Burn

by Geoff North

  ESTAY

  His finger hovered over the ENTER button. He considered again what he was doing, what he was planning to unleash. Twenty-one cryogenic facilities. 57,611 ABZE clients, minus the 2,400 or so that perished in the Dauphin collapse. Fucking Lawman. Very few had been selected to receive the enhancements. Most of them would be mindless, soulless, and starving. They would consume everyone and everything in their path.

  Just what this world deserves. Lothair pressed the button.

  Lucille was on her hands and knees, hacking with every breath of air being pulled into her lungs. Edwin heard her. He crawled to his wife and bit into her shoulder. She went for his neck with black fingernails, but Lothair pulled them apart. “Behave, children.” Lucille snapped at his fingers, and Lothair kicked her viciously into one of the empty canisters. Three ribs broke on impact, but the freshly revived woman tried coming at him again. His grandson lunged from the other side, knocking Lothair to the floor. Edwin climbed on top of him, snapping towards his face like a rabid animal. Cold saliva dripped onto Lothair’s forehead. Edwin’s eyes, once blue and sparkling, were now grey, lifeless orbs.

  He was such a cute little baby.

  Lothair wrapped his fingers around his throat and pushed up. “I had hoped you would’ve retained some Eichberg reasoning in that frozen brain. I had planned on bringing the entire family together again.” He stabbed his fingers into Edwin’s ribcage and tore out his heart. “Wishful thinking.” Lothair threw the dead body aside and went to Lucille. He forced her head into the open cryogenic tube she’d climbed out of. He brought the metal door down with all of his strength, crushing her skull halfway in. He repeated the process two more times until most of her brains spilled out over the sides.

  Lothair climbed out of the Rushmore facility and crossed the rocky debris field scattered beneath the presidential busts. A roller was waiting for him at the bottom of the hill, resting its monstrously large head on its thick forearms. The creatures—though incredibly ugly and foul-smelling—had their uses. It grunted aggressively as he approached, snorting a half gallon of snot and mucus over Lothair’s feet. He reached forward quickly and found the bundle of nerve-ridden arteries behind one of its furry ears. The beast moaned as Lothair twisted. The roller pressed its anvil-shaped chin into the dirt and waited for Lothair to climb onto its back.

  He dug his heels into its sides and the roller stood. “We’ll be heading off alone.” Eichberg took hold of both arterial clusters on either side of its head and steered it westward. “It’s probably for the best. I’d have never been able to teach those idiots how to ride.”

  Chapter 19

  “You’re getting mighty attached to the boy, aren’t you?” The Lawman couldn’t see Jenny in the dark, but he knew she was there, standing off in the deeper shadows away from their small fire.

  She stepped into the light. “I can’t get attached to anyone anymore.” She sat across from him. “In fact, I don’t really care about anything.”

  “Yeah, yeah… Me and Sara have heard you say it a dozen times around a dozen different fires for the past two weeks. You’re a cryer, and cryers can’t feel nothin.” He threw the last bit of a bent cigarette into the fire. “That might’ve been true about the others… yer ma and pa, Eichberg, Dutz and the rest. But they was all adults. Sick as they became, their minds had at least finished growin’. It wasn’t like that fer you, was it?”

  “I was in a car accident.”

  “Don’t know what that is.”

  “Kind of like the big tank we drove out of Big Hole. Four wheels, fast and dangerous… especially when you’ve been drinking.”

  “You see the point I’m tryin’ to make, don’t you? You’re not like them. You still got feelings inside. And the feelings you got fer Cobe are plain to see.”

  Jenny stared into the flames a few moments longer before responding. “Whatever it is I’m feeling… whatever there is left human in me… doesn’t matter anymore. Kay and Angel both like him, too. Angel’s as ugly as an old boot, but Kay… she’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen. Why would he even look twice at something like me?”

  Lawson felt a swelling of pride in his chest. Kay was his daughter. She was the one beautiful accomplishment in a life otherwise filled with ugliness and violence. Too bad he hadn’t known about her before Jenny and the rest of her kind had come along. Things might’ve been different. “Looks ain’t everything. If that were the case, Kay’s ma never would’ve had anything to do with me.” He started rolling another cigarette. “But you do have a point about them other girls likin’ him. I think it would be best if you all put him out of yer minds. It’s causing too much of a distraction.”

  “So a bunch of girls like the same boy. That’s a nice distraction from all this death and killing.”

  Lawson blew smoke. “Not where Cobe’s concerned. The kid’s got to keep his head clear. He needs to prepare for what’s to come.”

  She could see him staring at her over the fire, his eyes narrowed and framed in hard wrinkles. He still didn’t trust her, after all they had been through. Jenny no longer knew fear, or at least not the fear most teen-aged girls experienced. Those emotions were no longer inside her. She was three times stronger than the Lawman, and twice as fast. She could tear him apart with her bare hands. But there was still something about him, something dangerous and brooding, that made her wary. “What does Cobe have to prepare for? All the other cryers have been killed. There’s only Eichberg left.”

  “You know that ain’t true. There’s more of your kind buried deep across the land. I read about them other installations myself.”

  “And they’ll stay buried,” Jenny countered. “What happened in Dauphin was an accident, caused by you and your people.”

  “Maybe. But if an accident happens once, it can happen again. And even if Eichberg is the only one left, he’s the most dangerous of them all. If he figures out a way to bring them others back… Well, let’s just say I’d sleep a whole lot better at night knowin’ Cobe and the rest were ready fer it. Worryin’ about what girl likes him and which one might tear his head off is a distraction none of us need.”

  “You want him to be more like you, a cold-blooded killer.”

  “I ain’t cold-blooded.”

  With that being said, the Lawman flicked his butt into the fire and laid down on his side. She watched as he fell asleep, wondering if the man dreamed. She could close her eyes and visit him there—see where he went, and what secrets were hidden deep in his subconscious. Jenny decided against it.

  ***

  Sara folded the blankets and packed them into the saddlebag. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was already getting light, and they would need to travel far during the days to get to where they were headed. She spotted Trot sitting up on top of the hill they’d camped next to. He had volunteered for the third and final watch during the night, taking over from Cobe and his brother. She waved, and Trot waved back enthusiastically. The black horse made a loud snorting noise as Sara pulled the drawstring in. The sound woke Kay, lying by the remains of the fire a few feet away. The girl sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and started rolling her blanket up as well.

  “How did you sleep?” Sara asked.

  “I miss my bed. It was a whole lot softer than the ground.”

  Sara had no comforting words to offer her daughter. They’d be sleeping on hard ground for weeks to come. “Get packed up and we’ll take another look at the map before we ride on.”

  Angel rose a few minutes later and joined the two studying the wrinkled paper. Sara had it spread on the ground with one finger holding it in place at their present location. “If we ride hard today we should make it here by sundown.” She moved her finger an inch over a crude representation of flatlands. She tapped her nail onto a thick squiggly line. The line continued west, meandering north and south in places, all the way to a jagged range of mountains near the far edge of the map. “This is the river Lawson told me about. It runs all the w
ay west, into the sky rocks and out into the ocean.” She settled her finger on a little blob nestled between mountains at the beginning of the range. “Here’s where we’re going, Victory Island.”

  “We ain’t barely got nowhere yet,” Angel complained. “How far till that river?”

  “A hundred miles, maybe a bit more. Like I said, if we ride hard all day, we should make it there by dark.”

  “What do these little pictures and letters mean?” Kay asked. She pointed to what looked like a small gathering of sticks standing on end.

  “The words next to it say Rust City. Lawson never went into detail on the meaning.” Sara shifted her finger to the left an inch. It stopped on the first mountain before Victory Island. “There are hundreds of sky rocks, countless peaks we could get lost in and die if we don’t go the right way. This one here is called Thumb-Up. Your father said it would be one of the first we come across, the most noticeable.”

  Kay made a fist and poked her thumb up. “Because it looks like this?”

  Sara shrugged. As detailed as the map was, she wished he’d had more time to explain it all to her. Crossing the great expanse ahead without him seemed too much to ask.

  Angel shook her head and confirmed her worries. “Too much flat land between here and there. Rollers will cut us down first, sure as shit.”

  “Then stay here,” Kay said.

  “How would you like if I shoved that map down yer gawdamn throat?”

  “Why don’t you try it?”

  Sara folded the map. “Up for five minutes, and the two of you are already at each other. Make yourselves useful and get the boys.”

  “Where?” Her daughter asked.

  Sara looked about their small camp. Cobe and Willem had been sleeping well away from the girls, but not that far from the fire. Their blankets were gone. Spot was still tied to the same rotted tree trunk they’d secured the horses to the night before, but the little grey mare was missing. Sara cursed for not noticing sooner. She rushed to the top of the hill.

  “Good morning,” Trot said happily. “I did good, hey? Stayed awake all night and kept us safe from them big rollers.”

  “The boys,” Sara gasped, catching her breath. “Cobe and Willem. Aren’t they with you?”

  “Nope. They went to catch breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Yup. Cobe said he was gonna get us each our own fish to fry up over the fire.” He giggled cheerfully. “Kinda makes up for me messing things up yesterday by the lake.”

  Sara gazed out over the dry plains surrounding them on all sides. “Who goes fishing in the middle of the night?”

  “Cobe and Willem do. They said the fish like biting more in the dark.”

  She reached down and hauled Trot up by the collar of his dirty shirt. “Do you see a lake anywhere?”

  Trot shuffled about in every direction. “Uuum… no.”

  “Do you see a gawdamn river?”

  He realized his mistake before she could spell it out for him. “They up and left, right? They lied to me and took off after the Lawman, didn’t they?” Sara was already heading back down the hill. Trot stumbled after her. “Me and Angel will go and get them! They couldn’t have gotten too far.”

  “The only way you and Angel are headed is west with me and Kay.”

  “What?” Trot came to a stop in front of the dead fire. “We can’t go on without them. The Lawman told me—”

  She spun on him. “The Lawman told me to keep moving west, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. How long ago was it they told you they were going fishing?”

  Trot closed his eyes and concentrated. “Five… maybe six hours ago.”

  “So they could already be a good forty or fifty miles behind us. I’m not waiting another six hours into the heat of the day with limited water and food. We have to get to that river, and we have to get there now… with or without them.”

  Angel tried arguing but Sara put the girl in her place. Kay got up on her horse without saying a word. She cared about what happened to Cobe and his brother, but she knew better than to talk back to her ma when she got that look in her eye.

  Chapter 20

  “I’m gonna name her Cloud,” Willem announced proudly.

  “Huh?” Cobe was sitting behind his brother, dozing against the smaller boy’s back.

  “Our horse. Her name’s Cloud, because she’s the same color as the clouds.”

  Cobe sat up straight. “Kay didn’t give no name to that black horse she and her ma are riding because she isn’t stupid enough to get attached to the thing. Don’t go naming animals. Thing will probably be dead before she learns the sound of it.”

  Willem elbowed him in the stomach. “Why you gotta say somethin’ stupid like that? Cloud ain’t gonna die. She’s gonna crush old Eichberg’s ribs into the dirt once we catch up to the Lawman. You’ll see.”

  “If we catch up to the Lawman,” Cobe replied. They had ridden hard through the remaining night, making their own trail northeast. It was a different route than the one they’d travelled heading west, and Cobe hoped it would be enough to throw Sara and the others off if they decided to follow. He’d checked over his shoulder often, imagining the sound of approaching hooves. No one was behind them—not Sara, not Trot, not even a stray howler. Cobe was beginning to worry they’d gone too far north. He’d steered the horse back to a more southerly direction two hours earlier, but the land looked unfamiliar. The lake they had stayed at was nowhere in sight. Maybe they had already gone past it.

  “You have no idea where we are, do you?”

  “I know where we ought to be, and so long as we keep heading in this direction, we’ll get there.”

  “Yeah, just like I figured… fuckin’ lost.”

  Cobe cuffed the back of his head. “Quit saying them bad words. If Sara was here she’d scrape the cusses from your tongue with a rock.”

  “But Sara ain’t here, is she? Her and Trot and them dumb girls is already riding west again. It’s just you and me and Cloud now, so I’ll say all the gawdamn bad words I want.”

  Cobe was too tired and hot to argue. The sun beat down overhead and the boys continued across the blasted plains on Cloud’s back. Willem lay forward into the horse’s mane, and Cobe rested against his brother’s back again thinking of the fateful day this never-ending nightmare had all started. They had run away then, too, but with one major difference; the Lawman had set out after them, and now Cobe and Willem had set after the Lawman. He was still a little young to appreciate the irony, but he did find it a little funny. They didn’t say another word to each other for more than an hour until Willem finally grumbled. “What’s that awful stink?”

  Cobe could see something shimmering in the heat waves ahead. Cloud began to snort nervously, and tried to turn away. Cobe yanked on the reins and forced her to keep moving straight ahead. The stink Willem had complained about was the smell of death. They came upon a debris field of bones and torn flesh, crawling over with flies. The younger boy covered his mouth and nostrils and spoke again in a muffled voice. “There must be a thousand of them.”

  It was an exaggeration. Cobe figured it to be maybe a dozen howler bodies. He could tell by the remains of their long finger and toe nails. Most of the heads had been torn away, the brains inside emptied, and the skulls tossed aside. “Rollers didn’t do this,” he explained. “The bodies would be squished into the ground.”

  Willem gagged. “Well if weren’t rollers, what brought ‘em down?”

  Cobe had no intention of finding out. He looked down at a decapitated head by Cloud’s hoof. The face stared back up at him, the mouth open wide, the sharpened teeth set in a grimace of horror. He went to dig his heels into Cloud’s sides, but the horse reared up on its back legs, spilling both boys down into the dirt.

  “Gawdamn!” Willem had landed on his armless side in the half-eviscerated carcass of a howler missing its legs and arms. He sat up, shaking a bloated piece of intestine from his shoulder. “Get the horse ba
ck, Cobe!”

  Cloud was already a hundred feet away, and she wasn’t slowing. “She ain’t coming anywhere near all this again.” He helped his brother stand and the two set off on foot. “Should’ve stayed with the others. Shouldn’t have lied to Trot like we did.”

  Willem was still shaking bits of flesh out of his shirt. “It was my fault this time. I wanted to follow the Lawman. It was my idea to tell lies and sneak away after dark come.”

  But Cobe hadn’t argued. He was responsible for both of them. He was the man of the family now.

  They trudged on for another fifteen minutes in the blistering heat. Willem yelled the horse’s name until his throat dried up. All they had to follow was the tracks she’d left in the dirt. The wind picked up and even the tracks disappeared after another half hour. “We’re gonna die out here,” Willem croaked.

  “We been saying that for weeks now,” Cobe tried comforting him. “Somehow we still manage to keep living.”

  Three hours later Cobe was beginning to regret saying the words. He had never been so hot and thirsty in all his life. Poor Willem probably felt worse; the boy had expended a good deal of moisture and energy crying the first two hours. How he was still putting one foot in front of the other was a question his older brother couldn’t even begin to answer. Willem, however, did begin to stumble. After three more gruelling miles he tripped down to his knees and stayed there.

  “Come on… Get back up.”

  Willem shook his head.

  Cobe kicked at his shin. “Don’t you want to find Cloud? Don’t you want to give her a good smack for running off? Can’t do that if you keep sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.” Willem remained quiet. Cobe gave up after a time and sat down beside him. A few minutes, he told himself. We’ll rest up for just a few minutes. He looked up at the sky and thanked the gods the sun was beginning to dip down in the southwest. It was still plenty hot, but that stabbing burn all over his skin was subsiding. Maybe this isn’t so bad. He stretched his aching legs out and rested on one elbow.