Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  No one had been here to loot this place. It was an absolute treasure trove, and Holt smiled lustfully.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE WORRIED,” ZOEY SAID. “I can tell.”

  She was right: Mira was worried. Zoey had somehow pulled images straight out of her mind.

  “I just don’t know how you do the things you do, Zoey,” Mira said. “I guess I’m the kind of person who needs to know how things work.”

  “I don’t know how it works. It just does. And I can’t pick when it does or doesn’t.”

  “Do you have any new … memories? Since we found you? Memories of how you got this way?” asked Mira.

  “Not really memories,” Zoey said. “But pictures, sometimes.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Pictures in my head, kind of. Pictures of things I’ve seen or places I’ve been. At least that’s what I think they are.”

  “What kind of pictures, Zoey?”

  “Black metal hallways that move up and down, not side to side. Glowing lights. And … other people. Older people. But sleeping, kind of.” Zoey’s voice was low, it was hard to hear her. “I don’t like to think about the pictures. They scare me.”

  Black metal hallways? Sleeping older people? To Mira, it sounded pretty clear Zoey had been inside a Presidium, had even seen the state of Earth’s adult population. But by sleeping did she mean just that? Or did she mean “dead”?

  “Mira, how do things from the Strange Lands work?” Zoey asked, abruptly changing subjects.

  “Well…” Mira collected her thoughts. Artifact creation wasn’t the easiest thing to explain. “Things from the Strange Lands—like pencils or coins or watches—once you take them outside, they become charged with weird properties. And the farther you go in, the stronger they become. The most powerful artifacts are called ‘major artifacts,’ and they’re found near the center.

  “The really interesting thing is that with minor artifacts, you can combine them into new and stronger ones with different functions. Want to see?”

  “Yes!” Zoey said with excitement. The little girl even stopped petting Max. Mira smiled and reached for her pack.

  * * *

  HOLT HOPPED FROM ONE ceiling rafter to the next, the toxic water ten feet or so below him. The rafters groaned with each leap, but the metal was still strong. The first thing he needed to find was another backpack, because his was almost totally full. He needed a new container for all the spoils he intended to come out of there with.

  He found a whole row of backpacks on one of the aisles near the side wall, and they looked like they were mostly for children. Cartoon characters stood out on their fronts and they were dyed in bright colors, but they’d serve his purposes just fine. He grabbed a blue one.

  The shelves at the rear of the store were full of medicine and pharmaceuticals, and he stuffed antiseptics, pain relievers, and bandages into the new pack. First aid supplies were some of the most in-demand items in the world now.

  From there, he moved on to toiletries. Holt hung down from the beams by his knees, just barely able to reach the top shelves. He gathered toothpaste, deodorant, soap, cleaning agents, all things that would trade for a very nice price.

  His new blue pack quickly bulged with the treasures, and Holt had to restrain himself from filling a second one. It was almost pitch black outside as it was, and he wanted to be back in the hotel room before night fell. The danger attributed to the Drowning Plains had seemed exaggerated so far … and it bothered him. He had a feeling this place hadn’t shown its real teeth yet.

  But Holt was interested in something at the front of the store, something specific, and he wanted to reach it before he started working his way up and out.

  He hopped over two more beams and found himself sitting against the front wall of the store, looking down on the shelves behind what used to be the front counter. The old cash register sat there, probably full of money that was now useless. Crumbling signs with pictures of soft drinks and pretzels and ice cream barely held on to the blackened windows, advertising things that few even remembered anymore.

  Holt looked away from the signs. More scars. More reminders of what used to be …

  He studied the front of the store, shining the light back and forth. If he remembered right, this was where they used to keep them. He looked at the shelves, item by item … and found what he was looking for.

  AM/FM radios, still new in their dusty boxes.

  Holt smiled broadly. His radio had died on him a few months ago, and he’d been looking to replace it ever since. But working radios were becoming more and more valuable. And here he was with a shelf full of them.

  He should take two or three extras for trade, Holt decided. Survival dictated it.

  But before Holt reached for them, he spied something else on the smaller shelves in front of the register. Colorful packages of candy and sugary snacks of all kinds, all glittering under the beam. There was taffy for Max. Bubble gum. And there were other choices, too. One of them stood out prominently, sealed in its plastic sleeves.

  Hostess CupCakes.

  Holt remembered Mira’s words, remembered the feeling of her head in his lap, the softness of her hair. Those feelings were still eliciting frustration from him … but not nearly so much as they had been.

  The CupCakes were easier to reach than the radios, and Holt, almost on instinct, hung down and grabbed two packages. The new backpack was almost full now, so he placed one in the new one and another in his trusty old one.

  What’s the harm? he thought. It might make her more cooperative. Plus, she would certainly smile when she saw them, which wasn’t a bad thing either.

  Holt moved for the radios, the last thing he needed. He hung down from the rafters again, stretching for them.

  As Holt’s fingers brushed the tops of the radio boxes, he noticed something along the wall just in front of him, and he aimed the flashlight in his mouth toward it.

  The wall contained strange, long markings, running from top to bottom. They were in groups of five. And about the same distance apart as the fingers of a human hand.

  It wasn’t a coincidence, Holt realized. They were scratch marks. Human scratch marks. And as Holt shone the light on the wall in all directions, he could see the entire thing was full of them, from one end to the other, dug deeply into the drywall and plaster.

  Holt looked at all the scratch marks revealed in the light … and felt knots form in his stomach.

  19. FORSAKEN

  MIRA SAT ON THE FLOOR in front of Zoey and Max. The dog was almost done with his taffy, and in the resulting sugar high, was content to let Mira do what she wished.

  Mira had several items from her pack laid out in front of her. Two pennies wrapped in plastic sleeves, a small magnet, a piece of copper wire tied into a circle, and the roll of duct tape.

  Zoey studied each artifact in turn, curious and confused at the same time.

  “It takes three types of artifacts to make the most basic combination,” Mira began. “First, you need a power source, which is always two Strange Lands coins of the same denomination. The higher the denomination, the more powerful the artifact. Coins also determine the ‘polarity’ of the artifact combination. Placing them with the same sides facing out is a ‘positive’ polarity, and different sides facing out is ‘negative’. Got it so far?”

  Zoey looked at her with wrinkled eyebrows. She clearly didn’t. Mira pushed on, making a note to try to simplify her language.

  “Second, you need what’s called an Essence. The Essence defines what primary effect the artifact has. And third, a Focus, which says how the effect of the Essence manifests. In this case—” Mira pointed to the artifacts from her pack. “—the pennies are the power source, which means it will be a very low-powered artifact, and we’ll place them in negative polarity.

  “The magnet will be the Essence. The effect of magnets with a single Focus involves gravity.” Mira placed the first penny tails side out next to the magnet. Then she
put the circle of copper wire next to it. “The copper wire’s the Focus, and it will channel the Essence into a circle.”

  Mira placed the last coin on the other side of the object, heads out. “Since the coins are aligned negatively, what do you think the effect will be on the gravity generated by the Essence?”

  Zoey considered the artifacts, lined up and touching, ready to be wrapped together. Mira wondered how much smarter, if at all, Zoey was than other kids her age. There was no denying she had powers, and more of them were showing every day, but was heightened intellect one of them?

  “It … decreases the gravity?” Zoey asked, slightly unsure.

  Mira smiled. “Yep. That’s right. If it were positively aligned, it would increase the gravity.” So she was smart as well. Interesting …

  Mira taped the objects together. The air around the artifact shimmered and hummed as the Interfusion took hold, the merging of the separate artifacts into one combination. Then, the humming vanished …

  Zoey watched the lump of duct tape on the old hotel room floor with excited expectation. Initially, nothing happened.

  And then, the artifact slowly began to spin on the floor.

  It spun round and round, in a slow, lazy circle. Then it spun faster. And faster. And faster. And finally … rose into midair and floated upward, farther and farther off the floor.

  Zoey clapped her hands. Max stopped his chewing, cocking his head to look at the floating artifact. He whined at the sight of it.

  It kept spinning, kept rising, until it hit the ceiling. Even there, it kept rotating, trying to push through the roof. Zoey watched it in wonder.

  Mira smiled, watching the little girl stare up at the simple artifact combination she’d made incessantly spinning into the ceiling. The first time Mira had seen an artifact do something like that, she’d probably been Zoey’s age. The sight had captivated her, and she immediately wanted to learn everything she could about the Strange Lands and the artifacts people brought out of it.

  She had known right then that she wanted to be a Freebooter.

  The artifacts were the closest thing the world had ever had to magic. For a long time, Mira had thought they were the key to everything, objects of unlimited possibility. Maybe to hold off the Tone, maybe even to repel the Assembly. Things that had happened to her, recent things, made her not so sure. But it still made her happy to see Zoey so engrossed.

  “Would you like an artifact of your own, Zoey?” Mira asked.

  “Yes!” Zoey exclaimed.

  Mira pulled the collection of necklaces she wore out of her shirt, about half a dozen strands. One was a gold chain that held a small pair of brass dice on the end. Mira examined it somberly. She hadn’t thought about that necklace, or what it represented, in a while, even though she put it on every day. She wasn’t sure if that was by choice or by instinct. Quickly she stuffed it back into her shirt and looked at two of the other necklaces, each with a tiny but working compass attached to the chain as charms. Mira slipped one off her neck and handed it to Zoey. The little girl studied it oddly. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting, clearly.

  “These little compasses are artifacts,” Mira said, “and they’re linked. Instead of pointing due north … they always point at each other, no matter how far apart they are.”

  Mira watched Zoey expectantly, and the little girl slipped it over her head.

  “Look at yours,” Mira said, holding hers up for Zoey to see. Zoey did the same thing.

  It was as Mira had said. The compass needles pointed directly at each other. Mira and Zoey smiled.

  “Now we’ll always be connected,” Zoey said.

  Mira nodded. “That’s right. Always.”

  A sound suddenly came from one of the walls.

  An odd sound, a sound that Mira didn’t instantly recognize. She, Zoey, and Max turned to the wall, looked at it warily.

  It came again, a long, sustained vibration that ran down its length.

  It was like … someone scratching. On the other side of their room. As if someone had dug in their fingers and clawed slowly from top to bottom.

  The sound implied movement … and it also implied thought and intelligence.

  Max dropped the taffy and stood up. He growled low in his throat, the hair on his back rising.

  “Mira…,” Zoey said, and she pulled the girl close.

  Something was in the next room from them, in the dark. And whatever it was, it was waking up.

  * * *

  HOLT STARED AT THE scratch marks up and down the wall in front of him. Outside, the sunlight was completely gone. It was night, and inside the sunken drugstore everything was pitch black.

  He could see only what his dim flashlight showed him, and that wasn’t much. As the darkness pressed in on him, Holt realized how much of it lay between him and the hole in the roof.

  The water stirred beneath him.

  Holt shone his light downward. The blackish liquid below stirred in circular waves, rolling back and forth, as if something had just moved through it.

  Or in it.

  A small splash, below and to the right. His flashlight darted over, but again, there was nothing. Only shadows and black water.

  Something was in the dark with him. He had a sudden, intense desire to make himself scarce.

  He reached for one of the radios and quickly grabbed it. There wasn’t time to get any more than that; he’d stayed too long already. In his greed, he’d ignored survival, had put himself at risk. He felt anger rising up, but pushed it back. This wasn’t the time.

  Holt swung up to the rafter, made ready to start jumping back … and then stopped, realizing he was missing something.

  Batteries. For the radio.

  He looked back down to the shelves behind the register. The batteries lay on the same shelf, just below him.

  More splashing … but now from several directions. The shadows pulsed and writhed under him, and this time when he shone his light down, he caught the briefest glimpse of something tall and dark as it darted behind one of the shelves.

  Holt jolted in fright.

  The blue pack stuffed with the treasure fell from his hand, tumbled down, hit the register, and slid across the counter.

  Holt stared down at it. It wasn’t completely out of reach—he could jump down to the counter, it would probably hold him. Then he could—

  More stirring of water, now all around him. He saw dark shapes rising slowly up and out of the murk, all throughout the store. If he didn’t leave now, Holt had a feeling he wouldn’t leave at all. The pack wasn’t worth it.

  “Typical…,” he said in frustration, staring down at the pack below him.

  But it didn’t have to be a total loss.

  Holt rolled back over the edge of the rusty ceiling rafter, hanging by his knees. He reached for a pack of batteries and grabbed it …

  … just as a human-shaped black shadow lunged at him from the dark, hissing and stammering in some crazed language.

  Holt flinched, flexed his legs, and swung back onto the rafter. The shadow just missed him and slammed into the store’s wall, sending the radios and batteries flying everywhere.

  The flashlight fell from Holt’s mouth, plummeting into the water. Everything went dark.

  But Holt didn’t have time to care. More of the black shapes were moving below him, rising from the water, dozens and dozens of them.

  He had to leave. Now.

  He shoved the batteries and radio into his main pack and leapt from one rafter to the next as fast as he could.

  The things below him hissed and gurgled their strange sounds, moving after him.

  Ahead of Holt was the rafter he’d first landed on, and above it the hole back to the roof. And two of the things, whatever they were, were crawling and scratching up onto it.

  Without the flashlight, they were just dirty black shadows, but he didn’t need to see them to know they wanted him dead.

  Holt leapt for the last rafter, landed, and drew his pi
stol, a Beretta 9, to fire off three rapid shots.

  The first shadow took all three, spun crazily, fell, and crashed into the shelves below.

  Holt aimed at the second thing crawling toward him, but it was too late.

  It leapt on him, and the scent of it washed over Holt. He gagged at the powerful combination of rotted plants and meat, oil, sweat, and whatever else made up the black water below.

  But it wasn’t the thing’s smell, as bad as it was, that shocked Holt. Or even the sight of its leathery, blackened, crazed human face, its mouth missing half its teeth. It was its eyes, set deep back into its skull.

  They were a solid white. The opposite of the black eyes of the Succumbed.

  The figure’s hand, its fingernails overgrown and curling, reached for Holt’s throat.

  Holt rammed his head right into the thing’s face.

  It hissed and wailed, stumbled off him. Holt kicked it backwards as hard as he could. The thing fell and crashed into two more of the dark, jittering shadows below.

  Holt caught his breath, got to his knees. More of the shapes were climbing up the wall to get to him. The entire floor was crawling with them now. They’d been hiding in the water the whole time. The image of the white eyes was burned into his mind.

  It can’t be.…

  But Holt knew it was. Holt knew now what was in the water with him, knew what had made this entire ruined city its home, knew the reason why no one who entered the Drowning Plains ever returned.

  He frantically leapt upward, grabbed the edge of the roof through the hole, and pulled himself out. He had to reach the others fast, had to get them out of here. Assuming they weren’t already dead …

  * * *

  MIRA STARED, WIDE EYED, at the wall. The scratching had intensified. It wasn’t just louder; it seemed like it was coming from more than one place.

  More scratching, this time from the opposite wall.

  Mira’s breath caught in her throat. It was on both sides of them now.

  “Mira…” Zoey, terrified, tried to push even farther into her grasp.

  Mira had to get them out of here fast. “Zoey, sweetheart, let go for a second,” she said, pushing her off. “I’m going to open the window. When I do—”