by Lee Carlon
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve heard all kinds of crazy stories in the last couple of years. Some people say it wasn’t even the Gods, but who else, what else, could do that?”
Ethan didn’t have any answers, so he kept quiet.
“They must have had a reason, right? What was it? What did we do?” James took a long drink.
“If they had a reason, nobody ever told me,” Ethan said. “The thing that doesn’t make any sense to me is why they’re still at war. There’s almost nobody left, but their Chosen continue to fight their petty wars.”
They sat in silence, passing the bottle back and forth between them.
Back and forth.
Eventually, James asked a question, trying to rekindle his enthusiasm for their conversation. “So what else did you do for Lord Obdurin?”
Ethan leaned back and considered. There were plenty of stories he could tell, but before he settled on one, prickles ran over the skin of his shoulders, neck, and cheeks. He shifted back, making it easier to get up in a hurry. “I never said I worked for Lord Obdurin.”
James’s expression went blank for a second. He recovered quickly, but Ethan saw the realization that he’d slipped up before he smiled confidently. James said, “Sure you did, you said Lord Duman didn’t give you the name Godkin, Lord Obdurin did.”
Ethan’s left hand reached for the laser-cutter next to him. “No, I didn’t. I never tell people that I worked for Obdurin. I usually don’t even tell them my name is Godkin. Who are you?”
James sagged and laughed at himself. “Shit. I always do this. I drink too much, and I forget what I’m supposed to know and what I still need to get out of folk. Sometimes I can get away with it. The trick is loading people up with enough booze that they don’t notice. The problem is I like the booze too, and it helps get people in the mood if we’re sharing. It’s a fucking tightrope, I tell you.”
“Who are you?” Ethan demanded, his laser-cutter active and pointed at James’s chest.
“I’m James Tardson. I already told you that, Godkin.”
“Why are you here?”
“Well, a man’s got to work, hasn’t he?”
“Who’s paying you?” Ethan asked. “No stories, give me a straight answer.”
“I can tell you what, but I can’t tell you who or why,” James said.
“Go on.”
“I’m being paid to make sure you go back to Peak City. Lord Obdurin sent you a message today, didn’t he, asking you to go home? My job is to make sure you do.”
“Obdurin sent you?” Ethan didn’t believe that.
“No. I was sent by one of Obdurin’s enemies to make sure you answer the call and go back.” James drank again.
“Why?” Ethan demanded.
“Because that’s what my boss wants you to do.”
“But why?”
James shrugged. “I’m just the messenger boy; they don’t let me in on the juicy details.”
“They? So there’s more than one of them?”
“Maybe, or maybe I’m just trying to avoid giving you any details. It’s a funny thing. I’m not a reader, as I told you, but I do get a sense for people, and you’re a weird one.”
Ethan stood up, but he kept the laser-cutter pointed at James. “How so?”
“Well, with most people, if you want to get them to do something, the easiest way is usually to appeal to their self-interest. If you were somebody else, I might have told them I’m a messenger from Lord Obdurin himself, and that he’s on his last legs, and he has something important to give to them before he goes. Something like that. You know, let folk know there’s something in it for them.”
“Cynical,” Ethan said.
“Aye, but true all the same. Anyway, that’s not going to work with you, I can tell. In fact, the exact opposite is the thing that will move you in the right direction. I’ve already said enough, I can see it. You’re practically itching to leave, aren’t you? Telling you that somebody is paying me to trick you into going back is the surest way to get you to go back. It’s a fucking paradox. In fact, telling you that and dropping hints that sending you back will cause problems for you and Obdurin and anybody else who’s around, is the thing that seals it. It’d be quicker to just jump, you know. Cleaner too, I imagine.”
Ethan belted on his swords.
“Incredible, you’re already convinced.”
Ethan picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.
“Who’s paying you?” Ethan asked.
James shrugged. He looked small still sitting on the ground. “That’s the only thing I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”
Ethan nodded. It could be any one of dozens of people. He held out a hand to help James to his feet.
“No hard feelings, eh?” James accepted the hand and got to his feet.
“None,” Ethan said. He held on to James’s hand with one hand and grabbed the front of his coat with the other. Ethan was bigger than James and strong. He pulled James forward, lifting him by his coat to prevent him from digging in his heels.
“Godkin, no!” James shouted.
Ethan closed the distance to the edge of the building in three long strides and heaved James up and over the wall that guarded the drop.
Without waiting to hear James’s screams or impact with the ground, Ethan collected his laser-cutters, kicked the emergency exit open and entered the building.
5
Light fell on uneven asphalt from a source behind a plain concrete wall in the underground parking lot. After his encounter with James, Ethan had spent the night collecting supplies and trade items from the city’s stores. He now carried two heavy black bags back to his car.
He’d left the car out of sight behind the wall, and he was certain he’d turned the lights out.
Anticipating a conflict, he lowered the bags to the ground and flicked on his laser-cutter. He stepped carefully around the wall, giving himself plenty of room.
The assault vehicle he called home was parked nose first, and the rear loading doors had been lowered to the ground giving Ethan a view of the car’s interior.
A woman with curly blonde hair and grease on her left cheek sat on the small couch in the back of the car. She pointed a laser-cutter of her own at Ethan and said, “Not so fast, big guy. I found it. It’s mine. Try your luck elsewhere.”
Surprise must have shown on Ethan’s face because she jutted her chin toward the back wall of the parking lot and said, “A girl can’t be too careful. You tripped three of my alarms on your way down here.”
Ethan glanced at the wall and saw a sensor mounted on it. He smiled and thought, I’m getting slow.
“Be on your way,” the woman said. “There’s nothing here for you.”
Ethan lowered his weapon. The woman seemed like a competent salvager, not an opportunist or a violent vulture. He said, “You’re wrong. That’s—”
She cut him off. “That smile of yours might work elsewhere, handsome, but not here. I’m not interested in you or anything you have to say. Go.” She flicked her weapon to the left indicating the direction she intended for him to go.
“You didn’t find the car. I never lost it.”
“Bullshit.” She studied him as he approached, lowering her weapon into her lap, but, he noticed, she kept it pointed at him.
“I left the driver side door unlocked, right?”
She nodded once but didn’t say anything.
“I wasn’t feeling myself.”
“That’s a shame. I hope you’re all better,” she said in a voice that told him she didn’t really give a fuck. “You practically gave it away. I guess, thanks.” Her smile asked, What do you think of that?
“Right, I made a mistake. Let’s figure out a way to fix it.”
“It’s simple. I found it. I took it. It’s mine. Fuck off.” Her smile was playful, but Ethan got the sense she could turn serious at any second.
He said, “Look, it’s my car
, I can pay you, so you didn’t waste your time.”
“Why bother?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“A big guy like you, you could probably drag me out of this thing and throw me to the curb. Why pay me, when you could just take it?”
Ethan glanced left and right. He knew a provocation when he heard one. He hadn’t seen the sensors he’d tripped. He looked now to see what else he’d missed. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything.
“What’ll it take?” Ethan asked.
“I’m not getting out of this car,” she told him.
Ethan thought about that. Finally, he nodded, “Okay. Stay in there. I can wait.” He reached into a pocket with his thumb and forefinger. He moved slowly so she wouldn’t think he was drawing a weapon. He teased a remote from his pocket. He thumbed on the screen and asked her, “Are you sure you want to stay in there?”
She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t answer.
Ethan entered a code. Blast-shields slid down inside the car, separating the woman from the driver’s cab and sealing the walls to either side of her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m giving you the car; you just won’t be able to use it.”
He entered another code, and the loading door hydraulics engaged raising the door.
She stood up to see him over the top of the closing door, and he saw the grin on her face, it said, Challenge accepted.
Ethan entered the final code, and the rear blast shield sealed her inside. She wasn’t going anywhere. He walked back to the spot where he’d dropped his bags. He dragged them to a wall and sat down. He’d found some chocolate in one of the stores he’d raided. He didn’t know what the living situation was like in Peak City, but the last time he’d been there, people had been willing to trade for chocolate. He reached into one of the bags and extracted a bar. Bottles clinked. He’d found booze too, lots of it, but it was going to be a long time before he drank again. He could still smell James’s whiskey on himself.
He ate the chocolate and laughed when he heard a couple of thuds inside the car.
The chocolate tasted good. He didn’t usually eat. His nutri-port implant meant he didn’t need to as long as he had a supply of nutri-vials, but in addition to tasting good, the chocolate took some of the edge off his hangover.
He unzipped the flap over his right thigh and examined the vial in the implant in his leg. Its contents were still clear, so he zipped the flap back up. He’d found a couple of blocks of nutri-vials in the night and taken them, but he wouldn’t be trading those in Peak City, he’d keep those for himself.
He waited a few minutes longer, then activated the car’s remote and patched himself into the car’s AI. “Are you ready to come out?” he asked.
A stream of expletives answered him, and he closed the connection before laughing to himself. He stood up and stretched, then walked the length of the parking lot. When he reconnected to the car’s AI, he said, “It’s fitted with top of the line tech. If you can break through it, you deserve to keep it.”
He waited for an answer.
“Fuck you,” her tone was still playful.
He laughed and closed the connection, then paced the length of the parking lot toward roller doors that blocked the exit at the far end. He stopped and leaned with his back against a concrete pillar, his feet to either side of a sensor that detected cars driving to the exit and opened the roller doors. He looked around the parking lot for the sensors she’d said he’d tripped, but he didn’t see any.
Maybe she was bluffing.
He tapped his right heel against the concrete pillar absently and continued to look around, aware that she might be watching him.
This time when he opened the connection, she spoke first. “Where did you get this tech?”
“Ready to give up?” he asked.
“No!”
Ethan laughed and closed the connection. He pushed off from the column, the heel of his right foot pushed down hard against the wall mounted sensor, and it fell to the floor.
When he opened the connection again, the woman asked, “How long are you going to keep me in here?”
“As long as it takes,” Ethan said, strolling back toward the car. “I figure there are some supplies in there. You might last a couple of weeks. I guess I could come back and check on you every few days, see how you’re doing or if you’re dead yet.”
He kept the connection open and waited. He heard her swear again, but it wasn’t directed at him this time. After a moment she asked, “Where are you going?”
“What?” Ethan asked.
“You must be going somewhere. I saw the bags you were carrying. If you weren’t going anywhere, you could have your pick of places to stay in the city.”
“Nowhere,” Ethan lied.
She scoffed quietly but loud enough for Ethan to hear. She said, “I’m going east.”
“Why?” Ethan asked. Lord Obdurin and Peak City are east.
“Because I’ve been west and now it’s time to go east.”
Ethan slowed his pace as he walked back to the car, thinking.
The woman continued, “There doesn’t seem to be any point staying in one place. I tried it after the Cleansing. I picked the fanciest suite in the biggest hotel and lived like a queen.”
“What happened?”
“I got bored. I was the only person there for months. I could have stayed forever, eating fancy food and drinking the best wine, watching movies or getting immersed in VR, but it isn’t real, so I decided to leave, see who else survived.”
“What did you find?” Ethan asked.
“That for the most part, the only people who survived are pieces of shit. There were a couple of guys who turned up at the hotel on the day I decided to leave.” She stopped talking suddenly as if deciding whether or not to continue.
Ethan waited.
“Before the Cleansing, you could take your time to get to know people. You’d see somebody at a party or meet them at work, and over time you could make up your mind about them. There were so many people, so many people,” she said wistfully, “it could take months or years to get to know any one of them, but now it’s different.”
“How so?” Ethan asked, even though he knew exactly what she meant.
“You don’t have that time. I think mostly the idea of safety in numbers is gone. No, that’s not right,” she said. “There was never really safety in numbers, not really. It just felt like it. Maybe big crowds inhibited people, and they kept their dark side in the dark, but now, with nobody around to say anything or do anything, they let it out.”
Ethan listened, there was a rhythm in the words that he liked.
“Now you have to decide about people quickly. You have to look at them and figure out who they are, whether they’re a threat or a potential friend or something else.”
“What happened with the two men at the hotel?” Ethan asked.
“They showed me who they were real quick. They were high and horny and thought the new world, as they called it, was their playground, and everything in it, including me, was there just for their amusement.”
Ethan wanted to ask what happened, but he stopped himself.
After a brief silence, she said, “Well, not anymore.”
“You killed them?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah, and I’m glad too.”
Ethan couldn’t argue with that. He let the silence draw out between them. Eventually, he hit the control to lower the loading door and retract the blast-shields. He stood facing the door as it opened, with his fingers tucked into his pockets, his hands close enough to snatch a laser-cutter and fire if he needed to.
The woman stood in the center of the car’s living space, watching him.
“I’m going east, you can ride along if you like,” Ethan said.
She studied him for a moment, her expression neutral. Eventually, she said, “You don’t look like those two guys at the hotel
.”
“I’m not,” Ethan said, studying her in return, trying to figure out if she was like them. He said, “You’re right, it’s easier to pick people now. Before, people were always so distracted, they didn’t give you their attention. Now, it’s easy to get people’s attention and see who they are.”
He stepped up into the car, dropping his bags on the couch. He walked to the driver’s cab at the front, as he passed the woman she didn’t give ground, forcing him to almost brush past her.
He glanced around to check if she’d damaged anything or tampered with the car, but other than the woman herself, he didn’t see anything out of place. He voice activated the car and told its AI, “Let’s get out of the city and go east.”
The engine started, and the car backed out of the parking spot even as the loading door continued to close.
Ethan turned to face the woman and held out his hand. “Ethan.”
“Nea.” She accepted his hand and squeezed it firmly.
Ethan crouched over the bags he’d brought with him and unzipped them. The car navigated its way to the parking lot entrance. Ethan took a shrink-wrapped block of water bottles from one of the bags and stowed it in the galley.
Nea sat on the couch and said, “You’ve got this place organized. Were you military?”
Ethan shrugged. “I was. What about you?”
“Before the cleansing, I—”
The car’s AI beeped. Ethan stood up to take a look at the dashboard. The car had stopped. The roller door Ethan saw earlier blocked the exit.
“It’s not responding,” Ethan said.
“I got it,” Nea said. She opened the side door and climbed down from the car. The door closed behind her, and she walked across to a panel mounted on the wall next to the roller door.
Ethan sat down at the driver’s console and pressed a control on one of the monitors. The car door Nea had just used locked silently.
Ethan lowered the window next to him and leaned out. “Can you get it?”
Nea pulled the panel cover open and let it fall against the wall. She pressed a button, machinery hummed, and the roller door started to rise. Nea stepped back toward the car, but Ethan stopped her. “We should close it before we leave.”