Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  Or that they’d left him to the Edge Walkers.

  Putting the back of her hand to her mouth, she pulled in a breath and remade the sob that tried to get out into a cough. She’d be damned if she’d show anything in front of these hard-nosed flyboys and Shoup was glancing back at her, impatience tugging on his expression. He had the same short hair and hard body as Jakes, but Shoup stood the taller by a shade. Dark hair and not-so-dark muscle reminded her of Temple. Where had he gone? Had they shot him, too? No, not thinking about that, either. She had to get these idiots out of open ground before they got themselves killed, too.

  She was doing well just staying on her feet. The idea of exerting any more control than that wasn’t happening. Which left memories dancing along at her heels like her shadow over the rough ground.

  They stumbled down empty streets. The thud of military boots followed the sluggish beat of the pulse in her throat. Weariness settled into automatic sway—an object in motion tends to remain in motion.

  So move.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, she scanned for clues about where they were wandering. Rubble, gray and bleak, with that dank sky overhead and a haze of mountains glittering in the distance like a mirage, had to guide her. Jakes kept slipping her sideways looks as if he knew she wouldn’t make it to whatever she was trying to find. She’d prove him wrong.

  Stubborn inertia kept her going. But something nagged at her, a rumble in the back of her mind. It tugged a lot like her mother’s voice had, calling her name in the dusk of a summer night to drag her home from the war games she’d played with her brothers and neighborhood kids.

  She hadn’t seen her brothers in years—God knew where Ted had gone this time, Indonesia, she thought, to teach farming. Randy didn’t stay in touch even that much—he had his own family, his own worries over a growing practice in Seattle. The bonds between them had passed on along with the old man. But she wondered if she’d see them again—or if they wanted to see her. Maybe if she got home and...

  Turning a corner, there it stood, fractured against the sky. The church. Or whatever that tall, half-shattered building with the arched windows and holy ground was. Mountains loomed in the distance behind it, dusky in the cloud-blurred light of this world’s day. Had Temple made it back?

  Closing her eyes—just for a second— she could almost hear a sound in her head. Temple? It wasn’t Gideon’s voice, but an image of him formed. Here and hurting. She wanted that to be real so much that the wanting of it cut like glass shards pressed into her heart.

  Shutting down the idea, she opened her eyes, and pointed with Gideon’s blood-stained knife. “Here. We’ll be safe here.”

  Jakes nodded and he still had heat in his eyes. He also sent Shoup in first and followed with his gun lifted.

  The two airmen went in crouched low, looking for trouble. Carrie waited to a count of five and eased in behind them. In the cool darkness, she leaned against a wall and closed her eyes. Maybe she could fall down for a few hours now. But soft steps on stone echoed, safety switches clicked on automatic weapons and she opened her eyes, panic flaring, hot and bright. She would find the energy to beat these two military idiots to death with their own guns before she’d let them take Temple out.

  But it wasn’t Temple who stood by the altar. Well, it was. His dark, bulky figure blended with shadows. More shadows darkened his expression into something wary and fierce. She could see why Jakes and Shoup had switched off their safeties. But Temple only stood there, very still in the gloom. He’d shucked off the tatters of his dusty robe. A sleeveless tunic and loose pants hung on his muscles, but her stare moved to the other man Temple held upright. She couldn’t blink, or find words, or even fill her lungs.

  Next to Temple, stood Gideon.

  He had lost his robes and his black t-shirt, but he still wore his even-sided cross, dangling from a thin black cord. The skin on his shoulders and chest gleamed pale and smooth in the dim light. He still had his jeans on and colorless cloth wrapped his ribs and he leaned on Temple like he needed the support. But he had his eyes open and his chest lifted and fell again with labored but regular breaths.

  “Gideon?” she said, taking one startled step, the word spilling out with a flood of giddy relief. She took two steps more. Fists clenching on air, she stopped. She glanced at Jakes and Shoup, crouched low to her left, guns aimed. Something cracked in her, fractured clean like stressed metal. No more. And she let out the fury and the misery of the day in fast, tight words. “Dammit, Jakes, wasn’t shooting him once already enough?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No, I didn’t rise from the dead. Shoup got it wrong, but I—well, yes, I was hurt. I don’t know how badly—it there such a thing as a good gunshot? But my recovery wasn’t miraculous. It’s…Temple knows…they’ve evolved a different approach to healing, what I think we’d call a holistic approach and it’s probably closer to Chinese ideas about chi. It’s their main advantage… interesting how the universe seems to need to even the balance. Like with extravagant flowers in a desert. — Excerpt Interview with Gideon Chant

  Gideon saw Carrie and two men with guns and everything else—even the pain—stopped mattering. He pushed away from Temple and something sharp pulled in his back, but it wasn’t enough to slow him. The burn in his veins told him he’d soon stop feeling even that slight tug on healing muscles and internal organs. He couldn’t, however, ignore these soldiers and their weapons. He heard Carrie say something—her voice sharp—and he glanced at her, caught fear pale on her face. With her hair sticking up and blood drying on her clothes, she looked like she needed to be off her feet as badly as he did. Fatigue hollowed and smudged her eyes. But a smile tugged at him, warmed him with the sight of her, alive and without glowing eyes and cracked dead skin that sparked with unnatural light.

  One more step and her words made it though the haze in his brain, formed from random sounds into recognizable thought.

  “They shot me?” He turned too fast to face the men with guns, had to press a hand to his side to stop the flaring ache. The words came out more half-stupid complaint than accusation. “What the hell were you using for brains? Or do you shoot everything on sight out of habit? God, you—from now on, don’t even point those things at anyone unless I say. We have few enough survivors as it is.”

  The older man rose, his knees popping, and while his expression didn’t change, the gun muzzle lowered. The faintest smile edged a thin-lipped mouth, but Gideon couldn’t say if that was patronizing sarcasm or something else. However, long fingers stayed curled around what had to be the trigger. Gideon knew what that meant—still on edge, still not trusting. Wary now himself, he locked stares with the guy—and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize someone who could act that quickly to shoot another human being.

  “By the way, I’m Gideon,” he said, offering his name since it was harder to kill someone you knew. At least he’d found that to be true. “That’s Temple.” Turning, he pointed behind him, but Temple had already moved closer, so Gideon’s hand smacked into Temple’s arm. He swapped a look with Temple, got back the image of jumping these two guys. He shook his head and turned back to the men with guns. “You can stay, but—”

  “Jakes,” the man said, interrupting. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s Shoup. Kevlar?” Jakes gestured with the gun to Gideon’s chest as he spoke that last word.

  Gideon had no idea what the man was talking about. “What?” he asked, blinking.

  “Kevlar, as in vest?” Jakes frowned, shook his head. “Never mind. Somehow I’ve got the feeling I’d rather skip that answer.”

  Gideon lifted a hand, started to rub the healing wounds, broke off the gesture and looked from one man to the other. “Look—my head hurts. My insides hurt. I need to sleep this off, not carry on a conversation.” He glanced at Carrie again and the tension bled out of him in a slow breath. She might look bad—strain tight around her mouth, skin so pale he could count her freckles—but she wasn’t dead o
r dying. He didn’t want to be grateful to these two gun-jocks, but they had looked after her and that counted for a lot on any world.

  “Good to see you,” he told her, the words inadequate but true. What else could he say?

  She nodded and folded her arms, hugged herself tight. The urge to do that for her stirred, so he stretched out a hand. She took the invitation, started walking to him and crossed the empty stones between them.

  As she strode past Jakes, she shot him a sideways glance, but Gideon wasn’t sure what that meant—a warning of some kind maybe—and she stopped just out of Gideon’s reach. He let his arm fall and waited. With her gaze traveling over him, wide-eyed, only a slim rim of gray-blue around black pupils, she stepped closer. She pressed her palm to his chest as if she had to check his heartbeat. Her fingers trembled, but her palm lay warm on him.

  “You were dead,” she said, voice so tight it might snap.

  He shook his head. “No. Temple can do a lot of things, but not that.”

  “But you…Gideon, the blood.” Her stare stayed on him and it seemed as if he could see everything in her eyes—all she’d gone through in that instant. She still had his knife in one hand. It was more than she should have had to endure.

  “I’m sorry. I—” Breaking off the words and keeping his movements slow—both to calm her and not kick up any more pain in himself—he reached up and smoothed a thumb over her cheek to brush away blood that had dried to a crumbling smear. Taking his knife back, he flipped it one-handed, gave it to Temple and he told Carrie, “You don’t really need a hospital for a transfusion. Not here.”

  Her stare dropped to the bandages wrapped around him and she reached out, pulled the top edge down to show the puckering scar from one of the exit wounds. “You do if you’re not going to risk infection. But…this is…what? Increased metabolism to regenerate tissue? Your pulse is up. I can see it in your throat, feel it in the heat off you…that could be fever. What kind of strain does this…this healing put on you?”

  Gideon shrugged, even though he knew what this was costing. This had pushed the limits of Temple’s skills—and he knew where the blood had come from to replace what he’d lost. He glanced at Temple, got back nothing—except a faint stir of amusement at the thought that there’d been any choice. Even with Temple’s patchwork—and Temple’s blood in him, making them even more kin than they had been—Gideon’s body had to do its part. It took every scrap of energy he had left to hang onto coherent thought. He put most of his focus into staying on his feet.

  “Around here, Temple used to be…well, shaman is about the closest we’d get to it back home. It’s a lot more involved than that and I don’t know all the details. I’m generally not aware enough when he...”

  Gideon let the words trail into a gesture and he saw Carrie’s mouth tighten. Ah, damn, he shouldn’t have said anything because he’d just implied he’d been this bad off before—which wasn’t quite true. He’d never been shot. Carrie looked at Temple and the harshness on her face softened. Temple kept up that black wall of silence, wasn’t even giving a twitch of his mouth to say anything. Carrie’s attention came back to Gideon and the faintest smile curved her lips.

  “He’s a witch doctor?” she asked. “So the dolls behind the...”

  “Uh, ‘scuse me here.” Jakes stepped forward, one hand resting on the top of his cradled gun, the other hand still not far from the trigger. “Hate to break up the reunion but there’s a couple issues on the table. Like where’s what’s left of your team, Brody?”

  Mouth pressed tight, Carrie turned and put her back to Gideon. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened, didn’t want to think about how everyone she’d worked with for the past few months were dead. She’d almost lost Gideon, too, and now she had him back and wanted to keep it that way. She stood between Jakes and Shoup, and Gideon—she’d put herself there by accident and if any shooting started she’d be hit. But she stayed where she was anyway. She wasn’t suicidal—or she didn’t think she was. However, she wasn’t letting anything else get to Gideon. Not today.

  Pulling in a breath, she let it out and shook her head. “Jakes, I know—oh, dammit, fine, there’s no easy way to…” She rubbed fingertips over her eyes and that didn’t wipe out the strain or the grit, so she straightened and just dove into it with the same rush of jumping off a cliff. “I think the people I worked with are all dead. At least, I hope they are, and aren’t like…like Chand—” She broke off, swallowed hard and forced the rest of the words out. “He was back there. Near…my lab. Only he’s…his body…it’s no longer a foothold for that thing that had him. And, right now, we’re stuck. So how about backing off for a few hours. We’re safe enough at the moment and—”

  “Uhm, actually...” Gideon let his words trail, but Carrie turned. She already knew that hesitant tone in his voice and it hadn’t meant anything good before this. Eyebrows lifting, she stared at him.

  He met the look and gave a shrug. Voice quiet, he said, “Five is pushing it for safe.”

  “Five what?” Jakes asked.

  Carrie decided her brain was still rattled by too much loud noise and too much death. Her body hummed with fatigue. But she remembered what Gideon had told her. She remembered Chand’s uncanny eyes, too, and shuddered. Small groups. Anything more than five or six drew the Walkers. Drew them to the hum of living bio-electromagnetic fields. “God, they’ll find us. There are too many of us?”

  Face set, Gideon nodded. The move pulled a wince from him and he pressed his hand against his side. He’d done that once before and she knew he needed to get off his feet—healing, not healed, she thought. She glanced back to Jakes and started a stumbling explanation—the accident in the lab, the explosion, the deaths. It must have been coherent enough since Jakes’ expression soured.

  “Goddammit, is nothing easy around here? So you’re saying those things—whatever the hell they are—are like goddamm heat-seeking missiles and we’re the heat?”

  “Fuckin’ EM fiel—” Shoup started to clarify. Jakes cut him off with a narrow-eyed stare. Shoup lifted one-shoulder and made a face, but he didn’t look all that sorry for interrupting and went back to an easy slouch, his gun propped against his hip.

  Carrie put her focus on Jakes. “Yes. Close enough. And the more of us around, the more heat. That’s not good.”

  “So how do we—” Jakes’ stare shifted to just behind Carrie. “Hey, want to back it off there, buddy?” Gideon’s hand had settled on Carrie’s shoulder. She shot Jakes a look to stop his complaints. But Gideon’s weight kept pulling on her. Her knees buckled as Gideon’s lean turned into a slow fall. Feet braced, she grabbed for him. Temple moved faster, silent, easing an arm around Gideon’s waist that pulled a hissed breath from Gideon.

  White faced now, eyes pressed closed, Gideon muttered, “Sorry. Sorry…I’m…thought I was doing better.”

  “Brody, there a place you can take him?” Jakes asked. He’d strode over to her side and had taken hold of her elbow to steady her. Mouth a tight line, he looked even more unhappy than earlier, but he’d at least slung his gun over one shoulder. She glanced at Temple. The man said nothing to her, but the impression flooded her mind of a room nearby, dark and cool, with a large flat soft surface.

  She looked at Jakes and nodded. “We’ve got him.”

  “Fine. One thing at a time. Shoup, you’re with me on neighborhood watch. I’ve had it with surprises, and that’ll thin our numbers for now. Brody, get him good enough to sit through a meal. I’m going to want a lot more answers.”

  “I’m not sure he has them.”

  “Someone better. This is no place to set up goddamm housekeeping. And don’t tell me again about any kind of stuck. That’s not an answer.”

  Gideon’s head lifted, his eyes opened to show a faint blue-silver gleam and the skin around the edges crinkled. “God, you’re bossy.”

  “Yeah, kinda comes with the uniform and the gold leaf.”

  “Those won’t help you here,”
Gideon said. And Carrie knew him to be right. She glanced at Jakes, face tight, stomach knotting.

  Eyebrows lifted, Jakes slung his weapon off his shoulder and into his hands. Gideon closed his eyes and the smile reached down to lift his lips before it twisted. Carrie tightened her hold, but Gideon opened his eyes and waved toward Jakes’ weapon. “That’s not going to help much, either. Not when you run out of bullets. But…I expect you’ll have to find out the hard way.”

  “Brody, move it. Your guy is about to pass out, so unless you want the joy of carrying deadweight—”

  “Thanks. I think we can manage,” she said, stiffening. She spread her feet wider to make it the truth. Every muscle screamed under Gideon’s weight, even with Temple on the other side and taking most of it. But she met Jakes’ knowing look with what she hoped had to be a hefty amount of belligerence. And she wasn’t going to look at Shoup, because she’d seen his smirk before and if she saw it again she’d want to smack it off his face.

  Jakes shifted his gun and reached into one pocket. He pulled something out, held out his hand. When Carrie offered her palm, he slapped cold metal against her skin. She glanced down, saw a pocket knife and a penlight. She looked up to see Shoup falling into step on Jakes’ left, long strides taking both of them out the door with the easy gait of men who knew they were dangerous and had the intention of proving it.