Vagrants (Vagrants Series Book 1)

by Jake Lingwall

  Jeff couldn’t take his eyes off the man as they passed him. The silver patch of a brave was worn but still visible on the man’s left collarbone. Jeff felt himself turn away from Stefani and follow after the man he recognized as Sean, the brave who had given him a knife while he crawled across the broken streets of Fifth Springs.

  25 SEAN

  EVERY STEP THAT SEAN TOOK sent a surge of hatred pulsing through Jeff’s body. Sean hadn’t been the one to kill Chad or slice the limbs from his body, but in a way, he had done something worse. He had been a brave, sworn to protect the people of Fifth Springs by any means necessary. Against an Apostle, that meant death, but Sean hadn’t answered that call.

  Instead, along with the mayor, he had completely avoided the conflict while the people Jeff loved had been cut to pieces. He was a coward and had failed his people.

  The man walking next to Sean looked back over his shoulder, and Jeff looked away, trying his best to act like he wasn’t following them. The man scratched his bulky nose and ground his teeth before looking forward once again.

  Jeff didn’t know where they were leading him, but it didn’t matter. He was more than willing to follow Sean as long as he needed to, to wherever he needed to go. The man had laughed at him while he lay in the rubble of Fifth Springs, waiting to die. Jeff had watched him walk away from him once before, and he wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

  To his right, a crowd gathered over by a large building that glowed from the inside with electric light. There was an energy in the air that was unmistakable; something had caused an unnatural level of excitement. Perhaps an envoy had just returned with unexpected treasures, or maybe it was some sort of community holiday. Fifth Springs had celebrated October 15 every year, a date that marked the most recent founding of the community. It wasn’t a date that Jeff celebrated; the loss of Fourth Springs had been too costly.

  Sean patted his companion on the back as they split up and headed away from the crowd. As Jeff followed, Sean rounded the corner of a building, where a handful of birds took flight from a tidy fenced garden. Something twitched in his brain; he would have called it a reflex before he had earned the vagrant’s uniform.

  His mechanical arm shot up and grabbed Sean’s wrist, preventing a knife from lodging into Jeff’s neck. Jeff flicked his metal wrist, breaking the man’s bones unwittingly. He was too focused to let the vibrations and crunch bother him. He covered Sean’s mouth with his other hand as screams escaped Sean’s throat.

  Sean went limp, but Jeff held him up, not letting the man drop to the ground with the knife that Jeff stared at. The sight of it sent a wave of memories through his mind; he had seen the sister of that knife before. Sean had left it for him to kill himself with.

  “Hello again, brave,” Jeff whispered to Sean. He twisted around him, using Sean’s body as shelter as he looked for anyone who might have heard the man’s screams. No one was coming, and Sean whimpered pathetically in his arms.

  “I suspect you didn’t think you’d see me again,” Jeff said. Sean trembled, weakly trying to free himself, but Jeff was too strong for him, and he had plenty of practice at subduing people. “The last time we saw each other, you gave me a knife.”

  Jeff closed his eyes as he spoke, letting his mind drift to the scene in his past where Sean had left him a dirty knife as he walked after the mayor. But now he remembered a past where he didn’t leave the knife in the dirt as he went with Carlee and Stefani. Instead, he remembered choosing to carry the knife with him, across Fifth Springs, using his only hand to hold on to the handle of the blade.

  He remembered Stefani making fun of him for it, for clutching to a metal knife when she could press him a force-field knife instead. But he kept it. He remembered fastening a case for it during one of his sleepless nights with the vagrants while he learned the secrets of the past and of pressing. He remembered Carlee pressing him a more fitting case with a beautiful smile. It was a case that would attach to the thigh of his fresh vagrant uniform, on top of the pieces of body armor.

  Sean pulled against Jeff’s arm, desperately trying to free himself, but Jeff held him tight as he opened his eyes. His metal arm slid down his side to where a knife rested on his thigh. He unstrapped it, freeing the knife that had always been there and had yet just appeared in this reality.

  “You let our community die without anyone to fight back for them. That can’t be forgiven. You told me once to be brave.”

  Sean squirmed, freeing his mouth long enough to get out a tiny scream, but Jeff regained control a moment later. He heard some sort of commotion in the distance, but he didn’t spend time thinking about it; instead, he preferred to listen to Sean plead in whimpers.

  “Now, let’s see how brave you are.”

  Sean tried to sink to his knees, and this time Jeff let him. They stooped low together as Jeff eased the knife steadily into his heart. Sean shook violently, and a warm wetness flowed between the fingers that had been covering Sean’s mouth.

  Jeff let Sean collapse to the ground with his knife permanently returned to its original owner, and he stumbled back, looking at the blood on his hand. It was a pure bright red, contrasting brilliantly with the dusty-gray sleeves of his uniform. He stared at it, transfixed, almost as if he wasn’t sure why it was there or couldn’t believe what had just happened.

  The emotions he felt were hard to define, but he knew they weren’t regret. But they weren’t joy or satisfaction. In fact, he just felt confused, or at least that was his best guess.

  There were voices growing closer, and he looked around the corner from where he had come and saw a mob of men rushing his way, holding all kinds of weapons, from guns to clubs. Sean’s companion was at the front of them, rushing in his direction. Jeff stumbled backward as he tried to look around for a place to run. Instead, he found himself looking at his bloody hand again.

  “He killed Sean! My God! He killed Sean!” the man shouted. And the mob flexed out in front of him as he stood in place. They didn’t try to kill him immediately, which seemed strange. But everything seemed strange.

  “I knew he was a raider when I saw him!” the man shouted. No one focused on the body; instead, they surrounded Jeff, pushing in closer. Their faces were violent—and understandably so. Jeff was an outsider, and they weren’t to be trusted. That he knew. In fact, he knew many things again, like how he needed to figure a way out of this mess. His mind had been so blurry for a few moments, but the more he blinked, the more everything came back into focus.

  “We should kill him!” someone shouted as he felt something crack against his metal arm and shatter. He looked over to see that it had been an old wooden baseball bat. The crowd backed away from him after seeing the bat destroyed.

  “It’s a human leech!” someone shouted.

  “Shoot it!” someone else shouted.

  “Call Darwin!” a third voice shouted. The crowd paused at this suggestion, and then more voices took up the call. “Call Darwin! Call Darwin!”

  “He deserved it,” Jeff said softly.

  “What did you say?” a man who looked to be able to give Jeff a decent fight said as he stepped forward. He was holding a machete that had been attached to an energy cell. It wasn’t activated, but Jeff had seen what weapons like that could do to a man.

  “He deserved it,” Jeff repeated, speaking softly now on purpose as he looked over the man’s shoulder, hoping to see Stefani coming in his direction. He didn’t see her coming, and he was starting to have the instant feelings of regret that he had experienced the last time he had left a vagrant behind to seek revenge.

  “Who are you?” the man with the machete asked.

  But Jeff ignored the question. He was busy trying to find a solution. He had pressed successfully a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t sure he could do it again. He closed his eyes anyway and started to imagine a reality where he had brought a force-field generator with him that could lock him in a protective casing.

  “We should shoot him.”
r />   “Shut it, Constance,” their leader said. “I’m going to ask you one more time, son. Who are you?”

  Jeff didn’t open his eyes to look at the man with the machete; instead, he tried to convince himself that there was a reality where a force field lay at his feet. He started to feel the connection form in his mind, but the man’s voice broke his concentration.

  “I don’t think he’s right in the head.”

  Jeff opened his eyes to see the man gesture with his hands, signaling the others to move in. But before Jeff could even move to defend himself, something crashed into the ground next to him, sending the mob running. They scattered in all directions, a few of them firing guns wildly over their shoulders as they sprinted away.

  “We can’t take you anywhere, Handsome,” Stefani said. He looked over to see that her body armor had been transformed into a flight suit. It was bulky, angled, and terrifying. And he wanted one.

  “Sorry.”

  “Of course you are.” She grabbed his shoulder, but he looked over at her disapprovingly.

  “I want to fly this time.”

  She didn’t open the helmet that hid her face, but he didn’t need to actually see her to know the look he was getting.

  “Never could say no to a pretty face . . .” Stefani grumbled. Reality bent around him as Stefani pressed another time line on top of their own, replacing the matter that had composed his body armor with a matching flight suit.

  26 FLYING

  A HELMET APPEARED AROUND HIS head, blocking his sight for a split second until it came online, overriding his vision with an enhanced view of the real world. It wasn’t unlike the hood experience the vagrant uniform offered, except this suit of armor had the ability to fly.

  He intuitively activated the flight controls with a mental flick, and his stomach surged, almost emptying itself, as he launched several feet diagonally into the air. Bullets clanked against his armor as he tried to stabilize himself. Carlee’s instructions on how to use a flight suit weren’t much help at the moment.

  Stefani grabbed hold of his suit and tugged him into the air as more projectiles chased after them. Energy blasts that could do some serious damage blew by them as she helped him fly for the first time. They picked up altitude quickly, and soon they were beyond the reach of Nula’s militia. Carlee had said many times that it was dangerous to fly high, but they didn’t have any other choice.

  Stefani gradually eased how much she was helping him, and soon he was cruising east next to her. He figured out how to patch a communication line to her and took a deep breath.

  “Thanks,” Jeff said. He had planned to say more, but it was all that came out.

  “No worries. Those ladies were a bunch of jerks anyway. Very cliquey. I think they were judging me because I didn’t have any Smallbrain children.”

  Jeff was relieved to hear that she was back to her normal self. He didn’t realize how much he had enjoyed conversing with the loose Stefani before. It reminded him of hanging out with a pretty, female version of Dane—before Dane had left him for dead.

  “Did you learn anything about what was going on there?” Jeff asked.

  They swooped below a cloud just above a gorgeous landscape that sprawled in front of them. They veered heavily to the north as the suits sensed a leech preparing to fire on them in the distance. He felt natural now, like he had been born to soar through the sky. He wanted to spread his arms out and fly around in circles like a bird, but he didn’t want to slow them down. The main propulsion was from his chest and the back of his calves, but moving his arms would cause a great deal of wind resistance.

  “Not too much. Those ladies weren’t a very trusting bunch. Too many hours spent preaching stranger danger to their kids or something.”

  “I guess they were right. We did sneak into their camp and kill one of them.”

  “Of course they were right, but . . . wait. You murdered someone?”

  “I wouldn’t use that word . . .”

  “You killed him in his own village?”

  “Yes. But he tried to stab me first.”

  “Oh. All right, we’re good then,” Stefani said. He had expected to be scolded for what he had done, but instead she sounded like it was just another joke worth chuckling about.

  “Before you and Carlee found me, the man I killed back there laughed at me when I asked for help. He was a brave, sworn to do everything and anything to save the people of Fifth Springs; instead, he hid during Horus’s attack. I called him out about that while lying on the ground, and he gave me a knife. He told me to be brave instead. I gave the knife back to him today.”

  “Sounds like the chump deserved it.”

  “He did.”

  “So, how do you feel?” Stefani asked. “To have your revenge?”

  “I don’t know . . .” He was conflicted, and thinking of killing others over the past was too much for him to think about right now.

  “It better at least feel a little bit good after the way I had to save you. Again.”

  “I don’t regret it if that’s what you’re asking. But I don’t know. I was mostly just confused at the time. I pressed in the knife he left me. Felt like the right way to do it, but it—”

  “You pressed?”

  “Yeah, I did.” Jeff laughed softly as it set in. He had done the certified impossible, the one thing that was so inexplicable that not even the robot gods who had infinite wisdom could explain. He had done it. He had finally become a true vagrant.

  “Congratulations! I’ll take most of the credit since you did it under my supervision.”

  “Thanks . . . I think.”

  “You sound unsure,” Stefani said, but it felt more like she was leading him than actually inquiring about his feelings.

  “It wasn’t what I expected . . . I mean, it worked. That was crazy. But my mind . . . it felt . . . wrong. Or confused, at least.”

  “That sounds about right.” Her voice had lost the unrighteous edge it had held for the past few minutes of their flight.

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked. She didn’t answer right away as they swerved in midair to avoid flying directly over an upcoming group of humans. There was no way to tell if it was a coalition city, a community, or a warlord camp, but they avoided it anyway.

  “Do you remember Drew?”

  “Yeah, the old man who’s not all the way there? Nice guy.”

  “Right . . . Well, the truth is that Drew isn’t that old. And there is more to pressing than you’ve been told.”

  “OK . . .”

  “When your mind bridges realities and makes that connection strong enough to leave an imprint on our own reality, there is a cost to it. Part of the mind never really recovers from that . . . it sort of gets stuck in the other time line. That’s what you were feeling; your mind was having trouble figuring out what was happening between the two time lines it was forced to bridge.”

  “So, that happens every time?”

  “Yes. But it’s worst at first. Then you sort of adjust to it for a while. I hardly notice it now. In fact, it’s just sort of become natural to me.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “But,” Stefani began, her voice heavy now, as if she were about to deliver horrible news, “over time, the mind becomes overwhelmed, too many pieces stuck between time lines, and . . .”

  “You turn into Drew,” Jeff finished for her. He wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand, he felt like he had just received a medical death sentence, but on the other, becoming a vagrant had given him a second life.

  “Right, but it can get worse than Drew.” Her voice was practically a whisper. “Much worse.”

  They blasted past a field that was full of cattle that had been grazing peacefully. The sheer number of animals was impressive; it would have been enough to feed Fifth Springs for years. But that was one of the benefits of a drastically reduced human population—there was more room for everything else. Fifth Springs had sent out hunting expeditions when necessary, but
it was too dangerous to leave their community often.

  “Well, that’s not the worst news I’ve ever received,” Jeff said.

  “What’s a brain of mush to losing an arm and a leg?” She forced a laugh, but it seemed too close to home to joke about.

  “It doesn’t change my mind at all.” Jeff winced at the unintended pun, but Stefani didn’t punish him for it. “I still want to be a vagrant. I’m still going to be a vagrant.”

  “I’m not sure you actually do. You’ve got the part about getting chased out of every town you visit down. You’ve got a knack for that. In fact, you could be the chosen one in that regard. I can’t—”

  “I’ve always wanted to be the best at something.”

  “Well, you’re off to a good start. Anyway, like I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I don’t think you want to be a vagrant. I think you want to use our little magic trick to kill everyone and everything that has wronged you. And die trying.”

  “It’s not about killing them.”

  “What is it about?”

  The question gave him pause.

  “Justice. If there were a way to give them a trial or put them in jail, I would do that. But there’s not anymore.”

  “I see. Well, I’m all for killing bad guys—trust me—but that doesn’t jive too well with Carl’s way of doing things. I have a hard enough time sticking to the rules, and I haven’t murdered anyone in a long, long time.”

  They passed through a heavy rainstorm that surprisingly didn’t affect his vision, which he believed was because his vision was constructed from a variety of sensors that weren’t so easily blinded. He wanted to pick the suit apart and tinker with it to discover how it worked, but then he realized he might be able to press in a sort of instruction manual or guide instead. The thought of being able to learn anything he wanted about how things work was tempered by the knowledge that every time he pressed something to learn from it, that act of pressing might detract from his ability to learn.