Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  It was here, out beyond a bone-dry gas station, where her father took every doll, every plaything she’d taken with her and set fire to. Marisol had wept, but her father said it was the only way.

  Fun and games were a luxury that could no longer be abided. He told her that she would have to start learning new things. New exercises, new ways of looking and examining and reacting.

  She wanted to know why he was forcing her to become something that she wasn’t. He smiled and hugged her. He said, “Most people have no purpose in this life. They’re just…travelers. Bystanders. Do you understand?” She nodded. “But you, Mari, you’re different. You were sent for some reason. You have purpose.”

  “But what is it?”

  Her father couldn’t answer, but he whispered in her ear that he believed it was no accident that he had been forced to bring the family to this very spot and that, in his words, “It’s never too late to be who you are really meant to be.”

  In the coming weeks he trained her and her brother day and night, teaching them to listen to sounds and discern portents on the ground and in the air.

  He taught them how to box, how to use their hands as weapons for defensive purposes, how to craft utensils from hunks of wood and the bones of dead animals.

  He showed them how to clean guns, and how to range a rifle by measuring wind and humidity and ballistic prediction. How to calculate the delta of aiming points in crosshairs while sitting squinched in a self-built blind. Her brother was a decent shot, but Marisol was a natural, born with off-the-charts dexterity and hand-eye coordination that her father helped her hone.

  At night, the family sat on the top of the camper and watched the horizon go from blackness (“As dark as the bottom of the devil’s well,” her father said) to ablaze with brilliant fires, punctuated every now and again by the thud of ordnance dropped from planes, or fired by helicopter gunships. Six months in, the machines stopped flying. She hoped it was the end of the conflict but her father told her that it was likely that only the dead would see an end to the fighting.

  Two months later, her father was caught trying to jimmy a truck belonging to a farmer who nearly blew his head off. The farmer refrained from killing her Papa only because he sensed that he might be a man who could be more than he was. A fighter, maybe. A tracker. In truth, the farmer spared her father’s life because his hands were calloused and his neck thick and he looked like he knew his way around a gun.

  The farmer forced Marisol’s father to give up the group and all of them were taken at gunpoint to see Longman, who was by this time encamped on the outskirts of old Chicago.

  One of Longman’s lieutenants tested Marisol’s father, and when he passed, when he showed them that he could run and fire and had his wits about him, they gave him and Marisol’s brother drab surplus-style jackets and patches emblazoned with red bolts and well-worn assault rifles with four mags of ammo each. They were soldiers in Longman’s army now. Marisol remembered watching them stand in rows of twos in the last shards of light before they headed out to battle the forces of a nearby settlement that had allegedly taken to cannibalism.

  Marisol hugged and waved to her father and brother and gave them both loops of metal she’d found that they wrapped around their wrists to ward off harm. They marched off into the late-day sun, her mother staying behind, brought low by a respiratory sickness that spread like fire through the camps. It was the last time she’d see her father and brother alive.

  In the days that followed, only a portion of the soldiers returned, and those that did told tales of battle and how Longman had performed brilliantly and bravely in leading his men to victory. She pressed for information about her kin, but was only given vague information: They’d died defending a hillock that overlooked the final field of fire. They were heroes in the camps. It was all too much for her mother, who soon passed into the great void, either from illness or heartache, and Marisol was left to fend for herself.

  She let her little dog go free in the wilds and then sacked up with the other survivors and began the march toward the wall surrounding old Chicago, which was still a work in progress. Those inside gave up without a fight. There really was nothing worth fighting for, and besides, many of them had been waiting for someone to lead, a strongman. Longman seemed to be the fulfillment of their wishes.

  Once inside the wall, she was just another survivor until Farrow spotted and rescued her from a mob of young men who were intent on doing her all kinds of wrong. Farrow brought her inside the barracks and introduced her to his superiors and soon tested her to find that she had abilities the others didn’t.

  She could, for instance, sense changes in her surroundings and discern patterns in the lower sub-zones that formed the areas where the hunts occurred.

  She could spot people hiding behind foliage and blinds, footprints on the ground, an errant branch broken by an unlucky Runner.

  She knew these things the same way she’d known the times of misery were coming before it all happened. The same way she’d known she was never going to see her father and brother again when they tromped off under Longman’s banner. She’d always had the gift to sense things before they happened and now her natural abilities were of great use to what passed for the State. The thought of it brought a bemused smile to her lips, for it was as if she’d been in training for Absolution her whole life.

  Marisol’s head suddenly snapped up and she made a quick assessment of her surroundings.

  An unfamiliar vibration hung in the air, a faint hum, like a million tiny insects fluttering their wings all at once.

  Next, she sensed movement.

  None of the others felt it, but Marisol did.

  She waited.

  Listened.

  Smelled the Runner before she saw him, caught wind of the sulfurous scent of fear and then, a half-click later, she saw him: a rangy boy about her age with a scarf covering his face.

  He stealthed behind a truck and nimbled over a low-slung wall that circled the shell of what was once a factory.

  He hedged left, then scampered up a fire-escape when Marisol, without uttering a word to the others, snapped off her HUD and blasted forward, using the hood of a car as a springboard to launch herself onto the base of the building that looked down on an endless warren of exposed rooms and duckholes.

  She grabbed hold of the rusted bars of the fire escape.

  The Runner saw her and, not unsurprisingly, started running, slowly at first, then faster, finding his feet, angling through the maze of debris that littered the interior of the building.

  The rules of the hunt were simple. Marisol and her brethren had one hour to pursue the Runner. If the Runner lasted longer than an hour or slipped four miles downfield, into what was the lower section of Zone 5, he was permitted to live another day to run, and the sin placed upon him would go unpunished.

  The Runner had to be aware of more than just the Apes, however. Crude traps were placed at strategic locations throughout the Zones. A toe-popper mine or IED here; a pit filled with sharpened stakes there. The traps varied, depending on the mood and attitude of the craftsmen and bomb-builders.

  The Runners were without weapons, sans the few inches between their ears (or whatever they could scavenge), and Marisol was not surprised when the boy picked up a length of pipe and turned and swung it hard enough to make the air bleed.

  Marisol anticipated this and slide-stepped under the pipe as it breezed past her head. She dodged to the right and shouldered through a moldering hunk of drywall.

  Planting her boots on a bathtub, she pushed and was able to somersault toward the boy who screamed at her. “YOU BITCH!”

  She crashed into him, her raised elbow meeting his nose, loosening the amber liquid housed inside.

  Blood spraying, the boy freaked as he staggered toward the back of the building. Marisol pushed herself up and bumrushed the boy, lowering her head, hitting him hard as his feet left the ground.

  They pitched over and fell together through the ai
r like broken dancers as their bodies plummeted from the rear of the building, smashing through the wood and metal railings that lay below.

  Momentum catapulted the two sideways so that Marisol hit the ground hard, rolled over, and was back on her feet in a flash, sprinting.

  The Runner was somehow up and ahead of her, arms and legs chopping the air, vaulting over cars and parkouring past and off the side of a building.

  The blood roared in Marisol’s ears as she pursued, lasering forward, hyperaware of her surroundings.

  She sensed the Runner once again and instinctively rolled forward upon turning a corner on a blighted two-storey building.

  She felt the length of wood swung by the hidden Runner as it creased the air over her head.

  Barrel-rolling forward she kicked back her right leg, felt it connect with something solid, heard the Runner yelp.

  Pushing herself up into a fighting position, she swiveled and he was upon her.

  The Runner punched above his weight, throwing a series of wild haymakers, one of which connected with Marisol’s jaw.

  She bit down on her tongue.

  Tasted her own blood which was like gargling a handful of copper pennies.

  Pissed, she blinked and fumbled back and the Runner wrapped both arms around her head and pumped his leg. He made a rookie mistake of not instantly powering his knee into her chest which she made him pay for.

  Marisol blocked his leg and drove her forehead into the Runner’s nose.

  Cartilage separated and blood spritzed.

  The Runner reeled and Marisol booted him in the groin.

  The young man staggered back five feet, then repositioned himself,

  He reached down and grabbed a fistful of busted concrete.

  Marisol did the same, snugging a jagged shard in a groove in the palm of her hand.

  He threw his rock.

  She reciprocated.

  The Runner’s rock grazed Marisol’s cheek.

  Her piece struck the Runner just below his right ear, freeing a ropy spurt of red.

  Disoriented, the Runner stumbled back and vanished around the side of the building. Marisol hitched herself up and gave chase—

  But before she could fully react, the Runner was heading for her again, screaming, a large boulder raised over his head.

  The Runner brought the stone back at the instant that the first bullet struck him below his chin and an artery ruptured like a punctured beer can.

  The Runner fell to the ground and Marisol saw the outlines of Farrow and the others behind him.

  More bullets followed and the Runner’s body bucked and heaved, the young man crumpling in a fusillade of slugs fired by the Apes.

  Marisol turned from this — she always turned during the “lettings.”

  She didn’t shed a tear for the dead Runner, however. She couldn’t. But she whispered a prayer for him, hands over her ears as her comrades stitch the boy from groin to temple with bullets, absolving someone unknown of their sins.

  And then, when it was over, when the last bit of brass had pinged the ground and the smoke had cleared, Marisol stood and began marching back toward the tac vehicle. She shrugged off her armor, rubbing the bruises that purpled her flesh as the lactic acid churned and burned within her. It always burned after the killings, but she’d gotten used to it. Used to the ancient sights and sounds of a new kind of hunting that had become all too common in New Chicago.

  3

  Moses O’Shea watched the young man training, quite impressed. The Boy, which is what Moses referred to him as, even though he was nearly out of his teens, was not only his newest Runner, but had a baby face to boot.

  The Boy was of average height with long, corded stems, a tight, laddered midsection, and a mop of ungovernable loose curls that shaded his face. He appeared ungathered, but lively, with an easy smile. He was the fleetest of foot in his class and ran with a fluid athleticism that made him a favorite of Moses O’Shea, the black man with skin like sandblasted teak who oversaw and trained the Runners.

  O’Shea was hale and brawny, unfettered by excess poundage, with a face that testified to the pain experienced since the time of the machines. His fiefdom was the Pits, which were located south of the wall and river in an intermingled series of dingy gray towers and soft domes constructed from concrete remnants, hunks of brick, and wide shafts of plexi material that had been salvaged since the Unraveling.

  He was a man who communicated as much with gestures and expressions as with words, and his movements were often so fluid that it appeared his body was conjured up out of smoke. In the olden days, he claimed to have trained world-class athletes, but what was once done for sport was now a matter of life and death.

  He had first taken notice of the Boy after a cattle call was placed for fresh fodder. An unusually lengthy session of Absolution had disposed of much of O’Shea’s stock, and so he needed to reboot and replenish his stores.

  A call went out to those far and near to offer up their youngest or any who were orphaned or in need of direction. Even though it was an exceedingly dangerous position, there was much that made being a Runner attractive.

  There was good food (and lots of it), free lodging, security, and a position in New Chicago that carried some measure of prestige. Runners, for instance, did not inhabit one of the lower-tier Guilds, but ostensibly functioned as a part of the State. As such, they held ranks above the average citizens and some of them, including a half dozen former Runners and trainers, had moved up into positions of power in several of the mid-tier Guilds.

  As a result, dozens of kids and young men had appeared after Moses issued a call for new Runners, but it was the Boy who’d wowed.

  He appeared out of the haze of a late day like an apparition, sans parents or papers or anything else that proved he existed save his slender frame and balled-up feet and eyes that looked like they’d been taken from some great bird of prey.

  Yes, Moses could tell immediately that the Boy (true first names were generally only used after Runners successfully completed a first run) was a natural after he ran him through some light sprints and got him to sparring with the other would-be Runners.

  Soon he was taken in by Moses and forced to endure an indoctrination program devised by one of Longman’s henchman who’d worked in a circus in Southeast Asia. The program was akin to phajaan, a ritual used in Thailand to break the spirit of elephants. It involved starvation and structured beatings until the subject reached a purgatory-like state where the will to resist was no more.

  Unlike the others, the Boy never completely broke.

  He rebuffed most of the attackers and constantly displayed the economical gait shared by all successful Runners. Moreover, he seemed to anticipate the movements of others which caught Moses completely by surprise. He’d won his first real heat, charged ahead of the others in a preliminary race and fended off attacks by older Runners sent in thereafter by Moses. It was then that the Boy was recognized as a true prospect and brought into the fold, which meant free lodging and five meals a day in return for an agreement to train and fight and do his best not to be killed quickly when he began running in earnest.

  Moses was (at least in his own mind) the linchpin of Absolution, the one who trained those that actually carried the sins of the wealthy on their backs. In return for providing Runners, Moses was given lodging, three relatively hot meals a day, a stipend paid for by the Guild families (as a kind of diyala as some called it, blood money for any sin their offspring might commit), and allowed by Longman and his thugs to do things that others were not. He was, for instance, permitted in limited circumstances to wager, in the form of barter, on the outcome of Absolution, even though there were many who claimed such a practice amounted to a conflict of interest.

  Conflict of interest. A protean term that carried currency in the old days, but little now. Everything was a conflict of interest in a world turned on its axis, and besides, Moses’s own morality gag reflex had long since faded in the years after the
Unraveling.

  He was part of the system now, invaluable so long as he produced Runners suitable to Longman’s liking. Fast enough to make the hunts appear fair, yet not so otherworldly in their skills that they might actually win more than a few races.

  Moses usually bet against his own charges, but The Boy was different. Moses smiled to himself and thought that he might actually place some silver on the skinny white boy’s back.

  The Boy was focused, running, leaping, and then chinning up and over a horizontal bar fixed between two eight-by-eight beams, piston-like, as he repeated his mantra:

  Keep the eyes fixed on a target ahead.

  Don’t swing the legs.

  Don’t try to use the biceps too much.

  Don’t cheat.

  If it’s easy, it ain’t goddamn right.

  His lats burned, a pump which the older Runners said signaled the development of muscles that would be important when the true races began. The key here was to not swing his body, but to keep the pressure on the lat muscles that snaked out from the sides of his back. Form and function had been drilled into him.

  Following up close behind was the only other Runner he’d made friends with, a young buck named Erik, who had a face as flat as a spade and red hair cropped close like a soldier.

  The two shared a look, and then the Boy winked and moved for the last set of chins.

  Murmurs turned to bellows and cries that caused the Boy to drop down from the chinning bars. Something wasn’t right.

  He navigated through the crush of people to see an object being held aloft by four men, a body covered in a blanket that was marinated in red.

  The body was lowered to the ground and, as was customary, heads were bowed and prayers silently offered. Moses swapped looks with all of the young men gathered around him and said, “That’s why we train.”

  That’s it. He said nothing more. Didn’t need to.

  A few words, and then Moses was back to barking orders and commands as the Boy and some of the younger Runners-to-be, including Erik, traded glances. Before the body was plucked up and taken away, the Boy called out, “Where will you take him?”