“There was a circular staircase that twisted around the edge of the place, and I followed it up a ways before I realised I was trapped. There was no way out of the tower.”
“I thought you never hid in a place with no way out,” Mish said cheekily.
“Yeah, except when I did,” I said, giving her a wink. “I thought about turning around and going out in a blaze of glory, see if I could take a couple out before they took me. Or I thought about giving up. I mean, what was the point of running when it wasn’t going to get me anywhere?”
“So what did you do?” Myron said.
“I decided to keep running. I figured if they were going to take me, they were going to have to work for it.”
“How high did you go?” Loren said beside me.
“Very high. So high that everything on the ground began to look small. And still I went up until I found myself on a wooden platform that led up to the roof. And when I got up there, I had a good look around for a way I could climb back down, or maybe trick them, but there was nowhere left to go. I stood on the edge and looked down, and wow… it was such a long way to the bottom.”
“Did you jump?” said Atlas.
“Well, the thought did cross my mind. It would have been a quicker and easier way to go than what the Marauders had in store for me.”
“So tell us!” Myron said. “What did you do?”
“I waited. I pulled my little knife out and stood there on the edge of the roof, waiting for them to come. I could hear their footsteps thumping up the stairwell, getting closer and closer. Then they appeared, just their heads bobbing up and down as they came up that platform, grinning like fools. They knew they had me. They knew I was at their mercy.
“Then, suddenly there was a great ripping noise, the sound of something crashing, and their heads disappeared. I looked over the edge and they were falling, flying through the air out of control, and then they fell all the way to the bottom and hit the ground, smashing into bits all over the place.” I made expansive gestures with my hands to illustrate.
“I don’t get it,” Myron said. “What happened?”
“The platform didn’t hold the weight of all three of them together. It broke apart and they fell through, and I was able to climb back down again to safety.”
“That’ll teach ’em,” said Chidi.
“Wow, they were idiots,” Loren said.
“No, they weren’t idiots. It just came down to luck. If that platform had been a little sturdier, I wouldn’t be here today to tell you this story.”
“They should learn not to mess with you, Brant,” Loren said admiringly, as if I was some kind of superhero.
“That’s one lesson the Marauders never seemed to learn, Loren,” I said. “But it was me who learned something that day: don’t give up, even when everything seems lost. Keep going. If you survive long enough, things just might go your way.”
I reached forward and nestled the pot with the corn kernels into the fire.
“You should have chopped those Marauders up,” Myron said, seemingly dissatisfied with the outcome of this story. He made slicing motions with his fork to demonstrate.
“Chopping people up isn’t the solution to everything, Myron,” Arsha said.
“Yes, it is!” he grinned.
“You just chop up your pumpkin, huh?”
In a couple of minutes the popcorn had begun to do its thing, and, having never seen it before, the children clustered around to witness this fascinating new delight. They began to take guesses at what might be creating such a din: bugs, monsters, exploding ants. Eyeballs. The guesses became more and more outlandish. As the popping receded I removed the lid from the pot and poured the popcorn into a bowl. They became even more intrigued as the aroma hit their nostrils, and they dug into it eagerly, exclaiming in wonder as the crunchy treats reached their mouths.
While all this was going on, a short distance away Ellinan had been setting up Arsha’s telescope on its tripod, a black reflector model she kept here at Cider. With his eye to the finder scope he began to pan it across the heavens.
“Brant, where’s Jupiter?” he wanted to know.
Atlas bounced up onto my lap as I lifted my face to the night sky.
“Yeah, where’s Jewwippur?” he said.
In my time out wandering in the desert I’d spent many nights staring up at the stars, and I had begun to recognise the patterns pretty well. While not equipped with a great knowledge of the constellations, I had learned the movements of the planets to some degree and knew where to look for some of the brighter stars.
“There it is,” I said facetiously, pointing up at the crescent moon over near the horizon.
Atlas elbowed me in the sternum. “Pfft, that’s not it, silly.”
“Okay, let me look again.” I swept my eyes across the band of sky in which the planets lived, quickly locating the orange glimmer of Mars.
“There’s Mars,” I said, extending my finger. Atlas looked about, struggling to find it even when I pointed his head in the right direction, and Ellinan didn’t even bother adjusting the telescope. Mars was not what interested him tonight.
“What about Jupiter?” Ellinan said. “I want to see the moons.”
“Okay, let’s see,” I said, and I traced my finger across the sky again.
“There!” Atlas said, pointing straight above us with such enthusiasm that he gave me a painful clip on the chin.
“No, it’s not there. That’s…” It was my turn to follow his pointing finger this time, and I immediately saw the star he was indicating. It was bright and white, as bright as Venus, but in the wrong position. “Y’know, I’m not exactly sure what that one is.”
“Is it Jupiter?” Ellinan said.
“No, wrong position,” I said. I kept my eyes on it, trying to recall what might appear at that position. It wasn’t a planet. “Is it Sirius?” I wondered out loud. “Nope, pretty sure it isn’t that either.”
Arsha had stopped clearing up plates and was now staring at the star as well, standing still and rigid.
“I wonder if it’s a supernova,” I mused. “That’s when a star explodes and becomes much brighter–”
“Brant,” Arsha interrupted. “It’s getting bigger.”
“Huh?”
I could hear the dread creeping into her voice. “That star… it’s getting bigger.”
I was about to make some off-hand joke about falling stars when the words lodged in my throat like a rock. She was right.
The star was getting bigger. It was getting closer.
I was on my feet instantly, Atlas tucked under one arm, my eyes searching for the other children. I heard the plates in Arsha’s hands crash to the asphalt.
I kicked at the fire, trying to douse it, and my voice sounded shrill in my own ears. “Get the kids inside, now.”
19
In the confusion I almost forgot my backpack, which I always left within reach, and had to go back for it on the road. The shotgun was tucked inside, and that was an item I didn’t want to be without right now.
I screamed at the kids, ordering them this way and that, and they continued to laugh and evade my grasp, thinking this was another game, another variation on hide and seek. Ellinan and Mish twigged to the urgency of the situation more quickly and helped to pull the smaller ones out of the garden and off the street, ushering them toward the candlelit confines of the house.
As I swept up the front path, Atlas still under my arm and squealing at the fun of it all, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the light was now brighter and more rounded, more distinct. It glimmered far more intensely than any normal star, reminding me more of a helicopter searchlight with each passing second. That was all I saw before I was through the door, Arsha following close on my heels with Chidi in her arms.
“Is that all of them?” I barked.
“Yes, that’s the last.”
“Get them to the back of the house.” I turned to Ellinan and Mish, both bug-eyed and panick
ed. There was no time to comfort them. “I need you two to blow out the candles in the house. Every single one. Can you do that?”
They nodded, moving sluggishly as they tried to tear free of the dread that surrounded them. After a couple of steps they hastened their pace, snapping into action. I crouched at the front window, easing Atlas toward Arsha as I reached for the shotgun.
“Go with Arsha now, Atty,” I said. He looked on the verge of tears, finally realising that this wasn’t a game, and I reached out a comforting hand to his shoulder. “Go. I’ll be with you very soon.”
“Wanna stay,” he mewled, but he went with Arsha regardless. As she guided him away she glanced back at me anxiously and gave me a nod as if to say ‘Good luck’. The house grew darker as Ellinan and Mish completed their work, and as the last candle was extinguished they also began to fall back to the rear of the house.
“Brant?” Mish whispered, pausing in the corridor. Looking back, I could see only her silhouette against the wall. “Aren’t you coming?”
“In a minute,” I whispered back hoarsely. “Tell Arsha that if something happens, just run.”
“Brant…”
“Go, Mish!” I hissed, and the silhouette melted away. Lifting my hand, I slid the window open a crack and stared up into the sky while fumbling to load shells into the shotgun.
What the hell is it? I thought. Marauders didn’t have a lot of aerial drones at their disposal – from what I’d gleaned out in the wasteland they were notoriously difficult to maintain. In any case, I’d never heard of one of their drones reaching this kind of altitude. The ones they used were short-range clunkers that rarely went above the height of a house.
Although I couldn’t discern anything distinct about this intruder, it already seemed far more sophisticated than anything I’d seen in operation in the last couple of decades. Either the Marauders were ramping up their technical expertise, or this was something else.
I thought of the Grid spire. Had the Marauders already begun to harvest information from the Grid, rediscovering old data stores?
There was no time to consider further possibilities. The light came into view again, and I could now observe its descent more acutely as it dropped and became steadily brighter. The oscillations also increased, and it shimmered erratically like an unstable ball of energy. There was a faint hint of a far-off buzzing sound as well, but I couldn’t decide if that was simply my imagination playing tricks on me.
My thoughts turned to the possibility of a cascade of Marauders appearing at the hill at the end of the street, snarling viciously and descending upon us with their blades drawn and at the ready. How would we get these kids to safety? Where would we go? There were six children and only two adults. I didn’t even want to consider the implications of having to decide, in the spur of the moment, which ones to tuck under my arms and which ones to leave behind. In fact, it was probably a decision I would not be able to make.
Something happened to the star and it seemed to stabilise, the radiance it emitted flowing along the spectrum from white to lavender to indigo. A triangle of pale blue light appeared suddenly and noiselessly outside, at first a broad slash that encompassed the whole breadth of the street – splashing on rooftops and gardens and footpaths alike, and then gradually narrowing to just a few metres wide in the centre of the road. Recalling an old movie I had seen once, I had the absurd notion of an astral visitor slowly descending along that column of light, held suspended in the air as if by invisible wires, alighting gently on the asphalt, its slimy green skin glistening and its gaze malevolent as it turned toward me.
Another, less fanciful notion struck me: that of a rope dropping down and jangling back and forth as Marauders clambered rapidly downward like a swarm of cockroaches.
But neither of those possibilities eventuated.
Instead, the light swung back and forth across the street until it reached the dull cherry glow of scattered coals, the last remnants of the campfire. It paused for a few seconds, light dancing and flickering across the debris that had been left out there, and I felt panic begin to rise. The game was up. We’d been spotted. Whoever controlled that thing in the sky knew about us. They knew we were here. There could be no doubt about that now. I imagined it dropping lower, its lights swinging into the interior of the house as it pressed in closer, preparing to attack, to destroy the house and everyone in it.
But then the light moved on and it continued harmlessly along the street. It searched for another thirty seconds, briefly touching on several houses along the way and passing over more of the asphalt before it began to recede again into the night sky. I heard the whirring sound intensify, and then the mysterious visitor disappeared as quickly as it had come. It grew gradually dimmer, and then I lost track of it altogether in the background of the starry heavens.
Waiting another few minutes, I kept my ear to the window, expecting to hear engines in the distance, but there was nothing, just the quiet of night in the deserted suburb. Keeping to the edge of the window, I slowly rose to my feet to look around.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of the light. Was it hostile? Curious? Indifferent? It certainly appeared to be some kind of reconnaissance device, but for whom, and for what purpose I couldn’t know. Whatever the case, it didn’t seem as though there would be any instant repercussions. If the visitor had attack capabilities, it didn’t seem interested in using them just yet. Most likely it was a surveillance unit that was reporting back to a central location. We probably had a little time on our hands before someone showed up, knocking on the door.
Feeling my way back through the house, I found the others huddled in the gloom near the back door.
“Brant?” came Arsha’s hushed voice. “What’s going on?”
“I think it’s gone.”
“Are you sure? What was it?”
“Must have been a surveillance drone.”
“Marauders?”
“Could be, yeah. High-tech for them, but who knows what they’ve discovered if they’ve started tapping into the Grid.”
“Then we’re not safe here.”
“No, we’re not. I think we should get everyone over to Somerset. Even if they’ve discovered Cider, they won’t necessarily know about the other plantation.”
“Are you sure?” Arsha said. “It might be just as dangerous to stay there.”
“Arsha, we don’t have anywhere else to go right now, and we can’t just haul the kids around in the dark trying to find something. If we’re caught out in the open, we’re toast.”
She thought about it for a moment, then said, “Okay. Let’s get them moving.”
We hurried the children through the darkness, using only the light of the moon to guide us. With their initial trepidation receding, the children began to view the whole thing as an adventure, hooting gamely at the night to demonstrate their fearlessness. Arsha and I were forced to reprimand them numerous times in an attempt to keep them quiet.
We scanned the skies constantly, on the lookout for more lights that were masquerading as stars in the heavens, listening for the mosquito-buzz of drone engines, but there was no hint of the light returning to follow our progress.
As we climbed the hill toward Somerset I looked out across the city, searching for headlights or flashlights cutting through the darkness, or anything else that might indicate the presence of pursuers picking their way across the terrain on their way to Cider. There was nothing out there to interrupt the serenity of the abandoned city, just the silent gloom of the suburbs and the ghostly form of moonlit skyscrapers further in the distance.
We reached Somerset Drive within a few minutes. Bundling the children inside the house, we ushered them through to the bedrooms, where the four of them crammed into the three beds usually occupied by Mish, Ellinan and Atlas.
With the bedrooms located safely toward the back of the house, we lit a candle so that we could get them settled, safe in the knowledge that the light wouldn’t travel out into the street and giv
e away our location from a distance.
“Listen, guys,” I said, crouching down to their level as they nestled in their blankets, “everything is okay. I’m sorry we had to cut the night short, but we figured we’d give you a treat and bring you back here to stay the night. A bit of a sleepover, huh?”
They began to spontaneously clap and cheer, but I lifted a finger to my lips and it was haltingly stifled.
“But you have to be quiet, okay? We’re going to try to be as quiet as we can tonight. Let’s treat it as a game. The one who stays the most quiet gets a special prize tomorrow.”
“What is it?” Atlas hissed in an exaggerated whisper.
“You’ll find out if you’re the quietest, won’t you?” I said, forcing a smile.
Arsha moved into the room and kissed the children gently on the forehead, one after the other. They reached up for her with little hands and returned the gesture, a touching show of affection.
Mish and Ellinan waited outside, unsure of what to do with all of these little people invading their bedroom. Moving out to them, I took the two Wards aside and spoke to them quietly.
“Are you two okay to crash on the sofa tonight?”
They nodded bravely, and Mish fought back tears.
“The Marauders are going to find us again, aren’t they?” she said.
“No, Mish,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of the human children had overheard her. “Don’t even think like that. There’s no way I’m going to let that happen. You’re safe with Arsha and Ellinan and me, all right?”
She leaned in for an embrace, and I pulled Ellinan into the huddle as well. The boy seemed a little dazed by it all, saying nothing. I kissed them both on the head and rubbed comfortingly on their backs, then guided them out to the living room and onto the sofa.
In the bedroom, Arsha was still taking turns embracing the children. They seemed excited by the prospect of the sleepover and didn’t want to settle just yet. Arsha crooned to them and used her hands to gently lay them back upon their pillows, and soon they were all lying still. She left the room with a final ‘Good night’ and then I went around to each of them in turn, kissing them softly on their foreheads.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 16