Earth Fire (Earthrise Book 4)

by Daniel Arenson

  And we'll have to survive here.

  His eyes stung.

  I came here to find a better life. Now I'm thinking of just surviving.

  He was about to try and comfort Addy, mostly to comfort himself, when he saw the figure in the alleyway.

  Marco froze, frowning.

  A girl stood in the alleyway. Instead of an atmosuit, she wore a tattered dress that seemed woven of ash. Her long black hair flowed in the wind, its tips burnt. She wore a white kabuki mask, its expression blank, the eyes and mouth mere slits. Her arms were long, bony, and flared out to pale hands with three clawed fingers. As Marco stared, brow furrowed, the girl turned her head toward him. The kabuki mask stared right at him. She raised one hand, its three fingers inhumanly large, the claws like daggers, and—

  "Poet, come on!" Addy shoved him. "What are you gawking at?"

  Marco blinked, looked at Addy, then back at the alleyway. The girl was gone.

  "Did you see her?" Marco said. "A girl. With a kabuki mask." He shuddered. "Strange hands."

  Addy peered at the alleyway. A poster hung there, displaying an anime girl in a schoolgirl uniform, cat ears sticking out from her hair. She held a katana, surrounded by Japanese icons. English letters appeared beneath her: All Systems Go!

  "That?" Addy said. "Marco, that's just a poster for a cartoon. Come on."

  Marco rubbed his eyes, peering into the shadows again. The strange girl was gone. Had he just seen the poster? Was his mind playing tricks on him?

  "Yeah, all right," he said, a chill still tingling his spine. He kept walking with Addy.

  They trudged down a few more streets, only finding more guards, more locked doors. Those damn birds kept circling above, screeching, and Marco became convinced they were alien vultures, waiting for Marco to collapse dead.

  "Poet, remember how you said we have to find the good neighborhood?" Addy said. "I think this is the good neighborhood. Guards at every doorway. How do you call those fancy guards? Congee airs? Con Sea Urgs? Anyway, through the windows, some of those apartments seem nice. I think—hey! Watch it, asshole!" She shook her fist at a car that sprayed them with mud, then turned back toward Marco. "I think we might have to expand our search a bit. Come on. I see a subway station. Let's see where it'll take us."

  She took his hand and pulled him along the sidewalk. Gray sludge—a mix of mud, snow, and ash—was piling up to their knees now. They made it to concrete stairs that delved into a tunnel. They walked downstairs, moving slowly to avoid slipping, and found themselves on a subway platform. Tracks ran to one side, and kiosks and eateries lined the other side.

  Finally they removed their hoods. Marco inhaled deeply. The air bag he had purchased at the spaceport was nearly empty. The air here in the subway was hot and rank, but he breathed it gratefully.

  "One problem," Marco said. "We're out of money. No way to buy subway tokens."

  "Your credit card," Addy said.

  He shook his head. "No can do. They don't accept it." He pointed at a box selling tokens. "See the sign? Cash only."

  Addy stared, then cursed. She spat. She pounded the wall. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She let out a loud groan. "Fine." She reached into her pocket, then pulled out an embroidered coin purse.

  Marco's eyes widened. "Addy! You carry a coin purse? Like a little old lady?" He gasped. "And look! It's embroidered with little flowers!"

  "Your face is going to be embroidered with my fist!" Addy growled. "This coin purse belonged to my grandmother." She clicked it open, stared inside, and sighed. "And these coins, they . . ." She sighed and wiped her eyes, which were suddenly red. "Ah, fuck it." She walked toward the token machine, shoved the coins in, and subway tokens spilled out. "There, now we can ride."

  A train trundled down the tracks, the same kind of subway train Marco remembered from his childhood on Earth—an old, clunky design, more rust than metal. Its cars displayed the symbol of Chrysopoeia, a snake eating its tail. The doors creaked, jammed, and Marco had to tug them open. He and Addy stepped into the cabin.

  Two tattered seats were still free. Marco and Addy sat, knees pressed together. Paper cups, old newspapers, candy wrappers, an old sock, and other junk covered the floor, half-buried in muck the commuters dredged in. A bearded, skeletal man sat across from them, wrapped in a tattered blanket that barely hid his naked, wrinkled body. Nearby sat a careworn woman in a long coat, holding a wilted rose, only two blackened petals remaining. She raised the flower to her nose, inhaled, and smiled wistfully. A man sat by her, arguing with an invisible presence, pounding his fists against his knees. An obese woman, so large Marco was surprised she had squeezed through the doors, occupied two seats, wearing a tattered dress, her belly spilling out and dangling between her knees.

  Marco and Addy sat silently.

  Exiled from Earth for panhandling, the man with no teeth had said.

  Marco looked around him, and he saw the poorest members of humanity. The mentally ill. The hungry. The homeless. A cadaverous woman with needle marks on her arms. A man whose clothes were held by tape. A man holding a paper bag full of empty booze bottles. A naked man wrapped in a tattered blanket, his eyes sunken, his beard long. Beggars, junkies, alcoholics. The wretched, the miserable.

  Exiles? Marco thought. Earth's unwanted? Or refugees who had come here with dreams, like Addy and me, who withered away?

  Still he did not dare speak. Addy sat at his side, silent, staring at her knees. This subway cabin was, Marco thought, the saddest place he had ever seen.

  The train screeched to a halt, and the doors opened, jammed again. Marco and Addy stepped out onto another platform.

  They stood for a moment under flickering neon light.

  "Addy," Marco said, needing to talk about something else, to stop thinking of the poor souls he had seen on the subway. "Those coins. The ones in your mother's purse. You started to say something about them. Before the train arrived."

  "Forget it, Emery," she said. She almost never called him that; it was strange to hear her speak his surname. "Come on. Let's go back aboveground. Maybe this neighborhood will be better. And maybe the storm is dying down."

  They grabbed a folding map from a stand, showing many subway stops scattered across Haven, this colony of five million people. Marco also grabbed a tourist brochure. It proudly announced that Haven was turning one hundred Earth years old, and that celebrations would be held across the colony. Judging by the brochure's date, Marco and Addy had missed the festivities by three years.

  "A hundred and three years," Marco said as they climbed a staircase, heading back toward the surface.

  "And I don't think they updated a damn thing since year one," Addy said. She cringed as a rat the size of the late Sergeant Stumpy scuttled by, then vanished into the shadows. "Ugh, space rats."

  They emerged back onto the surface. The rain had died down, but clouds still hid the sky, and ash coated the ground. The air still stank, burning Marco's throat, and he felt lightheaded until he placed his hood back on.

  He looked around and cringed.

  "Well, at least there are no guards outside the buildings here," he said.

  Addy nodded. "Of course not. They'd get shot."

  If before they had walked through an expensive area of the colony, here was decay such as Marco had rarely seen on Earth. Rust coated the buildings. Graffiti covered walls. Gangs of youths sat on fences and stairwells, breathing through thin plastic masks, their skin exposed to the harsh elements, withered and covered with boils. Marco couldn't see a single person without a gun, knife, or leashed pit bull.

  "Uhm . . . how about we try the next stop?" Marco said, suddenly missing his assault rifle.

  Addy nodded. "I like the way you think."

  They headed back down into the tunnel. They inserted another token, crossing the barrier to the tracks. They climbed into another subway and rode on.

  Posters hung from the subway car's walls, coated with graffiti. One poster asked for donations for a homeless shelter. Another
gave the address of the shelter, offering a bed for the night. A third poster advertised a strip club, while a fourth showed passengers what drugs did to their teeth. Below the posters sat dozens of commuters, staring ahead blankly. A hefty, elderly woman held plastic bags full of clothes. A massive, burly man—his steroids must have been on steroids—stroked his yellow handlebar mustache, his bare arms covered with tattoos. Two children, brother and sister by the looks of them, huddled in a corner, dressed in rags. Both children were missing their arms. A man was swaying down the car, broken bottle in one hand, shouting about how he was going to stab his wife. A handful of passengers were well dressed—a couple men in jackets and ties, three women in high heels and power suits—but they stood apart from the others, not seeming to notice them.

  "What happened to this place?" Addy said softly. "These are the colonies. The best of humanity should be here, but most of these people seem . . . not just poor, but hopeless. Their eyes are dead."

  "I don't know," Marco said. "Maybe the war against the scum impoverished the colonies. Maybe this was a penal colony, and all the unwanted from Earth were sent here to rot. Or maybe it's a big city, and we can still find those green places, those streets with puppies and trees and hockey on the driveways."

  Addy sucked her teeth. "I miss home. Marco, were we idiots?"

  "No. Addy, what did we have back on Earth? Our library was demolished. We had no jobs, no home—and don't say Stooge's couch! Never War wanted to toss us into prison for war crimes, the media portrayed us as Nazis, and the actual Nazis were worshiping us. Look, Ads. We're immigrants here. Immigrants have it rough at first. We'll work our way up. With a little elbow grease, a little can-do attitude, we'll find those watercolor homes from the magazines."

  "What if they don't exist?" Addy whispered.

  "Then we'll build them," Marco said.

  For a moment they were silent, waiting for a drum player to walk by, collecting coins.

  "Marco, what if there's no more place for us in civilian life?" Addy said. "They took us into the army as kids. We were eighteen. Just fucking kids. For five years, we were soldiers. What if that's all we know how to be? What if we just can't be civilians anymore? What if we . . . just go back to the army? Maybe they'll let us back in."

  "You're talking like a prisoner who can't survive on the outside anymore," said Marco.

  "That's how I feel. Poet, for a year I fought the scum. Then for four years, I trained recruits to be soldiers. And it sucked. It sucked sweaty scum balls. But it was better than this." She swept her arm across the decaying subway car.

  Marco looked at his fellow passengers. The poor, the ill, the refugees, the hopeless. Old. Weary. Some without masks or hoods, consumed with disease, the toxic air of this world eating away at their lungs. And among them . . .

  Marco's heart burst into a gallop.

  It's her.

  The girl from the alleyway. She sat at the end of the subway car, wreathed in shadows. A girl in a tattered, ashy dress. With long black hair. With three fingers on each hand, tipped with claws, resting on her lap. She raised her head and looked at him. A girl in a kabuki mask, barely there at all. As the subway raced forward, the dim lights of the tunnel streamed across her, until with a screech the train reached another station. Fluorescent lights bathed the car, banishing the shadows.

  The girl vanished.

  Marco rubbed his eyes.

  He was going crazy, had to be. He wanted to tell Addy what he had seen, but she would only mock him, say he was missing Lailani or seeing anime girls move in posters again.

  "Come on, Poet, another stop." Addy grabbed his hand and pulled him off the subway.

  They kept traveling, stop by stop, exploring each neighborhood. They found a square where neon lights advertised strip clubs, where prostitutes prowled the street like stray cats, hissing through oxygen masks. At another stop, they found a closed mental institution, its windows boarded up and its walls splattered with graffiti, and along the sidewalk paced a hundred bewildered, sniffing, weeping, shouting, laughing, mumbling people. A third stop took them to chimneys pumping out smoke, hammers clanging, drills drilling, and the stench and sound of industry. At another stop—a hundred people lining the street, clad in rags, waiting for a soup kitchen to open.

  Finally they could bear their hunger no longer. At a rundown stop, they walked down a tunnel that branched off into several subterranean roads. Local businesses crowded the tunnels: second-hand electronic shops, stalls selling pirated movies, spice shops offering everything from cardamom to cocaine, and local eateries. They stepped into several restaurants, only to flee from owners shouting, "Cash only!" Finally Marco and Addy found a Chinese place that accepted credit. The menu was in Cantonese, and the staff could not speak a word of English, but Marco pointed at a roast duck in the window. "This."

  "It's hopeless," Addy said as they ate. "Whatever neighborhood we explore, it's either a slum or a guarded community."

  Marco swallowed a bite of duck. It was mostly fat, skin, and bone, but it was heavenly. Finally a bit of joy here in these tunnels of despair. As he ate, he examined the massive, folding map of Haven he had picked up at the spaceport. There were two parts to this city. One side of the map showed Haven aboveground. The other side showed the network of tunnels, some for subways, others for businesses, that sprawled below. Both cities were of equal size, one rising into the storm, the other delving underground.

  "Look, Addy." He trailed his finger along the map toward its edge. "See these roads? They lead beyond the map. To the suburbs." He nodded. "That's where the nice stuff is, where we'll find those houses with the yards and puppies."

  "And hockey in the driveway?" Addy said.

  "Presumably." Marco took another bite of duck. He wiped sauce off his chin. "But the subways don't go there. I bet that's where the rich people of Haven live. Here, the inner city—this is where the refugees, the outcasts, the ill, the unwanted, this is where they end up. Some were banished from Earth. Others fled, nothing left for them at home. Maybe a handful of rich people live here, but they live high in their ivory towers, hidden behind guards. Most people with money don't live where we are now. They live beyond the map."

  "Or maybe there's nothing beyond the map but giant alien slugs," Addy said.

  "Then they wouldn't build highways there." Marco gestured back at the map. "See? Highways leave this city."

  "I think," Addy said, "that it's time to get hitchhiking."

  For hours, they stood on the roadside, wearing their atmosuits, thumbs sticking out. The storm lashed them with hot ash, with sticky rain, with wind that cut through their suits.

  Cars raced by, splashing them with mud.

  A few taxis rolled to a stop.

  "The burbs?" one driver said, then barked a laugh. "We ain't allowed in there. Private property. I can take ya as far as the potash quarry, if you like."

  "Fuck!" Addy said as they stood on the roadside, sopping with mud and ash and putrid water. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. The burbs may as well be another planet."

  "We could try walking," Marco said.

  "For what?" Addy shook her head. "What do you think they'll do up there, if they see two miserable, homeless bums show up on their nice streets? Call the cops, that's what. And we'll end up in the same trouble. Nothing's waiting for us in the burbs, Poet. Private property. And we own nothing." She stomped off the roadside, dragging him with her, into a cluttered alleyway filled with the homeless. "Look around you, Poet. Look at them. Drug addicts. Traumatized veterans. The lowest of the low. That's us. That's all we are now."

  "That's not what we are." Marco glared at her through the raining ash. "Addy, we fought the scum on Abaddon. We won the war. We're worth something."

  Behind her visor, her tears were falling. "We were worth something in the army. Not here. We don't know how to be civilians." She sat down in the sludge.

  Marco growled. He grabbed her. He yanked her up. "No, Addy. No!" He pulled her away from the alley, past the roll
ing bottles of booze, the needles, the human waste. "No. You will not give up. Not so soon. We are fighters. This is just another war. A war we will win. We beat worse than this. Does Haven have aliens with claws? Scum queens birthing alien warriors? Plasma cannons? Come on. We've faced worse than this."

  "What do we do, Marco?" They walked down a street lined with ten-story buildings. The sun was setting, and only a few scattered street lamps turned on, barely visible through the haze. "How do we survive this?"

  "First we find shelter for the night. Tomorrow we'll find an apartment to rent. Just short term. Then we'll find work. Then I'll publish my books. Then we'll be rich. Then we'll move up to those burbs, Ads. I promise you." He cursed his tears. "I promise."

  They explored the streets, seeking shelter, until they found a staircase leading into a tunnel. The subway platform was silent, the trains shut down for the night. Somewhere in these shadows, a man was laughing, cursing, then snoring.

  Marco and Addy sat on a bench, shivering. A gunshot sounded somewhere above, or maybe just a breaking bottle, followed by screams, then finally silence. Marco and Addy could not sleep. They sat in silence, holding each other, until the trains rumbled again at dawn.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "Stealth mode . . . fixed." Noodles leaned back in his seat, placed his feet on the dashboard, and wove his fingers together behind his head. "Am I good? I'm good."

  "Get your feet off my control panel," Kemi said. "This is the bridge of the HDFS Saint Brendan, not your mother's basement."

  "What's the matter, sweetheart?" Noodles blew her a kiss. "You need to dust?"

  Kemi raised her metal fist. "I'll need to punch my metal fist through your mouth if you don't shut it."

  "Soldiers, silent!" Ben-Ari said. She leaned forward, examining the monitors. Noodles seemed to be right. Once more, they were flying in stealth mode. Behind them, only a few million kilometers away, the enemy ships were still following, displayed as green dots on their screens. "Lieutenant, adjust our course. Let's see if they follow."