The Journeyman

by Michael Alan Peck

  The steadiness of Weston’s aim was matched by his stare. Dead men don’t blink.

  The moments passed in a fluid sequence.

  She installed the app.

  Her phone crashed. It always did when she downloaded something new, and she was used to it, really.

  She rebooted it and launched QRBoy.

  The intro screen looked like it had been designed for customer loyalty or in-store coupons before some hacker in a hurry messed with it. Which was, in all likelihood, exactly what had happened.

  Instructions popped up: “Type Ravager name and show him or her resulting QR code.”

  A gender-conscious programmer. Refreshing.

  She had only the name she’d made up, so she typed that in. “Weston.”

  How much time did she have left, anyway?

  The software generated a black-and-white square with an erratic checkerboard pattern—one of those discount codes she never remembered to use at the register. She held the phone out like a crucifix.

  Weston’s aim and gaze held steady. They had one another covered with the weapons at hand. His would put her on the ground with one shot—and in it, should some passer-by be kind enough to bury what the scavengers didn’t want. Hers would earn her a complimentary espresso at the local Bean Machine after ten check-ins, a logo mug at twenty.

  Nothing happened.

  Then more nothing.

  Annie got sick of the whole thing.

  “Enough,” she told the Ravager long minutes into the stand-off. She lowered her phone, disgusted at the game she’d been forced to play, and dropped it into her pocket. “Shoot me in the back if you like. I’m gonna go find my son.”

  She spun on her heel, walked away from the chopper and the pilot, and didn’t look back. How far might she make it before hearing the crack of the gun? The frustrated part of her said it didn’t matter. The mother part said no shot would come because Zach was out there, and he needed her. If the Ravager wasn’t going to help, she would continue on her own.

  One step became another. Before she knew it, she’d counted to ten. After that, she stopped keeping track.

  No shot followed. Instead, the clicking of switches on the Black Hawk’s console stopped her. Weston was preparing for take-off.

  She watched the pilot work from a distance, astounded by both her survival and the deftness with which he went about his job. It was all routine, as if only seconds before, he hadn’t been about to kill a young mother of one.

  He proceeded through the Black Hawk’s start-up in a collage of machine music, a concert given by vacuum cleaners and jet engines. The rotors got up to speed and overwhelmed all other sound.

  Her phone vibrated again. “Your ride’s here,” Char’s text repeated.

  Annie walked back to the chopper and climbed into the cockpit next to Weston, who didn’t so much as acknowledge her return. Then she waited to be airborne and hoped that the dead man who’d almost brought her quest to a bloody halt would now take her to her little boy.

  In the air, Annie couldn’t distinguish the terrain of The Commons from that back home. The forests and hills they flew over looked just like those she knew, the deserts identical to those she saw when flying into L.A.

  But after a while came houses, shopping centers, malls, schools, and roads that were interspersed with blank-slate nature in a broken pattern that wasn’t the logical flow of a map. The change was too abrupt, the terrain stuck in the process of reshaping itself.

  It was a landscape needing direction—wanting to be told what to do. From on high, it looked like it’d been waiting forever.

  With the pinky haze gone, her memory of the bus was back. No longer was it hidden behind an antacid-colored shroud with the rest of her real life. That was the hard part of it—the memories of the genuine versus the false recollections manufactured by the meds, if meds were all they were.

  The odd little suburban apartment she’d shared with Zach was an illusion of sorts, but the way she’d left him on his own was not. She’d have to deal with that after she found him.

  Memory returned as a punishment there in the air. Night slid sideways into broken glass. Passengers screamed.

  Helicopters. Soldiers. Blood. Snow. Fire. Spiders.

  She stole glances at Weston. She knew what the Ravagers were and what they did, but not who or why. Having worked the data, traveling through its imagery of cracking pipes, schools of fish, and angry bees, she’d retained only the basics. Ravagers were former cops, ex-military.

  “I was a soldier, too, Weston,” she told the pilot, who gazed straight ahead. “Did they tell you that when they said to help me? Did Charlene let you know?” Silence. “Did they say anything about me?”

  He maintained his heading.

  Annie thought of all the Westons she’d met and said goodbye to—if there’d been a chance for any parting at all—in her war years. The Westons of the world wanted to mean something. The boardroom hawks and talk-radio tough guys didn’t care about that.

  The Westons weren’t walking guns to be aimed as easily at one target as another. They followed orders. They’d chosen to do their best—wanted to leave a place better off than it was when they arrived. Those in charge didn’t earn that trust—that nobility of duty.

  “I’m going to find my little boy, Weston. He gave me my life back after they took the metal out of me. When I came home, I was still on the table, screaming inside, and nobody could hear it but my son. He heard, and he needed me. So I got up. Now I’m going to find Zach—and God help anyone who tries to keep him from me.”

  The pilot continued to stare out the windshield as if she hadn’t uttered a sound. So Annie did the same. But when she looked at him again, he was watching her, meeting her gaze with his sole visible eye.

  He’d heard every word.

  30

  The Smell of Licorice

  Mr. Brill sagged in his chair, his face turned down to his custom belt as if evaluating it. His eyes were closed, and a long string of something viscous descended from his mouth toward the buckle.

  The monitor’s screen was black and silent. It had been since the mud and stones rained down on the Shade—burying the monster in darkness and, from the looks of it, knocking Mr. Brill unconscious.

  Truitt hadn’t realized how closely tied the beast and the boss were on a physical level. He wondered what it meant for Mr. Brill—what it meant for all of them—if the Shade had been killed.

  He didn’t wonder for long.

  With a grunt, Mr. Brill jerked his head up, eyes still closed. He wiped the saliva—if that’s what it was—from his mouth with the back of his suit sleeve before it had a chance to complete its journey.

  From the monitor and the office’s unseen speakers came the Shade’s rumbling, choleric cough as it roused itself. Mr. Brill sat up, and the Shade began to dig its way out.

  Dim light from the tunnel’s few bulbs soon peeked through cracks in the creature’s muddy prison. It made short work of freeing itself.

  The first side tunnel the train passed was too dark to see into. But judging by the stacks of rail and timber blocking it, Paul surmised it was an incomplete branch of the line they were running on.

  The next was smaller, hand-dug, and a little better lit by the functioning bulbs hanging in front of it. Inside, its walls writhed.

  “Did you see that?” Paul asked Rain over the rush of air and the train’s squealing wheels.

  She chambered a round.

  Up in the engine car, Po turned from the frozen throttle to look back past the rest of the group, to the rear of the train.

  A cat-sized something fell from the tunnel ceiling and landed on Rain. The train hit a string of burned-out bulbs. Blackness enveloped them yet again as she reached over her shoulder to investigate the new weight on the holster between her shoulder blades.

  After that came a lot of yelling.

  Paul couldn’t understand what she said but didn’t need to. He reached out and grabbed a mound of wet, sq
uirming fur, pulled it off, and held it out at arm’s length. In the dark, he couldn’t see a thing. Something clicked in front of his face.

  The next string of working bulbs revealed his catch: a grotesque combination of rat, beetle, and shrimp. It had the body of the first, the head and pincers of the second, the thick, plated tail of the third.

  And the temperament of a hornet.

  Furious, the thing waved its six legs in the air, tail lashing about and pincers clasping, wet and sharp, trying to get at his wrist. Then, with a hiss, it changed tactics and went for his eyes. He flung it into the darkness.

  “What the hell was that?” Rain shouted.

  “I don’t know! But I’m glad it’s gone!”

  The train passed under a patch of black in the tunnel roof. A torrent of fur, pincers, and writhing pink legs poured down on them from above, filling the cars with seething shrimp-tailed rat-beetles.

  Rain let out a string of curses.

  In the engine, Porter did the same, matching her enthusiasm with every expletive.

  The Shade was fast—and frightfully so.

  On the monitor, it chased down the train’s taillights, devouring the gap with ease. Mr. Brill’s breathing filled the room, laden with exertion.

  When the tunnel bugs attacked the train, Truitt assumed the game was up. But the little horrors wanted nothing to do with the Shade—and for good reason. It consumed those that weren’t able to get out of its way, building strength.

  Mr. Brill’s exhalations became part effort, part ecstasy as the Essence flowed into him. Now his quarry was within reach. He had strength to spare.

  The red lights grew larger. The rat-bugs the Shade didn’t grab along the way were crushed underfoot, their little deaths feeding the pursuit.

  The panting from the monitor and that of Mr. Brill joined. The lights drew near.

  Overeager, the Shade grabbed for the rear coupler of the last car and missed. But this time, it didn’t fall. It lost a few steps and had to push to recover the lost ground.

  The hordes of tunnel bugs thickened, cascading down from above and streaming from the side tunnels as the train and the Shade passed. They would be a hindrance before long, but for now, the monster feasted.

  It dove for the coupler again, this time grabbing hold. Now the monitor image shook as the beast was dragged along, pummeled by railroad ties. Dreadfully strong, it held on.

  The Shade pulled itself to the train, clambering up and onto the rear car, where it enjoyed a brief rest. The car was filled with rat-bugs climbing over each other in their haste to get away from it. It consumed more of them and made its way forward.

  Paul and Rain ripped the attacking rat-beetles from themselves and each other. Pincers pierced arm and neck.

  The creatures went after hair and clothing where they couldn’t find flesh. There were so many that most made do with tearing into whatever presented itself.

  Paul pawed at Rain’s back and tore away as many as he could. When he had a handful of wet fur, he yanked and threw. Just as often, he caught the business end and got bitten for his trouble.

  She did the same for him. Her nonstop obscenities made it clear that she was just as unlucky with the parts she grabbed.

  When the train passed from light to dark and back again, Paul caught bloody flashes of her. The beetle-things didn’t bite deep, but they were legion.

  He was no better. The two of them blinked red in the staccato of the intermittent bulbs, faces and hands strung with blood.

  The train shuddered as it crushed the buildup of rat-beetles on the tracks. And still they came. Their group was getting the worst of this fight.

  From deep down came a heat Paul had only felt a time or two before—in very bad beat-downs where winning wasn’t possible and the price of a loss wasn’t clear, but promised to be high. It took hold, burned within.

  He was starting to panic.

  And from the pitch of Rain’s cries, he wasn’t alone.

  “Paul!” Porter said. The Envoy cleared beetle-things with his staff, jumping them away from the train. With each swing, the little monsters disappeared, but were soon replaced by twice the number.

  There were too many.

  Ken employed his long reach to pull beetle-rats from Porter. Despite his mitt-sized hands, the mummy made almost no difference. Po tried as well, his head striped in red, and fared about the same.

  The train spasmed over the furry bodies and plated tails, crushing them. It shook from side to side, lifted off the rails, found steel once more.

  “You have to do it again!” Porter shouted to Paul. “Now!”

  Paul tried to do just that, but didn’t know how he’d done it the first time. The tree that took down the chopper came from something rushing out to meet something coming in. The force of it had surprised him as much as anyone.

  And he couldn’t find it now.

  Another rain of beetle-rats. The train lurched left, then right.

  Porter swept his staff across Ken. The coat of beetle-rats clinging to the mummy melted away. “It’s there, Paul! Call it!”

  They hit a curve in the dark at full velocity. The car bucked, throwing Rain.

  Her shotgun clattered to the floor and slid. She lunged and caught it before it could go overboard, but her momentum carried her off the edge.

  Ken dove for her, driving Paul into one of the bench seats. The padded steel caught Paul in the side, knocking the wind out of him.

  The beetle-things pressed their advantage.

  In the strobe of the overhead bulbs, Rain dangled over nothing, shotgun in hand. Ken, prone on the car’s floor, had a hold of her, but the curve and the momentum prevented him from hauling her back in.

  She screamed.

  The train went dark under a string of dead bulbs, then lit up weakly again under a long span of feeble incandescence.

  The beetle-rats streamed over Ken to invade Rain’s shirt. She was a thrashing mass of them. They even hung from her hair, trailing behind in the train’s wind, pulling at her.

  She screamed again.

  Paul’s heat became power. “Rain!”

  The all-seeing perspective of the battle with the Ravagers—of the moment just before the tree pierced the Black Hawk—returned. Rain’s suffering and fear. Ken’s desperate attempt to help. A greater force—the strength of all and everything—telling Paul that he could change this.

  A crackling in the air poured in to merge with its counterpart inside him. The result pushed outward, like fire.

  They entered another dark patch. A torrent of what felt like small stones or marbles cut loose from above.

  The wet fur and the biting of the pincers faded. Vanished.

  In their place came the battering of thousands of hard black pellets filling the train. The tunnel filled with the smell of licorice.

  On a straightaway, the train sped up, wheels smashing through the pellets in a grinding chorus. Then it began to slow once more beneath the growing hail streaming down on them from the holes in the tunnel ceiling.

  The cars were swamped in cloying sweetness. Ken picked himself up, pulling Rain back into the car with him, fighting the surge of falling candy.

  She clutched her shotgun, managed a laugh in the face of what she’d just endured, and spit a stray pellet into her hand. “No way,” she said. “Sisu.”

  It took a moment for Paul to understand. “It’s what came to mind,” he said, half to himself.

  Porter cupped his hands, which filled with hard nuggets of licorice. “This is new to me.”

  As if it were old hat to Paul.

  Surely, somewhere in his trance, Mr. Brill was outraged. The boy’s act of changing the rat-bugs into black marbles or stones of some sort was sheer waste. A breach in efficiency was one of the big man’s chief irritants.

  It was difficult for Truitt to see the stones clearly in the monitor. However, when the Shade grabbed a handful to taste, it quickly spit them back out, along with a sizable amount of Stygian goop.
<
br />   The data on the floating screens indicated that Paul Reid had transmuted the little creatures’ Essence from one form to another—in this case, from living to inert, which brought a multiplier into play.

  There were now more black pellets than there’d been rat-bugs, the disparity in Essence working out to something along the lines of a 500-to-one ratio. Black stones filled the train to overflowing. The boy’s manipulation had reached a considerable portion of rat-bugs that hadn’t made it out of the deeper lairs.

  The Shade clambered over thousands upon thousands of nuggets. It was a struggle, but it had absorbed huge reserves of Essence to work with.

  The monster’s breathing drove it forward. Soon, Truitt could make out the silhouettes of its quarry up in the front car.

  Until, at least, another black cascade obscured them once more.

  Truitt allowed himself an inward smile at Mr. Brill’s expense. If there were more nuggets than creatures, there was also a good deal more weight pressing down on the earthen tunnel roof.

  The ceiling had just collapsed again.

  The train labored up an incline, arrested by the rising tide of Sisu and its licorice bouquet. The aroma couldn’t stop the train, in theory. But if any scent could entertain a reasonable hope of doing so, it’d be the sticky sweetness swaddling them now.

  Po signed something to Ken. They all looked up to see a large hole expanding above as they passed under it.

  The ceiling gave. Candy quickly buried the rear of the train, which slowed and came to a standstill. Its back half was entombed in a hillside of mud and Sisu.

  Paul’s bites, coated in sugary sweat, itched and stung. In the meager light of the surviving bulbs, his arms and hands were netted in drying blood.

  Rain, Porter, and Po looked much the same. Yet none of the bites were large or deep, and they could only hope there was no venom involved.

  “I didn’t do that last part,” Paul told them. “The cave-in.”