Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  Dammit, Gideon had to listen to her. If sex between them could kick open a door back home, could they use that? Or would it kill them as he feared? If she could only get some kind of equipment, so she could...

  Could what? Cause a new disaster?

  No. Not going there. She’d fix this. She’d find answers. But for that she had to get past this useless tumble of feelings.

  And where had Gideon gone?

  Panic spiked her pulse. She gulped two breaths to slow it, shifted to ease cramping muscles, pushed down the urge to run after Gideon and keep him in sight. Exhaustion dragged everything too close to the surface, past sins and present regrets, and she’d trade a hot coffee to be back in bed with Gideon’s arms around her. Or just to be back home.

  She glanced over to Jakes, wondered who or what he had waiting for him in their own world. He’d stamped on his game-face, military grim, focused and heading to feral. She’d seen the same on her father over the years when he’d come back from overseas postings, before his body had caught up with no longer living in a combat zone. She knew better than to try small talk or questions. But she’d still put her trust in Gideon—he’d come through before.

  Jakes didn’t seem to think he would. He gestured for Shoup to go after Gideon and Temple. Without so much as a glance at Carrie, Jakes ordered, voice low, “Stay close to cover. Shooting starts, you drop.”

  She thought about telling him ‘like hell’ but he was right. She’d be a liability if she got in the way. That spiked fresh irritation which fizzled like wet saltpeter in a misfired experiment. She opened her hand, saw the fine tremor in her fingers. She closed her fist again, locked it around the nine mil, but knew herself to be running low on everything. She followed Shoup, stayed close to the walls. Jakes followed her, his boots a soft thump on the dusty, buckling pavement of the street.

  Around the corner, heart thudding like the steady pound of a GPR unit bursting sound into the ground for a radar-read, the buildings started to look familiar. She glanced at Jakes, saw his eyes crease in narrow-eyed assessment. The thought hit her in a breath-stealing rush—they had circled around and were heading back to what had been their sanctuary.

  Gideon, what are you doing?

  From around the next corner, Gideon appeared as if he’d heard her. He held up his hand for them to stop. Without waiting to see if they would, Gideon ducked into a building. Jakes muffled a curse, signaled Shoup to follow. Turning, Carrie started to tell Jakes not to be an idiot—let Gideon carry out his plan. The hot hum of static dried her mouth, froze every muscle. The smell washed over her and through her, churning her guts.

  She choked on the stench drifting on a stir of dry breeze—rotting, burnt flesh. Next to her, Jakes fell to a crouch, dragged her down. She went with his pull, used her mouth to breathe because she’d rather taste dust than have putrid stink in her nostrils. Across the road, Shoup eased into an empty doorway, trailing Gideon. Carrie wished she had some place to disappear into. She did not want to face, for the third time in too few days, monsters who slipped under your skin to feed off the electrical activity in your body. But she knew one bit of good news.

  Gideon and Temple had put them downwind from the Walkers. Their scent would be hidden, but they could smell the Walkers coming this way.

  A blare of static sizzled in the air and leather shoe soles scraped rock. Carrie scanned the ruins for Gideon, her eyes narrowed against the rising dust. Fitful wind gusts moaned through the empty buildings, whistled through broken pipes. The hissing static kept rising—Walkers coming.

  When Jakes rough whisper scraped her ear, Carrie startled, her head jerking up. “Stay,” he said.

  He rose in a crouch and ran, boots kicking up reddish dust. With her gun perched on rubble that wasn’t much of a shield, Carrie glanced around and weighed the odds. Shoup was out there, with Gideon maybe. Jakes and Temple were in it as well. Staying put seemed a wise idea. But one more weapon might also make the difference in who survived. Having her around might also keep anyone from shooting Gideon—again.

  Mouth dry, hands slick on the hashed metal grip, she copied Jakes, rose, gun held up and out in front of her, arms stiff, hunched so low her back muscles and calves screamed. She made it to the next building, kept to the faint, cool lip of shadows. Moving forward, she rounded the corner, stumbled and froze. The hairs on the back of her arms lifted.

  A half dozen Walkers shambled down the street, clumped together, skin sparking like live wires. Their eyes glowed bright as neon in a charged tube. Straightening, she slammed her back against a wall, caught a startled breath that lodged under her ribs like a fist. She clamped down on anything else that might betray her. They were walking straight for her.

  Not a good time to freak, Brody.

  But it seemed a very good time to run screaming for the hills. Any hills. Like those jagged peaks lifting just beyond the city. There must be caves and dark places to hide. However, Gideon was here. And she’d seen what those things could do.

  They had killed her team.

  Holding that thought, she forced shallow, panting breaths, nursed her anger and fear into a cold pit she could wrap around that hard knot in her stomach. She wet her lips and widened her stance. Sweat trickled down her spine, a damp chill. She slid her thumb over the safety, switched it off with a soft click, moved her finger to wrap around the thin, cold trigger.

  Locked and loaded.

  From the corner of her vision, she caught movement up higher.

  She glimpsed a large, dark shape in a window. Temple leaned out and dropped one of the black pineapples she’d seen him use before. It bounced on the street, rolled and lay there. The Walkers headed to it in a blur so fast shock rippled through her.

  Crowding each other, they leaned over the black pineapple Temple had dropped. She couldn’t stop the questions that popped. Was it an EM field generator? Some simple electronic device the Walkers could feed on? Whatever it was, it made for a hell of a distraction. The Walkers stood over it, seemed to be basking in whatever it put out. Now was the time to move.

  She took one step back, paused, took two more. One of the Walkers—someone who’d once been a woman—looked up and straight at her. Tattered clothes flapped in the breeze. Yellow-bright eyes flared, flashed white and shifted to a charge of red.

  Not here, not here, not here, Carrie thought, willing herself to be hidden.

  Sparks leaked from the woman’s skin, charged the air with the acrid stench of burnt flesh. Carrie held her breath in an aching chest. Did that static hum hide her heartbeat? Sweat dampened her palms; nerves dried her throat. She put her stare on the other Walkers, now fighting over the black pineapple, clawing at each other for a closer spot. Movement pulled her stare back to the thing that had once been a woman—that one Walker had stepped away from the group.

  Static lifted, rose to a higher pitch. The others stopped, lifted their heads, turned toward the one of them that had been a woman. They all locked onto Carrie.

  Oh, crap—they communicate.

  She thought of orcas and how pack hunters had to coordinate on some level—so, not just mindless energy. Only what did she do with that new fact?

  Before she could decide, from an upper floor window, Gideon dropped into the street. He hit, rolled, came up to a hunched, fighting stance. Two long steps put him between Carrie and the Walkers.

  Another Walker split from the others, started forwards, moving so fast Carrie sensed the air displacement, reacted more than saw. Three sharp raps and the Walker stopped, staggered, looking down at the holes in his chest. Light flared from those black holes, jagged as lightning. The Walker put a hand over the leaks, fingers limp, spreading white blare into reddish beams. Static lifted, squealed high just before it exploded.

  Blood splashed, splattered over Gideon. Carrie glanced down at the smoking, warm gun in her shaking hands. She didn’t remember squeezing the trigger. Looking up again, she muttered, “Guess I am good with more ‘n paper.” Too bad Jakes wasn’t around
to hear.

  He was around somewhere. Shots popped from the buildings, a harder sound than any car’s backfire. Gideon, thank god, fell flat, pressed himself into dust and rubble. Two more Walkers jerked with the impact of hits, light spilling, pouring from fresh holes. Carrie flinched as the energy and bodies exploded in a flash of heat and brilliance.

  Containment fields, she thought, her back pressed to the building again, back teeth jarring together at every loud report. We’re containment fields for them. Compromise the field and you get an implosion of their energy. That had to be useful. But she didn’t know how to apply the data, not with a firefight ripping across the street. Not with ozone warming the air.

  Ozone.

  “Oh, crap.” She breathed out the words, knew what was happening because she’d been through it too many times now. Looking up, she stared at the Rift opening above where the two Walkers had exploded into curling smoke. Had the Rift been opened by the release of that energy? Or was it just opening because she and Jakes and Shoup were here—was the universe trying to put them back where they belonged as Gideon had suggested? The dark gash overhead widened and something even blacker lifted from the charred bodies, curled like thick oily eels before they bled into the Rift.

  Okay, that had to be connected—somehow, if you got the right energy going, you ripped open a doorway. Killer sex or kill a few Walkers—not really helpful to know that right now, but Carrie logged the information. She kept her stare on the Rift to see what would happen next.

  The Walker who’d been heading for her sensed or saw that tear between realities as well. For an instant it stood still. It let out a high pitch static scream. The sound cut off. In a blur, the Walker turned, slid fast down a side street. Pushing up to his feet, Gideon started after it. His path took him straight between two remaining wounded Walkers. Heart tight in her throat, Carrie screamed out his name. Gideon’s knife flashed. One of the Walkers staggered, throat slashed open and light bursting from its rotting flesh. The explosion threw Gideon down, widened the Rift into a black, swirling maw. The darkness dragged in the light spilling from the corpses, dragged in dust and rocks and anything else within its reach. Two more rounds took out the last Walker and the light from it poured up and into the Rift. The smoke from the bodies that wasn’t smoke but something thicker, curling and twisting, tried to wiggle free, but the Rift sucked it in. With a shaking boom, the Rift snapped shut.

  Silence settled in the aftermath.

  Forcing long, unsteady breaths, Carrie took in the stink of blood and burnt flesh and things she would not name which mixed with cordite and dust. The hair on the back of her arms and on her neck stood stiff. She counted to five to make sure nothing else came out of any street or building, and ran for Gideon.

  He’d risen to his feet, swayed unsteady in the breeze, his stare still tracking the female Walker who’d escaped. Temple eased from a doorway, strode to Gideon’s side and wrapped his hand around Gideon’s arm. Carrie tucked herself on Gideon’s other side. Gideon took a step forward, after the Walker who’d fled, but Temple held him. So did she. From the left, Shoup and Jakes stepped out of the nearest building, both of them scanning the street, their expressions locked down.

  Jakes’ stare ran across her, moved to Temple, to Gideon, before sliding back again. Taking inventory, making sure they could move, she guessed. She pulled in another breath, and said, voice almost firm, “We’d better get going.”

  “No shit,” Jakes said, his eyes a flat, flat gray.

  Ignoring the sarcasm, she turned to Gideon. He was still looking after the Walker, grief a deep shadow in his eyes. The lines on his forehead cut even deeper. She’d seen that look on other faces—on her dad for an instant at mom’s funeral, on her brothers’ faces after dad’s death. She’d had something like that in her eyes when she’d looked at her reflection in that broken mirror back in the church, when she’d thought of Chand and Thompson and Zeigler and the tech. She knew the truth in an instant and a shiver chased down her arm.

  Gideon had known the woman whose skin was now worn by a Walker. He’d known her very well.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It’s not accurate to judge Temple’s world as backwards—a difference observed should not mandate an assignment against a pre-existing scale of valuation. Sometimes our standards must change. Sometimes we must. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

  Carrie couldn’t stop thinking about the dead woman, about Gideon and that blur of heart-pounding action in the city. She shivered under the weight of those implications, and from a wind turning bitter as the day faded. She kept walking, too, following Temple into the hills.

  In the city, Temple had rounded them up like so many strays. With a firm grip and a shove, he swept in the direction he wanted them to move. He’d strode to the front and Carrie had trailed after him, numb and stunned, Shoup and Jakes following in single-file. Gideon kept to a far distance.

  Gideon had said nothing to her since leaving the city. But she replayed those last moments again in memory—Gideon staring down the street where that last Walker had fled. He’d taken one more futile step before Temple’s big hand, planted flat on Gideon’s chest, had stopped him. Fists tight, Gideon had turned, had stared at Temple for more than a long moment. Something passed between them. At last, Gideon had glanced once at Carrie, looked back at Temple and nodded, his jaw locked, his knife blade dull and stained red in his hand. What had he just agreed to with Temple? She still didn’t know.

  She also didn’t look back—not more than a dozen times.

  Gideon walked with his head bent, his stare on the ground, arms folded around himself as if he hadn’t healed from that gunshot wound, or as if his insides would spill out if he let go.

  He’d known her—had known the woman who’d once lived in that scarred body now animated by a Walker. Carrie shivered for she knew what that was like—it was worse when the dead walked again outside of dreams.

  She’d seen Chand when he was no longer Chand—some thing had stolen his body. Seeing Chand had stirred her guilt, widened her sorrow into a gulf she still couldn’t span. And they had only been friends. Co-workers. For Gideon…she had an idea about who that Walker had been and she didn’t want to face that thought.

  Thankfully, no one wanted to talk. Pavement gave way to rough ground. The city thinned, fell back, and foothills lifted. Carrie could stumble forward, numb, hungry, hating the damned things that walked the city behind her, staring at small shrubs that clung to the ground, at tiny pale wildflowers pushing through packed dirt and loose scree. Lichen clung to a few boulders and moss of some kind struggled for a hold. Existence living. The Walkers hadn’t consumed everything, but it looked as if they’d tried to. Or was this from the fallout of these people trying to push the Edge Walkers back into the Rift? Someone really needed to get rid of those things.

  That led her back to the fact that Gideon and Temple were trying to do that. Except right now they were retreating, meaning they must believe more Walkers would be coming. More than anyone could handle.

  She followed Temple in silence, hearing only the scuff of boots, the scrabble of some small creature moving away, the uneven rhythm of labored breathing.

  The incline rose and she had to push everything into the effort of trudging uphill. Better to focus on legs that burned from the effort of a walk that changed to a climb. Air cooled and scraped her lungs. She’d skipped too many days at the gym, had let the project take over her life—literally now, it seemed. She wondered what was going on back home.

  Had Kerrou figured out what had happened? If he’d sent in security—Jakes and Shoup, and those others now dead…too many others—he had to know something by now, right? But her notes would be in the lab and might be inaccessible. And if she hadn’t been able to cross back, was whatever blocking her also keeping the Walkers from crossing to Earth?

  Hell, what if that was what the Walkers wanted—a door to their next feeding grounds? She stumbled, put out a blind hand and grabbed a ro
ugh boulder that steadied her. Ideas spun wild.

  What if the Rift opening in her lab hadn’t been an accident? What if the power surge on her end wasn’t a cause, but an effect—the result of something else spiking the power, pushing through to make a small hole bigger?

  She rubbed her fingers over her forehead, wiped off sweat and wanted to wipe away this fresh worry. A blister on her right heel nagged for attention. She’d kept her running shoes, but now she wished for boots and thick socks. She’d traded her bloodstained clothes for ones Gideon had given her. And was that woman—that Edge Walker—actually who Carrie thought she’d been? She glanced back at Gideon again.

  Still head-down, not looking back, not looking forward.

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  But she’d known him only days, not the lifetime it seemed. Facing up the path again, Carrie watched Temple disappear around a bend that didn’t exist except as more barren slope. When she reached the same spot, she stopped and blinked in surprise.

  Someone had cut a cave into the mountain—the cave she’d longed for back in the city. She swallowed and peered inside and wondered about insects and bugs. And bats. She’d never been fond of flapping things. But this did not look like your average, ragged natural formation.

  Smooth edges and a round, uniform opening gaped before her, small enough you had to duck and press your arms tight to your sides to enter. She stepped into cool gloom, didn’t see Temple, but she heard the slap of his sandals, so she followed. Moist air wrapped around her and she pulled her tattered robes close. Sweat cooled on her skin, raised goose bumps on her arms. Light from the opening behind slipped into the narrow passage that curved and curved again before opening into a cavern.

  Stepping from the narrow tunnel into wide space, she straightened.

  Crystals nearly the size of fallen skyscrapers grew at slanting angles, creating a floor, opaque walls, jagged ceilings. Light gleamed, shimmered in phosphorescent greens and soft yellows. She’d seen photos of similar caves in Mexico—an astonishing sight, even on a flat image. To see the same in person but on a larger scale and with these glowing minerals—it took her breath, left no words for the vast, glittering cavern.