by James Axler
“Got lost,” J.B. responded automatically.
“You’re not allowed in here,” Nancy stated.
“You broke in,” Phyllida added. “We saw where you forced the door.”
“I came to see what you girls were up to in here,” J.B. replied innocently. “Did some good work.”
“You’re not allowed in here,” Nancy repeated. “No one can be here without the Regina’s permission.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said. “I thought I had permission.”
“You don’t have permission,” Phyllida snapped, striding toward J.B.
J.B.’s hand slipped behind his jacket as he spoke, reaching for the sheathed Tekna blade. “Mebbe I got muddled up somewhere,” he admitted.
“You didn’t get muddled, Mr. Dix,” Phyllida said. “You broke in here.”
“Well,” J.B. said, his right hand gripping the hilt of his hidden knife, “chalk that down to curiosity. I haven’t touched anything. I’ll leave now.”
“No, you will stay exactly where you are,” Phyllida commanded, “with your hands up where I can see them.”
J.B. inwardly cursed, but he removed his fingers from the hilt and raised his hands. “Look, this is just a mistake.” He tried to bluff. “I thought the redoubt wasn’t in use. I was mistaken.”
“On your knees,” Phyllida said. She was standing now in the open doorway to the mat-trans chamber, blocking J.B.’s only escape route.
“You’re real wound tight, aren’t you?” J.B. said, making no attempt to obey her order. “Let’s just call this a mix-up and leave it at that, okay?”
Phyllida moved then, a blur of motion, her white robes trailing behind her like the afterimage of a torch in the night. J.B. had no time to respond; he tried to step out of her path but she was on him before he had even taken the step, the knife-flat edge of her right hand sweeping through the air and slamming against the side of his neck with a crack.
J.B. staggered back, groaning as pain shot through his neck and shoulder. “What th—?”
Phyllida followed by kicking up and out, striking J.B. high in the chest and knocking him back against the far wall.
J.B. grunted again, sagging there, neither standing nor falling. “Look...” he began.
But the white-robed woman was on him again, swooping at him like a bird of prey, her outstretched arms crossing through the air in rapid blurs before meeting against either side of J.B.’s skull with a blow that sounded like a thunderclap.
J.B. staggered again, but with nowhere left to fall he was trapped against the armaglass wall as the Melissa attacked him. She was moving fast—too fast to be real. J.B. could barely process it, could not follow the speed with which each strike came. He perceived the next one as it began, the blonde woman’s tanned left leg kicking up in a billow of white skirts, but before he could block it the blow had struck him in the gut, driving the wind out of him in a painful blurt.
J.B.’s vision swam, but Phyllida kept coming, smacking at him with little blows, each one perfectly placed to hurt him, the attacks striking different parts of his head and body, moving and exaggerating the pain so that it felt as if his whole body was on fire.
The Armorer slumped back against the wall, tasting the blood in his mouth, feeling wetness on his face. The Melissa was standing over him, getting ready to strike again, her robes billowing around her like breakers on the beach.
“No one is to interfere here,” Phyllida said, her words hard to hear over the sound of rushing blood coming to J.B.’s ears as though through a broken speaker.
J.B. watched Phyllida move toward him again, tanned skin and white robes blending together in a swirl of gold and white. He felt the blow against his kidneys, figured it for a kick, yelping in pain. Phyllida was saying something else, but J.B. couldn’t seem to hear it or to process it; he just knew it was about chilling him, he felt it had to be.
The blond-haired woman swam in and out of J.B.’s whirling vision as he lay on the floor of the mat-trans. He could hear her bare feet slapping against the tiles, could feel the way those movements shuddered through the floor.
The Armorer’s hand moved, snatching for the knife hilt once more at the small of his back. As the Melissa closed on him, J.B. whipped out the Tekna combat knife and thrust it upward, driving it not at the woman but at the space he thought she would occupy in the next nanosecond, the space she wasn’t when he had begun the thrust.
There was a scream accompanied by the heavy feel of the weight against J.B.’s knife. But he was thinking slowly, struggling to process everything and to just remain conscious. His next move was automatic. He slashed with the knife, pulling it from left to right as though wiping grime from a window, pushing hard against the hilt at the same time with all the force he could muster.
There was another shriek and then a gurgle, and J.B. felt the rush of hot liquid wash over his hand where it held the knife. It was only then that he pulled the knife free.
The woman in the white robes slumped forward, crashing to her knees on the tiled floor, a kind of ticking-bubbling sound coming from her throat. J.B. felt more than saw her as she sagged against him, and he shoved her away with his eyes closed, forcing himself up to stand.
Someone was screaming. Several someones, their voices mingling like some awful choir held in agony. J.B. took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through clenched teeth as he opened his eyes. Phyllida was lying in a pool of blood on the mat-trans floor, her mouth wide and eyes open, the whites turned pink.
J.B. moved forward, forcing one foot in front of the other, agony coursing through him with every step. Phyllida had beaten him hard, sending spikes of pain through his whole body. He focused past it, gazing at the doorway to the control room with the blood-slick knife still in his hand.
“Get back, everyone,” Nancy said, placing herself protectively in front of the three engineers. J.B. guessed they had been taking a break when he had seen them exit and lock up, or maybe they had come back after forgetting something. It didn’t matter now; he had been injured, and he had to get out of there quick before they regrouped and turned on him.
Nancy glared at J.B. as he staggered forward.
“Get out of my way, girl,” J.B. warned.
“Phyllida,” Nancy said. “You’ve...”
“She attacked me, and I’ll do you, too,” J.B. vowed. “All of you. Now step aside.” The initial rush of adrenaline was passing already, and he could feel himself getting weak.
“You’ve...” Nancy said again.
J.B. glanced back, eyeing Phyllida’s slender form where she lay on the blood-streaked floor of the mat-trans. “She isn’t dead yet,” he told Nancy. “You want to fight me, or you want to save her?”
Nancy glared at him, fury burning in her blue-gray eyes. Then, reluctantly, she stepped aside and ushered the other women away from the door. J.B. trudged through the doorway, shouldering past one of the engineers, the bloody knife dripping in his hand.
“You’re a dead man,” Nancy told the Armorer as he made his way through the control room and into the corridor beyond. “Run all you like, violator, it won’t save you. Not after this.”
J.B. ignored her. He had been threatened by meaner people than this, and he was still breathing where they weren’t.
As Nancy and the engineers gathered to help Phyllida, J.B. exited the redoubt, forcing himself to keep moving.
* * *
J.B. WAS ON the run now. He had made it out of the redoubt without being followed, though each step was fought for past the pain, like swimming through molasses. He had made it topside, got out through the wedged-open door and into the fresh air, and that had kicked in something in his brain, making him wake up and get moving where inside he had wanted to just fall down.
It had been bad luck that both the sec women had come down t
o check on the mat-trans, he realized as he made his way through the trees and off into an overgrown mountain pass. They had found the open door and had come in numbers to see who had broken into their pet project, which made a degree of sense. At the same time, it had been good for him because it meant he had gotten out alive without meeting another one of the fast-moving Melissas.
And, yeah, what was that about anyway? he thought. That Phyllida woman had moved as though she was high on jolt, faster than the eye could properly follow. J.B. had never seen anything like it.
The Armorer thought about that as he followed a path west, creating distance between himself and the redoubt and the ville. He could make it a few nights up here in the mountains, but without a blaster he wouldn’t rate his chances in the land beyond.
And he couldn’t leave Ryan. There, he’d said it, at least in his mind.
The tree cover was thick, with tangling bushes budded across the sloping ground like barbed wire. J.B. created a way through it, following the path of least resistance, hacking the odd branch aside with his knife. He checked behind him as he went, placing the redoubt entrance where he thought it had to be, figuring himself to be not that far from the limits of the vast underground facility. They had built them big when they had built them, no question about that. Hadn’t done them any good. Most of the people who’d built those redoubts had died in the first few seconds of the nuclear conflict, and what few survived had been too irradiated to make the trek there without keeling over. Shitty way to die, radiation; it sunk into the bones and ate at everything until the body just gave in.
The sun was starting to sink, casting long shadows across the ground, bringing that chill back that J.B. had felt when he had gone to meet Doc that morning. It seemed a long time ago now, and J.B. wondered how Doc was faring without him. Doc was a slick talker when he needed to be; he’d probably come up with something to explain away J.B.’s continued absence.
The tangling undergrowth gave way to an orchard—twenty apple trees clustered in a neat little circle. J.B. stopped by a tree and turned back, watching behind him, searching the long shadows for movement. They’d start following him soon, he knew. Nancy would probably delegate the care of her colleague to the engineers so that she could come for him. She was a sec woman, what they called in these parts a Melissa. Hunting down “violators” was her job.
Moving away from the tree, J.B. kicked his way through the undergrowth, searching for a place to hole up and watch, somewhere he might be able to defend.
Beyond the trees, the side of a rocky incline waited like a hurricane-toppled wall. It was too steep to climb without gear, yet offered good protection from the wind.
J.B. ran toward the rocks, peering over his shoulder frequently to ensure he wasn’t seen. There were caves here—no, not caves but dark little depressions that had been carved by rainwater and were just big enough to hold a person. J.B. used his knife to cut away a tangle of briars that he carried with him to the outcropping. He located a good-size hole, one big enough to fit inside, hunkered down and slipped inside, pulling the tangle of green in front of him like a door. The green would act as camouflage, a screen he could peer through without being seen.
Then he waited.
* * *
“YOUR FRIEND’S BEEN gone a long time,” Jon said to Doc. They were gathering their equipment, circling back toward the towering gates of Heaven Falls.
“What? John Barrymore?” Doc replied. “I believe I saw him return to the Home a couple hours ago now. Did he not come speak to you?”
“’Fraid he didn’t,” Jon said. “Tom? He speak to you?”
Thomas shook his head as he hefted another pail of honey into the cool box that sat in the fields.
“Well, mayhap he had not wanted to bother you,” Doc suggested. “He could obviously see we were busy.”
Jon nodded, smiling. “Shame about his headache. You think he’ll come back on crew again?”
Doc shrugged. “Who knows? What makes a good beekeeper?”
Jon laughed. “Patience and a steady hand.”
Together, the three-man crew made its way through the open gates and back into the hub of Heaven Falls, thinking nothing more of J.B. and the fact he had gone missing. Doc only hoped that J.B. had found what he was looking for out at the redoubt, and that the man was all right.
* * *
NANCY RETURNED TO Heaven Falls with the engineering team and their wounded companion, Phyllida. Nancy carried Phyllida on her own, resting her unconscious body over her arms, managing the weight with apparent ease. Phyllida’s virgin-white robes were stained red with blood and, while Nancy had done what she could to patch up the woman, she was still losing a lot of blood.
One of the engineers called Deirdre hurried ahead to ensure that the gates were open by the time they arrived. Alerted, a medical team hurried to meet Nancy as she entered the gates, and they rushed Phyllida to the medical tower. Word was sent to the Regina, and shortly thereafter she came to find Nancy at the medical faculty to discuss what had happened.
“We found one of the newcomers in the mat-trans,” Nancy explained. She was standing at the doorway to the room where the medics were working on Phyllida, her brow furrowed with concern.
“A newcomer? Which one?” the Regina asked.
“The one with the hat,” Nancy told her. “Dix.”
The Regina nodded, her blond ringlets brushing like a pendulum across her shoulders. “The others have found their places, but Dix has been restless since he first arrived,” she said. “He petitioned to join one of the honey-harvesting teams. That’s how he got out.”
“An oversight,” Nancy said, “but one that can be corrected, my Regina. I will see to it personally.”
“Take a squad,” the Regina said. “You’re Chief Melissa now, until Phyllida is ready for service again.”
Nancy nodded in understanding. “As you will. All love.”
“All love,” the Regina responded.
* * *
THE SUN WAS low when the women came looking for J.B. There were five of them, each dressed in the gossamer-thin white robes of the Melissas. The robes billowed around them like mist, and the last rays of the sun highlighted the curves of their supple bodies beneath as it peered through the material. They had tracked J.B. via the path in the undergrowth, following the signs he had left in his haste to get away from the redoubt. He hadn’t had time to cover his tracks; his body ached and it was all he could do to hide.
J.B. had rested in the bolthole all afternoon, the agony of the beating he had received turning to a persistent ache. Nothing was bleeding, nothing was broken, and for that he was grateful. His ribs ached, though, and he figured there would be bruises there if he looked in the light, but he dared not step out from cover, for fear that someone would see him. So he had remained in the shallow hole all that time, watching through the curtain of brush as the afternoon shadows had grown longer, the once-vibrant grass turning a deep olive as the sun set.
Despite the pain, J.B. was alert. He spied the women as they made their way through the trees, their robes catching the breeze and whipping up behind them. Fanned out to cover as much ground as they could, there was about fifteen feet between one woman and the next. He couldn’t make it out between them; they hadn’t left enough room for that. They would swarm him the instant he showed himself.
J.B. watched from his bolthole as the women came closer, and he recognized three of them. One was the second Melissa from the redoubt—Nancy—her black hair piled high on her head. Accompanying her were Adele and Linda, plus two others he didn’t know by name but recognized from his travels around Heaven Falls. He was outnumbered with nothing to use against them except one lone knife.
He had to get away from them, and do it quickly. What he had seen in the redoubt, the inhuman way that Phyllida had attacked him—the speed with wh
ich she had assaulted him—was something uncanny. J.B. had to assume that the others could do the same.
He watched through the foliage as the women came closer, closing in on him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Regina had called a rally at sunset. Everyone was expected to attend.
The rally was held in the plaza outside the Regina’s tower, torches burning around the edge to illuminate the space as the sun slid below the horizon. It took thirty minutes from when the Regina had decided to hold the rally to everyone in Heaven Falls arriving.
Ryan and Krysty stood together in the crowd as the Regina took the stage, actually a raised platform outside her tower. Illuminated by the burning flames, their cheeks seemed to glow, and their eyes were alight with adoration for the benevolent leader of this paradise on Earth.
The Regina wore a wrap dress of bloodred with a matching headdress that ended in a sharp spine at its apex. The dress and headpiece was wound with black material, around and around in a series of thick stripes. Two white-robed Melissas stood in front of the stage, one to either side, surveying the crowd with stern expressions.
“My people,” the Regina began, her arms held aloft, “my children. I have gathered you this eve with terrible news. A violator walks among us. A violator has lived with us—passed himself off as one of us—for many days. The man showed his true face today when he tried to kill one of my precious daughters.”
A rumble of dismay buzzed through the crowd. A dark-haired young man dressed in a toga handed a flat wooden box roughly the size of a shoebox to the Regina with a bow. The crowd waited on tenterhooks as the Regina opened the box and removed the single item that rested within. Then she held it aloft, and a rumble of shock and revulsion went through the crowd. It was a lone item of clothing—the familiar white robes worn by the Melissas—only this one was stained with blood, fully two-thirds of it turned red.
“Phyllida, leader of our Protection Sisters and my most precious daughter, was almost killed,” the Regina announced to the horrified crowd. “She lives only because she is strong—made strong by the royal gift.”