by Alice Sabo
“Not bandits. Worse.” Wisp said. “They will kill the men and take the women.”
Nick didn’t slow. “Think we can plow through that crap?” He was worried. They didn’t have a lot of choices here.
“This is a very sturdy vehicle. Escape is our best option.”
Another bullet pinged off the windshield.
“Better tell them to hold on,” Nick said. Wisp went into the back to warn the others.
Nick headed straight for the barricade. As he got closer, he saw that it was more than just furniture. There were logs and tires. He probably wasn’t the first person to try ramming it. But he was pretty sure he was the first to try in an armored vehicle. He gunned it.
The impact wasn’t as spectacular as he had envisioned. The van crashed through wood, climbed over tires, hit a brief free area before ramming into a pair of old pickup trucks and pushing them yards down the road. As soon as the van’s tires were solidly back on dirt, Nick threw it into reverse to get around the trucks. The bandits were firing, bullets pounding the vehicle. The sound got louder, and Nick realized Wisp had opened the roof to return fire. He almost told him not to, but if a tire was hit, they’d be sitting ducks.
Nick swerved around one of the trucks and found the road again. When he saw the next barricade in the headlights, he hit the brakes so hard it knocked Wisp off his feet. Across the road, bound into place along a chain, were captives. In the glare of the headlights, they looked like children. A high cackle broke through the sound of the gunfire, followed by catcalls and hoots. Nick felt a gut-deep loathing for the man who had thought this up. Someone scrambled forward from the back of the van.
“My God!” Jean leaned against his seat. “We have to help those kids!”
Nick was thinking the same thing. But his mind wasn’t working fast enough. Men were lining up in front of the van. Dirty men with greasy hair and clean rifles. They wore animal pelts at their belts and strands of odd shaped beads around their necks. There was a feral-ness to them that raised Nick’s hackles and made his muscles twitch in anticipation of violence. As long as Nick kept the doors locked, they were safe in the van. But the longer they sat, the bolder the attackers would become. He needed a plan right now.
“Get out of that thing!” A slightly larger, somewhat cleaner man with a bald head banged on the hood of the van. He grinned, showing a mouth full of rotting teeth.
“Wisp, can you tell how many there are?”
“Many.”
Nick heard Wisp moving in the back, but he kept his eyes on the men.
The bald man threw his head back and cackled again. The sound had the sharp edge of insanity to it. Then he spun and shot one of the children.
“No!” Jean screamed as the slender figure dangled limp from the chain. The remaining children huddled in on themselves.
Nick lurched to his feet as automatic fire sounded above him. Wisp was firing on their attackers from the roof hatch. The men in front of the van crumpled to the ground in bloody heaps. Jean shoved a gun into Nick’s hands. “Lock this,” he snapped at her as he charged out the door.
He started firing before he had his bearings. Jean had given him an automatic weapon and the kick tossed him back a step. He blasted the woods around the car as he headed for the children. He could hear Wisp firing single shots from the top of the van. The area was pitch black but for the headlights. He couldn’t imagine how Wisp was finding targets.
He didn’t look at the kids. He knew if he did it would make him so angry he’d stop thinking. He went straight to the the chain and tracked it to a huge metal ring anchored to a massive old tree. He’d need a grenade to get that loose. A bullet whined by him and thudded into the tree showering him with chips of bark. He spun scanning for the enemy. A skinny boy of about fifteen was hiding by the side of van. He raised a gun and aimed. Nick ducked behind the tree as another bullet slammed into it. When he looked out, low and slow, the boy was down. Nick looked for Wisp, but couldn’t see him above the headlights.
“Look for a key,” Wisp called to him.
Six men down and Nick didn’t have the slightest doubt they needed killing. He located the bald-headed man among the bodies in the road as that one seemed to have been the leader. Close up the bandit was even more disgusting. His teeth weren’t just rotten, they’d been filed to points. A new level of repulsion welled up in Nick as he realized the pelts were human scalps. The odd beads were small bones, probably also human, he didn’t want to look too closely. The man stunk of old sweat and rancid fat. His clothes were filthy. Nick felt contaminated as he searched the pockets in the stained jeans, but was rewarded with a ring of keys. Now he had to face the prisoners.
With occasional gunshots sounding behind him, Nick worked at releasing the prisoners. Taking a better look at them, he realized they weren’t children. They were men and women, starved and broken. The taut chain across the road held them on their knees, some straining up or down to remain at the imposed height. None of them looked at him as he unlocked the steel collars around their necks. One man bolted as soon as he was free, scrambling away on all fours. There were six women and three men, not counting the one that ran. One man was wheezing badly. Once released from his collar, he collapsed on the road, gasping for breath.
The captive who’d been shot was starvation thin. Nick unlocked the collar and lowered the body to the ground. He barely weighed anything. Signs of abuse were all over his body. Nick kicked the chain away. He needed to bury this man, to put him to rest with a shred of dignity. He dragged the body out of the road and lay him on a strip of grass. He looked back at the rest of the prisoners. They remained where they had slumped, eyes down, unmoving, festering sores from the collars weeping pus onto their stained clothing. They needed food, water and medical supplies. He was momentarily caught between wanting to give aid and cautious at using their dwindling supplies. With William and Bruno using up the bulk of medical supplies, and all of them needing food and water for at least another day, he wasn’t sure how much they could afford to give away.
As if she’d read his mind, Jean made the decision for him. She brought water and train food to the captives, but they didn’t respond to her. Eyes lowered, most of them shied from her where they crouched on the road. She left a bottle of water and packet of Stew-goo, both opened, in front of each one. Then she came to where Nick was coiling the heavy chain at the side of the road. “What should we do?” she asked.
Nick didn’t want to bring these people to High Meadow. They were damaged, physically and mentally. Angus wouldn’t turn them away. But they would probably need care for the rest of their lives. It was a cold thought, but they were a liability. If they had any other trouble on the road, this lot would be of no help. He regretted letting Wisp talk him out of riding the train. A clean, well-lit station would be a god-send right now.
“You got em fed and watered. It’s warm enough to sleep out tonight. See if any of them will let you check their wounds.”
Jean winced, a look of revulsion crimping her brows.
“Sorry,” Nick said. “I can do that in a bit.” He turned to look for Wisp.
The biobot was standing by the front of the van watching the woods. Nick went over to him. “We need to do something about these folks.”
“Grand View is just north of here. They have a med center.”
Nick felt a fast flash of anger. He didn’t want to go further north. He wanted to get to High Meadow.
Wisp flicked a pale-eyed glance at him before returning his scrutiny to the woods. “We can leave them here, but I am not sure that we were able to eradicate the entire cult.”
Nick shot a frown at him. “Cult? You know who these nuts are?”
Wisp walked a few steps away, standing over one of the bodies. “Without a closer look, I didn’t realized who they were. The bone necklaces and scalps gave them away. They call themselves Maneaters.” He gave Nick an eye roll. “Not the most imaginative bunch. They are cannibals. There are a few groups of them around. They believe
the only way to survive is to eat those that appear immune.”
Nick felt sick, defeated. Cannibals. What had happened to these people that made them believe that was a viable course? He stared out into the surrounding woods. Small towns scattered across the country had become entirely isolated over the years. Many agricultural communities had carried on in their own tradition without much fuss. Other towns had devolved into petty oligarchies or church-based cohorts. Then there were pockets of pure evil, like this one. He felt a strong longing for High Meadow and its high ideals.
Despite how sick this made him, he felt responsible for the captives. The best course was to take them to the closest source of medical help. “How far to Grand View?”
“I will look for a road.”
As Wisp went back in the van, Nick walked around the vehicle to check it. A few scratches and dings. The tires were all in good shape. He came to the boy that had shot at him. Close up, he could see he was wrong again. Not a boy at all, just a skinny, runt of a man with filed teeth and three scalps on his belt. He felt no regrets. This was a death deserved for a vile predator.
“Wha’ abou’ da chirren?”
Nick spun, startled. One of the captives stood near him. She stared at the dirt. Nick’s gut twisted. Her bones had been broken and healed at odd angles. She looked badly put together, all angles and lumps. “What?”
She shot him a quick look, one eye socket was sunken. She gestured with a stick-thin arm. “Da chirren.” Her words were garbled from a lack of teeth and a mangled tongue.
Nick followed her gesture, peering into the darkness. Wisp exited the van and joined him.
“You understand her?”
“She’s fearful and hopeful and yearning for something over here.” Wisp walked confidently into the night.
Nick wondered if his pale eyes let him see in the dark. He had to shuffle along, snagging his feet on vines and weeds. A wobbly finger of light came from behind him. Jean joined them, flashlight in hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Not sure yet.”
Jean stayed a half-step behind him as they followed Wisp. In the thin beam from the flashlight, Nick saw the jumbled remains of a collapsed house. High piles of splintered lumber and crumbling bricks lined a well-trod path through the debris. When they caught up to him, Wisp was standing at an old-fashioned wooden cellar door, the paint peeled and deteriorated. A well-kept chain and padlock ran through the handle.
Wisp tugged on the padlock. “Do you still have the keys?”
Nick patted his pockets, surprised to find he did still have them. A shiver ran down his back. Standing in the pitch dark with just Jean’s flashlight made him feel too vulnerable. He handed the keys over to Wisp, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what was in that basement.
Wisp sorted through the keys, trying each one. The lock fell loose, and he pulled the door open without hesitation. Nick figured he must know that whatever was on the opposite side wasn’t going to come out fighting. Prudently, he took a step back, bumping into Jean. The flashlight wavered for a moment, then she pointed it at the black hole of the cellar.
“Come out,” Wisp said softly. He knelt at the lip of the stairs.
A young boy, not more than five, climbed out. In the weak light, he was pale and shaking. Two girls around Lily’s age followed, then another boy slightly older. They were dirty, shy and well-fed. They huddled together darting nervous looks at the strangers. The older boy frowned at them and then deliberately turned his attention off to his right. Jean moved the flashlight to see what he was looking at. A few steps away a squat table made out of thick wooden beams sat in the middle of a clearing. It was splotched with dark stains, knives and cleavers were racked to one side, chains hung in loops off the other. With a jolt, like a kick in the stomach, Nick realized it was a makeshift butcher block. He had to take a couple deep breaths to settle the emotion squeezing his chest and tightening his throat.
Beside him, Jean burst into tears. “No! No that’s, oh God...” She dropped the flashlight to cover her face, sobbing. Nick put an arm around her. He needed the comfort, too. He did not want to connect the dots between the kids in the cellar, and what he was looking at now. She pushed away from him and retrieved the flashlight.
When she swept the light over the area, he realized the children were gone.
Chapter 14
“It started from tragedy, a man so distraught at the loss of his child that he did the impossible. He loaded her cells into a bio-printer and re-built her. His attempt failed, but from that single desperate act, the biobots were devised. When they were finally perfected, they were touted as the solution to all man’s ills. From manual labor to complex calculations, one could order a Biological Robot built to almost any specification.”
History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss
Who am I? Mm, mmm, me. Not right, but close.
The day always started the same way, trying to remember who she was. The walls were white. Lights came on and went off without her asking, or wanting. Food arrived when the lights came on. There was a name for it. A word that meant just that thing. Food in the morning was...breakfast. Yes, that’s right, breakfast. That was the word for the first meal of the day.
She sat up slowly, feeling like she’d been wrapped in cotton. Sounds were muffled. Everything felt like flannel or rubber, even her body. Sometimes she wondered if she was made out of skin and bones, because they didn’t feel right. And that would make her wonder why she thought that. How was it supposed to feel? Had there been a time before the white walls and cotton? It was too hard to remember.
The small door in the wall opened with a snap. The sharpest sound in her world. A tray of food slid onto the narrow shelf across from the bed. A scratchy sound that made her stomach growl. The air in the room changed from a soapy smell to something else...toast? Coffee? Any change was special and must be appreciated. She let the smell float around awhile. If she ate the food, the smell would go away. But if she waited too long, the tray would be removed, and she would be hungry.
She put bare feet on a cold, tiled floor. The floor was not white. The floor was gray. She squinted at the edges where the white stopped and the gray began. The gray was important to her because it was not white. Her pants were white. Her shirt was the palest shade of blue. Sometimes her shirt was another color. Once it was pink. That had been a big surprise. It made her think of things that she couldn’t bring to mind today. It made her want something. Her shirts were never pink anymore.
She shuffled over to the lavatory on rubber legs. Toilet, shower, sink, toothbrush. She named each thing carefully before using them, proud to remember their names. Walls, ceiling, bed, tray. She rattled off all the items allowed in her world.
Who allowed?
That was another thought that she wasn’t sure she knew the answer to. Her parents? Parents. What were parents?
She sat on the chair in front of the shelf and put food into her mouth. She was pretty sure she had parents. Two of them. A man and a woman. They were important. Not like gray was important, or saying the names of things. But she couldn’t remember why they were important. There were a lot of things she couldn’t remember. Sometimes things floated up in her mind, and she had no idea where they came from.
Little triangles of yellow on her plate were sweet. She liked sweet. Not every tray had sweet. They were tart. She looked for the name along the gray of the floor. Apple? No, pineapple. The smell was a memory. She closed her eyes. Blue sky and yellow sand. A pounding sound that came from water...no, ocean. It was the ocean. And her skin was hot and smelled of coconut. An old ache of longing rose in her. But she didn’t know what to pine for. Was it the ocean? Did she ache to see that blue sky and blue water? But it didn’t make sense. She had always been here inside the white walls with the gray floor. Across the sand, a voice called, like the birds that swooped above her. Birds, gulls, seagulls. The voice said her name, and she remembered it. Melissa.
Ch
apter 15
“Biobots soon became a political nightmare. Unions were against them for replacing workers. The Human Rights organizations were apoplectic over the insinuations that these creatures were not human. Definitions varied wildly. The industry insisted that since a biobot was not grown in the womb and birthed from a woman, it was not a person.”
History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss
Wisp heard a motor kick over and felt Nick’s lurch of alarm.
“The van!” Nick spun back to the path.
Wisp grabbed his arm. “The van isn’t over there. It’s a different vehicle. The prisoners are leaving.”
“We need to stop them.” Jean shone the flashlight across the debris piles. She was searching for a way toward the sound of the engine. Her fear and disgust were so high, Wisp wondered how she could form a lucid thought.
“Why?” Wisp touched her shoulder to stop her. “The prisoners don’t trust us. They’re fearful and angry. They have taken their children and left.”
“Their children?” Nick demanded. “You’re sure?”
“The children went willingly. The adults think only of the children’s safety.” Wisp could feel the confusion in Jean. She so badly wanted to fix something. “They are better off seeking their own kind. The woods here have many small communities. They will be with people who want to care for them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick barked. He was angry at the situation and relieved not to be responsible for these people and oddly, angry at his relief. His emotions flickered so fast, Wisp worried that he was becoming unstable. Guilt steamed off him like a vapor. It was illogical for him to feel such pain for circumstances he’d stumbled across, but he was definitely not a logical man.
Wisp chose his words carefully. He used a calm voice and tried pushing a little on their overwrought emotions. It was not a time for Jean and Nick to go haring off after people who did not want their help. “We have our own responsibilities. Bruno, William, Lily. They deserve our undivided attention. The prisoners would require a lot of care and attention and still they would be questioning our intentions every step of the way. They would be fractious and defensive. Possibly violent. They are much happier making their own choices.”