by James Jaros
She swam to the middle of the pool, where she stood with bubbles eddying around her chest. Steph released Cassie’s hand, and the towhead wanted to take it back. She liked Steph, even though the girl hadn’t said a word to her.
“It’s really deep, but there’s a tiny island I’m on,” Miranda shouted above the waterfall. “Kind of like a stalagmite.”
Cassie didn’t know what she meant. “I want to jump!” she yelled back, even though her stomach fluttered at the very thought.
Miranda shook her head forcefully. “No! You’ll drown. Wait till you can at least swim underwater.”
But I can. You showed me.
The older girl floated on her back, gazing at a wide streak of white stone in the high ceiling. When she neared the far side, she swam forcefully to a large round stone and pulled herself out. Then she scaled steps that had been pounded out of a rock wall, and made her way through a stretch of small sharp rocks to the two of them, who stood watching.
“Where’s the river go?” Cassie asked. She couldn’t see any water beyond the plunge pool, only the end of the enormous cavern catching scattered streams of light from small openings.
“It goes underground for five miles. You can see where it gets sucked under when you’re over there. That’s another reason for not just jumping in till you’re a strong swimmer.” Miranda walked closer to the falls, dripping on the mist-covered rock. “We’ve got to go.”
Cassie also paused for one last look at the waterfall, then the three of them dashed back through the caverns, Miranda and Cassie hooting and hollering. Their echoes chased them all the way to the garden. The farmers looked up as the girls burst into the bright sunlight and raced madly past the raised beds. They didn’t stop till they reached the encampment. Cassie thought she’d keel over from breathing so hard—and she’d been one of the strongest runners on the caravan.
Eleven adults were congregating around the stone bench where she’d eaten breakfast with Miranda and Steph. Four boys stood outside of the gathering. Only one looked about Cassie’s age, and she noticed he was taller.
Sam, Yurgen, and William had washed and changed into fresh clothes. Cassie realized they must own two pairs of pants and shirts. Maybe more. But the adults looked worried, except for Sam, who smiled so warmly at Cassie that she thought of her mom again.
Sam had her sit on the bench. Miranda and Steph settled to her right.
“We have to ask you some important questions,” Sam said to her, “but do you need anything before we get started? Are you hungry?”
Hungry? Cassie shook her head, amazed that Sam had offered her more food; she’d eaten a few hours ago.
The woman crouched in front of her, as she had by the catacombs, and pushed long white curls behind her shoulders. “Do you know how many people you were traveling with?”
“A lot,” Cassie said. She wasn’t sure. There were three little babies, and Leisha and Kaisha. How do you count them? “Maybe thirty?”
“Do you know how many were children?”
“Most.” She stared at her hands, as if counting her fingers. “Twenty? I think that many. I don’t know how you count Leisha and Kaisha. They have two heads, but just one body.”
“Conjoined twins?” William asked, scratching his sparse beard. His dirty canvas bag still hung from his shoulder, even after he’d changed clothes.
“Yes, that’s what they called them,” Cassie said. She noticed everyone was paying close attention. Even the boys.
“Were you the only one who got away?” Sam asked.
Cassie told them about Maul. It hurt to think about him. Sam said she was sorry to hear about her old friend, before asking what the caravaners had been doing for food.
“We had lots.” Cassie described the provisions they’d taken from the Army of God. “It was all stuffed in the van.”
“Were people pretty healthy, or were some of your friends sick?” Sam asked.
“Mostly, everybody was okay,” Cassie said, but with a questioning lilt. “Sometimes Ananda was kind of sick. She was tired a lot. But she was the only one. Her mom was the leader with Burned Fingers.”
Yurgen asked about him.
“He’s a marauder, but now he’s a good guy. He’s got two burned fingers.” She showed them which ones. “But he sure keeps things moving.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Yurgen said. “And you’re sure he’s helping you?”
“You bet he is. He burned down the whole Army of God. I saw him do it with my own two eyes,” Cassie said, clearly awed.
Sam smiled. “Do you know why you guys were heading north?”
“Green things. They grow up there, like down here.” When no one responded, Cassie sounded a panicky note: “They’re growing stuff there, right?”
“We don’t know much about the North,” Sam said. “We just know that somebody doesn’t want anyone going there because every time people try to cross the desert, they’re attacked. You’re the second girl we’ve rescued. Steph was the first. Up till then, nobody ever got away.”
“Are you going to rescue my friends?” Cassie asked.
Sam took Cassie’s shoulders and held her eyes with an intense stare. “For a long time, almost a year, we’ve been planning to stop what they’re doing up there. It’s cruel. And if we don’t stop them, sooner or later they’re going to find out what’s going on down here. We’re living on borrowed time. Do you know what that means?”
Cassie shook her head.
“It means every day counts because they could have found all this,” Sam glanced around, “a long time ago. Tomorrow night a lot of people are going to be up there for a big party. They’re really bad people. Have you seen the City of Shade?”
“No.”
“It has a huge, heavy roof over it. We’re planning to drop it down on all of them.”
“But my friends!” Cassie cried. “Ananda and Bliss and Leisha and—”
“We know where most of your friends are, so they should be okay.”
“How do you know where they are?”
“We can’t tell you that,” Sam said.
“How can you make the roof fall, but not on them?”
“It was built in sections, and we know most of the men are going to be by a big pit. We’ve planted a lot of land mines under the city. When they go off, the sections of the roof right over them will fall down. The roof looks very strong because it’s made of bricks, but its actually very heavy and very fragile.”
“I knew it,” Miranda exclaimed. “That’s what you guys were doing in the catacombs.”
Sam nodded and said, “You’re right. And everything’s just about ready to go.”
“Not really,” William said, pointing to Cassie. “Tell her. We have no time to lose.”
Sam frowned at William, but she did turn back to Cassie, saying, “We need your help. The City of Shade is built over an old prison that was buried under sand and dirt during a big flood that tore through here a long time ago.”
“I told her about it,” Miranda said.
“That’s great, so you know all about that,” Sam said to Cassie. “We’ve dug our way into the old prison and planted a lot of land mines, but we need someone who can squeeze past some bars to get the last ones in. They’re bowed out in one place.” Sam demonstrated with her hands. “But they’re still not wide enough for any of us to get through. We’ve tried to break them, and dig around those places, but we can’t. And we can’t blow them up because it might give away our plans and collapse the wrong part of the roof, and that could hurt innocent people, like your friends or the slaves. So we need you to go in there with the last few mines and put them right under where they’ll be having that party. You’ll be inside the old prison.”
“Is it dark?”
Sam told her it would be. “But you’ll have a lantern.”
“Are there going to be skeletons in there?” Cassie asked uneasily
“Nothing like the catacombs. There are—”
“
But I have to go past all of them to get in there, right?”
“There are a lot of them in the catacombs, but we’ll be with you then. There are some skeletons in the prison, but from what we can see, they’re all behind bars, and you don’t have to go near them. But it’s possible you’ll run into others. We have an old map of the prison, but we don’t know for sure what you’ll find.”
“Snakes?” Cassie asked.
“Probably not,” Sam said.
“But maybe?” Cassie persisted.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. You’ll be helping so many people, Cassie, and you’ll be saving your friends’ lives.”
“I hate bombs,” Cassie shouted. “And I really hate snakes.”
Sam hugged her. “I do, too,” she whispered in her ear.
“Is this why you saved me?” Cassie asked. “So I could fit through some bars?”
Sam shook her head and took Cassie’s hands. “I would have saved you a thousand times over, even if I’d known you’d say no. I saved you because I saw a wonderful girl trying to hurt herself, and if you had, the world would have lost someone very special.” Tears spilled down Sam’s cheeks. “I didn’t want to lose another girl.”
“Do you have a girl?” Cassie asked hesitantly.
She barely heard Sam’s soft reply: “I had one. She was taken from me.”
“We don’t have time for this,” William said.
Yurgen pressed his hand against the smaller man’s chest. William pushed past him and raised his voice. “I’m asking the kid flat out: Will you help us?”
Cassie stared at William, then turned back to Sam. “Yes,” she told her, “I’ll help you. But can I go up and get my friends after the roof comes down?”
“We’ll find them and bring them down to you,” Sam said, wiping her eyes. “It won’t be safe up there, not after the roof collapses. There’s going to be fighting. Maybe a lot of it. We’re going to have to take control of the whole city. It’ll be much safer down here.”
No sign of iddy biddy bitch. He had spent the whole goddamn afternoon scouring the junkers in the first three rows, still working the ground level, still hoping to flush that rancid kid from one of those wrecks. Couldn’t find her. Couldn’t find a water pump. Couldn’t find a pipe that might lead to a water pump.
Somebody was helping her. At this point, he would have grabbed the scum and carved the truth out of their thick fucking skulls—if he could. But he was in no condition to run them down, not half blind and with his tongue thickening from his measly water rations.
The last few cars of the day proved grueling for Jester. Sweat kept pouring into his one good eye, salt nearly as fiery as the torch that had scorched the other one. He felt delirious, rage a bright red coal burning through his brain.
Time to hunker down, he thought. Jester looked around carefully, saw nobody. But who knows, right? He shouldered his pack and climbed to an El Camino that looked like it had died a peaceable death. A pulse of envy ran through him. He squirmed into the cab. Not a sound rose to his rusty aerie, the wrecking yard as quiet as the pumps that once fueled these cars. No one would get the jump on him up there without making a racket, though it pained him to have to worry about the scum—they’d always feared gunmen from the City of Shade. What gun? His disgust bristled with so much hate it could have been a bomb. The blond bastard had taken his gun, and his Royal fucking Highness refused to give it back.
As evening shadows fell, he crawled out the Camino’s passenger door into the backseat of a Suburban stacked next to it, upholstery oozing like guts from some loser’s belly. He studied the fourth row. Yard looked no different down there, empty as a ghost town. He’d seen a ton of those. Helped make a few, too.
Jester bit into a biscuit so dry it crumbled in his mouth. It could have been gravel, for all the moisture he could muster. A sip of water turned it to mush. Revived, he looked down again. In the creeping darkness he spotted a truck trailer across the way. He wondered what it once hauled, certain that water had been its most valuable load in the end, when anything that could move was packed with barrels of it. No matter the price, no matter how murky, people ponied up—in all kinds of ways. Great sport selling that stuff. Made him King of the World.
Darkness sealed the last of the light, and his eyes settled. He dreamed of oceans he’d never seen, tasting the salt on his lips, then filled with a vague sense of loss and a sudden longing that almost woke him. He slipped back into one of sleep’s infinite interludes until a little girl appeared. She stared at him, eyes big as bowls. She didn’t blink, not once. It was like she was dead, but wasn’t. Not yet. Even in his sleep he had swift intimations of blood. He asked if she knew what an eviscerator was, saying the word slowly so she’d understand him. She shook her head, scared, like all the kids he’d ever asked in real life, including the one who got away. He smiled at the girl with genuine pleasure and showed her his knife. She tried to run. He grabbed her, then awoke with a start.
Too dark to see much at first. But down below he heard three soft knocks, a pause, then two more. A door opened slowly.
His one good eye adjusted to the starlight, and he spotted four dark figures stepping from the trailer. They hurried away, like they were up to no good. He thought he saw someone else step back inside. No telling, for sure, but the door closed as slowly as it had opened. Someone didn’t want to make noise, but someone sure did.
He kept watch for several hours but never spotted any other movement.
Tomorrow, he promised himself, you’re gonna find out what the fuck’s goin’ on.
Three knocks, then two more. Some kind of code. Maybe the keys to the kingdom for the King of the World.
Chapter Sixteen
Hunt’s half-naked body festered on its side in the strong morning sun, wounds drawing flies. Their squat shapes clustered thickly on his gaping chest, a bristly buzzing mound.
Where do they come from? Esau wondered. Nothing but sand and hardpan and dunes as far as the slave could see—yet the hidden world of flies everywhere he looked. They came alive, as if from air. You never saw them, and there they were, laying their eggs, smearing your skin.
Esau felt them under his pants. He unbuckled and brushed them from his thigh, split and swollen like a grilled intestine. The severed muscle throbbed.
Flies fed on the kid, too. Jaya twitched in his sleep as his body tried to flick them off his hand, shin, and foot. Esau envied the boy’s oblivion. No pain, not really. Not yet. As he eyed him, Jaya rolled over, turning his back on one of the two pistols he’d clutched the night long.
The slave shrugged. He needed Jaya’s help more than he needed a loaded weapon. No different for the boy. The motorcycle was their only lifeline, and Esau knew how to use it. Well enough, at least. He’d watched Hunt carefully, saw him work the touchy throttle and sticky shifter, and he’d thrilled with the bike’s raw speed.
But where? Esau knew his way only to the Alliance and the City of Shade, where they’d pluck out his eye and put him to work—or force him back into the hands of His Piety. The black S on his brow did more than scar his face. It placed an indelible bounty on his head.
Jaya awakened on his belly, patting the ground in panic. He coated his bloody hand with sand before sitting up and finding the missing revolver behind him.
“I could have taken it,” Esau said. “It would have been easy.”
The voice startled Jaya, but one glance made him doubt the slave’s words. Nothing would be easy for him with his wounded leg, bloodstains down the front of his pants.
“So stop worrying about me doing something to you,” Esau went on. “We’ve got to get moving.”
Jaya climbed to his feet, shoving the guns into his belt. He wished he’d waited to chop off his new pants. Hundreds of flies seamed his shin, feeding on scabs. His sand-crusted hand, burning less than before, raised a dark cloud that landed right back on him.
“They’re not leaving us alone till we get going,” Esau said. “And you better keep
that thumb turned in.”
It hurt like a son of a bitch. The slave had told him to heal the broken knuckle so he could hold a pistol.
Jaya headed to the sidecar. He hadn’t spoken, mouth and throat parched. As he reached for a water canister, he recalled Hunt slamming him into the cage, spreading him open. He wished he could have kicked the blade through the bastard’s back all over again. One of the greatest feelings of his young life.
He drank and held out the canister to Esau, who leaned on his elbow, looking pained.
“I could use some.” Esau took the water.
“Food?”
They both ate smoked snake.
“We can’t stay here,” Esau said.
Jaya drank more water, loosening his lips. “I’m not going back to the Alliance or that damn city, or whatever they call it.”
“I’ll end up back at the Alliance no matter what.” Esau moved aside his hair and pointed to the S. “They’ll make me tell what happened, and then they’ll really hurt me. His Piety raised him.” He nodded at the body.
“Who’s this piety guy?” Jaya capped the canister.
“A fucker,” Esau said, smiling when he swore. “A goddamned fucker!” he shouted.
“We could go to that wrecking yard,” Jaya said. “We don’t have to go to the City of Shade. I’ve got guns and you’ve got a motorcycle. They must have food and water. Maybe make our peace with them.”
Esau struggled to his feet and hobbled to Hunt’s body. Jaya called after him.
“You think you can drive that bike there?”
Esau nodded without turning. Half of his knife handle protruded from Hunt’s back. He failed to pull out the blade until he braced a hand on Hunt’s shoulder and jerked hard. “I’m keeping it.”
“You put it to good use sticking him.” Jaya knew he would be riding on the rear of the saddle, so he wasn’t worried about the slave stabbing him in the back.
Esau held up Hunt’s knives, offering the boy a choice.
“The smaller one.” Jaya liked the idea of something handy.
Esau tossed it to him. “We’ve got to get rid of him before we do anything else. Somebody finds him, they’re coming for me.”