by Mark Crilley
“Heck, if I’m going to die I want it to be messy,” said Billy. “Make those Affys on the cleanup crew work extra hard recovering my remains.”
“Billy,” said Ana, rolling her eyes, “you have such a strange sense of humor.”
“Better—”
—than no sense of humor at all, Billy was going to say, but he stopped himself just in time.
“Better what?” asked Ana.
“Better …” Billy reopened the manual and fumbled back to the beginning of the entry. “Better read this one more time. In case I missed something.”
CHAPTER 9
When Ana brought the van in for a landing on a gravel road high in the mountains of western Guizhou Province, the air temperature was cooler by a good thirty degrees. A late afternoon mist had rolled in, muting the sunlight and turning the pine trees on both sides of the road into pale silhouettes. Billy could see his breath, and he was grudgingly grateful for that “nice warm scarf” Ana had packed for him. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, but it was pretty close.
Using a navigational computer screen hidden under the dashboard, Ana was able to guide them through the unmarked mountain roads leading to Huaqing. The prep manuals had provided a few simple facts about this remote village: an estimate of the current population (a mere one hundred forty-six, according to the most recent census), the meager local industries (timber, a bit of farming, and precious little else), and a brief rundown on their AFMEC contact in town, a woman named Lin Mei Jun. (She was from a larger city down in the valley and had been moved into Huaqing soon after the first rogmasher sighting.) But nothing could have prepared Billy and Ana for the spectacular location of Huaqing. As their van turned a corner and the village came into view, the two of them gasped.
Huaqing was built on a quarter-mile-wide strip of land jutting out from an enormous cliff face, which itself jutted out from the pine-covered mountain range surrounding it. The whole village stood in the shadow of the cliff, which loomed over it like a gigantic protective hand. Ramshackle houses were packed so tightly there barely seemed room for footpaths between them, much less roads. The old wooden buildings leaned in toward one another until their tiled roofs nearly touched. It looked as if the next strong gust of wind could send the whole village tumbling into the valley below.
“Why would someone build a village in a place like this?” asked Ana. “It’s crazy.”
“It’s a little nuts, yeah,” said Billy. “But I’m guessing Huaqing wasn’t always a village. First came the temple. Check it out.” He pointed to a red-roofed building at the very edge of the town, perched in the most precarious spot of all, right where the land dropped off at a near ninety-degree angle. “The Chinese love putting temples way up in the mountains like this. I’ll bet Huaqing used to be just a temple until they put this road through.”
Ana reached over and popped open the glove compartment. “Better switch on my creatch detector,” she said. She took out a small electronic device about the size of a CD player and handed it to Billy.
Sweet. Can’t wait until they let me have one of these.
Billy had used his parents’ creatch detector once or twice before but still didn’t have one of his own. Only full-fledged Affys were entrusted with them, since they contained technology that in the wrong hands could be retooled to detect the movement of Affys. Billy pushed a button on the side. A small screen lit up on the top of the device, showing a simple map of their current location. A glowing blue dot in the center stood for Ana, the only full-fledged Affy in the region at the moment. If there were any creatches within a one-mile radius, they would show up as red dots at various points north, south, east, and west of the blue dot. The screen currently displayed no red dots.
“Nope,” said Billy. “No rogmashers around right now. They must have seen us coming and taken off.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“Wow, we’re pretty close to the zone,” said Billy, pointing at a dotted green line on the left-hand side of the screen. The zone: it was the Affy way of referring to the demarcation line, the official division between human- and creatch-controlled territories as established by the World Creatch Accord of 1816.
“Yes,” said Ana. “Huaqing’s location is dangerous in more ways than one. Just three miles from the creatches. It’s no wonder there have been some sightings.”
“Yeah, but there’s barely room in this village for a chicken coop, much less the oxen and horses that a rogmasher feeds on. Why would they bother messing around with Huaqing?”
“That, my friend,” said Ana, “is what we’re here to find out.”
They crossed a large wooden bridge with iron guardrails. As they entered Huaqing, it became clear just how small the town really was. The main street—the only street—was so narrow you could make a traffic jam with just two cars. Elderly white-haired women with walkers made their way up cobblestone alleyways twisting between the dilapidated houses. Darkly tanned men squatted in gardens tucked into impossibly small spaces, watering rows of cabbage, watercress, and bok choy. A hooded beggar sat on a small wooden stool, feebly drawing a bow back and forth across a battered old musical instrument Billy recognized as an erhu.
In the center of the village was a shadowy outdoor market. Vendors sat behind crates of vegetables and racks of bright red sausages. Billy sniffed hungrily at the potent mix of aromas surrounding a cluster of food stalls they passed: steamed dumplings, fried rice, and a big vat of hot and sour soup.
It didn’t take much to attract attention in a town like Huaqing. Even with tinted windows preventing anyone from seeing Ana and Billy, children pointed and stared as they drove by. These kids were intimately familiar with the vehicles that came through the village on a regular basis, and this noodle delivery van definitely wasn’t one of them.
“Mei Jun has arranged to meet us at the temple,” said Ana. “That’s where we’ll get briefed on the latest developments.”
Ana drove the van down a potholed concrete road leading to the temple, pulled it off onto a narrow strip of grass, and killed the engine. She and Billy both jumped out and walked quickly around to the side of the temple facing the ravine. Even before they had set foot on the temple steps, they were greeted by a small Chinese woman with short black hair and a big bright smile.
“Huan ying, huan ying,” she said. “Welcome to Huaqing. I’m Mei Jun, Sino-AFMEC relations. You must be Ana. You must be Billy. Come inside, come inside. You got here so fast! How’d you do it? Transgravitational propulsion, right? Incredible!” Mei Jun was either very proud of her English, or else she always talked a mile a minute regardless of what language she was speaking.
“Please take off your boots,” she said as they reached the top of a stone staircase, where a single wooden step allowed them entrance into a small kitchen off to one side of the temple. “Sorry for the trouble. Chinese custom, right? Here. Slippers. Pink for you. Blue for you. Great.” She allowed time for a single breath of air, then: “You’ll have some tea? I’ll put the kettle on. You like long jing? Green tea. I bought it last month in Hangzhou. Very nice with melon seeds. You eat melon seeds? I’ll let you try some. They’re good.”
Ana and Billy removed their boots and joined Mei Jun at a Formica table in the middle of the cluttered little kitchen. While Mei Jun busied herself with the tea and talked about everything from the price of melon seeds to the flat tire she’d gotten riding her motorcycle up from Zunyi, Billy took in the details of the room. A framed brush painting of mist-shrouded mountains dominated one wall, while another was given over to a refrigerator and a rusty old stove. Billy marveled at how handwritten Chinese characters made even the most insignificant scrap of paper—a grocery list or a while-you-were-out note—look like a work of art.
“So, Mei Jun,” said Ana, interrupting a long story about Uncle Tang, the mah-jongg master, “maybe we need to start talking about rogmashers.”
“Right,” Mei Jun said, then grew silent for the first time since Ana and Billy had laid eyes on her. T
he smile vanished from her lips, and her face grew pale. She reached into a nearby drawer, pulled out a map, and unfolded it onto the table.
The map showed Huaqing and its immediate environs. The village was at the end of a dead-end road. There was a faint dotted line leading away from the temple, which Billy guessed was a footpath of some sort, but otherwise the only way in or out was by way of the bridge Ana and Billy had crossed. A line had been drawn in red pencil indicating the edge of the zone, along with two Xs well within human-controlled territory. Mei Jun nodded slowly before finally speaking again.
“Yeah, they’ve been crossing the line.” She nodded a little more. “Lots of incursions these last few weeks. Many more than usual.”
“More than usual?” said Billy. “What, this has been going on for a long time?”
“Huaqing is less than three miles from the demarcation line. Creatches stray across the line fairly regularly. Forest creatches, mainly. Little guys. They keep to themselves. Very few incidents.” Mei Jun put a reddish brown teapot and three tiny teacups on the table. “But rogmashers? Unusual. Very unusual.”
“Why’s that?” asked Billy.
“There were battles between Affys and a renegade group of rogmashers late in the nineteenth century. Big battles. Very bloody. AFMEC hit the rogmashers hard, and they learned their lesson. Since then rogmashers have been careful never to pass into human-controlled territory.” A teakettle on the stove hissed and sputtered as the water inside it started to boil. “Up until last week.”
Mei Jun looked from Billy to Ana and back again, her dark eyebrows tensed and pulled low over her eyes. “Last week a farmer, here …” She pointed to one of the Xs deep in the woods. “… he found footprints in his field. This big.” Mei Jun held her hands a good five feet apart. “I saw them with my own eyes. It was a rogmasher, no question.”
“Any missing livestock?” asked Ana.
“No. Nothing. Just footprints.” Mei Jun frowned at the map. “Like the rogmashers were … taunting us. Showing us they can enter human-controlled territory any time they like. Even for no reason.”
“Weird,” said Billy. “Any direct sightings?”
“Just one. The day before yesterday. Here.” Mei Jun pointed at the remaining X before rising to take the kettle off the stove. “Children playing in the woods on the south side of the village. They say they saw a giant gorilla, fifty feet tall. Said it growled at them. Broke a tree in half.” Mei Jun poured steaming hot water into the three small cups, warming them thoroughly before dumping the water in the sink and putting tea leaves in the pot. “Brave little children, they didn’t even seem scared when they told me about it.”
“Leaving footprints on farmland,” said Ana. “Breaking trees. What are they up to?”
Mei Jun gave Billy and Ana a worried glance as she placed a cup of freshly poured tea before both of them.
“Something here in Huaqing they’re … trying to get?” she asked.
Billy studied the map. The two red Xs were less than half a mile from the bridge leading into Huaqing.
“Whatever they’re up to, we’ll figure it out,” said Ana, in a very take-charge voice. She took a sip of tea, then rose from the table. “Come on, Billy. Let’s go to that farm and check out those footprints.”
CHAPTER 10
“Wow,” said Billy. “That farmer must have totally freaked when he saw these.”
Billy and Ana were at the farm where the rogmasher footprints had been found. It was late afternoon, but the thick fog rolling in from the valley made it hard to get a sense of where the sunlight was coming from.
“No doubt about it.” Ana was taking snapshots with her viddy-fone, which doubled as an AFMEC digital camera. “These were made by a rogmasher.”
Seeing the footprints up close, Billy realized Mei Jun had actually underrepresented their size. These things were six and a half feet long. Billy marveled at how deeply the rogmasher’s feet had sunk into the gravelly mountain soil, a testament to the staggering weight that rested upon them. Several dozen cabbages, unlucky enough to have fallen underfoot, were now flat as lily pads.
“These footprints were made very carefully,” said Billy, down on all fours to make a thorough examination. “Deliberately. You can tell by how well defined they are. Almost like the rogmasher wanted someone to find them.”
“Not necessarily.” Ana took a few more snaps, then put the viddy-fone away. “Rogmashers don’t think things through like that. I’ll bet you this little guy just wasn’t in a hurry.”
“Little guy?”
“This was a young adult. You can tell by the length of the toes.”
Ana was right, Billy knew. But he didn’t like her dismissing his theories. She might have been doing this stuff a lot longer than him, but that didn’t mean her ideas were automatically better than his.
“The footprints head off in that direction,” said Billy, pointing at a forest of pine trees at the edge of the farm. “I say we grab our weapons and follow these tracks.”
Ana nodded. “Let’s go.”
Billy and Ana went to the van and took as much weaponry as they could carry. Ana strapped a glaff rifle to her back and carried a paragglian crossbow in her hands. Billy did just the opposite. They both attached two hortch grenades to their belts. (It was impossible to attach any more. Hortch grenades were the size of pineapples, and even one on each hip was pushing it.)
Billy took a deep breath as he picked up his glaff rifle. He was a little scared, there was no denying it. But he was also psyched.
Maybe we’ll run into a rogmasher out there in the woods. Wish I had clocked a few more hours of glaff rifle target practice back at AFMECopolis. Still, you can’t beat on-the-job training.
Switching on the creatch detector, Billy and Ana began following the tracks. Finding the trail across the farm was a cinch. But once they got into the woods the tracks became harder to detect. For every spot where a clean footprint remained, there was a stretch of rocky, pine-needle-strewn ground that allowed little in the way of footprints, even from a beast that tipped the scales at ten or fifteen tons. But every time they thought they’d lost the trail, the broken branches of trees overhead would serve as a secondary path showing them the way.
For Billy the initial excitement of the rogmasher hunt soon gave way to a deep sense of unease. The terrain grew steadily more craggy and mountainous, and there were plenty of massive rocky outcroppings for one or several rogmashers to hide behind. The fog was getting thicker by the minute, even as the last of the daylight began to seep away. Billy became keenly aware of how far away they were from the farm, from their remaining weaponry, from the village of Huaqing itself.
But there was something else. It was the sense that they were being led into this. As if the rogmashers wanted them to be out here, isolated, hunting around in the woods. Billy had followed creatch trails before. They were generally haphazard and erratic. This trail seemed too deliberate, too straight, too … logical.
“Here,” Ana said, showing Billy a button on the cuff of her jacket. “Ever use these before?” She pushed the button and fluorescent stripes glowed pale green across her shoulders and along her arms. The jackets they were wearing were an AFMEC innovation: clothing that provided Affys with their own source of light everywhere they went, without having to carry a lantern or a flashlight. The first time Billy used one he feared it would turn him into an obvious target for creatches. Then he remembered that creatches had perfect night vision anyway: they were already obvious targets, and the added light didn’t even enter into the equation. Billy clicked the same button on his jacket and they continued on their way, illuminating the woods like a pair of humanoid fireflies.
“Anything on the creatch detector?” Billy asked.
“No, Billy.” Ana gave him a look of mild irritation. “And you know what? I don’t think it’s necessary for you to ask that question every thirty seconds.”
“Give me a break, all right, Ana? I just want us to be prepared
if anything shows up, that’s all.”
“Here.” Ana handed Billy the creatch detector. “You keep an eye on the thing and stop bugging me about it.”
Ooh, excuse me for bugging you, Your Highness.
Soon after Billy began carrying the creatch detector, a tiny orange panel illuminated near its edge.
“Ana,” said Billy. “Don’t tell me you forgot to put in a fresh power cell.”
“Of course I put in a fresh power cell. What do you think I am, an Affy-in … you know, a beginner?”
Billy gritted his teeth. He was pretty sure that Ana had been about to say “an Affy-in-training” but had managed to stop herself before she said it.
“Yeah, well it couldn’t have been that fresh,” said Billy. “This thing’s running out of juice already.”
“Impossible.” Ana took the creatch detector from Billy and inspected it. “I don’t understand this. It can’t be. It was a brand-new power cell, I swear.”
“How well do these things work when they’re running low?”
Ana brushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead. “Not so well. They can give false negative readings.” She sighed. “I’ve got spare power cells back in the van. We’ll put in a new battery when we get back.”
“Why don’t we go back and put one in now?” asked Billy. “There could be a creatch out there and we don’t even know it.”
“Billy, will you please calm down? Rogmashers make big noises, you know.” She stomped her feet, as if needing to explain the concept to a three-year-old. “Boom. Boom. Boom. We’ll hear them coming.”
“I know that, Ana. I’m not an idiot.”
“Good. So let’s keep going a little more.”
“I knew you were going to do this.” Billy realized that he’d said more than he wanted to, but it was too late.