by Kim, Susan
His voice echoed amid the broken piles of brick and twisted metal.
From her hiding place, Esther started as if struck. She was stunned to have been spotted, and more than a little rattled. She stood poised, adrenaline coursing through her body, ready to escape should he make a move toward her.
But instead, the stranger only shrugged.
Then with one fluid movement, he mounted his battered bike and left.
FIVE
UNDER A STREETLAMP ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PRIN, A BOY IN WHITE robes stood guard.
He shifted uncomfortably. Not accustomed to remaining still in the blazing sun for such a long stretch of time, he was perspiring heavily under his white sheets and headdress and felt more than a little nauseated. He was finding it impossible to keep his focus on the horizon. The heat caused shimmering waves of air to dance across the road, making it look as if hundreds of variants were attacking all at once. In addition, his sunglasses kept sliding down the bridge of his nose.
Early that morning, Rafe had called him together along with a dozen others. Normally, the boy would have been getting ready for work. He had recently started a new Excavation on the eastern side of town and was preparing to spend the day deepening and widening the trench he and the rest of his team, including his pregnant partner, had just begun. Big-boned and quiet, the fifteen-year-old preferred Excavation to the other jobs in town because it was mindless and let you work by yourself.
But Prin, Rafe decided, needed sentries.
“We can’t afford another attack,” he told the assembled group. “So I’m putting you at each of the main roads that lead into town.”
An unspoken question rippled through the crowd. Rafe seemed to anticipate what it was and held up his hands to reassure them.
“Sarah let us down about the weapons. But don’t worry, you won’t be unarmed. I seen to it.”
That was when the boy noticed the crate by Rafe’s feet, the one filled with a sorry-looking assortment of bats, corroded metal bars, and splintered table legs.
Now he adjusted his sweaty grip on the hollow steel pipe he was given and tried to imagine what it would feel like to hit someone with it.
He couldn’t.
The boy guard rocked back and forth on his heels and he swiveled first to the left and then the right. A drop of sweat trickled into one eye; and he pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead so he could rub it away.
When he lowered them, he sensed a flicker of movement. Nearby, a dust-colored squirrel was watching him from the safety of some underbrush.
“Hey,” he said, relieved at the distraction.
The boy set his pipe down, squatted on his haunches, and held out a hand, even though he didn’t have anything to offer. He made a soft chucking sound, and the squirrel cocked its head at him, twitching its plumed tail.
The boy was glad no one else was around. Anyone in town would have tried to kill the creature, without a second thought. Unlike humans, animals were unaffected by the poison lurking in rainwater, and fresh meat of any kind was a rare and precious treat. But the sentry secretly liked squirrels and wished he had something to feed it. Maybe he had some forgotten crumbs somewhere in his clothing?
Slowly, in order not to scare the squirrel away, the boy kneeled, hoisting his robes so he could scrabble in his front pockets. One knee grazed the pipe, which rolled into the gutter, unnoticed and for the moment, forgotten.
“Ahh,” said the boy at last. His fingers closed on a few gritty crumbs, which he removed and scattered on the ground.
The squirrel leaned forward on one paw, nose twitching, then appeared to make up its mind. Keeping its eyes on the boy, it darted forward in two, three quick movements, seized a morsel, then sat up and began to eat.
The boy eased back on his heels and smiled, satisfied. But after a few moments, the squirrel stopped chewing.
The tiny head jerked up and froze, black eyes staring at some point in the far distance. Then with a flick of its tail, the animal bounded away and vanished in the tall weeds, leaving the rest of the crumbs untouched.
Still on his knees, the young guard frowned, puzzled. He glanced behind him and saw nothing. It made no sense.
But then again, he couldn’t hear what was bearing down on him.
Not until it was too late.
Elsewhere, Caleb had reached the broken sign that said WELCOME TO PRIN.
The center of town itself still lay a half mile or so in the distance; he should be there within minutes. The main street appeared to be dotted with buildings, none more than a few stories high.
Caleb realized that the first thing he had to do was get water. He had nothing to trade with, but he was strong and handy; he knew he could work for what he needed.
Then he heard it.
Caleb braked and balanced stock-still, one foot on the ground, straining to identify the sound. As he did, he felt a familiar twisting sensation in his gut and a tingling in his hands and along the back of his neck.
Far away, someone was screaming.
For an instant, Caleb reeled. It was as if he was falling, tumbling backward into an abyss, a sucking vortex from which there was no escape. He gripped his handlebars so tightly his knuckles turned white, and the hot pavement beneath him started to bloom into an obliterating brightness.
Then he heard something else, a thin thread of noise that brought him back to himself. It was the sound of others shouting. Even though he couldn’t make out the words, the voices seemed mocking and jubilant.
They sounded like mutants.
Could he be sure? He might be imagining things. He knew he’d been seeing them for weeks now, maybe even months. Since he first left home, he sensed them everywhere, from the corner of his eye, behind him, just around an abandoned car or bend in the road, their obscene, deformed faces silently watching him, jeering, before vanishing into nothingness. Sometimes they appeared in his dreams and when they did, he awoke in a sweat, crying out.
Several weeks ago, he had confronted mutants in the flesh, an unsuspecting group he had happened upon while they were hunting. He didn’t hesitate to launch an ambush that left them unconscious and bleeding.
Now he made up his mind. Getting back on his bike, he swerved off the main road and onto a smaller street on his left.
It did not take him long to track the source of the noise. Although the screaming stopped, the other voices grew louder, providing him a rough guide to follow. He rode down one street, which led to a dead end; doubling back, he was able to find a parallel road, which led to another main thoroughfare. By now, he was so close, he was able to hear distinct voices.
“Pretty girl,” said someone. This was followed by the sound of others laughing.
With his backpack on, Caleb leaped off his bike and tossed it down in an abandoned yard, its front wheel still spinning. This was evidently once a residential block, with the remains of large two- and three-story houses on both sides nearly hidden by weeds and tall grass. Caleb cut diagonally across the last property and around to its backyard.
The yard led to an overgrown field, which bordered on the cracked parking lot of an abandoned supermarket. Caleb decided to head away from the voices. Realizing he was only one against at least three or four possible enemies, he calculated he would have to use surprise as an additional advantage. He skirted the open expanse and stuck to the perimeter, defined by an immense and straggling hedge.
As Caleb ran, his ears constantly adjusted to the thread of voices, trying to pinpoint their exact location. When he judged he was no more than fifteen feet away, he stopped. Only then did he work his way through the dense foliage, taking care not to disturb the branches around him. He noticed a small gap in the hedge. Through it, he was finally able to make out what was happening.
What he saw astonished and then repulsed him.
Five mutants stood in a loose circle looking up at a streetlamp. A boy hung from it, tilting forward at an unnatural and painful angle. His pitiful arms had been lashed together beh
ind his back, and this rope had been tossed over the beam that extended high up the steel pole and then secured. From where he stood, Caleb could see the boy had been beaten. His face was bruised and puffy, and blood dripped from a corner of his mouth.
But what was most shocking was what the mutants had done to his body.
The boy had been stripped of most of his clothing, and his pale white skin, long unaccustomed to the burning rays of the sun, had been defaced with obscene drawings smeared in red clay. It took Caleb a moment to realize the boy had been turned into a repellent caricature of a girl, a grotesque and unspeakable travesty. A wig of sorts, made from some filthy and stringy object, sat askew on his head. The smell of wet earth was strong. The scarred and tattooed hands of the mutants were all dark, stained red with mud, and their mouths were open in harsh and mocking laughter.
The body hanged heavily, twisting a little in the breeze. At first, Caleb thought he must be dead; but when one of the mutants prodded the victim with a metal pipe, the thin sides heaved and the feet kicked feebly.
“She’s pretty, all right,” said one of the mutants. The rest laughed again, and one of them uttered an obscenity.
But Caleb no longer heard what they were saying. He was reaching into his backpack, searching for his weapon.
It was one of a kind. He had forged it over time and through much trial and error. Made of wood, metal, and rubber, it was the length of his forearm and had a crude wheel at the center, held firm on an axis. He kept it loaded: the six rods that fanned out from the wheel were each tipped with a shallow cup that held a jagged rock the size of a hen’s egg. A taut rubber sling kept each rock in place.
It allowed him to shoot six rocks in as many seconds. He had used it once or twice, on his way to Prin. Now he prepared to employ it again.
From his hiding place, Caleb took aim at the nearest mutant, who stood facing away. He gave the wheel a sharp spin and as he did, he snapped each sling, firing off three rocks in quick succession. The first two hit the mutant in the head, and the last in the back of the neck. His knees buckled and he slumped to the ground.
As he calculated, the element of surprise had given Caleb a small but critical advantage. In the confused moment that it took the other mutants to register what had happened, he had time to take aim at his second target. He again set the wheel into swift motion and deployed his last three projectiles. While this mutant raised a hand at the last second to protect himself, it didn’t matter: The rocks came too fast, all three striking his head, and he too was knocked unconscious.
Caleb was scrambling in his backpack, trying to reload, when one of the remaining mutants spied him through the dense undergrowth. She gave an angry hiss, like an animal. Then she pointed at Caleb, her mouth open in a shriek of fury like a hawk, some bird of prey, and at that, all three mutants rushed the hedge.
The first one took a running leap and dived headlong through the dense growth at Caleb. At the impact, his weapon flew from his hands and he was knocked backward and onto the hot pavement of the parking lot, the wiry and muscular mutant on top of him, clawing at his throat, his face, trying to subdue him until the others arrived.
But instead of fighting the momentum, Caleb knew enough to work with it instead. As he curled into a ball and continued to roll backward, he seized the mutant by her scant tunic, pulling in his knees until his feet rested against her stomach. Then he released his grip while violently pushing out with both legs; the mutant was catapulted over his head. A second later, she landed behind him with a sickening crunch.
As Caleb leaped to his feet, another mutant rushed at him with a rock in an upheld fist. Caleb used his elbow to strike his wrist, loosening his grip; he then swiveled, shooting out his leg and driving his heel into the mutant’s knee. With a scream as much of surprise as of pain, the mutant pitched forward, off balance. Again, Caleb used momentum, this time to push the mutant farther downward while driving his knee up into his face as hard as he could. There was a satisfying crack of bone, followed by a hot gush of blood.
Caleb turned. His vision blurry, sweat streaming down his face, it took him a moment to see that the fifth mutant, the largest, was running away.
Dimly, he realized that he should let him escape.
Caleb had won this round, and he should tend to the boy who was still hanging from the streetlamp, who clearly needed his help.
But it was as if he was aflame, burning with a righteous fever that would not be satisfied until each mutant was hunted down, one by one, and made to suffer. A bloodlust was upon him. He took off in pursuit and now felt the glad fire in his legs; the mutant, a fast runner with a good head start, glanced back and the shock on his face was obvious. Caleb was nearly upon him.
The mutant swerved suddenly. He had reached a group of commercial buildings and, now frantic, he intended to escape that way instead. He clawed at the nearest wall and began to climb; Caleb leaped to grab his bare foot and only just missed. But any relief the mutant might have felt was short lived, for Caleb also began to scale the wall, moving with relentless speed.
The mutant pulled himself onto the roof; seconds later, Caleb did the same. By then, the mutant had sprinted to the far end and now balanced on the edge of the parapet; he was gauging the distance to the neighboring building. He glanced back with a look of pure panic and as Caleb ran forward, he pinwheeled his arms and took a standing leap.
Caleb didn’t hesitate. He was aware that he had no clue as to how far he had to jump and that he was at least five or six floors above the ground; a misstep would be fatal. Yet he no longer cared.
He put on speed, then at the roof’s edge, made a blind, running leap. He easily cleared the neighboring parapet and landed hard, instinctively rolling into a sideways somersault to blunt the impact. He came out of the roll without stopping, still running.
The mutant—only halfway across the roof—looked back. He had a setting sun tattooed across his face; beneath it, his expression was one of shock. Yet as much as fear, there was admiration in his voice.
“You have defeated four of my best,” he said. Caleb realized that this one was the leader. “Who taught you?” he called, panting.
“I taught myself,” Caleb said. The hatred and contempt in his voice were terrifying.
The mutant nodded, impressed despite himself. He was cornered now; there was nowhere to run, no other buildings nearby. But as Caleb stepped forward, the mutant hesitated for only a second.
Then he jumped off the roof.
Caleb ran to where he was standing and looked down. The mutant was lucky that the alley was strewn with crates and boxes; a pile of cardboard had broken his fall. Still, Caleb was satisfied to see him limping badly as he escaped down the alley and out of sight.
It was a team of Harvesters who first saw him.
A stranger walked down the main road that led into town. The townspeople viewed newcomers with suspicion, for supplies were scarce enough without interlopers looking for more. This one pushed a battered bicycle, across which was sprawled a body, legs and arms dangling. A dirty white sheet was partly draped around it and already, dark red patches—blood? clay?—were seeping through.
Caleb was bringing the brutalized guard back to Prin.
The Harvesters slowed their own bicycles and came to a stop.
“Mutants?” one of them asked, and Caleb nodded.
The Harvesters exchanged glances as one by one, they recognized the victim. A boy gave an involuntary cry, his eyes round with shock.
“Trey?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Is he—”
“He’s still breathing,” said Caleb. “Barely.”
The four dismounted and fell in line behind Caleb. There was no need to ask the details; everyone understood what they needed to know. But without being prompted, one of them handed over her water bottle and another took control of Caleb’s bicycle so he had a moment to drink.
By the time they approached the center of town, there were at least two dozen townspeople accompan
ying them. There was virtually no sound; as newcomers joined in, they were briefly told of what happened in whispers, and then the silence resumed. Without speaking, all had done the unthinkable act of leaving their jobs, and beneath their robes and headdresses and sunglasses, their faces were shocked and somber.
One of them, the guard’s partner, walked up front with Caleb. At first glance, Aima seemed stoic, a sturdy, heavily pregnant fifteen-year-old accustomed to unexpected hardship. But beneath her dusty head cloth, her eyes were dark holes in an ashen face. She gripped her unconscious partner’s hand, massive in her small one, and stroked it with her thumb, as if trying to will him back to health.
Word had been sent ahead of them and by the time the procession reached Prin, Rafe and a small crowd were outside, waiting. Several townspeople managed to lift the boy and carry him into his storefront home. Once inside, Aima and her friends would wash him and tend to his wounds as best as they knew how.
Rafe was taken aback to see a mere stranger followed by the citizens of Prin. As he stepped forward to greet him, he cleared his throat and attempted to take control.
“Thank you for bringing home one of ours,” Rafe said. Even to his own ears, his words sounded falsely hearty.
The stranger said nothing and merely bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“Did you see who done it?” continued Rafe. “Or did he run off before you got there?”
“I seen them,” said Caleb.
Rafe nodded. “So it was more than one,” he said, then turned to spit in the dust. “That makes Trey an even bigger hero. I bet he gave them a good fight with those weapons. Still, we’re glad you come along when you did. Must’ve helped scare them off.”
Rafe’s voice shook and again he cleared his throat, to cover it. He was aware that everyone in town was not only staring at him; they were judging him, weighing his words.
It was, after all, his idea that guards be posted that morning, alone, and without any kind of training or backup. In retrospect, even he had to admit that perhaps it was a bad impulse. He had acted rashly, without a real plan. Without weapons, real weapons from the Source that idiot Sarah had promised then failed to deliver, what other choice did he have?