Dead End

by C. P. Rider

  "We're going to get you to a hospital. Just hang on," I said.

  His hand tightened on mine. "Kilshaw?"

  I knew what he meant, even without him saying it. With a lightness I didn't feel, I said, "Alive. I didn't kill anyone, don't worry."

  Relief settled into Dad's face and he closed his eyes. Obviously, the news that I hadn't murdered anyone had reassured him that I wasn't an even bigger monster than he'd already assumed I was. I wiped away my tears and slipped my hand out of his.

  Abuelo and I stood together. He slung my two backpacks over his shoulders and patted my head. "My car is parked just beyond that dune." He shaded his eyes and pointed south, to a spot where the ripper field and the outskirts of Dead End converged. "I'll drive back into town for help. We can't handle Kilshaw by ourselves, mija. We need backup."

  I smiled at the endearment, but my smile faded when I caught sight of Kilshaw. His gaze followed me, a predator stalking its prey. How a guy buried to his chin in dirt could look threatening, I didn't know, but he managed it.

  "Did you like what I did to your father, earthmover?"

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  "It's a shame I wasn't able to finish the job. Maybe I should have blinded him. Made his worthless mid-caste powers disappear altogether."

  The ground rumbled.

  Aedan shook his head. "Don't do it, Maria."

  "I'm going to kill him, and then I'm going to kill you." He stared straight into his son's eyes. "While you watch, betrayer."

  I hunkered down a couple of feet away from Kilshaw's head. "Be careful. If I wanted to, I could take down the entire Divide and you with it."

  "Maria." Aedan pushed to his feet, started toward me.

  "Prove it," Kilshaw said, emphasizing the "t" sound. He was trying hard not to look excited, but his flaring nostrils, sweating temples, and wide eyes gave him away.

  "No, thanks. I've got nothing to prove to you."

  Aedan stopped. Let out a loud sigh.

  "You really thought I was going to use my ability?" I rolled my eyes at him. "How stupid do you think I am?"

  "Stupid is not a word I'd ever use to describe you, Maria Guadalupe. Short-tempered, stubborn, gorgeous…" Aedan said.

  "You're lucky you added that last one."

  "Silence." Kilshaw's face was so twisted with rage he looked years older than seventy. "Do either of you have any idea what's going to happen now that I'm back home?"

  "You'll be tried for your crimes by a jury of your peers?" Aedan took a step away from his father as he said it. Ingrained fear was hard to fight, even if you were as brave as Aedan Sterling was.

  "Peers?" Kilshaw laughed. "My family ruled Sanctum for hundreds of years. We have no peers."

  "Then I guess a jury of the descendants of your victims," Aedan muttered. "Should be a quick trial, then."

  "Wait. You ruled Sanctum?" I asked.

  "My father and I did, yes." Kilshaw sneezed. It made him seem almost human.

  "So, one might say you were once ‘the head' of Sanctum?"

  "That was awful." Aedan said, but he snickered.

  "Earthmover, you speak as if you think you've won." Kilshaw's satisfied expression worried me, because he was speaking as if he thought he'd won and, even though he was buried in the sand, I was terrified he was somehow right.

  The ground rumbled beneath us.

  "Maria, you can't do that around him," Aedan said.

  "It's not me."

  "Well, it's not him. He can only use what someone gives him."

  Kilshaw narrowed his eyes at his son, but said nothing.

  I shrugged. "Well, if it's not me and it's not him, then who is it?"

  33

  Abuelo reappeared on top of the dune he'd climbed over to get his car, and half-ran, half-slid down the sloping hill, a duffel bag clutched in his hands. A blonde head popped up on the dune directly after he hit bottom, and the person it was attached to also slip-slid down, landing on her butt.

  "Cindy?"

  She got up, dusted herself off, and ran to me. "Sorry I'm late, but I walked all the way over here as soon as I could—so basically, as soon as my parents' backs were turned." She pulled me into a fierce hug. "When your grandpas came home and found you gone, they called me because they figured I might know where you were. Of course, I did." She hugged me even tighter. "Don't ever do that again, Maria. Best friends don't abandon each other."

  "I needed to find my dad."

  "No, you were running away."

  She knew me too well. "I won't do it again."

  "Good." I knew the second her attention snagged on Aedan. It was as if a flashbulb went off behind her eyes. "Who is this?"

  "I'm Maria's boyfriend," he said.

  "Really? I'm Maria's best friend. Nice to meet you, boyfriend."

  "Nice to meet you, best friend."

  Oh no, they were bonding.

  "He is not my boyfriend," I mumbled, as I watched my grandfather dig in the sand around Kilshaw. "Abuelo, what are you doing?"

  "Spinning my wheels, it seems." He sat back in the sand. "We need to get to town, and we can't leave him here. If the Beyond beasts don't kill him, the scavengers will."

  "Scavengers?"

  Cindy nodded. "A group of lessers and mid-caste talents that eschew society. They live in a caravan town west of here. They scavenge anything that might be of value, and human life is pretty low on that list."

  "This place just gets weirder and weirder," I said.

  "Not to interrupt, but does anyone have anything to eat?" Aedan wrapped his hands around his middle. "I'm starving."

  "That's right. You crossed through the Divide. Wait. Does that mean he's going to conk out on us?" I asked.

  Aedan ignored me and focused on Cindy. "Do you have a crushed granola bar at the bottom of your purse? A box of raisins? I'll take stale ones. I've never been this hungry in my life. At this point, I'd gladly eat an entire bowl of kale."

  "Oh wow. He is hungry," Cindy said.

  "Yeah." I didn't like the way Aedan was eyeing the animal bones a few feet away.

  "I have something that might help. You're probably not going to like it." Cindy dug in her shoulder bag, producing a baggie filled with brown chunks that looked like some sort of root. "It's called gin—"

  "Ginger root? I like ginger. Not usually in this quantity, but I don't care at this point." Aedan swiped the bag from her and popped one of the pieces into his mouth.

  "Ginger pepper. It's one hundred times hotter than a jalapeño pepper. Do you have jalapeños in your part of the world? Mom said you don't have ginger peppers, so I—"

  "Fire. Mouth. Fire. Help." Tears streamed out of Aedan's eyes. "You … carry this … stuff around … with you?" He gagged.

  "Cindy is resourceful like that. You're lucky she didn't feed you limpid worm larvae instead." I peered at him, wrinkled my nose. "Good news is, the color has come back to your face. Bad news is, that color is purple."

  He opened his mouth wide and huffed out a breath. "Mean. This stuff is… meaner to me … than you are when … I make you mad." He huffed again. "Pepper. Hot, hot … my esophagus is ashes … burned away…"

  "Toughen up, kid. The heat wears off soon enough." Abuelo unzipped the duffel he carried down the dune and took out a thick blue, black, and white woven blanket. It reminded me of a Mexican blanket I had back home. He snapped the folds out of it and draped it over Dad.

  "This thing is really hot," Aedan said.

  Abuelo shook his head. "This is your boyfriend, nieta? He seems a little whiny."

  "Nieta?" Cindy asked.

  "Granddaughter," I translated.

  "Umm, yeah, I was totally kidding." Aedan puffed out his chest, sucked in several deep breaths. "It's no big deal." Sweat drooled down the sides of his face and coated his neck. "I'm cool."

  Cindy said, "If you let the heat dissipate on its own, it takes care of the worst symptoms from coming through the Divide. Not forever, but it should buy you half a day or s
o."

  "When I came across, I ate a lumberjack breakfast and then passed out for fifty-two hours," I said.

  "That sounds amazing." Aedan coughed, then glanced at Abuelo and thrust his hands on his hips and his shoulders back. "So, what's this about Scavengers, sir?"

  "No time to worry about them now. We have to get him out." Abuelo grunted as he worked one hand into the sand.

  "Why? What's the rush?" I asked, as another rumble shook the earth from below. "I swear that's not me."

  "I know it isn't. You're smarter than that."

  My dad coughed and slowly raised his head. "There's an enormous dust cloud about eighteen to twenty miles away. East. Rising like smoke in the sky."

  "I don't see it," Aedan whisper-wheezed. "I don't see anything but sand. Mountains of sand. Hills of sand. Sand, sand, sand. I thought I'd ended up in the Sahara when I first got here."

  "The town is over there." I pointed east. "You have to climb the dune to see it."

  "Then how is your dad seeing the smoke?" Aedan asked.

  "It's his ability. In ideal conditions, he can see up to thirty miles away."

  "Fifty," my dad croaked, "if conditions are ideal."

  "Something that would have been valuable to know months ago," Kilshaw snapped the words at his son.

  "That explains how you were able to stay ahead of us for so long. Cool." Aedan coughed a little, then frowned. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  Abuelo paced in front of Kilshaw's head, either not realizing, or not caring, that he was kicking up dirt in the man's face. For that matter, Kilshaw suddenly didn't seem to care, either.

  "You there, lesser girl. Give me some of that ginger pepper," he said. "The hunger is upon me."

  Cindy frowned at him and shook her head.

  "Don't call her that." Abuelo eyed my dad. "Cindy, we might need some of your ginger pepper over here."

  "I'm on it." She knelt beside my dad and handed him a piece of ginger pepper. It was half the size of the one Aedan had eaten. "Chew it fast, Mr. Thompson. It'll be easier."

  "Well?" Aedan asked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Dad always hid his ability and told me to hide mine," I said. "I didn't feel comfortable talking about his without his permission. I still can't believe I told you about mine."

  Aedan grinned. "I'm incredibly persuasive."

  "You're incredibly arrogant."

  "That, too." He blinked. "Hey. The burning is gone. The weird hunger, too."

  "For now," Cindy said, a little mysteriously, in my opinion.

  My dad held the bite of ginger pepper between the fingers of his non-broken hand. "I was only trying to keep you safe. You make it sound as if I'm ashamed of your ability."

  "Aren't you?" I asked, a bit more sharply than I intended.

  "No. I'm not ashamed of you in any way." He popped the pepper into his mouth.

  Maybe it was wrong of me to doubt my own dad's word, but I did.

  Abuelo stopped pacing, scratched his head, talked to himself, shook his head, and then started pacing again.

  "Whew, this is one hot pepper." Dad puffed out his cheeks, but he didn't seem as affected as Aedan had been. He wasn't even sweating, but that could be because he was still shivering.

  "The sand is like cement." Abuelo stood with his hands on his hips.

  "Good. That way we don't have to worry about him getting away," I said.

  "Besides, he'll be passed out before long," Cindy said. "I'm not sharing my ginger pepper with a bigot who tried to hurt my friend."

  Kilshaw cleared his throat. "You can't leave me here."

  Abuelo sighed. "Unfortunately, he's right."

  "Do you want me to help him out? The way I helped you all?"

  Abuelo shook his head. "It's too risky. That's why I haven't tried it myself. If you hurt him in any way, it would be considered an attack, even if it was an accident."

  "The dust cloud is closer now. I'd estimate ten miles away." Dad tried to lift himself into a seated position using his good arm, but dropped back down. "It looks like a sandstorm, but there's no wind."

  "Fire?" I asked.

  Dad shook his head. "Not like any fire I've ever seen."

  "It couldn't be the chimera, could it?" I asked Cindy.

  "No. She accepted the offering."

  "Offering? Ridiculous," Kilshaw said, and spat. "Only lessers bother with the old ways. Such an embarrassment."

  Why did the man make it so easy to hate him?

  "It wasn't embarrassing when she singlehandedly took on a mountain chimera and saved the town. Something an entire group of Elites couldn't do. Most ran off with their tails between their legs."

  "Lies." Kilshaw blew dust from his mouth. "No lesser could take on a mountain or any other chimera."

  "And yet she did," I said.

  Cindy sent me a quiet smile. "It's probably limpid worms."

  "Makes sense." Abuelo nodded his agreement. "The vibrations coming from the rippers draw them in. And with us disturbing the vibrations…"

  "Limpid worms? They're coming here?" My voice cracked. I was glad I'd forgotten about those things when I was trapped underground, or I really would have panicked. "What the heck? I thought the town was deworming or something."

  "Only the worms who nest within city limits." Abuelo said. "We have to cull those or they'll eat everything in sight. Mostly we try to redirect them, but they aren't the sharpest creatures and sometimes return."

  "How many are there within the city limits now?" I paced in front of Kilshaw's face. He blinked as sand flew into his eyes. Or was he getting tired? I hoped it was the latter. I'd be happy to see him take a fifty-two-hour nap about now.

  "According to my father, the deworming has been pretty successful, so I'd think not many." Cindy held up two, then five fingers. "My guess is more than twenty, less than fifty."

  "Fifty? You can't hold up five fingers and say fifty. Five fingers is five."

  "Oh. Sorry." Cindy stared at her fingers. "I'm not sure anyway. Samuel would know better, since he can hear them."

  Samuel. That's who I needed.

  "Where is he?"

  "Knowing him, I'd say somewhere between the worm horde and the city."

  34

  Cindy, Aedan, and I ran until we spotted a rusty, not-quite-classic-Chevy truck trundling down the road. It stopped when Aedan waved it down, and an elderly man in overalls and a dirty ball cap told us he'd take us the rest of the way into town. I was leery of accepting a ride from him, but Cindy hopped right in. Apparently, the guy was a member of her mother's gardening club.

  "Took you long enough." We met up with Samuel on the edge of town. He leaned against his ATV, arms folded across his chest, watching the worm cloud.

  "We had to stop and tell my dad what was going on so he could alert the city council." Cindy's tone could have cut glass. "Then we had to find you. It's not like you left a note telling us where you were."

  Aedan gave me a wide-eyed look. I nodded. Yep, my friend had claws. It was one of my favorite things about her.

  "I didn't mean anything by it," Samuel grumbled. He glanced at Cindy's mutinous expression, then away.

  "It's okay. I missed you too, sweetie." I winked.

  Aedan laughed. Of course, he thought it was funny. Sarcasm was his native language.

  Samuel did not wink back at me. He was too busy staring at the massive dust cloud bearing down on us. "They're coming from the mountains."

  "To attack the town?" I asked.

  "Limpid worms are all instinct and drive. They aren't capable of a coordinated attack based on any sort of logic. For some reason, they think there's food nearby and they want it."

  "I opened some rippers today. A lot of rippers."

  "I heard," Samuel said. Had he actually heard, or had he heard someone talking about it? Either choice was a possibility.

  "Abuelo thinks that's what's drawing them."

  "Probably," Samuel said. There was no blame in his tone, only interest.

 
; "So, these are the worms you told me about?" Aedan asked. "The giant, dog-eating, exploding ones?"

  "Yes."

  He glanced down at his T-shirt, jeans, and black Converse sneakers. "I really hope they haven't eaten. This is my only set of clothes."

  "At least your T-shirt is black. It won't show stains," I said. It wouldn't matter, of course. It would have to be burned if limpid larvae exploded on it.

  Samuel took me by the elbow, pulled me to one side. "Were you able to get across?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Did you see anyone on the other side? A woman?"

  The hope in his eyes made me wish I had better news for him. "No. I'm sorry, Samuel. I didn't see Mica."

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. It was the only sign of emotion he showed, but it was telling. We rejoined the others.

  "You guys okay?" Cindy asked.

  "Yeah, we're okay." I glanced at Samuel, who probably was not okay but was putting up a brave front.

  "Where's the prisoner?" he asked.

  "You know about Kilshaw already?" How was that possible?

  "The capture of Tristan Kilshaw Sterling, the biggest war criminal in the last century, is big news. The minute the council knew about it, so did everyone else. The editor of the local paper is a telepath and a gossip."

  "Telepath?"

  Samuel wrinkled his nose. "A low-grade telepath. He can only catch very strong emotions. No one in Dead End worries much about him reading their mind—it's his gossiping that really pisses them off."

  Maybe the town didn't worry about the man's telepathy, but it sure made me uneasy. I'd have to figure out who the editor was and steer clear of him.

  "The city council deployed a security team. Also, someone with a backhoe," Cindy said.

  Samuel's brows dipped low. "Backhoe?"

  "Maria buried Kilshaw to his neck in the sand."

  That netted me a rare, and precious, Samuel grin. "Nice work."

  "I had help. Abuelo Emilio stayed behind to make sure no one did anything dumb like use their abilities around him. He's also waiting for the medics to arrive for my dad." I'd hated leaving him so soon after getting him back, but there had been no other option. If I'd caused the worms to come to Dead End, I had to help fight them.