Huntress

by Christine Warren, Marjorie Liu, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclaine

  So Maggie waited, clear-eyed and tense, until the man finally backed away, around the gate. She followed at a safe distance, walking down the short, overgrown drive toward the cracked paved road. Watching him carefully. Finding it hard to determine his age. He had flawless skin, as though he had never spent a day beneath the sun, and he was effortlessly graceful—footsteps light as air. He did not move like the men from Olo or other Enclaves, whose feet seemed to be part of the earth; and as solid. Watching him made her afraid, but she spied a glint of silver through the young oaks, and then passed around the bend and saw the machine that the man had brought to be fixed.

  It was a motorcycle. Maggie had never seen one in real life; only in bits and pieces, wreckage, bent scrap; and in pictures from magazines. Like comparing paintings to fossils. But this was real. Onyx, obsidian, made of night; metal polished and shining like some reckless mirage of the past. For the second time since the man’s arrival, Maggie stopped breathing. She would never breathe again, if it would keep the machine genuine, and whole.

  “Oh, my,” she said, unable to look away—knees locked, heart racing. Aware, dimly, that she deserved what she got if the stranger decided to take advantage of her distraction with a good wallop over her head.

  He remained near the motorcycle, though, regarding her with a thoughtfulness that continued to unnerve. Sunlight splashed against his hair and clothing, but only served to make him seem more like a shadow.

  “It is a small problem,” he said, his voice a slow rumble; a rubbing purr against the air. “A torn tire, and nothing more. But I am … far from my tools.”

  Far from home, she imagined he would say instead. Far from everything known.

  “You need a replacement,” she replied, finally looking past the dazzle of chrome to find the ripped tread, so badly torn that there was little doubt he had lost most of the tire while moving at some considerable speed. “I have something.”

  “And is it right?” asked the man. “Will you serve me well?”

  An odd question—or perhaps just odd phrasing—but it irritated Maggie, and before she could stop herself, she replied tartly, “If you plan on paying.”

  A cold smile touched his mouth, and though the road was bright, the sky blue, and the morning sun shining, the light seemed to dim around him for just a moment; and the spring chill worsened with a snarl of wind.

  He reached inside his jacket and then held out his hand. Small flecks of color sparkled against his gloved palm: rubies, emeralds, diamonds. Gemstones. Or plastic. No way to know for certain, though Maggie couldn’t imagine anyone parting with the real thing. Not for a tire.

  Maggie did not touch the jewels, afraid that doing so would constitute a sealed bargain. She studied them from a distance, marveling at their glitter, but finally shook her head.

  “I have no use for them,” she told the man.

  “Then, what?” he asked dangerously. “What do you want?”

  “My life,” she said, without thinking—and froze in embarrassment, and fear. But the words slipped off her tongue, and could not be taken back. Part of her wanted to say them again, louder. My life. Do not take my life.

  Maggie thought he might. She thought he would be able to, if he wanted, no matter how fast she moved, or how hard she fought. He had a way about him.

  A cold gleam filled his eyes. “I heard of you. Miles away, I heard of you. The woman who fixes machines. But you are more than that, I think.”

  “Am I?” asked Maggie carefully. “Where did you come from, that you heard such things?”

  But the man did not answer her. He hid away the gems inside his leather coat, and inclined his head so that his long hair fell around his pale face, sharpening and hiding his features until he resembled a fox more than a man—nothing but a pointed chin, high cheekbones, and eyes that glinted golden. Maggie found herself unable to look away from his eyes, and though he studied nothing but her face, she felt as if he was all over her, touching her body in places she did not want to be touched.

  “Your life,” he said. “I believe that will be an interesting trade.”

  And then he moved—blindingly quick—and kissed her mouth. Maggie could not fight him. He was too strong. His lips were cold as ice—so cold, dunking her face into a raging winter river might have felt warmer—and in one dizzying moment it seemed as if all the air in her lungs was sucked away, and she was drowning. She screamed, but heard her voice only in her head. She tasted blood.

  The man let go. Maggie fell, hitting the road with a grunt, sledgehammer clattering. She stayed on the ground, sprawled on her side, unable to move or lift her head. Paralyzed, drained into boneless exhaustion, trapped; and when warmth oozed unexpectedly through her lower stomach, followed by a stroke of blinding pleasure, she still could not react beyond a startled, sharp inhalation.

  Her vision blurred, back-scuffed boots edged close to her face, and a pale hand touched the pavement. Hair brushed her burning cheek.

  “Rest,” he whispered.

  Maggie growled, furious, struggling to move. Her pinky twitched, but that was all, and a terrible feeling of helplessness cut through her anger. Fear filled her, growing until she could barely remember her own name. He had poisoned her, Maggie thought, heart hammering. Poison on his lips. Poison somewhere.

  The man walked away without a backward glance, and was gone a long time: until the sun rose to midday, and she glimpsed turkey vultures winging high overhead. He returned lugging a tire and some of her tools. Everything exactly as she would have chosen.

  He worked quickly to fix his motorcycle, ignoring her efforts to move, and only when he was done, and she was propped up on her elbows, sweating and nauseous, did he look down at her from astride his machine. Shadow rider, shadow steed.

  He tossed her lug wrench into the grass beside her. “You have your life. For now. But you waste it in this place, little one. You waste more than you realize.”

  Maggie gave him the most hateful stare she could muster, which only made him smile.

  “Kit with claws,” he murmured. “We will see if we cannot make you a lioness.”

  And then he did something with his feet and hands—kicked and twisted—and the motorcycle roared to life with a wild, deafening, thunderous growl; a glorious, wicked sound that fell through Maggie’s bones into her blood, and burned her heart with envy. A black cloud erupted from a chrome pipe, and the man threw back his head, laughing. Maggie’s fingers dug into the cracked pavement, reaching for the sledgehammer.

  “I am Irdu,” he told her, baring his white teeth, which suddenly appeared quite sharp. “Remember that.”

  His tires squealed with magnificent power, engine roaring, and then he was gone—the growls of the motorcycle drowning Maggie’s own sounds of frustration. And yet she watched that machine fly down the road—watched it for as long as she could—and even when it disappeared, its sleek metal body felt more real than the man; like freedom and thunder, and all the perfect beauty that humankind had once held at its fingertips, and taken for granted, and lost in blood.

  But where did he get the gasoline? Maggie wondered suddenly.

  She was still lying there, thinking about that, when the Junk Woman found her.

  TWO

  The Junk Woman was the oldest woman Maggie had ever known—well ripened, well done, and well wrinkled at the ancient age of seventy-three. She was a “crusty broad” (her words) who had once, long ago, driven a massive sixteen-wheeler across the country, hauling freight for a corporation that made toilet paper and diapers. She had been in Mexico during the first outbreak of the hanta-bola pox—gone into the hills to find herself (and maybe some gold treasure her daddy had told her about)—and by the time she’d come out, the world had changed.

  Maggie heard the mules first, the steady clip-clop of their hooves on the old road; and then the jangle of loose metal and bells, and the creak of the axles beneath the wagon. A loud voice sang out about darlings and Clementines, and then the melody shifted into a
hearty braying rendition of “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which Maggie was convinced should have stayed dead with the other 70 percent of humanity.

  But a thrill of relief passed through her, wild and heady, and she managed to finally sit up as the wagon came into view. Her head hurt, and she spit into the grass, trying to rid her mouth of the taste of blood and ash, and dirty ice. She fumbled for the sledgehammer and the lug wrench, and ignored the tattered remains of the torn motorcycle tire, which the man had tossed aside with no reverence whatsoever.

  A horn squawked—a fat sound, repeated in three short bursts—followed by a hoarse, “Haylooo, Maggie!”

  Maggie raised her hand, waving weakly as the old woman stood up in the wagon, reins held tight in her brown leathery hands. She wore patched denim overalls, and a puffy black coat made of synthetic cloth that was leaking its stuffing at the elbows. A green knit cap covered her head, and two long white braids framed a fine-boned face that might have been pretty once, but had been hardened by sun and wind, and death. Silver glinted against her throat; a bundle of shark’s teeth, capped in the precious metal and dangling from a thick chain.

  Maggie’s gaze skimmed over the flatbed wagon with its large rubber wheels, and salvaged junk glinting through holes in the bolted tarp. Unable to help herself, even now, from wondering what treasures might be hidden beneath. Crazy, her granddaddy would have said, and Maggie would have agreed. She forced a lopsided smile as the Junk Woman reined in the team of mules, popped the wagon brake, and hopped down off the rig and came running.

  “Hell,” muttered the old woman, stopping short to shield her eyes and stare. “Tell me the motherfucker who did this to you is missing his nuts.”

  “Not quite,” said Maggie dryly. “Nice to see you, Trace.”

  She grunted, and slapped her hand around Maggie’s wrist, hauling backward. It took a couple tries, but the younger woman finally rocked upward onto her feet, swaying unsteadily.

  Trace slung her sinewy arm around Maggie’s waist. “You hurt? Broken?”

  “Just my pride,” she replied, comforted by the solid, strong warmth of familiar arms. “I thought there were weeks left before you’d come back up this way.”

  Again, the old woman grunted. She could hold an entire conversation without saying a word, just by the tilt of her eyebrows and the small soft sounds her throat produced.

  Words are worthless for everything that matters, she had once told Maggie. But a little bit of silence can say it all. And what Maggie was hearing now in Trace’s silence was nothing short of uneasiness.

  The old woman eyed the sledgehammer, and the other scattered tools. “Let me get you to the house. I’ll come back for those.”

  Maggie almost protested, but she shut her mouth when Trace shot her a sharp look, focusing instead on her footing, as she carefully walked up the drive to the junkyard gate. The short distance made her breathless, and she swallowed hard against the bad taste in her mouth. When she was eight, her granddaddy had traded big for a case of old-time Coca-Cola, and for more than a year the two of them had stretched out that fizzy sugar water. Maggie wished she had some now.

  She wanted to sit down in the dirt, maybe close her eyes and rest a spell, but once they were on the other side of the gate, bells chiming along the barbed wire, Trace said, “Tell me.”

  “There was a motorcycle,” Maggie replied.

  Trace blinked, turning slowly to stare, her expression curiously empty. After waiting in vain for the old woman to say something—anything—Maggie went on from start to finish, fighting to keep the tremble in her knees from spreading to her voice.

  She left out the kiss, though. She did not share the man’s name, either—or what he had said to her. It was too embarrassing, and more than she wanted to say out loud.

  In the end, Trace did little more than grunt, her gaze downcast and thoughtful as she fingered the shark teeth hanging around her neck.

  “Well?” asked Maggie, leaning her elbows against the rails of the fence. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” replied the old woman. “And if you see that man again, don’t go lusting after his motorcycle ’fore you bust his brains in with that hammer of yours.”

  Maggie shook her head. “You should have seen that machine.”

  Trace rolled her eyes. “Seen ’em plenty, ’fore you were born. Rode ’em once or twice. Just a way of getting around, Maggie Greene. Nothing worth losing your life over. And,” she added, “leave it to you to care more about metal than about losing your life to a dangerous man.”

  “I am what I am,” Maggie replied, which was something her granddaddy had been fond of saying.

  And that’s all I am, he would have added.

  Trace frowned, tugging one of her thick white braids. Her dark eyes glinted, as though sparked with sunlight. “Long dark hair, you say? Lily white skin, like a corpse?”

  “Cold like one, too,” Maggie said, before she could stop herself.

  Trace’s gaze snapped up. “Didn’t say he touched you.”

  Heat warmed Maggie’s face. “Briefly. It’s how I got … knocked down.”

  Anger flittered through the old woman’s gaze. “And he came here … looking just for you.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said uneasily, and pushed herself away from the fence. “Come on, I’m fine. And if he comes back, I’ll be ready.”

  Trace yanked her braid even harder, her other hand tightening around the shark teeth. Maggie tried not to squirm under her sharp gaze, which suddenly felt more intimidating than any strange motorcycle man.

  “We’ll see,” the old woman said ominously, and raked her gaze down Maggie’s body. “You’ve lost weight. Promised your granddaddy I would make sure you stayed strong, and here you are, wasting away.”

  Maggie blinked, struggling with the change of subject. “You gained some, looks like.”

  Trace grunted. “Found a gentleman down South. Old Mississippi, if you can imagine it on that antique map of yours. He lives near the coast, in Arbo Enclave. Fat, sassy man who makes the meanest, hottest gumbo I ever found.” She paused. “I think you should come with me, next trip down. You’d like him. And you’d like it there.”

  Maggie looked down at her boots. “I wish you’d stop asking me to leave home.”

  “Gah.” Trace waved her hand, turning in a slow circle to survey the junkyard. “Young people need to see a bit of the world. You, Maggie, you see it all up here, with your books.” She tapped her head with one long brown finger. “But words aren’t living.”

  “I’m happy,” she protested.

  “You’re a hard girl to bring down,” Trace agreed. “But think about it. You come with me, it’s not permanent. Just a season, on the road.”

  It was a familiar speech, but there was an urgency in her voice that was different, and that made the hairs on Maggie’s arms rise.

  “Trace,” she said carefully, “forgetting, for a moment, what just happened … is there something else wrong you’re not telling?”

  The old woman’s expression turned grave and quiet. Maggie stood very still, watching her. The last time she had seen this look had been months after her grandfather’s funeral, when Trace had returned from her road trip and discovered that her friend was dead.

  “Things are changing,” she finally said quietly. “I can taste it. Life was bad after the Big Death, but folks with common sense stepped in and life smoothed out into something I never expected. Peaceful, Maggie. We got peace in place of death.”

  “You’re saying that’s no longer the case?”

  Trace gave her a sharp worried look. “I’m saying I’ve heard rumors, strange ones, and I don’t know—”

  She never finished. A bundle of black feathers tumbled from the sky, landing roughly on her shoulder. Maggie jumped backward, alarmed, but Trace, aside from a slight flinch and the raising of her eyebrows, seemed none too surprised by the creature suddenly perched on her.

  Maggie
stared. “You have a crow on your shoulder.”

  The bird tilted its head, meeting her gaze. Trace shrugged—carefully. “He found me near one of the old city forests, not long ’fore I entered Tennessee. I think he was lonely.”

  Maggie made a small, non-committal sound—because that was what one did when old women said that crows were lonely. Although, there was something about the bird that seemed odd—and not just because it had attached itself to a human, out of the blue. She stepped closer, peering at the crow, and felt herself examined in turn, sharply. Maybe too sharply. She felt dizzy, her vision blurring. Again, blurring.

  “Maggie,” Trace said, touching her shoulder. “Maggie, girl. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she mumbled, blinking hard. Her dizziness faded. So did her blurred eyesight, though the morning sunlight suddenly seemed too bright, glaring against the old junk and metal heaped around the yard. Everything hurt to look at: the gutted rusting cars, the iron rails, oil drums filled with the detritus of decades past, toasters, hair dryers, television sets, and cell phones. The useful components had already been removed, and what remained suddenly looked less like poetry to Maggie (poetry being the myths that people created) and more like trash.

  It unsettled Maggie to feel that way; and it saddened her, too. She liked fiddling with relics from the past. She liked making up stories about objects that had been treasured not so long ago. It made her feel closer to her parents, long dead from the hanta-bola pox. Made her feel close to her granddaddy, too, who had happened to be looking after her when her folks got caught up in the city outbreaks. He had been gone now for five years, taken by the influenza.

  “Come on,” Trace said gently. “You head in. I’ll take care of my babies, but after that, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  Maggie said nothing, just started walking through the junkyard to the old farmhouse. She looked back once, watching Trace stride down the drive to the road, and saw the crow perched now on the gate, staring back at Maggie. It had a peculiar gaze. She felt assessed and judged all in the same moment, and it made her skin crawl—but in a different way than it felt with the motorcycle man. She was not afraid of the crow. His presence seemed to tickle memories in her brain. Like dreams, forgotten.