Bloodlands

by Christine Cody

  I hunched toward the visz, my heartbeat tapping against my breastbone. Chaplin growled louder at the silhouette on the screen. The guy wore his long hair back, most of it secured into a bun by what looked to be chopsticks.

  “C’mon ot,” the silhouette said, strolling round the area as the camera tracked him. A jangle accompanied every footstep. Clink, clink.

  He was still too far away to recognize in the night vision, and thank-all he wasn’t looking straight into the visz’s lens like visitor number one of the night had done.

  Yet that didn’t mean my defenses went down. I felt the threat of this one in my very cells, which collided and heated up.

  As I got off the couch, Chaplin followed, going to the sleeping stranger’s side as if to guard him. I didn’t have time to ask him why he thought that important. I also had no time to indulge in the disappointment of seeing my dog’s loyalty spread to another.

  For the second time that night, I took out my revolver from its waiting position in my holster, then headed toward the ladder. While passing the visz on the way, I gripped my firearm, palms sweating and—

  Crash!

  I whipped round, my revolver aimed.

  But all I found was Chaplin barking up at the trapdoor as it closed, darkening the empty spot below where the stranger had just been resting.

  3

  Mariah

  I’d thought the stranger was down for the duration. Wrong.

  Darting to the visz bank, I discovered just where he’d gone—to the surface, standing behind the new arrival, shadowing him while he belatedly turned toward the sound of the already-closed trapdoor.

  Obviously the stranger hadn’t been hurt all that much, because there he was on the visz, with his ragged clothing and taut body providing an ominous threat to the unknowing visitor. Even more unsettling was the fact that, although the stranger wasn’t in close range of the camera, his eyes seemed to be shining in the night.

  Belowground, I readied my revolver, my blood racing.

  “Wh’r u?” the intruder asked. Then he stopped, spun round, as if he felt his spine tingling.

  When he found nothing—at least, that was what he probably thought—he walked toward the now-hidden trapdoor. “Whooz thr . . . ?”

  The stranger kept mirroring the guy like a true shadow, and I inched closer to the visz, my heartbeat hammering my lungs flat. But I didn’t let myself panic.

  When the intruder reached for some jagged scrub five feet from the trapdoor, the stranger spoke in Text, stopping the other man.

  “I wodn’t.”

  He sounded strong, but I sensed the effort beneath the words.

  A stretched hesitation marked the reaction of the man with the chopstick hair; I wasn’t even sure whether that pause lasted for a second or a full minute. At any rate, it was enough time for me to realize what was coming next.

  The man with the chopsticks moved his arm, clearly going for a weapon.

  I hitched in a sliver of oxygen, then sprangoward the ladder, not really knowing what I’d do once I got up it.

  The stranger’s voice filtered through the speakers. “I sed stop.”

  His tone halted me cold, turning my veins to lines of ice. The after-slice of his words cut and echoed through me, a shattered whisper.

  On the nearby visz, I saw the new intruder startle to a freeze, too. Nearby, Chaplin’s growls doubled in volume. Dog was pissed.

  As if hearing Chaplin, the stranger’s shadow tilted toward the camera. But he couldn’t have heard. The viszes were one-way hookups.

  In the next moment, he was back to facing the intruder, sauntering closer, leaning toward the man’s ear, whispering.

  I couldn’t hear what he said, but the new guy took off running, jangling madly as his form faded into the darkness.

  Chaplin and I didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, finally, my dog made a hmmm sound. We watched the stranger touch his head, probably to adjust the bandages there, then inspect his hand. Afterward, he stumbled forward, carefully making his way back to the trapdoor.

  Chaplin ran to it, releasing the button to let our guest back in.

  Without ceremony, the stranger made his stiff journey down the ladder, the door closing behind him. Then he fell the rest of the way to his blankets, offering no explanations. Nope, he merely removed his long, beaten coat, then his bag, while his bandages slumped over his forehead. He reached into the carryall.

  Again, I just stood there, brain-fried.

  But that didn’t seem to attract the notice of our guest. He casually went on to extract the flask from the bowels of his bag and gesture to us with the container.

  “Excuse my indulgence.”

  I had to absorb the Old American. Absorb the fact that he could be so nonchalant.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “No expounding on what just happened?”

  He paused, a melancholy look passing over him.

  As sure as the moon had started its waning phase tonight, I wasn’t about to let him off the hook. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he must’ve known I meant real business. I hadn’t saved his hide earlier for him to come in here and toy with me.

  The stranger sent me a lowered glance. “The way you talk . . . I haven’t heard Old American for a while. Haven’t ever seen a real live Intel Dog, either.”

  I was about to ask him why he seemed more comfortable speaking Old American when he continued, just not in the way I would’ve liked.

  “Seeing as our visitor won’t be back tonight,” he said, “I’d like to settle. Talking can follow, if you don’t mind.”

  Oh, so he thought it’d be that easy.

  “Exactly what did you say to make him run off?” I also wanted to ask about his wounds. How was the stranger all of a sudden functioning well enough to be scaring off others?

  He smiled, and it was a sad sort of gesture. But then he winced, holding a hand to a cut near his mouth. I noticed that gash wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d first made it out to be, either.

  Just seeing his injury brought the smell—the nightmare, the adrenald sight—of blood back to me, and I blocked it off again.

  “What I conveyed to him,” the stranger said, undoing the top of his flask, as if resigned to being interrogated for a bit, “is between Chompers and me.” He toasted the pronouncement and took a gulp. When he finished, he closed his eyes, shivering.

  “Chompers,” I said. “Who’s Chompers?”

  “Our flown visitor. That clinking he was making? From some silver-capped teeth strung around his booted ankles. Human teeth, I gather, since animals don’t generally subscribe to that sort of dental work.”

  A chill tumbled down my spine. Even Chaplin began to pant, stressed out by the thought of what kind of creep Stamp employed, if indeed that was who Chompers had been—one of Stamp’s henchmen.

  I reached over to console my dog, but my other hand still held the revolver. In the light of the dwelling’s solar-batteried lamps, I could see that all the stranger’s wounds seemed to be healing quickly.

  What was in that scentless unguent of his?

  “How’d you stalk up behind that man so easily, especially since you could hardly even stand a short time ago?” I asked.

  The stranger shrugged. “I just did it quietly.” He faltered slightly, seeming to lose energy. “Now, if I could . . . ?”

  He gestured to his flask, then swigged another gulp. Again, he quaked in the aftermath, hanging his head to hide his expression.

  Like a genial host, Chaplin trotted over to the stranger and gave him a thankful nudge with his nose. It caused our so-called friend to crash back into his blankets with a grunt.

  “See, here’s someone who understands the beauty of rest,” the stranger said wearily. He closed his eyes.

  “I’m still talking with you.”

  “I’m listening through my eyelids.”

  Chaplin brightly glanced at me, obviously expecting me to enjoy the humor, too. But all I could focus on was my dog’s bright
eyes. Had the stranger brought some kind of crazy bug with him and had Chaplin caught it? Outside held all sorts of dangers and disease that might weaken even an Intel Dog.

  But Chaplin had seemed off before the stranger had actually come into our home, so our guest couldn’t have brought on any kind of bug.

  “I’d like just a few more moments of chatter, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  When the stranger answered, the voice that’d been so persuasive outside had turned to an exhausted whisper. “I understand. You want to know who you’ve taken in.”

  Yeah, and who I’d be throwing out just as soon as I could.

  Chaplin sat on his haunches by the stranger’s side, his long fur like dark root tea in the lamplight. His quick affection might be a show of gratitude for what this man had done with Stamp’s guy, and I should be expressing the same, really. But I could ill afford parlor manners beyond what I’d already extended.

  The stranger’s eyes were still closed, his hands clasped on his chest in ease. “For the record, I’m appreciative of your kindness. Truly. But I’d just like to allow my medicines to get on with healing.”

  A beat passed, heavy with my unanswered questions. Heavy with the look I fd myself running over him, too—a look that made me weaken, my bones starting to turn to something like liquid.

  I went back to pacing my breathing. Hell, it wasn’t as if I’d never been near a man before. It’d just been a while. The attack in Dallas had scarred me in a lot of ways, and I wasn’t used to people anymore.

  As if sensing my interest, he opened his eyes, and I saw the gray of them.

  “I suppose, manners-wise, I should at least offer that my name’s Gabriel.”

  I nodded, hoping he’d go on.

  “Not much else to tell,” he said.

  When he smiled—just a slight, pained gesture with those injury-swollen lips—I swallowed. My mouth had become dry, but not the same dry as outside. Not at all.

  The realization brushed over me with shame, with awareness, with . . . I didn’t want to give name to it. But something lingered in the way he was watching me.

  And what did he see exactly? A tallish twenty-three-year-old woman with red hair sawed off to the jaw by frequent knife cutting for the ease of care, her eyes narrowed in eternal distrust and self-loathing. A flinty hostess sheathed in dusty garb and an impregnable attitude.

  His smile . . . For some reason, I thought it meant that he appreciated the way I looked. It made me want to peer into my rarely used mirror to see what he saw, to discern if I’d changed somehow since the last time I’d checked. It’d been a long time since anyone had told me I was pretty.

  I glanced away from the stranger . . . Gabriel. With harsh reluctance, I tucked my revolver into its holster. Then I fixed my gaze right back on him, letting him know that even though there was one less gun in his face, I’d still have it handy.

  Chaplin woofed softly. He was chiding me for being prickly.

  Hell, since when had he gone lax? Oh, yeah—right when the stranger had shown up.

  “I look forward to the rest of your story, Mr. Gabriel,” I said, prickly indeed.

  “Just . . .” The stranger’s smile disappeared. “. . . Gabriel.”

  “At the risk of keeping you awake, can you at least tell me why you’re in the New Badlands, in the middle of the nowheres? It’s not on many itineraries.”

  He sighed, as if willing to give up this one last inch. “I’ve been passing through what’s left of the States for . . . well, it’d be about twenty-five months now. After everything that’s gone down the last twenty-odd years . . .” He paused. “I lost my family in the epidemic way back when, and though I haven’t been wandering all that long, I never did find any place to root since they died. Not with substitute families, not with anything much.”

  The mosquito epidemic. I softened at this; a lot of people had lost their loved ones then. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Afterward, everything fell apart. But you already know.”

  A burn stung my throat. I knew.

  His words were weighed with something I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I didn’t want to, anyway, since Gabriel wouldn’t be round long enough for it to matter.

  “I guess I’ve been . . . searching . . . for a while, even when I stayed in one place. Now I think I’ve found somewhere quiet—what people call the New Badlands since the original ones were wiped away by that freak earthquake that came before the West Coast attack. I suppose the name of this place had a noble ring to it for me.” Slowly, he slipped his flask into the bag, then kept one hand on it. “But more importantly, I heard there might be a chance for survival and keeping to myself out here.”

  This wasn’t good. The community had taken in stragglers before, but it’d been closed off to any more newcomers for about a year now. Circumstances—our very existences—had . . . well, required it. It didn’t matter if Gabriel turned out to be the greatest man in history or not, he wouldn’t be invited to stay.

  Then the bigger implications of what he was saying barreled into my brain: Just how much had he heard about the New Badlands? How many others out there knew that there were dwellers here, and when would they be coming, too?

  My skin bristled with its hair standing on end. Gabriel. Dangerous.

  I tried to let him know that this was no paradise. “Since word is that the government went bankrupt during all that economic sanction trouble with India, we heard that there haven’t been U.S. satellite sweeps here.” That was the most recent update from the last visitor we had, anyway, but I didn’t want to talk about her. “We heard rumors of mercenary investors from different parts of the globe bailing out our treasury, and we’ve been fearing that the sweeps will start up again.”

  “Those rumors about the investors are true enough, though I don’t know if the government’s secured any satellite coverage.”

  “What I’m saying is that this place probably won’t be any more private than others, come the future.”

  “You’ve remained unscathed,” Gabriel said.

  I wouldn’t get into personal stuff with him. “Supposedly,” I said, still trying to scare him off, “Stamp heard about the so-called serenity, just like you. And the water, too.”

  “Stamp?”

  I nodded. “Johnson Stamp probably sent that goon you just chased away.”

  It looked like Gabriel was turning the name over in his mind. Then he seemed to store it away and move on. “At any rate, I came out here to see if this was what I’ve been needing in life. I might be mistaken, though, based on the trouble that’s already greeted me.”

  “You mean those injuries?” I motioned toward his healing face, injecting the right amount of suspicion into my voice.

  Gabriel nodded, and when Chaplin tilted his head in sympathy, the man laughed, reaching out to pet the dog. Chaplin, of course, reveled in it.

  Affection whore, I thought, trying not to feel envious, because Chaplin had always been my friend.

  “How I got bloodied up is an involved tale.” Gabriel cleared his throat, as if losing the words. “I was only resting out of the sunlight when they found me, just before dark was about to slant down.”

  Folks hardly went outside here without heat suits—which he didn’t seem to own—during the day anymore. The weather could be that hellish, but probably that was why he’d been resting out of the light and traveling by night.

  “The next thing I knew,” he said, “I was yanked out of my cave and roughed up for straying onto someone’s claimed property.”

  “You couldn’t see who it was?”

  “Not with the scarlet in my eyes.”

  The reference to red made me dig my nails into my palms. Blood, attacks. Bad guys everywhere, even in the places you least expected them to be.

  “This stinks of Stamp’s guys,” I said. “Word has it they’ll mess with anyone they find on the surface round here. Their boss doesn’t seem to exercise much control over them.”

&nbs
p; “So you don’t go out there often.” Gabriel was rubbing Chaplin’s neck, bringing the dog to the throes of ecstasy.

  “Only a few of my neighbors do—unless we’re gathered somewhere else.”

  I jerked my chin toward the east wall, where more visz screens showcased the sparse common area in a cavern not far from my home. Everyone had a tunnel leading there, although few had been using them to meet in the open.

  Not until lately.

  Propping himself up to see better, Gabriel stopped petting Chaplin for a moment. The dog scratched out a paw in entreaty, and our guest grinned, then resumed his work, much to the whore’s satisfaction.

  Unable to watch much more, I went over to a screen that showed a middle-aged woman and a stocky, dark-haired man near the same age sitting at a rickety crate table. Zel Hopkins and Sammy Ramos, two fellow Badlanders who’d recently started to venture into the common area since Stamp’s arrival. Unlike with the outside visz lenses, Stamp hadn’t found this secluded gathering spot yet, so Sammy and Zel obviously felt secure in meeting there tonight.

  I turned up the volume; doing so would automatically lower the feeds from the other viszes.

  The sound of chatter emerged from the speaker. Earlier, when I’d been listening in, they’d talked about how one of Stamp’s guys—a spindly-legged youth whom Zel had nicknamed “Twiggy”—had been slaughtered last night. I’d turned down the sound, not wanting to hear more because it revved up something vengeful and bloodthirsty in me.

  Bad guys getting their due. A reckoning. Justice.

  I lowered the volume again. “This is the common area. Back when we all found each other and decided to settle in a tight community, Dad connected viszes to this spot where a few Badlanders used to gather. They stopped meeting for a while”—here, I took care to keep myself controlled and subtle, even if Chaplin lowered his head and averted his gaze from me—“but now people are meandering out again. They’re worried about Stamp moving into the area and letting his wild men run free.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is how I hear the news that goes round.”