The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  Badger noticed the silver thumb-spikes on each of Darius’s gloves and smiled. Darius saw the change in her expression and clicked the spikes together.

  “Admiring these? I have to thank you for what you did. You probably think you hurt me in the worst way any man can be hurt, by removing his manhood. It’s exactly the opposite, I’m happy to say. My mind is free of the constant cycle of desire and I’ve gained a fearsome reputation. Upon my return to the capital I’ll be a battle-scarred veteran of the northern frontier, an experienced diplomat, and expert on the machinery we’ve found. If you and Wilson had simply escaped without disfiguring me I’d have written off the pair of you and been done with it. As they say, what goes around comes around. Although it’s a cliché, in this situation it’s a delicious one so allow me to say that life is one gigantic circle.”

  A young tribal girl appeared in the corridor with a bowl of soup in her hands, and Darius waved her inside.

  “See if she’s hungry,” he said.

  The girl stepped onto the blue tiles of the shower room. Trying not to look at Badger, she held up a spoonful of stew.

  The smell of venison and carrot hit her and Badger shook her head desperately, her stomach pulsing in her throat.

  “Just a little bit,” said Darius happily.

  Badger turned her head and vomited a white stream onto the tiles. The tribal girl stumbled away with a clatter of plates.

  “Just like I thought,” said Darius.

  The Consul shook her head. “You’re a cruel, cruel man.”

  “The machine said she was pregnant but I had to be certain.” He licked his lips again. “That’s one more life she’ll do anything to save.”

  Badger spit across the room but the white glob only made it as far as Darius’s boot.

  He beamed. “That’s the spirit!”

  DARIUS APPARENTLY DIDN’T THINK she would give him the door code and left without even pulling a fingernail. A pair of tribal girls helped Badger down from the wall and dressed her in warm clothing.

  The soldiers chained her hands behind her back and shoved her into a storage room. The stained concrete cube was bare apart from a pitcher of water, bedroll, and a bucket. When a soldier shut the door all light snuffed out completely, as if it had never existed. Badger kicked the bedroll against the wall and sat on it.

  The wedding bracelet still circled her left wrist but the skin underneath felt raw, like someone had tried to twist it off. She wondered if she’d dreamed the voice in her head. Could a gas make you hear things?

  “Talk to me,” she whispered.

  Nothing but muffled sounds came from the corridor.

  “I need help,” she said.

  The walls brightened in a cascade of white and yellow light, and the same male voice threaded a needle between her ears.

  “Owner Name, do you require assistance?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Owner Name, I am Huawei EcoPhone Model Three B Serial Number 3302713A––”

  “Stop,” whispered Badger. “What’s a Huawei?”

  “Owner Name, Huawei Corporation is a global manufacturer of consumer electronics based in Sunnyvale, California. As the largest contractor to the Department of Defense––”

  “Can you stop calling me Owner Name?”

  “Yes––would you like to change your Owner Name?”

  “Of course,” Badger hissed.

  “Speak your name, please.”

  “Kira.”

  “Owner Name has been changed to Kira.”

  Badger sighed. “What’s an EcoPhone?”

  “Kira, thank you for your purchase of an EcoPhone Model Three with an updated array of chips for expand social media connectivity and faster word recognition. The improved fuel cell design means longer talk time and even less water needed for battery recharge. With quad-net access and a wide-spectrum radio––”

  “I think ‘water’ was the only word I understood. Can you speak English?”

  “Do you wish to change your language?”

  “No,” said Badger. “I must have smashed my head on a rock because I’m talking to myself.”

  “Do you require medical assistance?”

  “How can you help me?”

  “In case of emergency, Kira, I can dial 911 to contact the proper authorities.”

  “Yes, whatever that means.”

  “Dialing ... local subnet connection failed. Expanding search ... broadnet connection failed. Expanding search ... 10XG connection failed. Wide-spectrum search ... failed. Satellite search ... failed.”

  “That’s a lot of failure, Mister EcoPhone.”

  “My apologies, Kira. No networks are available. Please move outdoors or to a higher elevation and try again. If you or a loved one has stopped breathing––”

  Badger smacked the wall with her palm. “Wait––can I talk with Wilson?”

  “No entries in the address book for ‘Wilson.’”

  “The other bracelet. Can you make a network or whatever you call it with his bracelet?”

  “Ecophone includes an exciting new feature called My Crew: a paired local network for family members. Do you wish to search for your Crew or any paired devices?”

  “Yes.”

  “Searching ... no devices found. Please power on the other device. If it is an EcoPhone bracelet, please immerse in sterile water for at least ten seconds. My Crew is not compatible with non-EcoPhone devices.”

  Badger sighed and tapped the back of her head against the wall, over and over.

  THE SURGEON WASHED UP and left the treatment room. He tried to wipe away the dark circles under his eyes.

  Felix, the lead bodyguard for Darius, was in quiet conversation with two other soldiers in the hallway. As the surgeon passed, Felix half-turned.

  “Need an escort, Sal?”

  “No, I’ll be fine.”

  Felix shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  The zig-zag tunnel to Barracks was empty. This late in the evening most of the men would have scurried back to their filthy rooms and even filthier hobbies.

  Sal didn’t like walking alone through the badly-lit tunnels, but he also didn’t like being treated like a child. He’d survived the massacre of East Pea Ridge and fourteen battles. Not just clumps of feathered tribals chucking spears––real battles against armies of desperate men in numbers great enough to cover a lonely Circle outpost like ants on a cube of sugar. He hadn’t survived all that just to be scared of the dark.

  Darius scared him, though, and not because he was violent. Sal had served in a royal household and seen his share of mayhem and murder. No, he scared Sal because he was unbalanced, arrogant, and unpredictable. If the unthinkable happened to Arian Nahid, could he expect Darius to offer a contract? He’d saved the man’s life, a miracle operation, but still––

  Something scraped in the darkness of an abandoned tunnel as Sal passed and he walked faster.

  No, he figured the best insurance policy he had was to keep being useful. It wasn’t hard, given the fact that he was the only doctor in a snowed-in mountain village. If it weren’t for his brains and skill Darius wouldn’t have a dozen soldiers left, but that wasn’t enough. Once the damned winter was over and they got back to the capital he’d ask for a leave of absence from Consul Nahid and disappear. He had enough saved up to take his family south, enough to live comfortably. The machines they’d found here were amazing but the royalty would fight like dogs over the last piece of meat. If there was going to be an outright war among the estates he’d rather be relaxing on the beach.

  He’d followed his father’s advice and become a surgeon, despite the decade of apprenticeship. His friends had earned glory in trading ventures and expanded each disc of the Circle while he practiced on rotting corpses and fell asleep with his face in a book. But after the fall of the regime, the purge, the return and another purge, half of his old schoolmates were dead. His father had been right––they’ll throw children on the fire before they touch a doctor.
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  A scraping gust of fingernails came from behind. Sal turned and saw three pairs of perfect circles. Three massive brown lizards twisted through the dim corridor toward him, bellies on the floor and heads pointed like arrows.

  He ran but knew it wouldn’t matter.

  The first set of teeth stabbed his left calf. He stumbled and smashed his elbows on the hard concrete. The second bite ripped through his shirt and cut to his kidneys.

  A dizzy floor mat of flesh beneath the clawing lizards, Sal thanked the Maker that the poison had already started to work.

  THE LIGHT PANELS IN THE WALL sputtered with three flashes, then again a few seconds later.

  The guard ignored the crackle and continued to write his letter. The fact that he could write at all, even with such a crude, blocky script, always bothered Yishai.

  He excused himself and left for the toilet. Inside the small closet he pulled out the vial and smeared the toffee-colored liquid over his arms, legs and neck. It stank like goat spit and had the same consistency. Once finished, he put away the empty vial and waited.

  Thumps and muffled screams came from the hallway outside the door. The guard looked up and ink dribbled from his pen.

  Three shots cracked in the corridor. Low caliber, Yishai thought. Probably the pistols carried by the Circle.

  The guard dropped his paper on the bed and hurried to the door, the pen in his hand dripping a trail of black dots.

  “Help ...” whispered a hoarse voice in the dialect.

  The guard began to unclasp the line of metal locks. As soon as he finished, the door snapped open violently and smashed him across the room into a tangled, unconscious pile.

  Mast stood in the doorway with a knife, his face and skin smeared with the stinking brown goo.

  Yishai saw a pair of huge range lizards in the corridor behind Mast.

  He pointed. “Look out!”

  The reptiles ignored Mast and spurted out of view, tails scraping from side to side.

  Mast spread his brown-stained hands. “They hate the smell.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Yishai, shaking his head.

  “No time to debate about it.” Mast pointed at the guard on the floor. “Want me to take care of him?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Yishai took the guard’s knife and stabbed him in the side of the neck, below the ear. The soldier gasped twice and stopped moving.

  Mast handed him a pistol belt. “Take this and come on.”

  In the corridor a three-meter lizard chewed on the arm of a Circle trooper. It hissed at Yishai for a second then jerked away.

  Mast and Yishai followed the noise of gunfire as they ran through the twisting corridors. They passed scattered bodies of Circle troops and a few lizards sprawled in the agony of death.

  The booming of rifles and pistols increased in volume as they approached the secondary entrance to the rectory. The metal hatch was open and a dead soldier lay halfway inside, the squished mass of his ribcage keeping the door open. Inside, Carter and Robb had taken cover in one of the storerooms.

  Blood-covered bodies of lizards and soldiers lay tangled on the floor of the rectory corridor. A gray-blue haze dulled the air. Everything stank of blood and lizard feces.

  “Get back,” yelled Carter.

  A bullet spat by Mast and Yishai and they both squeezed into the storeroom.

  “We have to take Reed’s office,” hissed Mast. “Nothing else matters!”

  Carter wiped grit from his eyes. “I know, but there’s still a few left.”

  “And none of my lizards,” said Robb, sadly.

  Mast pointed at Carter. “Which room?”

  “The old meeting room.” Carter pulled back the bolt of his rifle and loaded another round. “At the end of the corridor.”

  “Fine,” said Mast. “All three of you reload and fire down the right side when I tell you. Follow me after three shots.”

  Mast unbuckled his backpack and took only a tribal two-shot pistol and his knife. He closed his eyes and meditated for a few seconds, his lips moving silently.

  “Now,” he said.

  Carter and Robb leaned out with their rifles and fired at the meeting room. Yishai backed them up with a few thundering rounds from his pistol.

  With an image of the scorching sun in his mind, Mast flew down the left side of the corridor, leaping over the lizard corpses and mauled, green-uniformed bodies of soldiers. He couldn’t hear the bullets but felt the slap of air as they passed him and slammed into the concrete around the open doorway of the meeting room.

  Something flashed from the entrance and struck his left arm like a wooden rafter. Mast dropped his knife and stumbled. His pistol held at arm’s length, he fired at a dark shape beyond the doorway then leaped into a slow-moving human figure. As both flew across the room Mast fired the last round at another shape in the shadows of the meeting room. He crashed into the wall.

  A hand grabbed one arm and slapped his face. “Wake up!”

  Mast shivered. “Office,” he mumbled.

  Carter and Robb pulled him to Reed’s old office. Mast leaned groggily on the desk and tapped through a series of screens. He entered a short command and the rectory vibrated with the sound of slamming metal hatches.

  “Station lockdown,” he said. “Nobody’s leaving and nobody’s getting in.”

  Carter thumped him on the back. “Let’s see if Martinez and the women’s platoon need our help. What’s this? Mast––you’re bleeding!”

  “It’s just my arm. We need to check all the rooms and find Badger. Has anyone seen Darius?”

  “I found something better,” said Yishai from the corridor.

  Mast, Robb, and Carter left the office and watched the big tribal back out of the meeting room, pulling the Consul’s leather-clad body by the legs. Her eyes were closed and a smeared trail of blood led back to the room.

  Mast coughed. “How’s that better? She’s dead.”

  Yishai knelt and touched the Consul’s belly. “No ... this inaĉo is breathing.”

  DARIUS PUSHED BADGER through the old tunnels. The light-band on his head cast garish crimson shadows across the half-collapsed walls.

  Badger’s wrists were bound behind her back and she swayed from side to side as Darius pushed her along. He gripped a revolver in one hand and her arm with the other, steadying the girl so she wouldn’t fall on the uneven tunnel floor.

  “We’re such a lucky pair,” whispered Darius. “Lucky that both of us were caught up in those experiments when the lizards came.” He chuckled. “I say both of us because I don’t want all the credit. You’ve been an exemplary pincushion for the latest mixture of what I hope will be a new type of sedative. The herbal medicines in this village are most interesting.”

  “... babeee ...” said Badger with slurred speech.

  “The fetus will be perfectly fine. I told you that before––if you know anything about me, you know I don’t like to repeat myself. Whoops! Watch out for that drop-off.”

  “ ... kill ... you ...”

  “I’m sure you would, dear, if not for this gun pointed at your ‘babeee.’” He sighed. “If only your friends could have saved you. But all’s well that ends well as they say, and once we reach our destination I’m certain we can negotiate a different outcome.”

  “ ... lost ...”

  “Oh no, certainly not,” said Darius. “I know exactly where I’m going.”

  They arrived at a narrow ladder that disappeared through a round hole in the ceiling. Large black letters spread across the wall nearby: “Maintenance Access––Surface.”

  Darius holstered his revolver. He looped a section of rope under Badger’s arms and behind the back of her neck.

  “Now follow me and be careful.”

  He climbed the narrow ladder, one hand pulling Badger behind him. Her hands were still tied and so she climbed the rungs one at a time. Darius gave her support by pulling up on the rope beneath her arms.

  He pushed on the hatch abo
ve his head and it opened with a squeal of metal. Cold air and the smell of frost poured inside.

  Darius climbed out of the maintenance shaft and pulled Badger up to the frozen concrete of a roofless building. Crimson snow whirled in the beam of the headlight as Darius nudged Badger outside the ruins.

  Tribal voices yelled and a half-dozen red lights bounced over the snow.

  “It’s me, you idiots,” said Darius.

  The Circle troopers lowered their guns.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the nearest.

  “What are you men doing out here?”

  A tall soldier saluted. “We ran out once those monsters started eating people. But the doors slammed shut and we can’t budge any of them.”

  “That’s fine,” said Darius. “All six of you follow me. There’s another way inside.”

  The party trudged northeast through knee-deep, powdery snow to the rusted fence that shrouded the Tombs entrance. Snow-covered steps led down to a trench that ended at a massive reinforced door and keypad. Earth and rock had been shoveled away from the door, exposing a long box of snow-covered concrete.

  “Now dear––what’s the code?”

  “... never ... tell you ...”

  Darius pressed the muzzle of the revolver into Badger’s side. “You’ll survive this, but what about the small one? Think about someone else for a change.”

  Badger sniffed. “555 ... 222 ... 3437.”

  Darius pushed her into the hands of a soldier and punched in the code. With a metallic grind, the door began to open, vibrating the earth beneath their feet.

  “What a good memory,” said Darius. “I hope the child’s as clever as you are.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Villagers clogged the lanes like blood cells in a web of capillaries and pushed irresistibly to a plaza at the heart of the monastery. The toasted garlic smell of fried tofu still hung in the air and mixed with curls of incense from slotted bronze spheres.