Cut Off

by Robertson, Edward W.

  He frowned and scratched that onto the bottom of the list. "What do you intend to use these for?"

  "To build a fort."

  He glanced up, frown deepening. "A...fort? Are you expecting trouble?"

  Fiona slapped her hand on the table. "For God's sake, she's making fun. Miss Tristan, this meeting concerns the future of our town. Please treat it with the gravity it deserves."

  "Extra storage," Tristan said, watching her. "Farm tools. Seed. That sort of thing. Why would my intentions for the materials change their value?"

  Lewis laughed through his nose. "You mean, why do we deserve to give a shit?"

  "Well?"

  "If I were you, I'd ask exactly the same thing. So I think you've got a good guess why."

  "What you'll say is you want to make sure I'm not putting it to use for a bad end," she said. "Mostly, you want to know how much I want this and how much you can ask for it."

  He grinned, showing teeth that were stained with coffee or tea. In a few more years, he would start to lose them. "Oh, I like you."

  "What is the penalty for non-compliance?"

  Robin's eyes crinkled. "Wouldn't it be best if we can come to an agreement?"

  "It would be best if you answered the question."

  He pressed his lips together. "You would no longer be allowed to enter the town. If you were to be seen in town, you would be evicted. Peacefully. Unless you resisted."

  Tristan glanced between them. Robin looked conciliatory; Fiona, calculating; Lewis, eager. She nodded. "Let's talk numbers."

  They didn't ask for much. Some preserved food, a box of ammunition for a caliber she didn't use, and two dozen beeswax candles, which she'd looted en masse from the hotels. The entire meeting appeared to be more about getting her to recognize and concede to their authority than in extracting resources from her. Which was not to say she liked the outcome. She had been deeply tempted to tell them to fuck off—you're going to try to claim ownership over the entire town?—but the problem was she hadn't been able to read them.

  Oh, they came off agreeably enough. Real country club. Even Lewis' aggression was white collar, as if he were a former realtor or loan officer, the kind of guy who'd knock off work and drink shots with his buddies while bragging about how he'd "raped" the latest buyer.

  Tristan doubted, though. They had all gone through the same apocalypse. Making it this far had required something from each and every survivor. She thought the Guardians might carry some steel inside them. Their civilized demeanor could be nothing more than the sheath concealing a very wicked knife.

  She stood to leave.

  "We can pick up the goods at your convenience," Robin said.

  "Don't trouble yourself," Tristan said. "I'll bring them down tomorrow morning."

  She walked into the darkness of the restaurant. Near the front doors, Tom appeared beside her.

  "Everything simpatico?"

  "Sure." She glanced back toward the patio. "What can you tell me about them? I'm kind of on the fringes out there."

  "You don't say," he smiled. "They showed up early this year. Pretty outgoing, especially for new arrivals. Made a few friends, which helped thaw relationships with the holdouts. They launched this whole Guardian thing a few weeks ago. Idea is to keep town safe and the residents on good terms."

  "The others are on board with this?"

  "So far," he shrugged. "The few who aren't seem content to keep their distance. Haven't heard of any trouble."

  "How many people you got here, anyway?"

  Tom looked up and to the side, doing numbers in his head. "Twenty...one? Helen's still holding out, last I heard. Why?"

  "Just curious." She smiled at him. "Let me know if anything comes up?"

  "Will do."

  She headed north up the highway. At the house on the mountain, Alden was asleep on a bench in the shade. As she clunked around the kitchen, he wandered inside, bleary-eyed.

  "How'd it go?" he said.

  She had thought this through on the walk and had decided it was best for him to be made aware of the truth. Something could happen to her at any time. He needed to be capable of fending for himself. Food and shelter and all the rest would be no problem for him; he was strong, he had no qualms about working hard, and he'd learned how to get by on the island.

  There was something naive about him, though. The flaw that had allowed him to fall under Hollister's sway at Hanford, standing watch over the human cattle working the field. She was his older sister. She needed to teach him better.

  She recapped the meeting, including each question she'd asked and why. "Still don't know much about them. Frankly, I trust them less than I do the aliens."

  "How do you figure that?"

  "The aliens seem content to do their own thing. People? They always want something from you."

  His face struggled with ambivalent emotions. "They haven't shown us anything yet, right? So I guess we wait and see."

  They got up to go put in a couple hours at the Fallback Shack. In the morning, she loaded the agreed-upon goods into the basket of her bike and rode down to Sands. Tom met her with a smile. He had no news to impart.

  The next few days passed in peace, but the minor dust-up with the Guardians deepened her convictions the shack was a good idea. In fact, once it was done, she thought she would see about finding a new boat and fixing it into shape. Molokai and Lanai looked less than ten miles away, and Molokai in particular looked green enough to live on. She had the vague idea it had once been a leper colony and had never had much of a population. Unless survivors had migrated to it, it ought to be almost uninhabited.

  At the site, they strung the fencing between the posts, wove leaves into the links, painted the shack with blobs of green. Together, they dug out a corner of the hut for storage, reinforcing the sides with leftover plywood. At the house, they packed up tubs, set them in a wagon, and hauled it all up to the shack. Food, water, spices, a few guns, medical supplies, survival grab-bags with things like scissors, Swiss army knives, sewing kits, compasses, cooking gear.

  As work on the Fallback Shack drew to a close, Alden suggested they find a nearby tree with a good view of the slope and fit it out with ropes and handholds. While she continued the fence-weaving, which was taking forever, he left to scout that out.

  "Found a good one," he reported an hour later. "Can I work on it tomorrow? Or do you need me here?"

  She wiped her hands on her hips. The fence was three-quarters woven with leaves. The shack still needed a door (she'd decided to affix a real one), but she wouldn't be able to get to that for another day. Besides that, everything was in place, sound and secure.

  "Sure," she said. "But once the crow's nest is done, you better find us some eye patches and peg legs."

  Her work was far from perfect, but it stood on its own. It felt good to have built such a thing herself. As good as it felt to be able to run for miles and miles at a stretch. She ought to do more projects like this, just to learn how. To be able to do so if circumstances ever demanded it of her.

  She would get the chance much sooner than she liked. The next day, when they came to the site, they found it ruined: portions of fence pulled down, plywood pried up and snapped into pieces, the tubs yanked open and scattered across the woods.

  4

  Ness went numb with shock and terror. How had they found Sebastian? Cornered and captured him without Sebastian sending word to him? He rose halfway from his seat, reaching for his gun. A second light hit the chained alien and he saw that its motions were all wrong: it had a sinuous, compact walk. Head was the wrong shape, too. More like a baby carrot than an egg. Ness let out a shaky breath and reseated himself.

  "Thought that would get your attention," Sprite grinned. "Ever seen one before?"

  "Now and then." Ness reached for his beer. "How did they get their hands on that?"

  "Beats me. As in, I'm sure the staff would beat me within an inch of my life if I tried to find out. All I can tell you is they've had t
hat thing for four months, it's fought five matches, and it's undefeated."

  "So why would anyone bet on the human?"

  "Because until now, the human has never been given anything nastier than a knife—and they're not done yet."

  From what little Ness could gather, the action at the betting booth was primarily going to the alien. A second spotlight shined from above, silencing the crowd. Every face at the booth turned to watch as a second man was led to the arena. He too bore a sword.

  "Interesting, eh?" Sprite said.

  The hollers at the booth doubled, men gesturing toward themselves and the ring, reversing bets. Ness examined the alien with a clinical eye. They were so different from the human physiology it was easy to write them off as identical drones, perhaps even clones, but despite integrating some artificial processes into their reproduction, there were variances between individuals. As this one was put inside the fence and prompted to display itself as the human fighter had done, Ness locked in on its hammer-pods.

  That was Sebastian's term, "hammer-pod." The limb resembled a typical tentacle, but rather than terminating in a prehensile tip, the last eight to fifteen inches of the arm were a dense, rock-hard club of chitin. Sebastian had opined the limb had originated as a way to bash open stubborn crustaceans and shellfish. In their modern era, it found use in any number of professions where a tough, hard tool was useful.

  Most of the aliens had one. This one had three.

  "It's going to whip their asses," Ness said.

  "We'll see what the katanas have to say about that."

  "Check out those tentacles with the clubs at the tips. They're made from calcium carbonate or some shit. You're thinking they're going to carve it up like calamari? Their swords are going to bounce off those clubs like Super Balls."

  Sprint gazed toward the ring. "You guarantee this."

  "Hell, man, I don't know. I never cared about boxing, let alone cross-species armed death matches. But if you put a stack of chips in front of me and asked me to choose, I wouldn't hesitate. Not for one instant."

  The man furrowed his brow, calculating, then bounced from his seat. "I'll be right back."

  He made his way through the throng to the suited man behind the betting counter, who was calling out odds in several languages, the alien the slight favorite. While Sprite was gone, the announcer yammered some more. Ness wished he could understand, but he knew it wouldn't help; however they'd actually acquired the alien, the announcer was surely delivering some trumped-up origin story that had nothing to do with the facts. Ness thought about contacting Sebastian, but there wouldn't be any point. Anyway, five minutes from now, the thing in the cage might be dead.

  Sprite came back sweaty, flushed, and disheveled from doing battle with the bettors. He thunked in his chair and grinned at Ness. "If you're wrong about this, you're about to find out what the world's nicest angry drunk looks like."

  "That doesn't sound so bad."

  "Be afraid, my friend. All it means is that when I knife you, I'll make sure you bleed out in a comfortable position."

  The alien was sent to one corner, the humans to another. The men readied their blades in a guard, murmuring to each other. The alien raised its array of limbs. The announcer raised a metal bell above his head and clanked it vigorously. The crowd bayed.

  The alien glided forward on a half dozen legs, its eyes as bulbous and outraged as Marvin the Martian's. The man with two swords circled, bringing it to hesitate, while the second man shuffled forward with tiny steps. Before he came into striking range, he dropped to a knee, scooped up a handful of dirt, and flung it straight into the alien's eyes.

  The creature reversed course, pawing at its eyes with a frantic tentacle. The crowd gasped. The booth grew louder than ever as a man called out new odds. For the first time, the humans were favored.

  Sprite gaped. "Do you know how much money I just dropped? I am fucked!"

  "If anything, you should double down."

  "So they'll break both my legs? After this is over, you and I are getting in that ring!"

  Ness shrugged one shoulder. "Just watch."

  The two men advanced on the alien, which had retreated to the edge of the ring. It raised two fat tentacles, keeping them toward the back of its body. As the man with one sword moved in on the side, the tentacles rotated minutely, like a pair of stretched-out radar dishes. The man swung in a downward arc that would slash right through the alien's side.

  A serpentine tentacle whipped from the alien. A sharp crack rang across the night. The sword spun away, steel flashing under the lights; before the disarmed man could react, the alien was upon him, hammer-pods whaling him to the ground. The crowd groaned in sympathy. The sound faded, replaced by the sick crunch of breaking bone.

  The second man loped forward. The alien turned. For a minute, they feinted back and forth, swords and limbs threshing the air between them, circling for an opening. The spectators began to make cat calls.

  The man swiped at an extended tentacle and the creature scuttled back. The man struck again. The alien intercepted with a hammer-pod and jabbed at him with a small, razor-sharp claw. The man hacked at it clumsily, but the deflection drew a spatter of thick yellow blood.

  The spectators whooped. Emboldened, the man stutter-stepped in, thrusting with his long sword. He let it be intercepted by a hammer-pod, then struck his shorter weapon at the extended limb's soft upper arm. It landed true, severing the tentacle to the dirt. The crowd roared.

  A second hammer-pod lashed in from the side and fractured the man's wrist to grit.

  He dropped his short sword. Staggering, he attempted to bring the other to bear, but a cascade of claws hit him in his ribs and face, shredding and battering. He fell to one knee, gathered his strength, and attempted to drive his blade into the center of the advancing alien's body sac. It sacrificed one more limb to its defense, then fell on him, rending him apart. The dirt went muddy with blood.

  Silence ravaged the crowd like a sickness. One man burst to his feet to cheer, clapping over his head. Dozens joined him. Not to celebrate wagers won—most had clearly lost money—but for the sight of blood.

  Ness watched in contempt. He'd tell Sebastian about this, all right. And ask why exactly they were trying to protect these people.

  The announcer opened the fence, handed the creature a red belt, and jokingly held out the megaphone to it. The alien twitched one of its limbs. Ness was no expert in their language, but he knew well the symbol it displayed to the unwitting crowd: "BETRAY."

  Sprite thumped him on the shoulder. "You just earned me so much cash I can't tell you or you'll want half. How did you know it would turn out like that?"

  "My daddy was an alien." The security team entered the fence and began to secure the creature with chains.

  "Remind me to thank your mom for having such an open mind." Sprite dislodged himself from his chair and tugged down the hem of his shirt. "Stay here. I've got riches to collect."

  As security led the alien outside, two men rolled a wheelbarrow inside the fencing, donned gloves, and heaved the remains of the humans inside. The crowd had returned to socializing, drinking, collecting bets; several mimicked replays from the fight, laughing. The alien-handlers led their charge down a walkway and disappeared behind a line of trees. With Sprite occupied at the betting counter, Ness hurried across the patio toward the handlers, but they were already gone from sight.

  He returned to his table. Sprite came back a few minutes later looking smug. He slung himself into his seat. "Tonight, drinks are on me. I recommend you have a ton of them."

  Ness scooted back his chair. "Afraid I got to call it an early night."

  "Indeed, sir. Let me show you to your limo." Sprite's face fell. "You're serious? You just got here!"

  "And you showed me a great time."

  "I'm not kidding. You can't go before I have the chance to repay you. In spite of my appearance, company, and words, I'm a man of honor."

  Ness gazed across the da
rkened courtyard. "You know, there might be something you can do for me. How can I get in contact with you again?"

  Sprite examined his face and sighed. "If you're that determined to have no fun, I can see I can't convince you of your error. As to how to reach me, you must travel to the southern point of the island, cross the Moat of Lost Souls, and approach the apartment complex known as the House of the Lion. You will know it by the stone lions guarding its front."

  "Once I've finished that leg of the quest?"

  He shrugged. "Drop a letter through the mail slot. It's right in the front door."

  "Thanks for the tour. And for saving me from the dude with the baton." Ness tapped his fingers on the table. "Know what, stick around, will you? I got a feeling I'll be back pretty quick."

  "I make no promises. Money wants to be spent—and it's hard to say no to something as beautiful as this." He held up a finger, reached into his jacket, and removed a plastic sleeve. He counted ten red poker chips onto the table. "If you need to get back in, flash these at the front door. They'll be happy to give you the chance to part with them."

  Ness scooped them up and pocketed them. "See you when I see you."

  He exited the courtyard and made his way back through the hall to the lobby. It was roughly ten PM, and now that the fights were over, many of the spectators were drifting around the interior, joining the gaming tables, looking for a good time. Ness walked back into the night and strode to the parking garage. He climbed the stairs to the penultimate floor, shuffled through the darkness to the open window in the wall where he'd left Sebastian. It was vacant. Ness turned in a confused circle.

  Sebastian burst from behind a dingy SUV. Ness' heart jumped like it was fit to explode.

  "What the hell?" he blurted out loud, then signed, "Trying to scare me to death?"

  "To prevent myself from being seen by those who would shoot me."

  "I got some news. I went inside. Looked around. Saw a fight. Like..." He shadowboxed. "An organized fight. One of the combatants was a Swimmer."

  This was the term Sebastian used for his species, though Ness wasn't certain whether it applied to all of them—the equivalent of "human"—or if it only referred to the sect that had invaded Earth—the equivalent of "Americans" or "Buddhists," say. And while there was an obvious physical, literal element to it, he thought the term had a symbolic side, too. One he hadn't yet been able to parse.