“They got out,” Arsha whispered. “Must have been spooked by the gunshots. But where–”
There was the muffled sound of something breaking in a house across the street, and the unmistakable squeal of a child.
“The other houses,” I said. “They must have scattered along the street.” I pointed across the road. “I’ll check the houses over that side, you check the ones here.”
“Right.”
Crossing the asphalt surreptitiously, I saw no movement in the street. The Marauders’ vehicles sat further up the hill, their headlights blazing like sickly yellow stars in the murk, but there was no one around them. Pushing through to the house from which I’d heard the sound, I found myself at the residence in which the fowls had made their home, the ‘coop’. As I passed through the front door, the chickens sat nestled in their roosts, shuffling and cocking their heads at me and making little discontented clucking sounds at the intrusion.
The living room was clear. The kitchen, too. In the hallway, a table had been knocked aside and the chicken roosting there pecked and scratched amongst the debris. I stepped over it and continued on past the first bedroom and the bathroom. At every turn I expected a Marauder to step out of the darkness, leering, scarred cheeks glinting like quicksilver, the limp form of a child draped in their arms. I held the shotgun steady and paused at the next bedroom.
I thought I could hear breathing within.
Stepping inside, I took in the details at a glance: a broad double bed covered in dusty sheets, frayed pillows arranged at the head, wooden bedside tables, a rusted and cracked treadmill in the corner.
To my right, the built-in wardrobe’s door had been slid open. Inside it was dark and empty.
I turned to go, but the sound was still there. The soft inhalation and exhalation was unmistakable.
I dropped to the floor, and in the darkness I could vaguely see the outline of two tiny bodies under the bed. They had somehow squeezed into the impossibly small gap beneath.
They squealed in fear at the sight of me, and I realised I must have looked horrific covered in wet soot.
“It’s Brant,” I whispered. “It’s me. Who’s there?”
“Brant? It’s Myron.”
“Chidi.”
“Where are the others?”
“Don’t know,” Myron said. “We heard bangs, and Mish told us to run and hide, but we got lost.”
“What were the noisy things outside?” Chidi said. “Is it bad people?”
“Just wait here,” I said. “Don’t come out. And don’t make a sound.”
The chicken in the hallway trilled in alarm and there was a thump, followed by furious scratching on the wall and the flapping of wings. I placed my finger to my lips and the children shrank back further under the bed.
I got up, looking for a place to conceal myself. I grabbed the pillows and stuffed them in a bunch under the sheets on the bed, then slipped into the built-in wardrobe.
I waited. The breathing of the children seemed deafening as the noise of rain on the roof began to ease.
Footsteps approached. The light in the room changed subtly as the bulk of something filled the doorway. They moved forward into the room. I saw the barrel of the gun first, a rifle of some sort, and then the hands that held it. That was all I needed to see to know this wasn’t Arsha or any of the children. The hands were large and coarse, and the ring finger on the right hand was missing.
Then I saw a hooked nose, mottled skin and cheeks lined with a crosshatch of silver markings. The tribal carvings of the Marauders.
He only had eyes for the bed, and the lump under the covers. Accompanied by the sounds of breathing, it presented a more effective illusion than I’d anticipated.
Lurching forward, I cracked the Marauder across the temple with the butt of my shotgun, and he fell away heavily, colliding with the wall and bashing a sizeable hole in the gyprock. He tried to raise the gun, but I kicked it out of his hands and rammed my boot into his neck, pointing the shotgun barrel squarely between his eyes.
“How many?” I hissed.
“Fuck you.” Several of his teeth were missing and a clump of his dark hair had been ripped out of his scalp above one ear.
I swung the butt of the shotgun at his face again, felt it crunch against his nose, making his eyes roll back in his head.
“Aaghh,” he cried, trying to reach for his face. I grabbed him by the throat and hauled him up against the wall, then stuck the barrel of the shotgun under his chin.
“Try again,” I said.
“Hurg…” he drawled, blinking. “Hung…”
“What?”
“Hundreds,” he said, and he smiled at me venomously through slitted eyes. “Thousands. You will never overcome us. We will take everything in the end.”
“That’s real nice, but I’m not going to ask you ag….”
“Here!” he screamed suddenly. “They’re here!”
He flailed at me crazily and the shotgun accidentally discharged, blowing his metallic head apart down the middle like a watermelon split in two. I fell backward and his body slid down the wall and crumpled on the carpet.
The children screamed in terror.
“Here,” I shouted at them, extending my hand under the bed. “Come, now!”
I pulled them out of their hiding place and dragged them through the house toward the back door. The chickens had gone berserk, running this way and that, jostling each other to reach windows and doors, and I had to smack one out of my face as it tried to fly past. We reached the back yard, and I hustled the children along in the opposite direction to the parked Marauder vehicles. The rain had eased off considerably. We’d made it three doors down when I saw movement nearby, over near the road.
“Brant?” It was Arsha.
“Yeah. I’ve got Myron and Chidi.”
“Mish, Ellinan and Loren here.”
I saw them vaguely outlined in the darkness, covered in the soot that had tumbled down with the rain. Someone was missing.
“Atlas?” I said.
“We don’t know where he went,” came Ellinan’s voice. “He couldn’t run as fast and he fell behind. We got split up.”
I handed off the two children to Arsha. “Take them and go.”
“Brant–”
“Arsha, go. You need to get them out of here and keep them safe. I’ll go back for Atlas.”
At that moment there was a noise up the street, the sound of splintering wood. A shout, laughter.
“Go,” I said one last time, then turned back the way I’d come.
I crept out toward the street under the cover of a slanted wooden fence, crawling on my hands and knees. Even though the storm seemed to be passing, it was still getting darker, the day’s light fading. It was, perhaps, the longest day I’d ever known, and it wasn’t over yet. Far from it.
Poking my head out, I could now see a figure silhouetted against the headlights, monitoring the street. The glare was too much for me to make out any more distinct details. It wasn’t Wraith himself, of that much I was certain. The height and body shape were wrong.
Returning to the rear of the house, I weaved between old neighbourhood relics: children’s play equipment, garden sheds, washing lines. Staying low and fast, I only lifted my head above waist height to vault fences or to peek inside windows as I searched for Atlas.
I had no idea where the remaining Marauders were located, or how many were out there, just as I had no clue as to the whereabouts of Atlas himself. He could be in any of these houses, or none. Maybe he’d run in the opposite direction and had already shot through. There was no way to know.
The only thing I was certain about was that I couldn’t leave until I was sure that he was safe.
I tried to put myself in his place, tried to imagine what I would do if I was a four-year-old boy. Would I run off into the gloom with no direction or destination in mind, or would I hunker down somewhere, terrified, and hope that everything would turn out okay?
Most likely the latter, I decided. Atlas was still scared of the dark, for a start. I couldn’t imagine him running off by himself.
So if he had to choose a location in which to hide, where would he go? Which one of these houses would most appeal to him?
Before I could consider that thought any further, there was a scream further up the street, and then the sound of a child crying.
Atlas.
I scrambled back out to the street and hunkered down in the long grass by the side of the road. The figure was still there in the headlights, but as I watched I saw another two forms stalking toward it. Even in the dim light I recognised one of them, simply by the gait.
It was Wraith, and he was dragging Atlas along by the scruff of his neck.
“Stoppit, stoppit!” Atlas cried out, wriggling in futility. Wraith knelt beside him and whispered something to him in guttural tones that I couldn’t discern at this distance, and Atlas fell quiet.
The three of them stood before the vehicles for a moment, conferring quietly. I was terrified, not for myself, but for Atlas. I couldn’t envision a scenario where he came out of this alive. I could charge them, or try to sneak up, but I wouldn’t reach them and kill all three before they put a bullet through his skull. If I chose that route, we’d both die. I could wait here and hope they locked him in the off-roader, then split up again to search, leaving him unguarded, but they surely weren’t that stupid. Otherwise, if they got in their vehicles and took off, I’d never run them down – I no longer had the Helios.
Appallingly, my only play at this moment was to wait. I hated myself for lying there and watching them, but there was nothing else I could do.
As it turned out, Wraith decided my next move for me.
“You out there,” he called, and I could hear the delight, the cruel satisfaction in his voice, “we know where you are. We’ve got a scanner locked right on you.” One of his cronies held up a device for him to see, and Wraith pointed vaguely in my direction. “Yeah. There you are.”
“Come after me,” I muttered to myself. “Come on, you bag of shit. Come on down here.”
“I don’t know who you are,” Wraith went on, “but you should know we’ve got something of yours. Haven’t we?” he said, and he jabbed at Atlas’ ribs, causing him to cry out. “So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to load this thing in my ride, and we’re gonna get the hell outta here. Simple as that. Figure this isn’t a bad prize for one trip. Might make a nice circus attraction, if we can figure out how to keep it alive.”
The others laughed, and then Wraith turned his back arrogantly, heading toward his off-roader. The others stood watching the street with guns at the ready.
“Wraith!” I screamed, getting to my feet and stepping into the middle of the street. Tiny curls of steam wafted up from the asphalt in the storm’s wake. Wraith turned slowly, and I could see the smile on his face even from this distance. “I’m here.”
29
I had no idea what to do from this point. Most likely, the outcome had already been decided. The Marauders held all the cards. They had me at their mercy. By stepping out and presenting myself to them, I was sacrificing myself. I was throwing it all away.
But I knew I couldn’t just let them drive away with Atlas in their keeping. I’d lived with some terrible memories, awful thoughts that rattled around in my head, but all of those would be dwarfed by this one if I allowed it to happen. There would be no coming to grips with the knowledge that I’d let them take him, no acceptance, no way to cope. It would utterly destroy me.
I understood that I was doing exactly what they wanted. They had Atlas, and now they were reeling me in as well. Dropping the small fish on a hook into the water to catch the big one.
So be it. I deserved nothing less for leaving him unprotected.
And maybe there was one move I could make. Maybe I could trade my life for his.
“Is that who I think it is?” Wraith called out. He sounded as though he was holding back laughter.
“I’m the one that you want, Wraith. You got me, okay? You let him go and you can have me.”
“It is you, Brant. What a coincidence, seeing you here.”
“Cut the crap, will you? Let him go.”
“I don’t know, old friend. I’m starting to become attached to this little bag of meat already. I figure it might be worth something to someone.”
“Come on, Wraith. You’ve been after me for years. You know as well as I do that you won’t catch me unless I deliver myself to you on a silver platter. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? That’s what you came here for.”
“Really? You sure that I can’t catch you?”
“If you could, what the hell have you been waiting for over the past five years? Just biding your time? I don’t think so.” I took a few steps down the road. “Let him go and you can have me.”
“How noble of you, Brant. I’m touched. Come on up here and we’ll talk.”
“Let him go first.”
“Or maybe I just blow his fucking head off right now,” Wraith snarled, his previously jovial tone evaporating. He brandished his shotgun and levelled it at Atlas to show he meant business.
“Okay, I’ll do it. But you touch him again and the deal is off.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I made the slow walk up the incline of Somerset Drive, knowing these might be the last steps I ever took. The three Marauders stood spaced apart across the street, making no attempt to hide their glee. On the left was a female with closely cropped white hair, a star pattern carved into her cheeks, and on the right a bald male with both ears missing grinned toothlessly at me. I recognised them both as stalwarts of Wraith’s crew from the old days. They knew what was at stake, and what this meant to their leader.
Wraith stood between them, towering over Atlas’ tiny form like a giant, his dreadlocks swept to one side, his face and shirtless torso striped with vertical lines of black soot like war paint. His body was covered in even more scars than the last time I had seen him. His olive skin was disfigured to such an extent that he was beginning to look like a patchwork, a Frankenstein. Most surprising of all, his left hand seemed to be whole and intact. That was the one I’d blown off in the junkyard.
“The shotgun and your backpack,” Wraith said as I neared. “Lose ’em.” He made a sharp motion with his head. I complied, tossing them both to the side of the road.
Up close, that left hand of his seemed swollen and disproportionate to his arm, bulging in an almost cartoonish fashion. He followed my gaze and lifted the hand, rotating it back and forth to show it off.
“Got myself a new addition,” he said, “after the work you did on me last time we met. The techs back at the enclave still have a bit to learn about clank surgery, unfortunately.”
“Couldn’t get the right size, huh?”
“Actually, I asked for this one. Came off an industrial clank we captured. Big fucker.” He flexed his fingers. “Bigger is always better, right?”
I stopped before them, ignoring him. “It’s okay, Atlas,” I said to the terrified boy, dropping to one knee. He whimpered in return. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“You never fail to disappoint,” Wraith said, dropping his hand back to Atlas’ throat. “Here I was thinking you’d just be hiding somewhere, but as it turns out you’re harbouring little treasures.”
“Yeah, you’ve got some surprises up your sleeve, too. Creeping around the neighbourhood to catch little kids? You’re getting soft, Wraith. Back in the old days you’d have just started bashing doors down till you got what you wanted.”
Wraith smiled. “You’re a clever one, Brant. You’re a different breed. The usual tactics don’t tend to work with you.”
“How did you find us?”
He spread his hands wide and shrugged. “Some good old-fashioned tech from yesteryear. So good to have the Grid returning, isn’t it? I’ve missed watching infomercials.”
“Wish I could agr
ee with you.”
Wraith smirked and glanced down at Atlas. “It’s human, isn’t it?”
I straightened and stared him in the eye. “Let him go.”
“It’s human, isn’t it?” he repeated. He pulled his machete from its sheath. “Or should I just cut it open to find out?”
“Yes, he’s human.”
“How did they survive? How many are there?”
“I’m not telling you anything more until the boy is safe.”
“It would be a shame to let it go,” Wraith teased. “Could fetch quite a nice price somewhere, I’ll bet. Not exactly a common commodity anymore.”
“Let him go!” I shouted.
“Oh, Brant, calm down. I was never going to take this thing with me.” He replaced the shotgun in its holster and gripped Atlas by the back of his shirt, lifting him as if he weighed no more than a balloon, letting the boy dangle and spin slowly in the air. Atlas began to cry, tears dropping from his face like white gemstones in the headlights. He reached out for me piteously with both arms. “I mean, look at it! What the fuck am I going to do with it? No, have it your way. We’ll leave it here.”
The mirth drained from Wraith’s eyes and he looked at me pointedly. I could see the intent within, the menace, and took a half step forward. Wraith drew his arm back and flicked as if he were tossing a wad of paper toward a trash can, and Atlas spun through the air, across the street. Screaming, he thumped into the wall of the nearest house with a sickening crack, then bounced away and landed in the dirt, silent and unmoving.
“Atlas!”
I started forward, but the blonde female stepped into my path, raising her shotgun at my face. She sneered and shook her head.
“Uh-uh,” she said. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, fella.”
“Not to worry,” Wraith was saying. “I’m sure there’s more where that came from, right? For a while, at least, until we track them all down and slaughter them.”
The others laughed, but I was barely able to process the words. Their taunts meant nothing. Atlas was the only thing that mattered, and now he lay in the gloom a short distance away, his body bloodied and his limbs at strange angles.
The Seeds of New Earth Page 24