by T. K. Malone
From behind her, Teah heard the grind of a vehicle on the mud trail. She tore her eyes away from Charm’s gun and looked around. A black van was trundling along it.
“The trouble is,” Charm said, his own eyes watching the approaching van. “The trouble is that I can’t have you blabbering about all this, and that is why I need this gun—well, one of two reasons. I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove whatever device Prime had put in your head, and don’t try and protest that he didn’t. It’s the only reason he has shown his hand so blatantly. He wants to understand. We will have to cloak certain memories from you. Trigger words—quite clever, really.”
“What?” Teah asked.
The black van drew to a stop. A woman jumped out, her stark white boots and scrubs such a contrast to all around. She opened the van’s back door.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Charm said. “You could almost transplant a heart in the back of that van. If you will, Teah.” He waved his gun to shoo her in.
“And if I don’t?”
“It ends now.”
Chapter Nine
She woke, her head throbbing. It was dark ahead, a light shining from behind her. The ground felt damp and sloped steadily downward. Reaching around, she felt large plastic undulations that curved upwards. She gasped in the dank, damp air.
A shot rang out behind her, echoing around. She drew her legs in, coming up to a crouch. Looking behind, the bright, round light made her squint and bring her hand up to cover her eyes, no doubt in her mind that she was now in the vast, black pipe. She scrambled back against its wall, sure that was where she was. A vague memory of a man, of a woman, of a black truck, came to her. She waited for the next shot, for the silhouette of the killer, but instead she heard an engine start, she heard it gun, and then she heard the scrunch of stone on stone as it pulled away. Teah waited until the engine’s rumble faded.
Crawling toward the light, she paused frequently to let her eyes accustom to its ever-brighter glare. When she finally made the pipe’s mouth, she shut her eyes momentarily before opening them and taking in the scene. It was of mud, waste and desolation. It was drab in color, browns, olive greens and blacks, apart from a prone body. That was pure white against the dull backdrop. Teah remembered thinking how stark the boots were.
The first explosion threw her backward, its billowing orange and yellow bursting outward, soon extinguished by a sheet of brown that raced toward her. She spun in the air, crashing back onto the mud that she’d only just crawled away from. A wave of scree splattered up her. She gasped, pushed herself up and ran into the dark as more explosions peppered the light behind.
The downward path evened out, the curve of the pipe keeping her central as she floundered in the dark. Above her, the ground itself trembled as muffled thumps signaled yet more explosions. She drew in a long, stuttering breath, her eyes wide like a hunted animal. Stumbling on, her dry path became slippery, then wet, and soon she was wading through shin-high water. She reached out, trailing her hand along the pipe’s wall, and she stopped when it did. Reaching forward with one foot, she felt the pipe’s end, nearly stumbling forward as it gave way to much deeper water.
Taking a breath, she tried to remember, a vague feeling that she’d been down here before, hazy recognition. Lurching to her side, she reached out, at first grabbing nothing but the thick, dank air, but then her fingertips scraped something cold. Grasping it, Teah pulled on what she assumed was a handrail, guide rail. Her feet scrambled against the pipe’s floor, plunging off its edges, her other hand grasping the rail. She pulled herself up and out of the foul water.
Feeling around, she knew she was on a metal platform—some form of access way, she decided. Pulling herself along it, she came to a stop, a peculiar, spongy wall rising up before her. She reached up, but at first could feel nothing. Slumping back down, she took breath and ran her fingers through her hair.
“For fuck’s sake,” she sighed, wondering why her life had suddenly taken a sharp left into a desperate fight for survival. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out Sticks’ sodden smokes. “For…” but she never bothered finishing the curse, reluctant acceptance running through her. “Sticks don’t break,” she shouted to no one but an echo. Above her, the earth still shook. Letting out a frustrated growl, Teah pushed herself up and off the metal gangway. Her hands roamed over the spongy wall. She felt a crease in it and traced it all the way around with her fingers. “A door,” she whispered.
Sweeping her palm back and forth, a small undulation about halfway down made her stop. She went back to it, running her finger around and around, then jabbed it out of frustration. A click broke the sound of her breaths, and the door sprang out, a filament of light shining out of the door, bathing the tunnel in a murky glow. Teah saw she was indeed on a walkway, and she saw the vast chamber the pipe had once drained into—the chamber where Connor had been floating.
Connor? She thought, and wondered about the glimpse of a memory. Looking back down, she saw nothing but dank, black rainwater. Teah pulled the door open slowly. A white tube lay the other side of it, around fifty feet long, about twenty wide. On one side, a row of empty, white shelves; at its end, what looked like another door. Her eyes settled on the white walls. She prodded them, letting her finger sink into its soft texture. It wasn’t white, she could see that now, more a crystalline form, white flecked with what looked like glass. She was strangely drawn to it, rubbing her cheek against its texture, gaining a measure of comfort from it. The door clicked shut behind her.
Walking up the tube, she came to a break in the shelves, a doorway, but more an air lock on closer inspection. Looking through its glass, she could see what appeared to be a service duct. Pressing her hand against a pad to the door’s side, she waited for it to open, but nothing happened. Moving on, she walked toward the door at the tube’s end and found it had no handle, no undulation to open it. Looking around, she pondered her next move. A large, white duffle bag was sitting on one of the shelves.
“What the fuck?” she muttered, reaching out for it, untying its straps.
She pulled out a set of dry, khaki fatigues, a pair of boots, a packed rucksack and at the bottom, a machine gun.
“Charm,” she whispered, but had little clue why, and she began to strip off her wet clothes and donned the dry ones. Lacing up the boots, she sat for a while, straining her mind to try and form some reason for her being there. She somehow knew she couldn’t go back to The Black City, knew she was in immense danger, and knew she was running away. But, she was unsure why.
Rummaging in the depths of the bag, she recovered a flashlight, a taser, a handgun, a lighter and a new pack of smokes.
“This shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” she said out loud, wondering if anyone could hear her, wondering if anyone was watching. Her hand reached up and behind her head. It felt tender, a small ridge in the nape. The dead person with the white boots, Teah knew she’d had something to do with it. Then she felt her belly, and remembered her baby. Was it even still alive? She had no idea, no idea how the whole thing worked, but decided that from now on in, she would protect it above all else.
Opening the rucksack, she saw it was packed full with what must be a bivouac, tent, or some such things. She felt around its bottom, her fingers scrunching something. Deciding that whoever packed it must have known roughly what she needed, she slung it on without another thought. Popping the smokes and lighter in her top pocket, the gun in her belt, she shouldered the machine gun, flicked the flashlight on and left the tube.
She now saw the walkway skirted the door and ran alongside the length of the tube. Beyond the chamber, more tunnels branched off. She reasoned that straight on was best, away from the tunnel she’d woken in, and so she jumped off the walkway and started running up that tunnel. The constant thump of explosions from above interrupted the still of the underground, the bombs still raining down.
Her flashlight sprayed light around the concrete pipe, her boots splashing in the shallow w
ater. She was soon breathing hard, panting; the still air, damp. What the hell was she running from? The Black City, that must be it. She was running to save the baby. But what about Zac? Somehow she knew she could never go back for him. Teah wondered why was her memory so sporadic, just glimpses of a past life.
How long she ran for, she couldn’t be certain, but exhaustion made her stop in the end. She crouched in the drain, her head down, gasping in the dank air. The darkness began to close in on her, the silence weighing on her fear, just an occasional scuttle, the odd drip, a slither from the black. Her hand reached for her gun, patting it, reassuring her. Teah knew she needed a plan of some kind, but for now she only had two options, back where she’d come from, or forward. No, she thought, she only had one option.
Only a few hundred feet later, the flashlight lit up the tunnel’s end. A mash of concrete and mud, it was obvious that the sewer had been terminated by force at some point. Probably when the city had enforced its isolation. Cursing out loud, she walked forward more out of morbid curiosity that her path had ended so suddenly, her only option to double back. As she closed, she saw a dark shadow in the sewer’s wall. Shining the flashlight toward it, she let slip a smile.
The wall had been cut away leaving an entrance about seven feet high. Beyond it, a hewn tunnel led away. She poked her head in. The roof was supported by cross-timbers spaced evenly every four or five feet. The walls were part chiseled stone, part clay and flint. The floor crunched underfoot, some type of hard core covering it. Teah briefly wondered if it was one of Zac’s smuggling tunnels, whether this was where Connor had been headed that day. She stopped at that thought; her hand darting to the back of her head. “What day?” she briefly wondered before that thought vanished too. She stepped into the tunnel.
Soon banking upward, the tunnel curved to one side. She started running, a dread feeling passing through her. The torchlight danced around. The constant pounding stopped. It was only when she was almost at the tunnel’s exit she realized that it was there. Night had drawn in. She flipped the flashlight off, conscious it would have been seen if anyone was watching. She edged toward the tunnel’s end.
Moonlight, doused by the cloud cover, barely illuminated the land in front of her. She could see The Black City behind her, the tops of the high-rises speckled with lights, the lower floors swallowed by the derelict outskirts. The wastelands were dappled with the odd flame here and there, and up ahead, the freeway was silent. She took a deep breath of fresh air, unslung her machine gun and squatted down. For the first time since she’d woken, she thought she might just have a chance of making it out.
“Sick fuck,” she muttered, as a vague feeling that she was being played by something or someone passed through her. Lighting a smoke, she sat. What the hell was she going to do? She knew she had to get into the hills, knew she had to hide out, become one of them, country folk, knew that was where she could raise her child. She scoffed inwardly. It appeared she had little past left anyway. Just brief recollections. Taking a puff of her smoke, she looked up at the night sky and wished she could sleep where she was.
On the very edge of her waning consciousness, she heard the faint whir of a drone’s propellers.
She froze, dropping her smoke and crushing it with the butt of the machine gun. Scrambling to her feet, she was in two minds; back into the tunnel or make a mad dash for the freeway. Teah took a deep breath. “Shit,” she muttered, and sprang forward. She bolted between two heaps of rubble, banking around them, hurdling a small ditch. An explosion rang out behind her, and then dozens all around. Heavier booms vibrated the night air, huge blasts that rained down soil, earth and debris. Glancing upward, she saw the bellies of a score or more drones lit up with the orange flecks of reflected fire. The whole wasteland was ablaze, secondary explosions ringing out as the bombs found discarded gas bottles and pools of toxic waste.
Teah ran for her life, the freeway seemingly miles away. The land around her became more like a brushland, small rivulets and creeks, zigzagging banks of overgrown grass, feeble trees with twisted trunks clinging to pockets of untainted soil. Behind her, a curtain of raging orange cordoned off the city. She raced on, hurdling, skidding, forging forward with one aim—the freeway.
A burst of machine gun fire took her by surprise, peppering the ground around her. She threw herself into the air, aiming for a cleft between two scruffy dunes. She rolled; ending up on her back, machine gun in hand. Without pausing to think, she pressed the trigger, her aim drawn to a blinking red light in the sky. The drone exploded in a ball of flame. Jumping back up, she’d barely made another ten yards before gunfire rang out again.
This time she dived sideways and into a shallow ditch, two lines of fire exploding to one side of her. Looking up, she saw the drones, hovering, waiting for her next move. “Heat seekers, shit,” she said, as one advanced. She took aim and fired, but this time it just jumped up in the air as if it had learned. “AI, damn.”
Crawling backward, she aimed low and then shot in an upward line, the drone tried to evade her bullets, but she ripped right through it and then turned and bolted while the explosion masked her heat signature from the other. Darting one way and then the other, she took off for the freeway, waiting for the next round of bullets. As she neared, Teah threw herself into a drainage ditch that ran alongside the road, not even trying to stop the roll that took her to its bottom. Thankfully, it was dry as a bone and angled down. She looked up at the night sky. The drone was nowhere to be seen. Teah allowed herself the faintest of smiles.
Rolling over and onto her feet, she shouldered her machine gun, adjusted the straps on her backpack, and walked along the ditch. Heading away from Sendro Verde, The Angel Bay Hotel, she traipsed up the slope, explosions still sounding out all over the wasteland. Someone meant to pummel it into submission, she thought, and sighed with relief that she was out of the tunnels, sighed with relief that the drones appeared solely focused on that poisoned belt of land.
Chapter Ten
Teah woke with the sun, an abandoned gas station her bedroom, her rucksack her pillow. Sitting up, she drew her legs in and ruffled her hair. The place smelt of piss and plastic. Taking out the pack of smokes, she lit one and stared around. It was just a mess of cracked concrete and shattered glass. An old counter stood directly in front of her, a heap of toppled shelving to one side. If this was all the country had to offer, she decided she was fucked. Yawning mid drag, a cough raked through her. “Which way to go?” she thought, and saw the face of a young soldier in her mind. He was explaining the way to something called ‘The Prepper’s Compound’.
“Sticks don’t break,” she said, and smiled, that memory complete. Stubbing out the smoke, she got up, ready to start the trek. Ambling over to the counter, she froze; sure she’d just heard voices. She crept behind it and crouched, un-shouldering her gun. The door crashed open.
“You smell that?” A man’s voice rang out.
“What?” another grumbled. “Come on, let’s get outta here. Ain’t no one survived that bombardment.”
“That’s the smell of smokes. Someone did.”
“So what?”
“Chief says a few dozen heat signatures were tracked crossing the freeway. We didn’t get all of ‘em.”
“Rumor is, they was Prime’s spies.”
One of them scoffed. “No rumors when they’re dead. Who ever was here’s probably long gone.”
Teah heard the door shut. Prime, she thought, that name meant something, and she wasn’t the only one that had escaped. Pulling herself up, she peered over the counter—all clear—Teah crept to the back of the shop.
The roadside stop was a few miles shy of the foothills that rose to the forest-cloaked mountains. Smaller redwoods clad their slopes, nothing compared to the ones she saw framing Sticks’ face as he’d relayed her route. Teah headed for them nonetheless, glad of the eventual cover, crouching behind the first, scanning back across the scrubland for any sign of pursuit. Past it and over the freeway, t
he wastelands still smouldered, a black cloud hanging over it. Beyond, she could see The Black City framed by the blue ocean. Teah turned and trudged up into the foothills. Distance from the freeway, from the city, she decided, was her friend. It began to rain, light at first, but soon much heavier. Head down, she traipsed on, the rain not bothering her, invigorating if anything.
By mid afternoon, she’d made the mouth of the valley that led up to the army camp, for some reason that memory was still vivid, as if she were being fed only the things she needed to know. She was soaked through, damp, but her immediate fear had wilted, and that was what counted.
Sitting among the thicker trees, Teah decided to wait for dusk’s cloak before she crossed over to the other side. The floor of the valley was broad, a river sweeping down it, dissecting it, carving its fallow farmland and pastures in half. She tried to spy the best route, but none were without danger, all too open. Some of the fields were tilled, still tended, no doubt the few that still supplied the city. Pushing herself to her feet, she set off. It wasn’t quite dusk, but she figured she could get a start if she hugged the forest as far as the first field. The forest ended too quickly for her.
A small path ran the length of the first field, Teah turned on to it. She straightened her slouch and attempted marching, reasoning that with the soldier’s camp just up the valley, maybe she’d be mistaken for one of them. She had the boots, the fatigues, rucksack and gun—she could pass, that was sure. Once again, she wondered whether this wasn’t all planned out, whether her fate was her own.
The path turned between two fields and headed toward the river. Teah decided she was committed to hiding in plain sight now, and she stuck her chin out, pulled her shoulders back, and made swift time along the track. Thirst riddled her thoughts as her energy began to wane. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a drink. Teah marched on, angling her face up, catching the rain in her mouth.