Raining Fire

by Rajan Khanna

My vision blurs behind my goggles.

  Images flicker through my head. Dad standing over me as I cleaned and loaded my first gun, offering criticism when I skipped a step. Dad and me taking apart one of the Cherub’s engines, doing repairs. Dad showing me how to bypass some burned-out solar cells, squeezing as much juice as we could out of the remaining series. Dad checking me for scratches and cuts. Dad sewing my first bullet hole closed. Then, Dad fishing out that same bullet. Even the memories are exhausting.

  And I just left him. To become an animal in the wilderness.

  Here, now, looking at this Feral that could very well be my father—maybe I can right this.

  The goggles fog up, forcing me to push them up off of my head.

  I raise my gun hand. I hold out my arm, keeping it as steady as I can, and I stare down the sights at the old Feral. At my father. At the thing that used to be him. At the thing wearing his body. I curl my finger around the trigger, knowing that the moment the others hear the shot, they will stream out after me, and they will tear the flesh off of my bones. I’ll probably die with them chewing on me, eating my face and the rest of me. Just more meat.

  But, still weeping uncontrollably, I hold my arm steady. I start to pull the trigger.

  And the world splits apart around me.

  * * *

  The world tilts, disorienting me, until I slam into the ground, hard, on my side. The ground trembles beneath me, and then the sound. The booming crumple of an explosion nearby. My brain is screaming at me to look around and identify its source, but instead I get to my knees, the revolver still in my hand, and I raise it back in the direction of the door. But the Feral that may or may not be my father is gone. All of the Ferals are gone, pushed out by their alarm at the explosions. My moment is gone.

  Crump. Crackle. Boom.

  Another explosion, and this time I do look. A fireball rises into the sky, bright-red flame quickly fading to swelling black smoke. Then again. And again.

  My eyes scan up to the ships. Three of them, moving in formation. Dropping bombs on what I can now tell is a nearby settlement. I move closer, walking to the edge of the hill, then down. Yes, a settlement. With fencing around it. A nice place, by the looks of it. At least the parts that don’t resemble a burned-out, demolished mess from here.

  I look back to the ships and almost certainly know what I’m going to see. And there they are—Valhalla flags, black with three white interlocking triangles on them. The fingers of my left hand form into a fist while my right grips the revolver tightly.

  I move without thinking, heading down the hill as fast as I can, toward the burning settlement.

  I think about all of the crimes I’ve been witness to that bear the stink of Valhalla. The attack on Gastown, using hooked Ferals to clear off the city. The taking of Apple Pi and the deaths and capture of the boffins there. The torture of Diego. The death of Atticus. The destruction of the Cherub.

  Miranda.

  Fire rages in my veins. Seething. Burning hot as those explosions. I half tumble, half slide down the hill in their direction. Scree and rock and dirt fly around me, bumps and jars that I can’t feel through the fury that fills me. The need to do something, anything, overtakes me.

  But as I hit the outskirts of the settlement, some hundreds of meters away from where the fence was, the Valhallan airships move away, leaving the smoldering corpse of the settlement behind.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I move toward the fence and as I do, the smell of burning penetrates my scarf. Burning wood. Burning plastic. Burning bodies.

  I hit the fence at a run, easily passing through a large section gouged out of it by the explosions. I catch only a glimpse of the panels that make it up, but they appear to be sheets of stone held in place by metal frames. Tall enough to keep Ferals out.

  But not airships.

  The air is filled with smoke, and the sounds and smells of burning, and I can’t hold back memories of Tamoanchan, the smoking, smoldering ruins of the houses there. Of Miranda’s house. The smell of burning wood, the tang of gas and explosives. For a moment, something in me wells up, grabs hold of me, and wants to pull me down. Make me stop and curl into a ball. Make me stop entirely. But matching that pull is a push, a hot, fiery surge forcing me onward with the need for action.

  I pass buildings, collapsed and on fire. Charred corpses, fallen in what pass for streets here, trying to flee burning buildings. Nothing seems to move except for the waving reach of the flames, greedily looking to consume everything it can.

  What was this place? The buildings, at least those that still stand, seem well constructed. The layout feels good. Was this an old settlement, from the Clean, brought back to life? Or was it built here as a new start?

  Fucking Valhallans. Preying on everything good and hopeful in the world. Cutting down everything green trying to claw its way up through the broken streets of yesterday.

  I saw three ships flying away, three ships dropping bombs, but there might still be some around. They often send a ship down to mop up any survivors. I check the revolver, making sure its fully loaded and everything is moving smoothly after my tumble down the hill. I have to watch how much ammunition I’m using, too. I took everything I had with me off the Valkyrie, but I’m not liable to be able to replace it anytime soon.

  Still, if I can find some Valhallans to put bullets into, it will be well worth it.

  I run past a crumpled wooden bonfire and what looks like a house of worship still halfway standing amidst the wreckage. No religious iconography that I can see, just benches and some kind of stage.

  Then I hear it—screams and what might be gunfire. It’s hard to tell over the collapsing timbers and the cry of dying buildings.

  I round the corner of the church, or whatever it is, and stop short. A group of people stand in front of a partially destroyed house. One has a hand out, holding a weapon of some sort, and others are arrayed around them. Is it a Valhallan? I raise my revolver and prepare a shot. But as I near, I see that I have it wrong. It’s a handful of people, one of them armed, being circled by a small pack of Ferals.

  I hesitate for a moment. Take the time to observe these people. Because if they’re from Valhalla, I might just walk away and root for the Ferals. But they’re dressed in simple clothes. None of them look, at first glance, like fighters—not the sort that I would expect on a Valhallan ship.

  I target one of the Ferals and shoot.

  It’s a mistake. That Feral goes down with a hole in its back, but the others with it—five or six—turn toward me. Then start moving. Another pull of the trigger, and another Feral goes down, then they’re on top of me, and I slam the revolver into one Feral’s face and kick out with my boot at another. Dammit, dammit, dammit, they’re too close.

  “Shoot them!” I yell at the woman with the gun. I manage to break away from the three Ferals clustered around me, but an arm grips my leg and I fall to the ground. I raise the revolver. Squeeze the trigger twice. One bullet tears through the Feral’s shoulder, and the other explodes its face.

  Only two shots left.

  “Fucking shoot them!” I yell again.

  One of the Ferals lunges, and I blast it in the chest. But the one that’s left scrabbles toward me and lashes out with its arms. I pull back from the blow, but it catches the revolver and sends it spinning away. Sensing that I’m helpless, the Feral jumps forward. I throw my arms up to hold the thing’s face away from me, gripping the neck as firmly as I can. “Shoot it!” I try to cry again, but it dies as a gurgle in my throat as I struggle to keep the creature’s teeth away from me. The Feral’s long nails scrape down my coat, and I hope the leather is holding. I bring my legs up to grip the Feral’s body, trying to hold it in place. Slaver is running from the thing’s mouth, but I’m holding it to the side, watching, and pushing as hard as I can, while a thin string of drool narrowly misses my face.

  Then, in desperation, I squeeze as hard as I can with my legs and knees, bringing as much pressure as I can to be
ar on the thing’s midsection. With my grip around the neck, I simultaneously squeeze and twist and keep that pressure up as much as I can—crushing and wrenching and using . . . every iota . . . of strength . . . that I have . . . until—

  The Feral stops moving. Still maintaining my grip on its throat, I roll it to the side, where it falls to the ground, limp, its head twisted at an unnatural angle. I take a moment to make sure it’s dead, and then I roll toward the revolver, grab it, and jump to my feet, head spinning from the exertion. I sway on my feet, but the revolver is out, pointing at the woman.

  Who is pointing her own pistol back at me. For a moment I expect her to shoot, but she doesn’t. Which is a good thing for her, because while she could take me down right now, I would almost certainly get off my own shot and make her pay for it. I’m also aware of the group of people, looking at me.

  “Why didn’t you shoot them?” I growl.

  The woman shakes her head. “We don’t know you,” she says.

  “I just helped to save you,” I say.

  “He’s one of them,” a young man with brown skin says. “He’s one of them.”

  “I’m not one of the raiders,” I say.

  “Then where did you come from?” the woman with the gun asks. She has light-brown skin and long, dark hair that she tied back but which has come loose in all the activity. She wears a flannel shirt over a muddy t-shirt and jeans. These people are barely covered. Naked skin everywhere. Fences, I think.

  I wave my left hand back in the direction of the hill. Then, in a gesture of what I hope is goodwill and trust, I use that same hand to raise my goggles and pull my scarf down. It certainly makes the breathing easier. “I was . . . I was investigating that temple up on the hill. I saw the explosions.”

  “Don’t believe him,” the young man says.

  “Listen,” I say. “I—”

  I freeze as I feel something pointed press into my side. Very near my kidneys. I glance down quickly to see someone short—a kid?—with a wicked-looking blade pressed up against me.

  “Give her the pistol,” the woman says. Then, using the pistol for emphasis, “Slowly.”

  I nod, slowly, and adjust my grip on the revolver so that my fingers aren’t near the trigger. Then I lower it and hand it to the young girl with cropped brown hair.

  The girl moves her fingers to the grip and the trigger and holds the gun on me, not putting the knife away either, but just holding it in her other hand. The gun looks ridiculously huge, but it doesn’t waver. She backs up slightly, covering me from the back as the woman covers me from the front.

  The dark-haired woman moves forward. The gun is no longer outstretched. Her elbows are pulled in to her body, the gun still at the ready.

  “So,” she says. “The temple.”

  Now I hold both of my hands up, palms toward her. “Yes.”

  “Do you have an airship?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Other transportation, then?”

  I wince, then shake my head again. “Someone dropped me here.”

  “Are they coming back?”

  I sigh. “It was a one-way trip.”

  “See?” the young man says. “He’s one of them. Who would take a one-way trip out here?”

  “Did you come looking for Phoenix?” This from a tall, thin, light-skinned woman with long, reddish-brown hair tightly pulled back, and glasses. Something about that reminds me of Miranda.

  I think about lying. About telling them I was looking for Phoenix, but I don’t know if that’s a person, a place, or an animal.

  “No,” I say. “It’s . . . complicated. But I’m not one of Valhallans. I hate them.”

  The dark-haired woman narrows her eyes.

  Now that I have a moment, the appearances of the other companions sinks in. There are five of them all together. The dark-haired woman and the young man, the woman with glasses, and an older, tall man with light skin and gray hair, holding a club in his hand.

  And the young girl holding my own gun on me. She can’t be much more than a decade old, I’m guessing.

  A Feral howl cuts through the air.

  Shit.

  “There are going to be more of them,” I say. “Your fence may have kept them out, but it’s torn to shreds. They’ll be attracted to all the light and activity and noise. Are there any buildings left?”

  The dark-haired woman’s eyes don’t leave me.

  “We have to hurry,” I say.

  Again, nothing.

  “Do you have any vehicles?” I ask. “Any airships or ground cars? Wagons? Bicycles? Anything?”

  “It’s all gone to shit,” the older man says in a low voice. “It’s all gone.”

  “Not all gone,” the woman with glasses says. “The storehouse is still there.” She points at a large building at one end of the settlement. It’s hard to tell, it’s obscured by smoke and flickering flames from the nearby buildings, but it looks like it might be intact.

  “We need to go there,” I say. “Now.”

  I can hear the howls. Closer. More of them. So can my new friends.

  “You can’t come,” the young man says.

  “I was trying to help!” I say. I point at the dead Ferals. “I took care of them.”

  “You were saving yourself,” the dark-haired woman says.

  “With no help from you!” I snap. “If you want to argue some more, can we please do it somewhere inside where more Ferals can’t get—” Then we all snap our heads around, because we can see them running toward us. A big pack. Maybe the one I saw up on the hill.

  Then we’re all running, what we were arguing about forgotten, as we all make for shelter. I could run for it, try to get away, but where would I go? So instead I put my faith in their course, hoping that they’re right, that one building escaped all of this unscathed. Besides, the little girl has my gun.

  As we near the building, I see that it does indeed look like some kind of storehouse or something. Big, and blocky. The front of it is burned, scorched, but it appears as if the firebombs fell short of the mark and just splashed across the outside without doing any major damage.

  A crater on one side supports that notion. But luckily the crater is out of our path. Our way to the entrance is clear.

  We reach it at a dead run. There are two large sliding doors on the outside. My new friends all move to one and start pushing. It cracks open, but only a little.

  “Well?” the dark-haired woman says. “You want to help? Help!”

  “I wanted you to help,” I say under my breath, but I move to the door and grip one of the large handles on the side, sharing it with the older man, and push with all the strength left in me. An agonizing long space seems to stretch on, but then it starts moving, wide enough for us all to speed in.

  “Now close it!” the woman shouts and we all do the same, only in reverse. By now the mechanism has at least been loosened, and we’re able to slide it shut with a resounding clank. The two women slide some latches into place. I finally let out my breath. I could see the Ferals coming toward us. See the numbers, their faces, the looks of greed, of hunger, upon them. So many.

  So hungry.

  I sink to the ground, exhausted.

  The dark-haired woman turns the gun on me again. “Now tell us why you’re really here.”

  * * *

  I rub my face with my hands. That time in the temple, just a few hours ago, feels more like weeks. “It’s personal,” I say. “I have history at the top of the hill. I was . . . trying to reconcile it.”

  “Up at the temple?” the white woman asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “I was there once. A long time ago.”

  The woman with the dark hair crosses her arms, the pistol still held tightly. “And you had someone drop you here, all by yourself, with no way to get out?”

  I meet her eyes. “Who said I wanted to get out?”

  She shakes her head, her eyes widening. “So you’re a crazy person.”

  “Let�
��s just say it wasn’t well thought out.”

  “You think?”

  Scratching on the outside doors. Growls. Grunts. Screams of challenge.

  I get to my feet and brush off my clothes. Dark Hair keeps the gun trained on me the whole time. “I’m here now,” I say. “We’re all here now. And we’re all in a load of shit. So what say we put the guns away and work on getting out of here in one piece?”

  Dark Hair, who seems to be the leader here, looks at her people, then back at me. Then she tucks her pistol away in the back of her jeans. “Fine,” she says. “No guns. But—” She meets the eyes of her people. “You see him doing something funny, feel free to shoot him.”

  “Much better,” I say.

  She scans the room. “Look around for food. Or weapons. Or anything else that might help.”

  As they move away, I finally look around the place. I had been smelling it already. Grease. Dust. Mold. Machine smells. Chemical smells. Now I can see why. The space is big, and it’s not completely full, but against the far wall is an assortment of machines, all in various states of repair. I see things that look like the remnants of ground cars. Parts of an airship. Several things that are probably large tool machines. A series of pulleys and winches. Engines. Motors. Fan blades. Smaller tools and parts resting on tables.

  “A workshop?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Dark Hair says. “It hasn’t been used much lately. But the idea was to see what we could salvage and repair from the nearby houses and shops.”

  I stare at her. “Is this your settlement?”

  She looks at me in surprise and snorts. “Me?” She shakes her head. “No. I was just someone who lived here. Welcome to Phoenix.”

  The name of Mal’s warship. Also a place. “Like the old city?”

  She shakes her head. “Like the bird.”

  “You lost me.”

  “A myth. From the Clean. A bird that rises out of the ashes of its predecessor.”

  “Oh,” I say, getting the symbolism. Mal always did have a poetic streak.

  Her expression gets dark, and she runs a hand through her hair. “This place was founded by a man named Lincoln. He wanted to set up a place where anyone could come, a safe space. A place where the past would be forgotten. A new start. For anyone.” Her eyes tear up. “And they killed him for it.”