Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  The air was tanged with the odor of biological decomposition. Fetid pools of sewage from the old days filled troughs that ran on either side of the pipe next to dormant pumps that once whirred and whooshed and pushed the sludge out to be treated elsewhere. This was the once and final resting place for all of the detritus of the old city.

  They maneuvered around debris and stumble-charged through the pipe, melting into the vaporous mist that rose from the sewage in the manmade cavern. They were making good time and Elias forged ahead of Marisol who stopped to catch her breath. When she looked up, Elias was standing very still. His body seemed to tremble and he tried to speak but his throat couldn’t muster any sound. It was the hands around his neck, she could see that now. Hands belonging to a large form that shapeshifted out of a blackened alcove, snatching Elias up in a horrible embrace.

  29

  Heavy diesel generators filled with biofuel powered the twin elevators as Cozzard, Lout, and ten of Longman’s best men rode fifteen stories down. They had a general idea where Elias and Marisol were headed. There was only one primary way in and out of the tunnel, and with some luck, they’d catch the punks and string out their necks before they exited out into the grasslands.

  Cozzard’s lips curled up in a demonic smile. Either way, the boy and the girl were as good as dead. If their bullets didn’t bring them down, they wouldn’t last half a night out with the evil that hunted beyond the wall when the sun went down. It was a secret known only to Longman’s inner circle and a few others, but they routinely exiled troublesome members of the Guilds out in the grasslands. Just brought them under the tunnel and bound their arms with wire and set them off before night fell. In the morning, they’d come and find the bodies — what was left of them anyway. The Thresher began the work that the carrion birds finished. Same thing would happen to these two. They’d be flesh-ragged corpses by midday tomorrow. The elevator reached its end and the doors pinged open. Cozzard and the others funneled out, ready to draw blood.

  Elias stagger-stepped in the grip of the hulking figure who picked him up a foot off the ground. Marisol reacted quickly and threw a punch that hammered the figure in the back. Elias was dropped to the ground as the figure threw up his hands to reveal a soul-worn man. A Scrapper. A “taker” from Longman’s new paradise who subsisted on refuse and crafty repurposing.

  “You,” the scrapper said to Elias while pointing. “I know you.”

  Elias shook his head and stood defensively as the Scrapper grinned a mouth full of blackened, festering teeth. “I seen you run, boy. Oh, yes. I seen you run and take down them bastardly Apes.”

  Elias looked over at Marisol, then whispered to the Scrapper, “I did an Absolution run yesterday if that’s what you mean.”

  “I know and I watched every second of it,” the Scrapper snorted. “Me and a whole lotta others. Gods in Heaven, we was rootin’ for you against the dictator’s people the whole way, if you’ll permit me to talk true.”

  “I won,” Elias said.

  “I saw it. Saw you beat them bastards that were hunting you.”

  “Did you see me beat the girl that was chasing me? Cause she’s right there,” Elias said, smirking, pointing at Marisol.

  “I seen all of it,” the Scrapper said, grinning. “I seen you beat ‘em all.”

  “Boom,” Elias said, pointing at Marisol who did a slow burn.

  The Scrapper removed his sodden hat and took up Elias’s hand and shook it vigorously as Elias’s cheeks reddened.

  “We’re looking for a way out,” Marisol muttered, breaking the moment. The Scrapper eyed the directions Elias had and shook his head. “You don’t wanna go that way, for it surely leadeth to destruction,” he intoned, before motioning. “Follow me. I got eyes for another joint. I’ll show ya the way. Come on, hurry now, this way.”

  Elias and Marisol jogged at the heels of the Scrapper, who moved briskly through the space, heading right, then left, ducking behind obstacles, following a path only he could see.

  They veered through the underground passages in the silty light as sounds echoed in the distance. Shouts of men, metal doors opening, colorful obscenities being hurled.

  Someone was most definitely coming. Elias looked up; not much to see at first glance, but then he spotted a long, dark, reaching form that only the hyper-alert would notice. A wide trench running off to the side, carved into the bedrock, funneling water and sewage and sediment out to the Great Lakes. Elias pointed, and as Marisol looked, her foot caught the edge of the trench and her rucksack went flying.

  “My bag!”

  Elias grabbed the bag before it could fall into the watery scum and hauled it back onto the path, where it opened and tossed its contents. Dolls and girly items spilled onto the path. Lots of them. Elias held up a faded Hello Kitty doll as Marisol grabbed it all back. Elias giggled.

  “Ha! So this is your deep, dark secret?”

  She didn’t respond, choosing instead to inventory the bag.

  “Hey, Marisol?”

  She looked over at Elias.

  “If you want, I’ll play princess and dress-up with you when this is over.”

  She didn’t immediately respond, but her face reddened and Elias thought, for a moment, that she might cry. He poked her. “What? What’s the problem?”

  She shoved him away. “That’s wasn’t cool at all.”

  “What?”

  “What you just said! The stuff about dress-up!” she shouted in reply.

  “That offended you?”

  She nodded.

  “We live in a place where people get fed to dogs and that offended you?!”

  She nodded again and Elias shook his head. “Every day I thank God that I wasn’t born a girl.”

  “Which is weird because you’re such a pussy,” she said, snatching her bag up, holding it close to her chest.

  The Scrapper watched this and seemed to enjoy the sight of the two bickering young people immensely. He pointed to a stout door that was visible down a short flight of steps.

  “That’s the way,” he said. “You wanna get you some freedom, it’s on the other side of that door.”

  “What’s out there?” Marisol asked.

  The Scrapper’s complexion suddenly bleached at the thought of how to answer this, at what he knew lay on the other side of the door and in the lands beyond.

  “Freedom,” he said. ”There is freedom there, but it might come with a price.”

  Before he could respond further, Elias heard a snap, an echo, then a rush of air as a bullet hammered into the Scrapper’s chest.

  The Scrapper staggered, his chest yawning red. He clutched the wound and pitched backward, dead before he hit the water in the trench.

  Time and sound seemed to slow for Marisol, who watched the man’s arms fan out as he plunged into the sewage, disappearing under its swift currents as Elias pointed and shrieked, “THEY’RE HERE!”

  Cozzard lowered his smoking rifle and signaled for the others to double-time it as he stayed behind and fired at them.

  Bullets buzzed over the heads of Marisol and Elias like bees as they combat-ran toward the stout door.

  Lout and Longman’s men were gaining ground, running like stallions and firing pistols and sawed-off shotguns wildly.

  Elias heaved open the door as Marisol dove in first.

  A round from Cozzard’s gun whined off the metal just over Elias’s head as he inched inside, slammed the door shut, and threw a bolt across it.

  Pounding began on the other side. The bolt wouldn’t hold for long.

  Elias turned and caught the tail end of Marisol as she scampered down a dark thruway that lay under metal catwalks dripping with water and plumed with steam.

  30

  The unadulterated blackness pillowed Elias and Marisol as they continued along the thruway past walls of poured cement that were curved and without angles. The thruway dilated into a high chamber and a bricked wall with another door that had a wheeled handle. The two gripped the handle a
nd turned the wheel to reveal the outside world as seen from some point high above.

  They peered outside to see that the city of New Chicago stalled here, for beyond was the beyond, the “Land of Nil,” as some called it.

  Nothingness.

  The grasslands.

  The dwelling place of the Thresher.

  And beyond that places which existed only in their imagination: The Tanglewood and The Forest of the Night and all the other dwelling places of the things that people only whispered about.

  An opening looked them in the face: the end of the tunnel, which was little more than a slab of concrete with an attached earthen embankment. There was a short ledge, and then a wall slapped onto the concrete that dropped to the ground some eighty feet below. The wall was lined with metal rungs. Marisol wrapped her fingers around the first one and cast a final glance back into the tunnel.

  “If we go, we won’t be able to come back,” she said.

  “What’s there to come back to?”

  “I… there… there were people I knew.”

  Elias smirked. “You mean the ones back there shooting at us?”

  “I didn’t mean them, jackass.”

  “Oh, then maybe the Apes? The ones that tried to kill me during the run?”

  “Farrow was my friend. He saved me from the others.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate to say it, but good riddance to New Chicago. I thought it might be better inside the wall when I was outside of it, but I was wrong. I’ll take my chances in the beyond. Ain’t no friends or goodliness inside the wire.”

  “We could go back and talk to them,” she muttered as Elias laughed.

  “Yeah, I kinda think the time for talkin’ is over, Marisol.”

  “We could try and change things,” she said, even though she knew it was an impossibility.

  Elias shook his head and said, “We don’t have enough bullets to change things. It’s better to run.”

  She took this in and did what she’d done since she was a child whenever faced with a difficult decision. She grabbed her knuckles and tugged on them until they cracked like splintered wood. She knew Elias was right. She knew that she was finished with the city and the lettings and whole damn thing. Still, there was a part of her, inherited most likely from her father, that made her believe, however ludicrous it was, that she had the power to make a difference.

  “My papa used to say something to me.”

  “Yeah,” Elias said, looking over. “What’s that?”

  “That sometimes you have to kill your own dogs.”

  “I don’t got any dogs and I don’t see your old man around anymore, Marisol, okay? So get a good look and watch me run.”

  Marisol looked back over the embankment, steeling herself, realizing she had no choice but to go down.

  Elias could see her hesitate. He leaned down and whispered, “You ever close your eyes and try and trick you brain into thinking you’re doing the opposite of what you’re really doing?”

  “All the time,” she replied.

  “Well, this is another one of those times. So take that first step.”

  She nodded and climbed down first, gripping the rungs, body and core-muscles tense, winching herself down the side of the wall as Elias followed. The going was slow at first, then the pace quickened.

  As Marisol reached the bottom of the wall, she observed the tall, thick grass swaying in a stiff breeze, stretching to the hilly horizon, a vista that appeared immeasurable in the darkness. She looked up at Elias, who nodded and said, “We’re officially Three-Oh: On. Our. Own.”

  She smiled and dropped from the wall and he followed suit. They hit the ground and heard sounds above them, catching sight of Cozzard first as he opened fire. Bullets slashed the grass as Marisol and Elias ducked for cover. Hands on the ground, they pinwheeled past and threaded through the grass like pickpockets in a parade.

  Cozzard and the others made excellent time descending the wall, dropping the last eleven feet. One of the men turned an ankle, but the others strung out and continued the hunt.

  A foot-race ensued as Elias and Marisol shot through the grass. Marisol yelped as the razor-sharp blades sliced her barren arms. Elias barely noticed the blades; he was more concerned with what else might be hiding in the grass. On several occasions, he spotted things out on the edges of his sightline, dizzying shades darting through the grass, everywhere and all around. Yet each time when he blinked and looked back, the shades were gone.

  “This way!” Marisol urged him, “This way!”

  He squinted sideways and spotted her making for a region out to the far right, a section of land drowning in rusted cars and all manner of machines and earth-moving devices, stretching to a stupendous overhang that dropped down into bottomlands that he could not yet see.

  Marisol trotted forward and then stopped dead in her tracks. Her nose tilted. Something was wrong.

  “What? What is it?” Elias asked.

  Without uttering a word, she lifted a finger and pointed to the ground where Elias could see that Marisol’s right foot was positioned on top of a sheet of pounded metal. A pressure-plate of some kind.

  Tiny wires led away from the plate, through the grass, toward the treeline. Elias could barely make out a cube of metal the size of a car engine, lodged in a tree. The wires connected to the cube.

  “What happens if you let up?” he asked her.

  “What happens if I don’t?” she whispered in response.

  They both looked back and heard the sound of Longman’s men. Marisol loosed a ferocious sigh and stepped off the pressure-plate as—

  ZZZIIPPPP!

  The wires twanged and snapped back toward the metal cube as Elias grabbed Marisol and shoved her forward.

  The wires plunged into the cube, a Rube-Goldberg-like contraption, made from repurposed automotive parts. The wires unhitched a clutch pedal which slammed down, activating a hydraulic piston that pressed on a release fork to power up a flywheel that spun like a turbine. The flywheel, which operated without batteries or fossil fuels, loosed its kinetic energy, sending out pulses that triggered a series of hidden traps.

  In the grass Elias and Marisol spotted movement. Marisol screamed “Cover your head!”

  They both ducked low as BOOM! a small IED exploded off to their right, sending them rolling left. Elias stopped to catch his breath when something closed around his ankle and in a flash he was on his back, moving at an incredible rate of speed as the sky raced by overhead.

  31

  The hidden trap’s mesh loop gripped Elias’s ankle like a vice as it dragged him screaming through the grass. Elias craned his head so that he could see the ground in front. He was being pulled toward what looked like a pair of metal jaws brimming with saber-sized shafts of sharpened metal when—

  WHUMP!

  A hand flashed out and grabbed his outstretched arm around the wrist and slowed his movement. Marisol fell across his chest, giving him enough time to shake his ankle and slacken the trap’s loop. Greasy fingers reached down and pinched the loop as Elias pried his foot free.

  “Don’t – do not say it,” he whispered.

  “I, a girl, have now saved your ass twice in the last twenty-four hours,” she replied, grinning.

  “Keep a tab.”

  She reached down and grabbed him up and then the two scampered into the shadows.

  The pair knifed through a bottleneck of machines and moundings of debris, passing the desiccated corpses of those who’d died in their cars when the world went to blazes. They made themselves small inside a junked car that was once used to ferry little ones around to games of leisure in the times of plenty.

  They could hear the shouts of Longman’s men in the distance — sometimes drawing near, other times drifting away. Marisol’s mouth dropped open to speak, but Elias placed a finger on his lips for silence. She nodded, using the fabric on one of her dolls to stanch the ribbons of blood that sprung from the grass cuts on her arms. Outside, the voices of Longman’
s men drew closer. Elias looked out through a section of spiderwebbed windshield, gripping the knife Marisol took from one of the Loons back in the house.

  In the car-yard, Cozzard and Lout stood and paid special attention to the ground. They could make out prints leading this way and that. Following the prints they soon caught sight of the car concealing Elias and Marisol. They couldn’t discern whether anyone was inside, but they felt good about their chances as they readied their weapons and signaled for the others to move in.

  Inside the car, Elias watched Longman’s men move menacingly forward. He looked over at Marisol, who leaned back near the dashboard, easing her frame against the parking brake. The brake, hooked to frayed, rusted wires, hadn’t been applied in nearly a decade, and the pressure from her body caused the wires to snap, and the only thing anchoring the machine in place to give way.

  The car’s oversized frame began moving; slowly at first, then faster, falling back over the overhang as Cozzard and the others pointed and shouted and sprang toward the car that was falling from sight. Cozzard drew his rifle up, took a knee, laid his face against the stock, aimed at Marisol and fired, though he could not tell if his shot was true what with all the dust and confusion.

  One of Longman’s men dove off the hood of another car and latched onto the machine holding Elias and Marisol. He saw them inside and grinned darkly. His hands shot out and he grabbed a handful of Marisol’s hair and snapped her head back, angling it toward a ridge of broken windshield glass as the car blurred down the overhang. Marisol screamed and threw wild punches as Elias held on for dear life. Longman’s man, cackling now, brought Marisol up, exposing her neck, and fingered a blade that he brought up as Elias inched his hands out, holding the knife he had from before. Marisol grabbed it with trembling fingers, but was unable to use it, screaming, “I can’t do it!”