by K A Riley
Until we round a corner and Rain stops and points down the road and says, “Look!”
A few thousand people are shuffling between endless rows of long tables at what looks like a massive farmer’s market.
“No wonder the town’s mostly deserted,” Rain observes. “Seems like everyone’s here.”
“And the place we need to go is on the other side of that chaos,” I say.
There are more people in this one place than we’ve ever seen in our lives. It’s like every person from every bombed-out ghost town we passed during our months on the road has found their way here, to this square in this otherwise quiet town. I suggest this to Brohn, and he says that’s probably exactly what happened.
“From what we’ve heard from people like Asha and Vail, it sounds like the only way to survive these days is in these bigger communities. The Recruiters made sure the little tucked-away towns like the Valta weren’t the safe havens our parents thought they’d be.” I can feel his bitterness on the air, and quietly reach over to grab his hand for a second. No, indeed. The Valta was no safe haven.
Rain stares out at the throng of busy and bustling people who flood the market in the square. “Do you think they cleared them all out and brought them all here because of people like us?”
“You mean to try to find more people with…abilities?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I’m not sure if Brohn if shaking his head at Rain’s extreme suggestion or at the insane possibility she might be right. “It’s funny,” he says with a cynical chuckle. “These people could’ve started out like us. All that time, we all thought we were being kept safe when really we were all just being imprisoned. The government was keeping us caged until they could figure out which of us was worth saving while they killed off the rest.”
“Great,” I mutter. “Just what I’ve always wanted to be: a chicken in the big poultry farm of life.”
Brohn gives me a sad half-laugh and starts walking toward the crowded market.
“I wonder if there will ever be quiet mountain towns again,” Rain says sadly.
“Probably not,” I reply as we follow Brohn down a small embankment and along a narrow foot-path leading to the busy square.
The area is wide and must be a mile deep with short, one and two-story buildings standing like blocky sentinels around its perimeter. The buildings are an odd combination of slick, synth structures mixed in with old sandstone shops, bars, and some pretty unappealing-looking restaurants. I can also see a few clusters of moldy wooden crates under a giant tattered umbrella at what I think is supposed to be a makeshift café.
The patchy ground around the sidewalks, like the air itself, is a sickly and rutted mess. The hot sizzling air seems to have baked everything in the town to a crispy reddish-brown. Even the bustling people share the same look. Jammed into the massive square, most of them are covered nearly head-to-toe in scruffy boots, baggy jeans, and loose-fitting brown and yellow overcoats, but the exposed faces under the sea of cowboy hats are char-broiled and flaky-red.
Brohn leads us right into the square, where we find ourselves in the middle of overlapping cries of vendors selling their various wares. It’s a sensory overload, almost too much to take in. Swarms of marble-sized flies buzz through the steaming air. Throughout the open market, there are tables piled high with scarves and wraps in a wild palette of colors and patterns. Metal racks lined up a hundred yards deep are filled with an array of blue jeans, earth-toned shirts, and long brown coats on hangers. People rifle through it all as sellers scramble after them, offering deals and picking discarded selections up from the ground. Other tables are lined with canvas sacks labeled by hand, the names of various seasonings and spices scrawled in black ink on off-white tags. A whole section of tables set up on one side of the square feature cases of pistols and endless racks of rifles.
Wedged in between two of those tables, a boy sits on a small stool with a large, oil-filled pot front of him. He flips brown and green shards of food high into the air, where they hover before landing back down in the pot with a splatter and sizzle of hot oil. To our left is a long table with cages filled with flapping and fluttering chickens. Billows of tiny white and brown feathers fill the air and mingle with the smells of feces and sweat.
Brohn reaches over and tugs my sleeve, leaning in close. “Want to go say ‘Hi’ to some of your fellow poultry farm prisoners?”
I giggle, and a woman brushing past me gives me a nasty look before shuffling along to continue with her shopping.
Behind several of the long tables, vendors stand inside clear glass boxes. The boxes have a small, mesh-covered opening up near the vendors’ faces and another opening down at table level, which is where they seem to be accepting big silver coins, lumps of black or gold pebbles, or, in some cases, small glass bottles of what looks like water, in exchange for their goods.
“I wonder if water is currency here,” Rain muses, gesturing with her chin toward a woman who has maybe two dozen of those little bottles tucked into a leather belt around her waist. “If so, those tap-coins Vail and Roland gave us won’t be of much use.” The woman catches us looking at her and hisses at us to “Scratch off!”
At one of the tables, lined with bright red plastic gas cans, a man is screaming at a mousy-looking vendor. “You trying to cheat me?” the bigger man says. His bushy eyebrows clamp together in a scowl, and his long beard bristles as he stabs wildly with his finger to a spot somewhere on the other side of the market. “I can get a better price from Gusher, right over there!”
“Then you should go do that,” the vendor says calmly. Not only does the smaller man not seem intimidated by the person shouting at him, he doesn’t even really look up at the raving red-faced client who now has the side of his fist pressed up against the glass. “I’m offering the best price I can,” the shop-keeper sighs. His breathy voice is barely audible from behind the glass and over the bubbling noise of the crowd. “Gusher’ll tell you the same thing. Probably already has. Costs go up. Prices go up. It’s called capitalism. I’d tell you to go look it up, but my guess is that reading isn’t your strong suit.”
In a flurry of his cape-like trench coat, the bearded man whips a gun from a holster just under his jacket and fires at the vendor. The explosion of gunfire startles everyone as the bullets ping off the glass, leaving nothing but smoky patches where they hit.
The vendor ducks, and most of the shoppers go scrambling for cover. A bunch of men around us drop to one knee and whip out their own guns, pointing them at the shooter, then at the vendor’s table, then at each other. The vendor, still crouched behind his bullet-proof glass shield, whips out an old-style sawed-off shotgun of his own and aims it at the bearded man, who takes a step back but doesn’t lower his gun.
I hit the ground with Brohn and Rain, and the three of us crawl under the nearest table.
When it’s apparent that no one has the stomach for a full-on street massacre, the men all stand, holster their weapons, and go on about their business. Everyone else gets to their feet and goes back to their shopping and shouting, like nothing’s happened. It’s business as usual. No one seems too shaken by the extraordinary events.
No one, that is, except for me, Brohn, and Rain. The three of us stay crouched down even as the rest of the crowd returns to their shuffling along around us, many of them casting annoyed grunts in our direction or growling at us to stand up and get out of their way.
Scanning the area like baby mice about to emerge for the first from their burrow, we stand slowly and start walking again. This time, we stay a little closer to each other, our heads on a swivel and our bodies tense with anticipation of the next shoot-out.
We don’t have to wait long.
About twenty feet away, two men—one with a threadbare jean-jacket, one bare-chested—get into a shoving match, with one claiming the dusty leather trench coat on the ground is his while the other swears he just bought it off the rack behind them. They pull their guns, each firing at th
e same time. A bullet rips through the bare-chested man’s shoulder, and he staggers back, knocking down one of the racks of coats and falling into it in a bloody tangle. The man in the jean-jacket drops to his knees and pitches forward, his face slamming into the hard-packed ground as a thick pool of dark blood oozes from his head into the dirt. With the bare-chested man groaning in pain and sinking into the coats like they’re quicksand, a quick-stepping roundish woman takes advantage of the jostling and shouting onlookers, scoops up the dusty jacket up from the ground, and skitters away into the crowd as some of the bystanders laugh and cheer her on.
“Did you see that?” Brohn calls out to me over the din of the crowd. “It’s like the Old West out here!”
Brohn, Rain and I are now shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder, but it’s quickly gotten so loud and crowded in the market that I feel like we might get swallowed up by the swarm, like three twigs lost in the Colorado rapids. “If it weren’t for some of those synth-steel buildings,” Brohn shouts, “and the newer model Sig Sauers and plasma pistols some of these people are carrying, this could easily be two hundred years ago.”
Rain offers up a disdainful smirk. “Always nice to see human evolution take a giant step backward.”
I remember what Hiller said back in the Processor about Brohn, Manthy, and me being what she called an “evolutionary upheaval, or some glitch in the genetic code.” It occurs to me for the first time that the world and I might be moving in exact opposite directions. I point this out to Brohn and Rain as the three of us duck into a small alleyway to re-group and get our bearings.
“Sounds like a good scenario for us, anyhow,” Brohn says with a relieved gasp, looking back out at the crowd of chaos we just slipped away from. “I don’t think I’d want to be moving in the same direction as these people.”
“At this rate,” Rain says, her hands on her knees as she takes some deep breaths to slow her pounding heart, “they’ll have devolved into something Medieval by the time we get out of here.”
Rain’s right. In looks and feel, not to mention the violence as the first resort vibe, this place really is like the gun culture of the Old West. Of course, what little I know about the Old West comes from a single book called The History of Cowboys in Film, which I read when I was about ten years old. I’ve never seen an actual film other than the videos projected onto the viz-screens back home, but I know what they are, and our cowboy book gave us a look into part of our country’s violent past and the myths that sprang from it. The book was filled with pictures of the Old West, real and from the movies, that support Rain’s theory.
Boots. Hats. Dusty roads. And, naturally, bloody street duels.
“There does seem to be some pretty serious vigilante justice going on,” I pant. We haven’t really been running, but my adrenaline is through the roof. I’m leaning against the smooth beige stones of the building’s wall, silently grateful for the shade, the relative quiet, and being able to take the time I need for my heartbeat to drop back down from its jack-hammer rate.
“The only thing missing are horses,” Brohn says through a crooked grin.
“Too bad,” Rain says with an exaggerated sigh. “I’d love to be able to ride a real horse again.”
We’re gathered in a close clump in the alleyway now. I’ve lost any connection I had to Render, who’s flown off to somewhere in the distance, though I’m not sure where or why. He might have been startled by the gunfire, or else bothered by the constant din of the market. Or he might also just be feeling hungry, adventurous, or at his wits’ end.
I have to remind myself that he’s gone through all the same turbulence we have. The Valta was his home, too, and now, like us, he’s a homeless straggler struggling to survive.
“We need to find Vail’s contact, get that part for the truck, and get out of here,” Brohn says. “It’s only a matter of time before we look at someone the wrong way and wind up with our bodies full of bullet holes.”
Slipping back out of the alley and toward the edge of the busy market, we dodge and weave our way past hundreds of hostile looks and, frankly, some less than floral odors.
We’re just negotiating our way through a gaggle of twittering women standing outside a bar when I hear Render issuing a series of urgent kraas! from somewhere up above. At first, I’m shocked to be able to hear him above this ear-splitting din, but his voice has become so ingrained in my brain I could probably pick it up from a mile away and over ten times this much noise. I grab Brohn and Rain by the backs of their jackets and point up to where Render is perched on the top edge of the building across the way. He beats his wings but doesn’t take off. Instead, he bobs his head, gesturing with his beak at the doorway in front of us.
“Well,” Rain says looking up at the nondescript building, “I guess Render’s found our place.”
“I guess,” I say. “Though I don’t know how he could possibly know for sure.”
Brohn looks up, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand and trying not to get run over by the pedestrians shoving their way past us. “With the information Vail gave us, plus whatever weird instincts your bird up there is developing lately, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“So, we go in?” I ask, but Rain is already striding toward the open door, so we don’t exactly have a choice.
She leads us through the doorway and plunges right into the middle of a crowd of sweaty, jostling people. Like the market outside, this place is a noisy tangle of bobbing heads and flailing limbs. Only in here, cut off from the stale but open air, the funk of sweat and unwashed bodies presses down on us like a tangible weight as does the oppressive pulse of the deafening music blasting our ears and vibrating through the floors.
I clamp my hand over my nose and try to keep up with Rain, who’s zigzagging her way toward the bar. She may only be five feet tall, but she marches forward like she’s a fearless giant in a teeming world of baby elves. Brohn takes me by the hand as we do our best to keep up with her. The last thing we need now is to get separated in this strange, archaic place. As Rain weaves deftly through the crowd, I notice we’re getting some curious stares along the way. It might be that we’re teenagers in a room filled with adults. Or it could be that we seem to be the only ones without handguns slung in holsters around our waists or rifles strapped across our backs.
As I look down, I realize that it’s most likely the way we’re dressed that’s drawing confused eyes. Most people in here look like the pictures of the cowboys from my old book. The three of us, on the other hand, are in the outfits Vail supplied us with back in Salt Lake City, where clothing styles seem to be far tidier and more conservative. Our combination of dark green camo cargo pants, black compression shirts, and pocketed combat vests is probably pretty confusing to this crowd. I’m sure we must look half-military, half-mountain climber, and all stranger.
But stares or no stares, we don’t have a choice but to follow Rain on her quest.
Shouldering her way through the crowd of lurching dancers, Rain marches right up to the bar and edges over to the burly bartender who’s busy chatting in a relatively empty space with a bored-looking woman who’s puffing lazily on a cigar. They’re quite the pair: His thick shoulders and broad chest threaten to snap every stitch in his yellowing, used-to-be-white tuxedo shirt. The sleeves of his poor strained shirt are cuffed up to reveal cylindrical, wrist-less forearms like marble columns.
I raise an eyebrow when I see that he has tattoos similar to mine peeking out from around his elbows. The woman he’s talking to is oddly pretty, with wide-set eyes and high cheekbones on a creased bronze face. She’s draped in layers of silk scarves, her long hair cascading in silver, blue, and black waves down to her waist. Her wrists are heavy with a colorful array of beaded bracelets. A pair of thigh-high black boots complete her odd ensemble, and I can’t help wondering if she’s a sorceress or a stripper.
“We’re looking for Saucy,” Rain shouts to the big man over the thunder of music, the clink of gla
sses, the screech of chairs against the wooden floor, and the general cacophony of the crowd behind us.
The man sneers at Rain and turns back to the strange cigar-smoking lady, who continues to stare off at her reflection in the spotted and fractured mirror behind the bar. Brohn leans forward to call out to the man. “Do you know where we can find Saucy?”
“Scratch off,” the man growls and flicks his thumb back toward the door.
A wide-bodied man in a denim jacket shoulders his way past Brohn with a dismissive grunt and shouts across the bar for the man to give him “a stoup of toxic.” The bartender pours what I hope is beer into a big metal mug and pushes it toward the client, who growls a half-hearted “Thanks” before disappearing back into the crowd.
“Vail sent us,” I shout to the bartender. “Vail and Roland?”
“Never heard of ‘em,” the man barks.
“Of course you haven’t,” the woman snaps at him. She’s suddenly alert, like she just woke up from a trance. “We only keep you around for the important stuff, like stocking the bar and keeping mice out of the supply closet.”
The man hangs his watermelon-sized head and steps away to busy himself at the other end of the bar.
“You’re looking for me,” the woman says, tapping herself on the chest as she turns our way. “I’m Saucy.” She sucks hard on the wet end of her fat cigar and exhales a thick gray plume of smoke into the air. “Vail sent me a synch-comm yesterday. Said a bunch of gung-ho teenagers would be showing up, looking for a thermonic sensor cartridge and possibly directions to San Francisco. She called you a ‘Conspiracy.’” Stone-faced, she looks from one of us to the other. “I’m assuming that’s you, because teenagers and this place don’t exactly mix, if you know what I’m sayin’.”