Daughters of Forgotten Light

by Sean Grigsby

  Soon, though. She stared down at the wrecked air machine. Soon.

  Now for the hard part: climbing the stairs down to the street.

  Chapter 49

  When the spaceship broke through the Veil, Sarah didn’t waste time deciding what it was or why it had come. Oubliette had taught her not to trust anyone or anything, so she ran from the roof and hid inside the stairwell. Later, when the screams and explosions and smell of powdered glass came, she knew her gut feeling had been right.

  What the hell was going on out there? Sarah didn’t believe in little green men, but she did subscribe to the unrepentant, destructive nature of the human race. Someone on Earth had sent that thing to kill them all. When the building shook around her, it became a choice between staying inside and letting the glass and metal crush her, or chancing an escape onto the street.

  Her cyclone.

  Lena had told them not to use the bikes, but circumstances had gone to shit, the board wiped clean. It was up to her to save her own ass, and Grindy’s shop lay at least five blocks away. Before leaving the building, she waited with a hand against the cool glass of the front door. She listened – nothing. A quick breath did nothing for her nerves, but she poked her head out. The dwellers, Farica, and the spaceship, all were gone. At the end of the street, rubble cascaded in small rivulets of dust and glass – the building the OC woman had been on.

  That could have been me.

  Sarah crept onto the street, moving toward the ruined building, but stopped herself before taking another step. No one lay under all that broken glass and metal, no one alive anyway. No screams for help came, no hands clawing from under the debris. And having no time or reason to search for the dead, Sarah ran the other way.

  Her footsteps echoed across the glass as if she was taking a hammer to it. If it had been an Earth street she snuck down, the noises of hovercars and newspapers blowing in the wind would have unsettled her. But on Oubliette it was the quiet. She’d have given her left hand for a noise, any noise, to help cover up her long trek. As if granting her wish, a low, sharp chirping echoed over the buildings. It was the spaceship.

  Sarah hurried her steps.

  Grindy’s shop lay dark and desolate, just the way they’d left it. Her cyclone stood alone in the back lot. The others must have had the same idea and sped the hell away as fast as they could. She wondered how long they’d waited for her – probably not one millisecond. She couldn’t blame them.

  Inside Grindy’s shop, something fell. Had the gangs even considered taking the dwellers with them? Those poor women probably still waited inside. Well, Sarah wasn’t going to let them die like a bunch of useless animals.

  When she entered, the door closed behind and sealed her in the sticky hot dark of the shop. She opened her mouth to call out, but thought better of it, having seen more than a few old horror movies, and Oubliette was just one giant haunted house.

  Something solid and soft squished under her boot, burbling wet. Every muscle tensed. She refused to reach down and see what she’d stepped on. She stood still.

  On second thought, to hell with the dwellers, she’d get on her cyclone and ride to the Core or back to the ganghouse.

  A laser cutter sparked on in the middle of the shop, revealing a shadowy shape standing a few feet away. Sarah gasped, and the shadow turned toward her. It held the cutter against a dismembered head, burning the skin off the cheek and chin. Sarah staggered back as the laser cutter rose, illuminating a terrible face. Farica grinned with blood-smeared lips, before the laser light went out.

  A pipe fell to Sarah’s right. Something shattered to her left. Farica’s demented laughter moved in behind her, and Sarah broke into a run. She’d only taken a few strides when her foot hit another of the solid squishy things on the ground. Before Sarah knew she’d fallen, her face hit the floor. She rolled away with her rang raised. Blood and burning flesh thickened the air, the smell of dwellers dead and left behind.

  Something pinged on the floor to her right, so she swung her rang that way, giving Farica an opening from the left. The cannibal jumped on her, straddling Sarah’s chest and wrestling against her arms. Sarah fought to get her rang close enough to blow away her attacker’s head, but the Amazon was too strong.

  Farica whipped her rang hard against Sarah’s face before removing the Daughter’s rang and tossing it across the shop floor. Head spinning, all Sarah’s strength left her arms, and she was half-conscious enough to feel the Amazon throw her onto a table.

  “You know,” Farica said, “if I had my way, we’d all live happily ever after. You know what ‘Farica’ means? ‘Tranquil leader.’ Hey, that would have been nice, huh? Right?”

  Sarah moved to roll off the table, but Farica slugged her in the stomach. Her breathy “Stop” became garbled with painful coughs.

  “But it’s all coming to an end. I see what my real meaning is now. You can’t have tranquility when no one gets with the goddamn program. I’m going to help move this ending along. Like that old book, Ten Little Indians? Yeah,” Farica nodded, as if her own words were revealing an epiphany. “I’m the final girl.” Farica lowered the laser cutter.

  The heat radiated against Sarah’s legs, and her quickening pulse sharpened her senses. There was no fucking way she would lay down and die.

  She wrapped her legs around Farica and took the cannibal with her off the table. The laser cutter bit at the sides of her legs, and Sarah screamed, but she refused to release her squeeze. Farica dropped the laser cutter in an effort to claw at Sarah’s eyes. The cutter spun when it hit the floor, splashing light against the walls and shelves in a dizzying kaleidoscope.

  With two fists, Farica hammered Sarah’s privates. A rang to the face had been more welcome, and Sarah loosened her legs enough for Farica to crawl away. The Amazon stood and lifted her rang. Swiping a leg, Sarah tripped Farica, and as the Amazon fell, her rang fired. Orange light flew through Sarah’s left hand, splattering her face with the flesh and blood that didn’t get burned up in the ball of energy. Only a charred stump remained.

  Sarah screamed, scrambling to her feet. The rang shot returned to its owner and Sarah closed in behind it. Pain swelled throughout every muscle and tendon, but she distilled every bit of it into a rage that painted her vision red, even in the darkness.

  Brass knuckles slipping onto her remaining hand, Sarah pounded into Farica’s face, kicked her in the side. Farica pushed her away, fighting against Sarah’s grappling, sending fresh jolts of pain through Sarah’s tender stump, but also fueling her anger. Sarah grabbed hold of the Amazon’s rang and ripped it from her forearm. By the time Sarah put it on and fired, Farica had thrown a shelf behind her and bolted through the back door.

  Sarah chased the Amazon outside in time to see Farica’s image dwindling in the distance, speeding away on Sarah’s cyclone.

  Another of Sarah’s screams ripped across the darkened Oubliette streets, against what few buildings remained standing. Sarah didn’t care if the spaceship heard her and hunted her down. What else did she have to lose?

  Sarah guarded her injured arm as she limped down the street, one rang strapped on and the other hanging from her teeth. Even with no weather on Oubliette, she couldn’t shake the chill that enveloped her, no matter how much she hugged herself, or moved her legs.

  Black char coated the stump where her left hand used to be. At least she hadn’t bled to death. And she didn’t care if she had to stay behind to get it done when the others returned to Earth, but she was going to find that miserable shit, Farica, and rip her apart, one digit and limb at a time. Maybe Sarah would make Farica eat her own flesh, since she was so keen on devouring other people.

  Sarah lowered her eyes to the street and kept walking – she didn’t know where. Maybe, if she was honest with herself, she hoped that spaceship would find her and put her out of her misery. And if she was lucky, she would find Farica right before that.

  Instead, she found Lena.

  The glass street had started glowing
again, fading in from nothing, and then glimmering brighter than it had before. It startled Sarah so much, she jumped and looked all around. The buildings lit up and just around the corner, Lena stood beside the wreck of the spaceship.

  “Lena!” The extra rang dropped from Sarah’s mouth as she yelled. She ran, tears streaming from her eyes.

  Lena aimed her rang, but dropped it when she saw Sarah. The younger Daughter wrapped her arms around her gang’s head and cried into her jacket; every hurt she thought she could swallow and forget flooded out of her eyes and mouth.

  “Glad you’re OK.” Lena patted her back.

  Sarah broke from the embrace. “I’m far from OK. I’ve been through hell!”

  “I thought you were on that building this fucking thing blew up.” She nodded toward the spaceship. “What happened?”

  “Farica.” Sarah shook her head, choking back tears so she could tell Lena. “She tried to kill me, she did this!” She held up her burned stump.

  “Oh shit,” Lena whispered, frowning at the missing hand.

  “And she rode off with my cyclone.”

  Lena crossed her arms and spit. “Would you like some good news?”

  “What could possibly be good about any of this?” Sarah could have hit her.

  “This airship had a sensor to get through the Veil. And guess what?” She held up a thin green card, black electronic veins coursing through it. “It’s still intact.”

  A humming buzz zoomed from around the corner. Sarah turned and raised her rang in unison with Lena.

  Taylor pulled up to the curb. “Hot damn, Horror! You killed it!”

  “I thought you’d be dead.” Sarah lowered her rang, steadying her breath.

  “I’m not that stupid,” Taylor said. “I got the hell out of there as soon as all of you went after Farica. This is Grindy’s old bike.”

  Lena pocketed the Veil sensor and stepped forward. “Got room on there for three?”

  Chapter 50

  “That’s one gnarly wound.” Hurley Girly inspected Sarah’s nub with the curiosity of a sideshow patron.

  Sarah pulled her arm away, tucking it behind the other. “Yeah, well, the bitch who did it is going to get ten times worse.”

  “You’ve gotten to be one cold mother.” Hurley Girly whistled and jogged around to the other side of the airship.

  Only six dwellers had survived the night, most of them under the Daughters’ protection, and rather than wasting time and energy hauling the airship back to Grindy’s, Taylor suggested they work on it where it lay.

  “We’ve already built some good replacement parts,” Taylor had said, “and the thing is in damn fine condition considering Lena dropped it off a rooftop.”

  Taylor asked Sarah if she’d like to go back with her to Grindy’s and grab some extra tools.

  “I don’t know what good I’d be,” Sarah said.

  “I think I might have something to make you damn useful. Just be sure to grab that extra rang you took off Farica.”

  The rules said no dwellers got to use rangs, but if Taylor wanted some protection from here on out, Sarah wasn’t going to deny her. Everything had changed. But Taylor didn’t ask for the rang until they’d gone inside Grindy’s.

  Rot and blood suffocated Sarah when they entered. The return of the lights revealed several dismembered and torn bodies strewn across the shop floor, one even hanging from a shelf.

  “Don’t pay any attention to that,” Taylor said. “Unless it’s going to help you focus on our goal.”

  “Why’d you bring me back here?” Sarah covered her mouth with the collar of her jacket. “I’ve only got one hand.”

  Taylor held out her palm. “Give me your other rang.”

  Like hell. “Why? I already gave you the other one.” Sarah had been taken advantage of before, and while she didn’t think Taylor was her enemy, trust had become scarcer than the dwindling manna supply.

  “I’d been working on a prototype. Damned thing wouldn’t fit over anyone’s hand. But, I think it’d fit you just fine.”

  “What’s wrong with the rang I’ve got?” Pain in the stump throbbed to the beat of Sarah’s pulse.

  Taylor smiled. “This is much different. Trust and follow, little bird.”

  Behind Grindy’s shop, Taylor had built herself what amounted to a small shed where she’d tinker in her spare time. All kinds of weird, oblong “tools” covered its inner walls. Sarah couldn’t tell what any of them did. Here something that resembled a laser cutter with two orifices pointed opposite directions, there something that looked like a nail gun.

  “Let me see that other rang,” Taylor said.

  Sarah handed it over, after a moment of hesitation.

  Taylor went to a manna box desk and bent over to dig through a pile of junk that clinked and shuffled against her searching hands. “Here it is.” She turned back with a smooth, cone-shaped piece of metal with straps dangling from the back end.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Your new rang.” Taylor set the conical piece on the desk and slammed one of the old rangs against the edge.

  “Hey!” Sarah stepped forward, ready to strangle the dweller.

  “This won’t take but a minute.” Taylor pulled away cracked pieces of the rang and removed a small cylinder that glowed blue. With the same amount of indifference, she broke open the other rang and took out its luminous orange core.

  “Is that what powers the rangs?”

  “You betcha. And I need both to supply your new gun.”

  Sarah bit her lip as she watched Taylor open one side of the new rang and slide in the orange cylinder, sealing it back with a pop of the metal. On the other side, she placed the blue core.

  “And that’s that.” Taylor handed over the conical rang.

  “How do I wear it?”

  “Well,” Taylor straightened out the straps. “You’ll have to wear it on your left arm. Seeing how the truce is over, it shouldn’t mean a damn if you’re a southpaw or not, yeah?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Anyway, I’ll slip it over your… nub and secure it with the straps. Oh, one more thing. Keep your arm bent. You shoot it by straightening out your arm, pressing your…”

  “Just call it a fucking stump or nub.”

  “OK,” Taylor cleared her throat. “Your stump presses the inner sensor and fires.”

  A terrible thought sprang to Sarah’s mind. “Wait. How am I going to be able to ride a cyclone?”

  “You won’t.” Taylor looked away. “But to be honest, you wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Not without a hand.”

  Tears burned in Sarah’s eyes, at the back of her throat. Farica had robbed her of more than she’d previously thought.

  But she fought back the weakness, and focused on her hate. “So what’s so special about this rang?”

  “In theory,” Taylor grinned wide, showing grimy teeth, “multiple shots at once.”

  “Like a machine gun?”

  Taylor shrugged. “Don’t know. Like I said, it’s a prototype and never got tested or used. Now’s as good a time as any to try it out. Shoot out that way and give it a go.”

  “Maybe later.” Sarah shook her head. “Besides, there’s only one person I want to use it on. This thing better not blow up in my face.”

  Taylor made a pfft with her lips. “I’m confident in my design. It’s not like you have a hand to lose now anyway.”

  Sarah punched her in the arm.

  “Gah! Sorry. Come on, we’ve got a ship to fly off this shithole.”

  Chapter 51

  Dolfuse turned to the other side of her bed and grabbed her phone, smearing her face against the drool-soaked pillow. Without even bothering to see who’d messaged her, she threw the phone across the room, where it smashed against the wall into a few dozen oblong pieces. She did manage to take another swig of bourbon before rolling over and closing her eyes.

  If she could stay in bed for the next month or so, letting the memory of her daug
hter and Spangler and Oubliette disappear from her memory, she might be fine. It was what she used to do as a little girl when she was upset. All you had to do was close your eyes and wait for sleep as the tears dripped down your cheek, and when you woke up everything changed back to normal.

  Back then she didn’t have the assistance of Maker’s Mark.

  The phone ding had jarred her from an otherwise peaceful depression and she couldn’t close her eyes again. The sun had shifted and the light straining through the blinds was now more orange than yellow, and at a sharper angle. She couldn’t tell if it was morning or evening. Not that it mattered. She’d either shuffle to the kitchen to have bourbon and egg substitute or bourbon and bagged chowder. Her legs had gotten more stubbly than ever from lack of shaving. At least a week’s worth. Damn, had she been cooped up that long?

  She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. No matter how much she drank, the pain in her injured hand wouldn’t numb, and she’d been too lazy to change the bandage.

  By now, the flying monster machine was blowing all of Oubliette to smithereens, her daughter included. At least the baby wasn’t alone. She had a new mother before the end – Lorna was it? No, Lena. Horowitz. Someone else who knew what it meant to be discarded and forgotten.

  It would be very enlightening to speak to someone who’d shipped their daughter. Someone who knew what it was like. Of course, Dolfuse had an acquaintance or two who’d shipped, one of her staff had even done it. But she couldn’t let them see her so disheveled, what her mother would have called a “hot mess”. No, she needed to see someone right then who didn’t know her. Even better if that somebody could give insight into who Lena Horowitz was.

  This new development gave her enough of a spark to hobble over to her computer, feeling her drunk even heavier on two feet. She searched for “Horowitz” and “Mechanicsville” – the town Spangler said Lena was from.

  As Spangler had told her, Renee Horowitz, according to her search engine, lived at 45 Blinkley Circle, just under two hours away.