Outcasts of the Worlds

by Lucas Paynter

  “You’ve got some balls, comin’ into a town like this, lookin’ like you do.” Jean stripped out of her own uniform before dropping to her knees to dig out something more agreeable. Mack found his way in a moment later and, after dropping his lesser haul next to Jean’s, proceeded to follow suit. There was little modesty between the two.

  “You take work where you can get it,” Flynn shrugged.

  His gaze didn’t linger, but it was suddenly very clear why Jean’s uniform had been so tight. After some digging around, she found a black tank top and pulled it on, stretching comfortably into it with a pleased, “Ah!”

  As Mack removed the undershirt from his uniform, the makeshift bandana Flynn had provided fell to the floor. Mack gave it no mind, and began searching for something to wear. Jean glanced up at him, smiled, and then returned her attention to the task at hand before realizing what she’d seen. Mack’s left eye was gone. What remained was discolored flesh and two lids, stitched poorly shut. Flynn had known, and had deliberately neglected to mention it. Jean’s teeth and fist both clenched before she reached back to stroke the scab that was settling in on the back of her neck. The severity differed greatly, but they’d both carried scars. Jean’s hand trembled as she crawled over, reaching out to touch Mack’s sealed eye socket.

  “Aw, come on, Jeannie.” His voice was gentle, as though he was consoling a child. “It’s not so bad.”

  “Did it hurt?” Her voice was hoarse.

  “I didn’t let it.” He grinned.

  Jean pulled back, swallowing her tears. “How’d it happen?”

  Mack smiled back at her, as gentle as before, but didn’t answer. He dug his hands into the pile of clothes, producing a red leather jacket with spikes adorning the shoulders. He held it up to her.

  “So I saw this, and I thought, now this is something Jeannie’d wear.”

  Jean sniffled once as she accepted the gift, stuffing her own pain down for his sake. She slipped into a pair of black jeans before donning the red jacket and zipping it up. She unbuttoned the wrists, allowing her forearms room to breathe.

  “So,” she changed the subject, the last break leaving her voice. “What’cha think?” Jean fished out a long, narrow, spiked barrette and stood up, pulling her uneven red hair back into a ponytail before fastening it into place.

  Flynn chose his response carefully. “Intimidating.”

  Jean was pleased.

  Flynn had slipped into a black vest he’d found. It had a few pockets for supplies, but more importantly, it was loose and covered him well. Mack, meanwhile, was still narrowing his choices. Stripped to his skivvies, he looked gangly and ragged. A fair bit of this was owed to all the bandages, which he had wrapped around his elbows and knees, his shoulders and feet, and around his neck as well. It would have been easy to overlook in the shambling rags they had worn as prisoners, and the stolen uniforms covered everything, but he seemed to have little interest in keeping it concealed. He finally settled on some slightly long shorts, a t-shirt, and a button-down Hawaiian shirt to wear over it.

  “You look like a tourist,” Flynn told him bluntly.

  Mack just smiled proudly.

  *

  Cheerful conversation and the rapid scraping of utensils against aluminum filled an apartment room that had seen little activity for several decades. The afternoon light was fading and night’s chill had begun to creep in. In hiding as they were, it should not have been so easy to find food, even in an outpost so well supplied as Crescent. Yet Flynn made it so. He had sent Jean out, telling her who to speak with and what favors to call in; she had returned with sacks of canned food. The forks and spoons least rusted had been salvaged, washed, and put to use.

  While Flynn ate in silence, contemplating his next move, Jean and Mack caught up on the year lost. The matter of Mack’s missing eye stayed untouched, although Jean’s gaze was drawn to it whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. He hadn’t bothered covering it after being discovered, and he wore the sickly flesh, stitches and all, as casually as the nose on his face.

  As Jean scraped the last bit of beef from the bottom of a can, she glanced over at Flynn, who had been lost in thought for some while. “Been kinda quiet there, Flynn.”

  “I have business I need to follow up on, once I leave Crescent.”

  “Really?” Mack sat up, his curiosity piqued. “Where’re we goin’?”

  “Only me. Just worry about getting as far away from here as you can. I take care of myself.” This felt like the right ground to set. Help them, but don’t get too close.

  “What sorta business?” Jean asked. Her spoon scraped repeatedly against the bottom of the can, trying to scoop up what juices remained.

  Flynn was reticent to share, but could find little reason not to. “I’m missing time from before Civilis. I don’t know why I ended up there. I …” His head ached as he grasped at the memories. “I wasn’t far from here. I was delivering something.”

  “Oooh,” Mack was intrigued. “Anything else?”

  “Just blue. Blue light. I don’t know what it was.”

  “So where’s this place?” Jean asked.

  “Up in the mountains, northwest of here,” Flynn replied. “It’s an old medical facility. Run down, abandoned. Why?”

  “I’d like to know where we’re goin’.” Before Flynn could object, she added, “I told ya before: I don’t ditch my friends.”

  “You consider us friends?”

  “Ya helped me bust out, and ya helped me save my best buddy. If that ain’t grounds for friendship, I don’t know what is.”

  “Are you sure you know me well enough to say that?”

  Jean stopped with her spoon hanging from her mouth and pointedly asked, “You a rapist?”

  “No!” Flynn retorted, flushing.

  “Good start then. Don’t have to go an’ smash ya.”

  Flynn withdrew and gave this a moment’s thought. Trust of this sort was ripe, easily exploited. Yet with things as they were, there was little benefit to be found in taking advantage of two Civilis escapees—and more still, despite understanding the situation as he did, he found he didn’t want to. Flynn was not generally inclined to take unknown elements into unknown situations—without knowing what he would find, he couldn’t control what Jean or Mack might learn about him.

  He set his near-empty can on the floor, his fork rattling inside. He considered the situation. He had not been alone when it had happened, but his then-companion was dead, captured, or long gone. Confident that his crimes lay concealed, Flynn nodded his thanks and consent, having concluded that he didn’t really want to be alone.

  *

  Night had fallen, but Crescent was lit up from beneath. On a building adjacent to the one in which they’d briefly found safe haven, Flynn held fast to a chimney pipe with one hand, using his free hand to help his allies up. Mack climbed swiftly up the sturdy boards barring a window below, which served well as a makeshift ladder. Flynn lifted him silently, then proceeded to do the same with Jean, whose muscled frame offered considerably more heft.

  As they continued, Flynn lingered a moment to observe two figures outside the building—armed, but not uniformed, nor part of Civilis. Bounty hunters, almost certainly. Two others had ventured inside; he could hear the floorboards breaking from their clumsy steps and heavy gear. Flynn took off quickly, lightly, but a woman on the ground spied him, by chance.

  “There, on the roof!”

  A flash of white light caught the corner of Flynn’s eye. Hastening, he waived silence for speed.

  “Fuck all to stealth, eh, Flynn?” Jean cracked as he caught up.

  “There’s a strike team on our trail,” he said as they jumped to the next roof. “They have a specialist.”

  “A what now?”

  Jean’s confusion hadn’t cause her to slow, and there wasn’t time to explain. The next building loomed above them, too high to scale. Mack veered right, prompting the others to follow. They were awash in the rapids, moving deep
er into Crescent, their longevity subject to the height of the buildings to come.

  *

  Rebecca Saul held fast to the sidebar as the jeep veered around a corner. Her black hair whipped into her eyes and she pulled it back the moment the vehicle steadied. Chance had brought the strike team to their targets, and they had been careless, but their prey had little chance for caution now. A commotion swelled in the streets, providing a trail. It would have been enough to follow the shingles raining down from above, but the noise had drawn the locals out, pointing and yelling.

  Colin was on point, catching every clue and telling Gilroy where to go. Though Colin seemed somewhat small in the seat before her, Gilroy’s bulk and muscle more than made up for it. She’d known both equally as long, and trusted them to steer her right.

  Through the chaos and crashing wind, she was perturbed more by what she’d seen—only a glimpse, something more animal than man.

  “You okay there, Becca?” Doc sat on her left, jostled by another sharp turn.

  “I wish I knew what we were pursuing.” She kept her focus on the road ahead, to stem off nausea. Moving vehicles and backseats never sat well with Rebecca, but such was the curse of rank. She’d take it over being caged. Everyone else who had shared her last name was gone. Freedom was all she had left.

  “Just be glad we’ve got this lead.” Doc cracked a winning smile, leaning in with the desperate hope of it being seen. “Word is, they’re still trying to sort out what happened in the tower. Seems they found a guard locked inside a cell. Took two hours before he convinced them he was one of them.”

  “Yeah …” Her stomach burbled; she felt better not talking.

  Doc tried harder. “And, man, good work spotting ‘em like that. When we’re collecting this payday, we’ll be toasting our drinks to you.”

  Rebecca concentrated on the road ahead. Whatever she had seen, she knew it wasn’t a beast, but a person. Like her.

  *

  The rooftops had petered out at a major street, leaving Flynn, Mack, and Jean no ready means of crossing. A fire escape provided quick passage to ground level, screeching and shifting as metal folded and stripped screws came loose—but somehow it held firm until the three reached the ground and made it safely from the alley in which they had emerged. Moments later, it collapsed completely. They were cutting across the intersection, trying to escape to Crescent’s fringes when the strike team intercepted them. The jeep screeched to a halt and four stepped out, armed with shotguns and custom rifles. Unlike the Civilis guard, these were seasoned veterans, and heavily armored.

  “You three! Rare and wonderful escapees!” Their leader bellowed. Gilroy, Flynn recalled. “Stand down or we’ll—”

  “Fuck off,” Jean growled, dropping to one knee and planting both hands on the floor.

  It wasn’t like before, in Civilis. There were no unsteady walls, no roof to come crashing down. The concrete and the earth below it buckled and ruptured as the street itself rose up against the strike team, bowling them over and flipping their jeep in the process. A jagged rift formed a barrier between the two sides, and a choking dust wafted upward.

  There was a momentary silence before Flynn looked to Mack and asked, “Can you do anything like that?”

  “Naw. Jeannie’s got us both licked.”

  Brushing the dust from her leather jacket, Jean beckoned. “Come on, let’s jet.”

  They fled the scene, avoided by onlookers all around who knew to keep their distance.

  *

  Bruised tailbones and minor sprains were the worst the strike team had suffered. They could as easily be dead, and they all knew it.

  “Still in one piece, Becca?” Doc asked, in a desperate bid to make small talk. She was always on his mind, and Rebecca knew it, though she’d never admit it.

  “How about a little less flirting and a little more lifting?” Gilroy demanded, and Doc reluctantly joined him and Colin as they struggled to flip the damaged jeep upright.

  Standing close by, Rebecca held her rifle firmly in one hand—a companion she’d known but slightly longer than these three, a gift from someone she hoped was okay. She held her other hand high, illuminating the scene with the radiant light beneath her skin.

  “Ain’t never. Seen our asses. Get kicked. So fast!” Colin declared between grunts.

  “So we know which one to watch out for next time,” Doc said.

  “Which just makes me worry more about what the other two can do!” Gilroy retorted. “Now shut up and push!”

  The jeep flipped, but its springs were strained and its frame bent. Gilroy hopped in quickly and tried the engine. It struggled to turn, but wouldn’t ignite.

  “Come on. Come on, girl,” he pleaded, patting the dash frantically.

  “Be careful, or you’ll just kill the battery,” Rebecca warned as she climbed into the back seat.

  “Watch, bet ya he starts romancing her next,” Colin sneered, while elbowing Doc.

  “You’re such a child, Colin,” she scolded.

  Gilroy leaned in near the broken speedometer. “You know that little French place you like? We’ll go there, just you and me, if you can only—” the engine turned, and his sweet promises turned to exclamations of “That’s my girl!” He turned to the rest of the strike team and bellowed, “All of you! In, now!”

  *

  The strike team tore down the streets of Crescent, trying to make up for the ten minutes lost recovering and regrouping.

  “Colin, light me,” Gilroy ordered, chomping a cigar he’d pulled from the glove compartment.

  The windshield was cracked and wind ripped through its gaps. Colin struck a match and cupped it in his hand, keeping it from the wind without blinding the driver. He’d done this many times before. Gilroy sucked in a draft before glancing back.

  “Now, Becca, I know we keep you around to help talk these folks down, but we didn’t get a word edgewise before they turned on us.”

  The wind was near deafening, but she heard well enough.

  “I joined your team to help.” Her own rights and freedom were on a leash in Gilroy’s hands. She protested because she trusted him. “I’m not here to cut other half-humans down.”

  “And you’ve helped us plenty,” Gilroy replied, slowing to let Colin ask some onlookers for information. “We all know the rewards aren’t particularly there when we take in heads instead of whole bodies.”

  “Press isn’t very good either,” Doc piped in.

  “When it gets out that things went south, yes,” Gilroy agreed, speeding up at Colin’s gesture. “We’re not here to kill them. Just to help them.”

  “I know,” Rebecca agreed. “I know. It’s better for them. Better for everyone.”

  “Still, three escapees?” Colin laughed. “And from Civilis? If that don’t freak people out—”

  “Which is why we may have to put them down,” Gilroy reminded them. “I don’t want their blood on my hands any more than you do, but that redhead ripped the street up to get her—”

  The wind drowned out the rest of Gilroy’s chatter as Rebecca murmured to herself, “She’s not the one that bothers me.”

  She already knew why they had to be quarantined or killed. She had seen him, just a glimpse. The one like an animal. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he ignited a sense of longing in her. Her palm fell instinctively on her rifle, and she felt a glowing warmth in her hand that Doc likely hoped was for him.

  It made no earthly sense. But Rebecca Saul would see him soon. Then, she would know.

  *

  Flynn, Jean, and Mack had reached the midsection of Crescent, where they stood in the burnt-out cross street of four hollowed buildings in the midst of early reconstruction.

  “You’ll hide in that building, over there,” Flynn told Mack, pointing to a corner market lined with lumber and tools. “And I want you in position up there,” he said to Jean, pointing up to an exposed second-story apartment.

  She took a look. It was wide open, save
for one cornerstone to hide behind. Masking her concern, she asked, “You sure they ain’t gonna call in the cavalry?”

  “This isn’t Civilis. Our jailers were neither properly armed nor ready. They weren’t trained for pursuit, just containment.”

  “Plus these guys’re bounty hunters,” Mack added.

  “And there’s that,” Flynn agreed. Then, to Jean, “They won’t share this. We’re only worth more to them dead than alive if someone else gets credit for the capture.”

  Jean wasn’t one to stick her neck out, to take chances. But at least the sandstorms of the night prior had subsided somewhat. And they would still have the cover of dark.

  “We need them off our backs. And we’ll get farther, faster, with what they have.” It took little calculation to add, “But if you want to go, I won’t stop you.”

  Challenged, Jean gave a self-righteous smirk. She had her own code, and moved to take her post.

  “You are really good at pushing buttons, aren’t you?” Mack asked, impressed.

  Flynn was flustered by the recognition, but quickly buried it. “I’m not trying to make either of you stay.”

  “Maaaayyyybe. I just don’t think you’re trying to get us caught either.”

  “It’s all in line with using the gifts I was given,” Flynn responded. “Like what Jean can do with her hands. And what about you? What talents do you possess?”

  “This and that,” Mack replied ambiguously, wandering off to the corner store. “I just kinda do stuff.”

  Irked by the non-answer, Flynn took a spot near Jean’s post, where he sat cross-legged on the ground and waited.

  Killing Mack in the cell could have made things easier, if not for the unavoidable complications with Jean. Part of him wished he had, though he wasn’t in the practice of killing.

  Flynn didn’t like killing. He hated getting his hands dirty. But he would, if he had to.

  *

  It was maybe seven minutes before the strike team’s jeep pulled up—enough time to cut and run into the wasteland, not enough to safely lose a tail. They pulled up just short of Flynn, kept the headlights on. He got to his feet, keeping his back to them.