The Nethers

by M. E. Parker

  “Megan?”

  Te Yah nodded.

  “What was the sound?”

  Between the houses that hung by a breath on the crater’s wall and the tracks where carts ran on the energized rail, a set of cables stretched from the roof of a shack beside a silo. “This is what Megan asked you to retrieve in exchange for your friend’s liberty.”

  Myron peeked inside the shack to see a bright green rectangle the size of a storage locker. Spliced wires jumbled above it, making it look like it had a head of unruly hair. Myron knew right away it was Old Age tech, but it looked brand new—unscratched, undented, no marks, and on the side a label bore a picture of a muscular man with a giant hammer that read:

  THOR XDS 100—portable thorium power pack.

  -portable reactor with patented Xenofoam cooling technology-

  “Where did Megan find that?” Myron read the small text on the reactor. Thor XDS 100 unit is equipped with dormancy recovery innovation for idle storage. Once activated, delivery is guaranteed for the life of the unit.

  “A bunker.” Te Yah waved his hand to the horizon.

  “Where?” Images of Old Age wonders filled Myron’s mind. He thought of the day he discovered S.L.O.G.’s at the Stony Mountain facility under the Great Gorge.

  “She told the truth about the bunker, but lied about where exactly the bunker was.” He pointed his cane to the dark bottom of the crater at the center of Mesa Gap. “I think she found it down there.”

  Myron leaned over the railing, staring down the steep incline to the bottom, where his imagination constructed an Old Age wonder.

  Te Yah knelt and placed his hand to the ground. “I sense something down there. Megan has breathed life into this Old Age machine. I will not resurrect more of the same world that destroyed my ancestors’ world.”

  “Why did you take it from her?”

  “It’s not that I took it.” Te Yah revealed his gums again as his lips stretched into a wide smile. “I simply didn’t let her keep it. Because of what irresponsible usage of such a power can lead to. Irresponsibility is in great part why the world finds itself wounded and bleeding now.”

  As they continued down a bricked road, they passed markets and neighborhoods—clusters of dwellings, constructed from usable pieces of the broken city that came before, some in boxcars strung together, others constructed from shipping containers stacked on each other, tucked into the wall. They shared common courtyards where dogs barked, children played, and people cooked over fire pits.

  After they traversed the entire ring of the crater, circling back to the front gate, Te Yah led them to a lodge built from the fuselage of a crashed Old Age aircraft, the kind that had once ferried passengers through the sky to places like Bora Bora in a matter of hours. Myron had seen pictures of them in his grandfather’s books. They carried the weight of two hundred or more passengers hanging in the sky with no more effort than a gliding a bird.

  “You have now seen Mesa Gap. You have seen what is possible in this inhospitable world.” Te Yah felt for the curtain that hung over the passenger hatch on the airplane. Pyro ran out straight for Drillbit. The dogs exchanged growls and barks, the hair on Pyro’s neck raised. The woman who had led Myron to the intention ritual greeted Te Yah.

  “This is Chooli. I believe you have met. She will give you each a cot. Eat and drink as you wish.” He opened a cabinet with seedbreads and greens that made Myron’s mouth water. They walked down the cylindrical corridor to an opening that led to a great room.

  “You may wait out the battle here in this lodge. You are not to leave it. Your intentions do not line up with Mesa Gap,” he said to Myron. “And, though they are flesh, they roam the world as phantoms,” he said of the twins. “They are not welcome here.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Scattered groups of people ran from the smoldering village of Hardsalt in all directions. Behind them, a transport wagon full of orange shirts hopped out to chase the villagers, bagging and thwacking them the same way Sindra remembered when the orange shirts came for her.

  As people ran across the countryside, a vehicle headed straight for Rounder, Sindra, and Ren.

  “Come on. Get on,” a man yelled from the fourteen-man pedal bus with only four people on board. The rudderman bounced on the seat that extended from the rear of the bus, trying to steer it on the rough terrain. The bus didn’t slow down, except under the weight of the three new riders when Ren, Sindra, and Rounder hopped on board.

  “Crank for your life,” the rudderman yelled.

  The bus picked up speed as Rounder stood up to pedal, pumping with everything he had. “How—many—are there?” Rounder asked.

  The woman in the seat in front of Sindra craned her neck back, still pedaling, and yelled “Chasm knows. Enough”—she took a breath—“to wipe out our defense before we could mobilize.”

  “Am I the only one pedaling this thing?” Rounder shouted, out of breath.

  “What do you call what I’m doing?” Sindra sat in the seat adjacent to Rounder and didn’t see the veins in his legs sticking out like hers. “I can’t even tell you’re pedaling.”

  “Everybody pedal.” The rudderman steered the bus from the back to keep most of the weight distributed over the back axles. His seat jutted out from the rear and swiveled in the opposite direction of the turn. As they sped up, the bumps and ruts on the ground popped everyone up from their seats in jaw-rattling turbulence. “This here’s a road bus. Don’t handle so great on this bumpy ground. Hang on and keep pedaling.”

  The pop and whoosh of a steam wagon sounded as the orange shirts gained on them. “Halt the bus!” a voice called from the wagon called. Now close enough to reach the frame of the bus, the orange shirt extended his arm, getting a hand on the frame. The rudderman jerked the bus in the opposite direction. It swung toward a steep embankment, causing the rudderman’s seat to swing around and knock their pursuer to the ground.

  “Hang on.” The front pedalman waved his hand toward the embankment as the tip of the bus went over.

  Sindra grabbed the center bar. The bus creaked over the edge to a steep slope. The rudderman pulled a lever that disengaged the pedals, locking them so that the speed of the zoom down a hill, faster than people could keep up with, would not result in a bus full of broken ankles.

  The drop took Sindra’s stomach. Wind whipped by her ears. The bus frame rattled as they picked up speed. When the front right wheel slipped in and out of a rut, the woman in the seat in front of Rounder tumbled off the bus, rolling to stop near a boulder.

  The velocity of the vehicle exceeded its ability to control direction. The bus’s erratic movement tossed the rudderman off the back, sending the contraption careening to the right, traveling at an angle sideways, down until the ground began to level out. The rudderman chased the bus until it came to a halt at the base of the next hill.

  With no orange shirts in sight, they settled in with a slower churn of the pedals, traveling without the urgency of escape.

  “Where are we going?” a man near the back asked.

  “Mesa Gap. That’s the only place out here strong enough to turn back the Jonesbridge forces.” The rudderman pulled a lever to guide them around a rock.

  “They won’t let you in. I don’t know why all you people want to go to Mesa Gap.” Rounder shook his head. “It’s pointless. You may as well paint a target on your head and stand out in front of their wall as bait.”

  Hour after hour they pedaled, until Sindra was certain that she was the only one still making an effort. Myron needed her. She needed him. She would pedal the bus by herself if she had to. Cresting a hill in preparation for the next, most of the passengers stared at the ground deep in thought or grieving about losing their homes and loved ones in the invasion. Sindra, with her eyes on the horizon, spotted a column of smoke in the valley ahead. Where an Old Age highway dead-ended into the ruins of an ancient city, the Jonesbridge forces fanned out in the valley, bombarding an enormous wall with artillery and piss
whistles.

  “What is that?”

  “That is Mesa Gap. And we’re too late.” Rounder motioned to the rudderman to turn the bus around.

  Sindra began pedaling as hard as she could, sending the bus down the hill toward Mesa Gap before the rudderman could turn them.

  “What are you doing? We’re headed straight into battle.” Rounder slapped his forehead. “Every last one of you nutcogs is cracked in the head. Can’t I find one person out here that ain’t turning circles in the dirt with their tongue hanging out?” Rounder held his feet up as the bus picked up speed. “And if I hadn’t ever met Myron, I’d say you was the biggest walking catastrophe in the Nethers. But he got you beat by a hect and a half,” he said to Sindra.

  Everyone except for Ren, Rounder, and Sindra leaped off the bus to avoid running headlong into the fighting. The rudderman followed suit, leaving the three of them careening at high speed down the hill. With the pedals still engaged, they whipped around beneath Sindra’s feet as she held her legs up to keep from getting struck. Rounder left his seat and climbed out onto the rudderman’s chair to get control of the bus.

  He yanked the brake lever as they reached the bottom of the hill, bringing them to a stop. “Turns out this bus ain’t half bad. Put some fat wheels on her and she’s a good replacement for Myron losing my glider.” Rounder stepped down from the rudderman’s seat. “Only problem is the steering mech.”

  Rounder ground the bus to a stop and pulled out the binocular lenses the rudderman kept for navigation. He inspected the battle, then peered up the highway.

  “I don’t believe it,” Rounder muttered under his breath. Ren joined him at the back of the bus. “Have a look at that.” He handed the binoculars to Ren.

  “What the…”

  “What do you see?” Sindra reached for the binoculars. The blurry landscape came into focus, bringing closer the image of Megan and her drudgers.

  In every aspect of Megan’s image-conscious life, she held true to her persona, even in the heat of battle. Half of her crew rode in chariots pulled by bicycles with heavy knobbed tires. Her sash billowed behind her like a cloud as her chariot navigated explosions. She fired a revolver at both Jonesbridge soldiers in the rear flank and the Mesa Gap warriors, who couldn’t figure out where to fight, forward or backward. Another five drudgers followed in a wagon filled with bundles of burlap. Four of them fired bags from crossbows retrofitted as slingshots while the other prepared them for use. “What are they firing?”

  Rounder grabbed the binoculars. “Oh, Chasm. Those are bog bags—charged sacks full of squat and weddle that explode on contact.” Rounder eased out a nervous laugh. “The smell alone has a…demoralizing effect on the enemy.”

  Sindra took back the binoculars. “They’re firing them at the Mesa Gap warriors and at the Jonesbridge forces.” She watched a bag fly from the crossbow catapult, following its flight to a soldier where it hit his chest and popped, splattering human waste on his face and into his eyes. The bags rained down on the artillery, splashed across overloaders and equipment, wagons and soldiers, spreading sewage onto as much as possible.

  Megan and her drudgers confused everyone and then held back, waiting for the Jonesbridge forces to weaken the warriors from Mesa Gap, who spread out from the wall to fight the encroaching foot soldiers.

  With no more stomach for the battle, Sindra handed the binoculars back to Rounder, who watched the fighting, cursing in his now familiar way, half in words Sindra understood, the other half in what sounded like sleep talk.

  “They’re fighting alongside Jonesbridge?” Sindra shook her head. “Didn’t think even Megan would stoop that low.”

  “She ain’t fighting with them, she’s battle drafting—taking advantage of their firepower.”

  “But be warned, I’ve seen her at her worst. There’s nothing Megan won’t stoop to,” Ren said.

  Rounder rested against the bus frame to steady his view. “She’s getting awfully close to the fighting.”

  “Those bog bags are likely to make somebody mad.” Sindra wished that Jonesbridge and Mesa Gap would join forces to crush whoever it was that smacked them with wet bags of human squat.

  Even with the distraction of Megan and her drudgers, artillery fire continued to eat away the Mesa Gap wall, sending debris rumbling down the mountain of junk, and Mesa Gap responded as they could by slingshotting enormous objects that bounced around, over, and on top of their attackers. Sindra had no idea who to root for in this mess, except that Mesa Gap had to be better than Jonesbridge or Megan.

  Eyes still in the binoculars, Rounder clenched his fist. “Pull out of there, Megan.” After another explosion, the binoculars dropped, tumbling onto the lower bus frame and smacking the dirt. Rounder stood in a daze, still staring in the same direction. “No. no.” He shook his head. “No. no. no.” Rounder took off running toward the battle. “Megan!”

  “What are you doing?” Ren chased after Rounder.

  Sindra watched Ren chase after Rounder, while Old Nickel’s voice in her head advised her to run the other way, to scatter, never show up as a group into a mess like the one up ahead. Old Nickel, Sindra’s voice of reason growing up, still counseled her from the periphery of her doubts.

  If all the railwalkers had fought together the day the orange shirts came for them, they might have fought them off. Out here, by herself, Jonesbridge on the prowl in more than one place, convinced her. This time, stay together.

  Sindra tried to keep up, but Rounder ran as if his feet had sprouted wings until he reached Megan, where he stood over a mangled bicycle chariot. Megan draped over the side like a scarf on the back of a chair. Sindra and Ren kept low, but the fighting had shifted to the ridge where the Mesa Gap warriors assailed the Jonesbridge artillery.

  Rounder lifted Megan in his arms and jogged toward the Mesa Gap wall.

  “Te Yah! You son of a carpie. Let us in!” Rounder leaped over battlefield debris and bodies on his way to the gate. He fell to his knees, still holding Megan. Ren rushed to Megan’s side, stroking her hair.

  Sindra had seen people die many times, but never someone so powerful. In Sindra’s mind, if anyone could have defeated the final call from the custodian spirits, it would have been Megan. And who would win the rights to escort her to the Chasm, since the gates to the Great Above would be barred shut for her? Starick would come for her, but so might Meron, the custodian for the erotic. Or would Larond, the custodian spirit of put-upon women, take pity on her and deliver her with patience? But Megan could turn them all away.

  Megan’s eye inched open, not more than a slit of color. “Jasper. I knew you’d come crawling back to me.” She snapped her fingers with a smile. “I mean—Rounder. I’m fine. Just got my bell rung.” She grabbed the back of her head. “But I did enjoy the ride to the wall.”

  Rounder’s jaw clenched. He lowered his arms and dropped Megan, who hit the ground and rolled to her feet.

  “But—all that blood.” Ren wiped Megan’s leg, which was coated in red.

  “That’s Jimir’s blood, my meanest drudger. He will be missed.”

  She motioned to two of her drudgers now arriving in their bicycle chariots. “Be dears and tie up my precious pets.” She waved in the direction of Sindra and Ren. “I was devastated when they got away last time.”

  Sindra darted in the opposite direction, but two more drudgers arrived to surround her, lassoing her feet and sending her to the ground with a thud, while she cursed herself for following Rounder and Ren. She should’ve scattered. She’d known better.

  Megan grabbed Rounder’s shirt and pulled him close, so that he could see the side of her head where he’d hit her with the pipe. “I can live with the headache, but if this leaves a mark, you’ll have a bigger one.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and gathered it into a tail, twirling the end. “Look at this.” She examined the wall. “Those tate lickers from Jonesbridge did my work for me.”

  Rounder stood on a bench and gazed through his binocular
s at the battle on the hill where Mesa Gap warriors exchanged fire with Jonesbridge, artillery fire exploding into the wall with less regularity. “Once they deal with Jonesbridge, they’ll be back for you.”

  “Oh, Rounder. You’re so cute sometimes. I could just kiss you. But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Megan ran her hand across Rounder’s chest on her way to the gate-crashing steam walker. “Boys, fire this up.”

  Two of her drudgers removed the bodies from the cab. Rounder stepped back when he caught sight of the slain operators with holes in their throats. “Te Yah’s men didn’t do that. This was a sly job. I’d say there’s somebody else out here besides you, Megan.”

  The gate crasher released a whoosh of steam. “Don’t worry, Rounder.” Megan said. “Ren, I know Rounder forced you to leave me, so I forgive you. But I’ll keep you tied up until we get back.”

  The Megan’s Point drudger crew formed a defensive semicircular guard stance around the gate crasher and Megan.

  “That blind warthog can’t see a thing, but he can hear a rat squat thirty miles away. Te Yah!” Her voice echoed through Food Court. “We’re coming for you.”

  The behemoth advanced until it hit an obstacle, followed by a loud buzz and a shower of sparks when the machine severed a chain link fence in the middle of the junk wall. The operator, one of Megan’s lieutenants, climbed out to inspect the situation. His foot hit the ground, and a jolt of lightning shot through his body from the earth to the handle on the cab of the gate crusher.

  “Electrified fence.” Megan held up her hand to the drudgers, who were eager to pillage Mesa Gap. “One thing’s for sure, that fence won’t be hot for long.” She stepped in behind the machine. “Careful not to touch this thing until we get that hotwire off it.” Megan tossed a tire onto the bent-up fence, which folded under the weight and pulled away from the steam walker. “Okay, all clear. Get through this wall.”