow farts and lots of other things like trash. It’s highly flammable. An explosion from something as small as static electricity can set the whole thing off.”
I scrunch my nose. “So what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying, Wyatt,” and here she paused for a moment, “is that we’re sitting on top of a huge, friggin’ bomb.”
9
I’m speechless, staring at the rotten carrot peel.
“You … you want to blow us up?”
She arches an eyebrow. “What I want to do is find a way to focus the methane for a controlled explosion.”
“How?”
She holds up the strand of wire she copped before from behind the socket plate.
“With my detonator.”
Naia slowly lifts the flap on the blind and peeks out. She motions for me to follow and we shuffle outside, the two of us slicked in the blind’s gray gruel.
She tells me there’s no time to waste and that I’m to be the scout while she prepares a way for us to escape.
There’s little room to argue and so I grab a discarded garbage bag and shrug it on like camouflage and then shimmy up the ridgeline of the garbage pile.
Visibility is still poor, but I can see the cannibals that chased me rooting around on the far side of the space.
They’ve found something, some scraps of flesh less rotten than the others that they’re making a meal of.
They don’t hear or see us and so we’re safe.
For the moment.
Turning back, I watch as Naia grabs my section of PVC piping and leans her body on it, shoving it into the side of the garbage pile until it’s lodged three feet down in the muck. After that, she maneuvers the pipe until its open end is facing a faraway wall that includes several windows, including one of the shuttered windows. Then she peers into the open end of the PVC and breathes deeply.
Her eyes water and she works to suppress a cough, but one comes out.
The cannibals hear it.
They shriek and whistle and I think one of them sees me.
I make several shushing sounds in Naia’s direction, but she’s not listening.
She’s down on her knees, striking the strand of wire against the shank I gave her.
Nothing happens for several seconds and then there’s a little flash of sparks as a coil of smoke rises up.
“Hurry,” I say to her. “They’re coming!”
I ooze my way down through the garbage as she fans a small fire built on the ground a few feet away from the PVC pipe.
There are a few scraps of newspaper and some cardboard that she feeds the fire, the flames blazing up nicely.
“They heard you so we need to hurry.”
“Cool your jets,” she replies even as the screams of the cannibals grow closer.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Trust me,” she says. “I’ve plotted it all out.”
The cannibals are visible now, streaming toward us through the trash.
“Get ready to dive and duck.”
She grabs a piece of newspaper and rolls it up and touches it to the flames before motioning for me to fall back.
I search for and find a natural depression in the garbage and look back to Naia who tosses the now li
t newspaper toward the PVC and dives at me as—
WHOOOSHHHHH!
The methane’s ignited by the paper, creating a wall of fire that seems to set the air ablaze.
The cannibals are forced back and then the fire sucks back down into the PVC pipe and—
WHUMP-BOOM!
The pipe explodes and the resulting shockwave tosses me and Naia back, end-over-end, like a pair of quarters in an old-school washing machine.
My ears ring and stars fill my eyes and every inch of my body is covered by garbage.
Sunlight hits me next, huge shafts of it falling through the gaping hole in the far side of the building.
The explosion has rocked the space, gouged the floor and torn off a section of the faraway wall large enough to drive several trucks through.
Through the dust I can see the outer buildings.
I spot Naia, a few feet away from me, and she spits out a mouthful of trash.
Her eyes widen and then she stands and pumps a fist and cheers.
“You see!” she says, “I told you! I told you I’d find a way to save our and then we’d—”
The words die in her mouth because she’s taken a step and fallen.
Slipped on the trash and before I can move she’s on her back and sliding forward through the trench carved by the explosion in the floor.
The one that slopes directly toward the hole in the far wall.
10
Naia’s a goner.
In seconds she’s going to be sucked through the hole in the wall and spat out into dead air so I bound forward, charging down through the trash as Naia fights to stop her forward progress.
The trench is sloped in such a way that her momentum carries her forward at an alarming rate. In seconds she’s traveled nearly twenty feet from me.
I rocket through the smoke from the explosion and negotiate my way up a slope, hands out, trying to maintain my balance.
I pick up speed, taking an angle that allows me to rise up over her and sensing a chance, charge forward and jump.
My hand thrusts out as I sail through the air.
She’s seven feet away from the huge hole in the wall.
Seven feet away from certain death.
Her mouth pulls back.
She scrabbles for purchase, but there’s nothing to hold onto.
And then I land, belly-flopping onto the soggy ground next to her.
My hand somehow finds her wrist.
I dig my boots into the trash and manage to slow her descent just enough so that her feet are dangling out of the open wall, but her upper body remains on solid ground.
She plants her palms and pushes back and I bear-hug her up and away from the hole in the wall. Releasing my grip, she slumps to the ground and catches her breath.
“I – I saved you,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“Are we even now?” I ask.
“Not even close,” she replies, exhaling.
We crawl forward and look outside.
Scraps of paper and bits of trash, remnants of the explosion, flutter through the air. I can see some of the residents from the outer buildings peering through windows at us. We both look out, up and down, and then all around.
“What’s the plan?” I ask.
“You’re looking at it,” she says, pointing to the hole.
“You blew a hole in the wall, Naia.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That’s the plan?”
“I never said it was a great plan.”
I search the space behind us and spot the bodies of the cannibals who lie br0ken and bent and charred. One of them twitches and moans, but I don’t think he’ll be causing us any problems.
“We’re safe for right now. Maybe we can hold tight here for a while and come up with a new angle, a new way out.”
Sirens suddenly wail overhead followed by footfalls and muted shouts.
“Maybe not,” she replies. “We could fight.”
“We don’t have the numbers or the weapons.”
“So what then? We give up? Surrender?” she asks.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, that’s because you never really say anything. I’m the one that’s always doing the strategizing.”
I turn back to the hole as a draft of wind hits my face. I breathe deeply and the cool air reinvigorates me and the clouds break and the warmth of the sun’s rays splashes my face.
“There’s only one thing to do. We have to go outside,” I mutter.
“Excuse me?”
“We go out and climb down.”
She snorts. “Are you – we’ve got no equipment.”
“Not true,” I say, wiggling my fingers. “We’ve each got ten of these suckers.”
She holds my look, her face ultra-tense. “You’re crazy.”
I manufacture a huge smile. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
My mouth says these words, but my hands don’t get the message. They’re trembling and so I tuck them in front of me (so Naia can’t see them) as I take another look outside.
The good and the bad of the situation become readily apparent.
On the one hand, we’re only sixteen or seventeen stories up, which means the wind currents won’t be as intense as they might be up near the thirtieth floor.
On the other hand, we’re sixteen or seventeen stories up!
Even a Jumper like me would be hard-pressed to free climb out of a shattered window without any security gear. I mean, not only am I about to go out completely naked, but I’m taking a newbie with me.
Naia looks out and down at the road and her face drains of color.
“That’s a super long way down.”
“It’s all in your mind.”
“I’ll remember that when I hit the pavement at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.”
“We can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. And you know why?”
She shakes her head and I point at the hole in the wall.
“Because I know what that is.”
“It’s a hole, Wyatt.”
I shake my head. “It’s a chance. And if we’ve got a chance, we can find a way down.”
I reach over and grab her hand and she musters up a smile.
“All in my head, right?”
“Right, except for the actual climbing down part. That’ll be totally physical.”
Her smile wilts. “I hate you, Wyatt.”
“We’ll go one hand at a time,” I say, ignoring her. “How’s that sound?”
“Peachy.”
A door bursts open somewhere behind us. I can hear men shouting and a gun fires and several people scream. Probably the last of the cannibals just cut down by Odin’s goons.
I grab the metal frame of the shattered window which is thankfully still in one piece. My first training as a Ledge Jumper consisted of tests on a white-board with Shooter and memorizing the exterior of the building. In my mind I can see the curtained walls of glass and steel fastened in diagonal grids that resemble diamond shapes twelve feet deep and six stories high. We’re near one of the diamonds so there will be ledges and frames and little steel buttons hammered into the exteriors that we should be able to “finger” from.
What this means is that we’ll have to slip down five or six feet from our present position to a stone ledge and then slide twenty feet or so over a wall of glass to the lip of the building. Once we reach the lip we can drop onto another ledge and then another until we’re able to either find a way back into the building or we reach the ground. Of course, we’ll be without cables or any other kind of safety equipment, but it’s our only chance.
I suck in my abdomen and tense the muscles in my core, repeating this to Naia so that she does the same. Then, when I’m sufficiently coiled, I draw my arms in tight against my sides and feel the pressure in my lats.
Del Frisco always said if you can take that first step you can do anything and so I do like he
does. I conjure up some music, classical stuff I imagine being played at some great party in Europe attended by people in horse-drawn carriages with white wigs.
I work against the rhythm of the music, measuring my breaths and then I take that first step and it’s like leaping off the edge of the world.
A frigid downdraft hits me and the wind currents work to suck me back into the nothingness that exists between VC1 and the outer buildings.
I cling to the frame, my eyes peeled on Naia, my boot hunting for a foothold.
A full-on wind gust hits me, the air colder than I expected.
I watch Naia stiffen.
“Don’t look down,” I say.
“That’s what you say.”
“I’m the one talking, so of course it’s what I say.”
My eyes roam down for both of us. I spot the stone ledge under me which means I’ll have to release myself and measure my weight and hope like hell that I’m able to make the plant and then catch Naia as she does the same.
“Naia?”
She nods, unnerved, but doesn’t look back.
“I’m going to jump,” I say.
“You’re –what?!”
“Just four feet, maybe five, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“There’s a ledge. A safe spot. It’s the only way.”
“What about me?”
“You’ll have to do the same.”
“That is exactly the opposite of what I hoped you’d say.”
A scream rips the air and I look up as—
WHUMP!
A man flies out the open window and nearly takes Naia down with him.
He’s a bearded grunt in grubby clothes, eyes as wide as the moon, arms chopping the air. My guess is he’s a guard who was sent down to snuff us out when he slipped on the garbage just like Naia did. Unlike her, however, there’s nobody to stop his fall.
He rockets past us and hits the glass below us, bouncing up and over the edge of the building.
His anguished face freezes for an instant and I remember bits of information from my training days. About how we used to toss Dub bodies out of upper windows to measure speed and study how a body was injured when hitting the pavement. We found, for instance, that a body reaches terminal velocity after a fall of five-hundred feet. At that distance you fragment upon impact, you black out, your inner cavity basically becoming like a scrambled egg. The falling man’s distance to the ground is probably a little less than two-hundred feet which means he’s going to live just long enough to feel the collision.
Vertical City Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 30