He hoped Zhang’s reentry had been at least this bad. Worse, even. The idiot.
The idiot who’d handed him his key to freedom, he reminded himself, his joy at his escape currently tempered by his less-than-stellar arrival. He’d get over it. He prayed. Don’t let this be a mistake.
The good news — they were alive.
Keeping his eyes squeezed shut, he rolled onto his side with a moaned, then jerked upright in revulsion at recognizing the overwhelming stink of urine, now soaked into the shoulder and side of his jacket. He’d landing in freaking urine? He staggered to his feet, swaying, squinting around himself, taking in a shaft of weak light that cut down into the narrow alley he was standing in, bookended by tall, smoke-blackened brick buildings. A series of overflowing metal dumpsters lined the walls and cast long shadows, creating dark places for danger to lurk. Where was Coru?
The path to escaping this hot, stinking monochromatic world presented itself in the form of a brightly lit narrow opening at the end of the alley and out onto a city street. Here the pressing, cloying atmosphere of the alleyway was broken with brief glimpses of passing combustion automobiles, a garish parade of colors, bringing with them snatches of music blaring, or an impatient horn. This had been known as the Saturation Period in the art world, with nothing untouched by wildly innovative interpretations of colors expressed on the canvas, in the architecture, transportation, fashion.
His heartbeat sped up with excitement; his pain was already subsiding. So completely different than the subdued colors of Cloud Rez. Cloud Rez was lifeless, this was exuberant. He fully intended to embrace that exuberance. If he was smart, Coru would follow his lead. Coru.
He searched out the Time Bore’s entrance, barely discernible here. The evidence it was even here so slight the casually eye would miss it. The slight vibration in the air, the slight trick of the eye the only indication it was even there, and that evidence would most probably be dismissed as a mistake.
He turned this way and that, searching. Where was Coru?
Nowhere; Coru was nowhere.
Payton was alone. His heartbeat reminded high, fueled by apprehension now. He caught sight of movement by one of the dumpster, heard a faint shuffle.
Not alone.
He crouched, drilling his gaze into the shadows, willing himself to see what he was facing. “Who’s there?” he demanded, his voice gravelly with need for water on his raw throat.
A stooped man drifted forward, his gray, layered clothing more rags than garments. His brown hair was long and stringy, his lined face held an expression of terror.
This guy looked more scared than Payton. Payton took some comfort in this fact. Some; not much. He straightened, shrugging his shoulder, shivering in revulsion at the pungent smell of urine he now emitted. Gawd. Five minutes. He’d been here only five minutes…
The man moved closer, his expression becoming more wondering that afraid now. “W-where’d you come from Mister? I was watchin’ the whole time. This place was empty — I was by myself.”
He stopped and nodded at something over Payton’s shoulder.
Payton wasn’t falling for it.
“Except for that guy. He ain’t going nowhere. You fell out of the sky right in front of me.” He fell silent and waited for Payton to respond. When he didn’t, the man shrugged and let it pass. “Nice backpack you got there, buddy. Got anything you’re willing to share with a man in need?”
Payton opened his mouth, about to tell Dumpster Man to take a hike, then thought better of it. This guy would have information he could use. Payton shifted, glanced back to make sure there was in fact no one behind him, his gaze arrested at the sight of a body stretched out where the broken blacktop met brick wall. The guy wasn’t moving, his eyes were open, staring, his jaw wide as if gasping at something shocking. Payton jerked back. The guy was dead.
Creaking laughter brought him around to face Dumpster Man, who was grinning wide, displaying his two remaining brown teeth.
“You’re fresh off the turnip truck, aren’t you, boy?”
Payton straightened his shoulder, ignored the smell the action produced and strolled confidently along the alleyway toward the daylight out on the street. “I’m new, but I’m no fool. You see another guy? Big guy, all muscle, tattooed head like mine, only with a ton more ink, with a walking hero complex?”
Dumpster Man gazed back at him quizzically. Okay, so this guy wasn’t the brightest star in the galaxy. Not a bad thing, since he’d just witnessed Payton’s appearance from thin air. If he were to tell anyone, they’d likely not believe him, keeping Payton’s entrance into WEN 2036 on the down low. Plus, Coru would doubtlessly make a dramatic entrance somewhere in the vicinity. No one who saw his brother would have the balls to challenge him. In the meantime, Payton would do some recon, set them up for their Charles and Wren Wood search.
First order of business — get away from the dead guy in the alley. He didn’t need to draw attention to himself like that.
He jerked his chin back the dead guy. “What’s his story?”
“Fentanyl.”
“Yeah? You’ve still got that here?”
Dumpster Man’s expression was baffled. “What else’s cheap down here? Don’t touch the stuff myself. They’ll scoop him.”
“Scoop—?” Payton stopped. He didn’t want to know. He had more important things to do. One: Find Coru. He let his pack slide from him back, pulled out a spray pen, and keeping his pack in his grip, strode to the wall. Here he sprayed the message in red quick-drying ink both he and Coru had agreed upon.
C. I’ll return at 1 every day. P.
Satisfied, he tucked the pen into his bag and slung it back onto his back.
“What’s that all about, Mister?”
Leading the way toward the street and infusing a friendly tone into his voice, Payton addressed Dumpster Man. “I’ll make it worth your while to give me the grand tour, old man.”
Dumpster Man hurried his step into a shuffling trot alongside Payton, his eyes flickering often to the backpack in question. “What d’ ya got in there for a fella?”
They reached the opening, and stepped out into the full light. Holy hanna! The fossil fuel smell hit him square in the chest, making him first gasp, then choke on the filthy air that invaded his lungs. He could literally taste the emissions!
A huge bus pulled up, blocking his view. A large photo on its side showed a pristine city, sparkling ocean, happy families and smiling business men and women smartly dressed, hurrying to important business meetings. There were tarnished silver solar panels on the top of the bus. The telling part was the dangling wires that led to nowhere.
The bus pulled forward, revealing emission-blackened buildings, harried foot traffic, obviously down on their luck; their shoes, their eyes, their expressions flattened. Their faces were vacant or harassed, or just beat up, accepting of their fate. Brutal.
Beyond the foot traffic was the road traffic.
The noisy, colorful vehicles, traveling four lanes deep before him, was a river of motion that threatened to sweep him away, end-to-end, blaring horns, thudding music pulsing from their interiors, the passengers inside showing no interest in him or Dumpster Man, their eyes trained forward, their lips moving as they spoke either into a device somewhere nearby or to others in the vehicle.
He pushed back against the wall of the building behind him and raised his eyes up. He was surrounded by a mosaic of towering colored buildings that made up this pulsing city, each building flashing huge 300, 400 foot frantically animated ads across their glass sides, selling more vehicles, gold jewelry draped on naked women’s bodies, sleek bottles of hard alcohols poured over ice, trips to exotic places, a full set of glistening veneers in a single afternoon at Doctor Feelgood’s Clinic, stacked plates of foods he could not name surrounding by smiling, hungry people, a cherry-red clad skier skiing down a pristine-white snowy slope, leaving a lazy, curling trail behind her.
Narrow rapid transit railings wove an impos
sible to comprehend overhead grid, with sleek white, bullet shaped passenger compartments defying gravity as they slipped along each railing without a sound, or so it seemed from down here on the street.
He glanced at Dumpster Man and did a double take. The man was gawking at him as if he were an alien just arrived from another planet. And why not? He’d appeared out of thin air, and was now clinging to the side of filthy building like a toddler to his mother’s leg. He’d have to lose the newbie attitude, grow himself a pair.
Deliberately he straightened up, stood away of the building and shrugged his shoulders free of tension, looking around with a bored expression, searching for some sort of marker of where he was in order to find the Bore entrance again and where to return at one to hook up with Coru. Oh yeah — he didn’t need to know the Bore entrance to get home because he wasn’t going home, was he? He made note of the street. Cordova Street. Cordova and... he strained to read the cross street sign down the block.
“Move along,” a flat voice commander from behind, breaking his concentration. He felt a painful rap across his shoulders.
“Hey! What the hell?” He twisted around and found himself face to face, no wait, face to a broad dark blue chest of a beat cop with the name Waights was printed across it. A monster of a guy, bigger than Coru. Payton looked up. This guy’s face was not happy.
Raising thick, bushy eyebrows, the cop blinked slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. He asked softly, “‘What the hell?’ Is that what you just said to me? ‘What the hell’?”
Dumpster Man rushed forward, waving his hands in protest. “No, no, officer Waights. He didn’t mean anything by it. He’s new around here and doesn’t know the rules yet. I was about to tell him we gotta get going.” He gave Payton a shove down the street. “See? We’re going right now.”
Officer Waights slapped a thick, dark billy club inside his palm, the sound traveling up Payton’s spine. The officer considered them as they hurried away, Payton’s gaze still glued to Waights’. That club could break a collar bone, an arm, easy. The billy club, that perennial bully’s favorite, never goes out of style, does it, Officer Waights?
Waights lurched forward, his eyes bugged, and when Payton jumped and squeaked in fear — which he hated himself for — the cop laughed. Dumpster Man pulled him along, and murmured, “Stop looking at him. He doesn’t like that — keep moving.”
They hurried down the street, with Payton attempting to catch sight of street names and numbers as they passed them, fumbling to store them in his brain, which was reeling with sensory overload. He did notice many of the business in this part of the city were closed down, their doors and windows boarded up. “There’s some kind of trouble here?” he asked as they hurried by, waving his hand at the vacant buildings.
“You are new here. Most of these street level entrances are blocked. Entrances are three storied up.”
Payton shifted his gaze. Sure enough, there seemed to be activity a few levels up from the dour streets. Why?
After several blocks of flight, they turned a corner and Dumpster Man fell back against the wall, clutching his chest, breathing hard.
Payton could see the man was not well. “You okay?”
“Asthma,” Dumpster Man replied with a gasp.
“What are you doing down here, man? This air will kill you.”
The man started to laugh, “You think?” then stopped when his laughter erupted into a thick, mucusy cough. He bent at the waist with his effort.
Payton cringed at the sound. He slipped off his pack again and pulled out a pack of water, broke the seal and handed it to Dumpster Man. “Here. Drink this. It should help. It has all your basic nutritional needs.”
Still coughing and unable to speak, Dumpster Man glanced up at him and rolled his eyes, though he did take the offered pack.
As the man drained the pack between bouts of coughing, Payton glanced around, absorbing this new neighborhood, seemingly the same as the old neighborhood, but here there were a few open businesses. A convenience store, one proclaimed, and across the street, a smoke shop — oh yeah, they used to inhale carcinogens back around this time. Dumb-asses.
He and Dumpster Man were standing before a heavily iron-bar reinforced pawnshop. Kinda’ quaint, as grubby shops go. He knew this was where desperate people brought stolen items to be traded for cash back in the day.
He jumped when a pile of rags up against the wall of the pawn shop moved, proving to be a sleeping man. The man peeked out of his filthy surroundings with rheumy eyes, sizing up his world before committing to crawling up onto his hands and knees, then creakily to a hunched stand. He brought a thin grey blanket from the concrete as he rose, giving it a weak snap before slinging it over his shoulders and shuffling along the avenue, reaching behind and pulling his thin gray pants free from the crack of his bum.
The WEN 2036 homeless seemed to have missed the “Saturation Period” memo. Apparently here, color cost money.
Payton’s eyes snapped back to another ‘pile of rags’, knowing what they represented now and waited for this ghost to rise and walk as well. It did not.
“That one’s dead.” A deep voice close to his ear made him jump away and turn in defense. This was getting old; he was showing too much fear, a deadly weakness down here in the trenches, he knew. This sneaking up on a person was a street skill he’d need to learn. Plus, he needed eyes in the back of his head.
A dark-skinned man with an over the top afro was looking him over with undue interest, Payton decided, grasping hold of the two straps digging into his shoulders. What he wouldn’t give for one of Coru’s tasers now.
The man raised his hands, showing pink palms. “Hey, it’s cool, man. The meat wagon will be around to clean him up. Gotta keep the city’s rep intact.”
“Meat wagon?”
“Meat wagon. It makes a run every morning to pick up the stiffs.”
Payton repeated, his lips wooden, his voice faint, “The stiffs.” What hell had he fallen into?”
The black man stuck out his hand and nodded, his massive hair bouncing. “Name’s Dom.”
Payton looked at Dom’s meaty hand apprehensively. Was this trick?
Dumpster Guy wheezed, “Dom’s okay. And I’m Weazer.”
Still. He didn’t know these guys. They could be grooming him, like Coru had warned him. Still, he had no choice. He reached out and shook Dom’s hand, ready to run at the first sign of trouble. Nothing happened. Dom’s hand was warm and dry, and the shake wasn’t the classic over-compensating Trump grip’n’jerk shake. Payton snickered despite of himself. Didn’t that clown of a president have a tiny…
“You can stick with us, learn the ropes, kid.” Dom looked Payton over, his expression sympathetic is amused. “You’re remarkably clean and well fed for down here, and I’ll admit, while the head tats are cute, they don’t mean squat down here. These streets will eat you for breakfast.”
“I-I can’t. I have to stick around. I’m meeting my brother, Coru. He’s a big guy, really big. Has a tattooed head like me, more ink. He’s the kinda’ guy you don’t want to meet in an alley.” He made himself smile. “I was supposed to meet him in an alley.”
Dom shrugged. “Okay, kid. But watch your step — you have a big X on your forehead right now. Not everyone down here’s as friendly as me and Weazer here.”
Weazer straightened up to his full height. “Just don’t go back to Waights’ beat. He don’t like you already.”
Payton pushed his mouth to one side and nodded. “Yeah — I got that.” Only, he did have to go back, didn’t he? It was where Coru would be looking for him. They’d travelled down the same Time Bore — it made sense they’d both emerge at the same location. The time of arrival? Not so much the same, apparently.
Dom added, “Just keep moving. Look like you got some place to go. Come to the shelter on on Cordova near Main. There’s a few down there. Get yourself inside before dark is my advice. If you’re caught short, get your ass up a tree
down in the park, tie yourself up there so you won’t fall and stay put ‘til light.”
Payton blinked at Dom’s advice. “Seriously?”
Dom went to the bundle of rags by the pawn shop and bent to lift the man’s over-sized coat. Payton staggered back at seeing the man’s throat had been slit from side to side. The dirty dark stain seeping out from under the rags upon which he lay was old, dried blood.
Dom dropped the cloth and dusted off his hands. “Like I said, no sleeping in the alleyways or the doorways if you can help it. Not safe.”
“All — all right. I won’t. Which way to the park?”
“You don’t know Stanley Park?” Dom frowned. “Where you from?”
“From…” Payton scrambled for the name of one of the local towns that surrounded Vancouver back during this time. He’d scanned the map so quickly when they were getting ready, he barely remembered them. Oh yeah. “Hope. I’m from Hope.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Meeting my brother.”
Dom nodded, but Payton could see he didn’t believe him. “Okay kid. Good luck to you.”
With grim nods, Weazer and Dom left him there, on the corner of Cordova and Water Street. It took all of Payton’s self-control to not run after them.
But he had some tagging to do. He pulled out his spray pen, tucking it inside his palm so it wasn’t readily seen and joined the foot traffic with a purposeful expression, and circled back toward his original landing spot.
For the next few hours and sticking within a four-block radius, he painted his messages to Coru, only this time, he said he’d be in Stanley Park at 6 every night as well. He was careful to paint out the messages when he was alone and in an easily seen area. He must have been better at looking focused on his imaginary destination than he’d hoped, because no one stopped him, no one questioned his being here, not even the cops, and there were a ton of cops down here, all big, all with expressions of intense scrutiny in their eyes, and “Just try me” in their swagger.
Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1) Page 48