Stone Rider

by David Hofmeyr

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?”

  Nothing. No response. He blinks and wipes away the blood with the back of his hand.

  “FRANK! WHERE ARE YOU?”

  A vase implodes. The stone slices through the middle of it as though it were made of paper. A picture explodes into hundreds of glass shards and the wooden frame clatters from the wall, rolling drunkenly on the floor.

  The violent cacophony goes on and on. Adam clamps his hands to his ears and tries to drown out the sound. But it keeps building. On and on.

  Stones fly. Shards of glass scatter and shrapnel fragments pelt the walls. The half-light of a rising sun makes everything a play of red shadows. Then one last smash and all he hears are the whoops and screams outside.

  Now he hears the front door swing open.

  The onslaught of stones must have torn the bolt clear off. Adam feels the presence of someone in the room with him. He can hear breathing. Outside the shouts die down and there’s silence. Adam’s heart is in his throat. He’s outraged by his own cowardice. He wants to stand to confront the intruder, but fear pins him to the floor.

  Footsteps crunch through the debris. Breathing and footsteps. The slow creak of floorboards.

  Adam wants to scream, but he makes no sound. Instead he listens to the crunch of the footsteps as they make their way through the room. They stop. At what he thinks is Frank’s door. Silence. Adam sweats and holds his breath. Time drags.

  The intruder’s footsteps scrape and then fade to the front door, and exit.

  Adam waits. His cheeks burn hot with the embarrassment of his fear. When he hears the cries take up again outside, he moves. He crawls over the debris and his knees are sliced as he goes. He winces with the sharp pain. The sound of the scraping is loud. He trails crimson blood.

  When he reaches the window, what used to be the window, he raises his head, real slow. Shreds of curtain flutter in the breeze. Shards of glass cling to the metal frame. It’s been blown to pieces. Torn apart.

  Dark figures move in the red dust outside. Silhouettes against the low sun. The sun catches their goggles and throws flares at him. Riders. Their mouths are covered by masks, but he can hear them laughing under them. They sit on their bykes and set themselves to riding in a crazed circle, flinging up spumes of dust and crying out, whooping and hollering.

  One of them, on a white Stinger, sits astride his byke, not moving at all. He looks at Adam. Right at him. Then he calls something out, something sharp, and the Riders circle him.

  The lead Rider, alien in his gold goggles, salutes Adam with a raised right hand, and then they turn and they ride out, one after the other.

  The last Rider, a skinny kid, carries a flagpole in his hand. The flag whips back and forth as he rides. Adam sees the black marking on the cloth, clear as day in the red haze.

  Scorpions.

  Adam hobbles back to the couch, staunching the blood flow from his head with his bundled shirt. He picks his way through jagged rubble and his feet are cut and bleeding by the time he reaches his boots. He lifts them from under a pile of smashed bits of wood and glass and he pulls them on, slides into them, blood and all. His head throbs and his heart hammers.

  He doesn’t speak. He hardly breathes. He doesn’t call his brother’s name. Instead he surveys the wreckage. A table, scarred and broken. Ornaments, smashed to pieces. A carpet, ripped and torn. Every surface strewn with debris. And stones. Stones everywhere. Hundreds of them. Too many to count.

  Bastards. Bloody bastards!

  The ceiling creaks above him. It splits with a terrific ripping sound and a section caves in. Dust showers down and clumps of plaster explode in powdery white clouds.

  Only then does he move to his brother’s room. His hands shake. His guts twist into painful knots. At the door, he sees what he knew he’d see. What the intruder must have seen.

  A thin stream of blood runs in the gutter of the wooden floorboards. It comes from a wound in the side of his brother’s cracked skull. The body lies inert on the floor, unmoving.

  “Frank,” Adam says. It’s more a puff of sound than a word.

  Adam feels his legs carry him to the porch. He stares at the sun, hands limp at his sides. He takes a spade from where it leans and he walks out to the one tree left standing, the wild oak.

  He looks at the two headstones already there, blinks at them. A single white feather floats across his vision. It lands on Pa’s headstone, catches a gust and whirls up into the oak’s bare branches.

  Something grabs his attention.

  Throughout the attack a sound was missing. A sound that marks every dawn, regular as clockwork. Roosters crowing. He doesn’t bother going round back to check the coop. He knows in his gut what they’ve done to the chickens. The dead quiet tells him.

  The silence builds to a roar of accusation in his ears.

  Adam glances across at the mound of the shelter. The door is shut. Stillness hangs about the place as if no one’s been near it for months.

  He looks at the well and sees his byke still propped up against the wall. The Tribes have a kind of honor with bykes. A convention. Never touch someone else’s byke. Not ever. His Longthorn is still there, but there’s no byke alongside her. The Drifter is missing.

  Why? What happened? Where’d Kane go? And when?

  Questions tumble through Adam’s head.

  But he knows only this with certainty: Kane up and left…and Frank is dead.

  Dead. Dead. Dead.

  The word repeats itself inside his skull, each hitting like a hammer blow.

  —

  He digs with quiet fury. Slamming the spade into stones and dirt. Digs a ditch big enough to sink a man in. Digs without thinking, shutting his mind off, chopping through roots and hauling out rocks. It takes him hours, even though the ground under the oak is porous. He goes down so deep he has to throw the spade up and haul himself out with his hands.

  Breathing hard, he stands with his thumbs dug into his back pockets and looks into the hole. Sweat pours from his forehead and drops into the dust. He rolls on the balls of his feet, back and forth. His cut feet burn inside his boots. A weight presses on his chest and his throat is tight.

  He turns and makes his way back to the ruin of the shack. His boots drag through the rubble with a muted noise. Adam feels a million klicks away. Somewhere else. Somewhere above, looking down. This isn’t him. This isn’t his life.

  Adam lifts his brother under the arms and struggles backwards with him, inch by inch. It startles him how heavy the body feels. Even a body as thin as this.

  “Dammit, Frank.”

  But Frank isn’t Frank anymore. His body is waxy. It looks nothing like him.

  Adam takes up the arms again. He leans back and heaves the body along the wooden floor. The feet—one flat metal, the other flesh and bone—roll outwards, making two parallel drag marks through the rubble. The arms spread-eagle. The head slumps to a shoulder and nods against a jutting collarbone. The worn jeans hike up and the prosthetic leg is exposed, grotesque and alien.

  Adam pauses at the front door to rest. His eyes scan the room in a mist. He picks up a slingstone smeared with blood. He rolls it in his hand and drops it in his pocket. Then he stoops to take up the body again.

  He pulls it through the doorway. Bumps it down the steps. Averts his eyes at the sound. Across the yard he jerks the body. Through the weeds and through the dust. It takes forever to reach the ditch.

  He looks down at the body that used to be his brother.

  Frank’s immutable laws of survival run through his head. His seven mantras:

  Keep your head down. Stay low. Say nothin. That’s how you survive.

  If you fall, roll when you hit the dirt. And you get right back on your byke.

  Keep looking for a way out. And, when it comes, ride like hell.

  If you have to fight, fight dirty. No kind of clean fighting left.

  You gotta keep trying. Never give up. Not ever.

  You gotta be hard to surv
ive. A Stone Rider. Hard as the desert.

  Trust no one. You’re on your own. Stay alone. Stay safe.

  “What happened?” Adam says aloud. “Why didn’t you listen to your own rules? Why didn’t you keep your head down, like you told me?”

  There’s no answer.

  Adam returns to the house. He comes out with a ripped sheet and he tips the body over and rolls it into the sheet until it’s wrapped tight, head to foot. He doesn’t look at the face before he covers it. He can’t.

  It’s just a body. It’s not Frank.

  He gives it a hard shove with his boot and it falls into the grave. It makes a dull thump against the earth. The vibration shudders up through Adam’s boots, runs through his limbs and his stomach, straight to his heart. A sob escapes his throat. He leans forward, hands on his knees, gasping, feeling sick. He stays this way a long time, concentrating on his breathing. One shuddering breath at a time.

  Breathe….Breathe….Breathe….

  He recovers enough to collect the spade and he starts filling the hole. Slow. Methodical. Mechanical. He doesn’t pause. He doesn’t rest. He digs in the spade, kicks it down with his boot, scrapes on the soil, lifts and then scatters it. One load after the other. He doesn’t make any sound, apart from the occasional grunt as he works.

  Something hard and cold turns inside him as he pats down the soil with the curved back of the spade. A bitter taste fills his mouth.

  He throws the spade aside. Presses his fist into the small of his back and arches. His body aches all over. Every sinew and muscle. His hands drop to his sides. He rocks back and forth.

  “I’m sorry, Frank. I should’ve given Levi the money. I wasn’t thinking.”

  No answer. Adam reels under the weight of the silence.

  He brought the Scorpions here. It was his fault. All because of his bloody-minded fix on racing. But what good is guilt? Frank is dead.

  A sound vibrates the air. The low growl of bykes. Adam looks up.

  Two of them, approaching from the direction of Blackwater. And he can tell in his bones, with absolute certainty, that there is nothing human about them.

  Adam watches them bear down and doesn’t move. They look human—or humanoid at least—two arms, two legs, a body, a head. But they’re not. They are metal and bolt and rivet. There is no flesh on them. No blood and no bone. No soul. Their metal suits are pitch-black and polished. Strapped to their thighs are bulky fusion shooters. They ride modified Cobras, dark and sleek, fast as thought. Built and supplied by Sky-Base, controlled and deployed by Warlords like the Colonel, these are Ground Roving Utility Bots. GRUBs.

  They come to a grumbling stop in front of him and sit while the dust settles.

  “Blackwater citizen,” the GRUB on the right says, dismounting. “State your name.”

  A Talker. Third generation.

  Its speech is clipped and to the point. The voice sounds metallic. Hollow. Its head has been molded to resemble a human skull, encased in a helmet, with mandible-like jaws and an oval speaker disc for a mouth. Its black visor is opaque. Adam sees himself reflected.

  He looks small and misshapen.

  The dismounted GRUB carries a computer tablet in its hand and stands upright, like a gunfighter, legs apart. The second GRUB—silent and deadpan—remains seated.

  Second generation.

  Adam knows they were designed by Sky-Base to keep the core mines running. Engineered with only one purpose. To curb rebellion. To defeat the will of the Left-Behind. And—when required, with efficiency—to apply uncompromising force.

  Their state-of-the-art, muscular design is an obvious display of might. Adam knows that. He also knows not to mistake bulk for lack of speed.

  He stares at the GRUB’s holstered fusion shooter and feels his palms begin to sweat. He’s never seen them blast, but he’s heard stories. Riders vaporized into red mist.

  The GRUB speaks again. “State your name.”

  “Adam Stone.”

  The GRUB consults its tablet. “Our data indicates the death of Frank Stone. Verify.”

  Adam feels a surge of animosity. “You know it’s correct—why ask me to verify?”

  “Comply, citizen. Confirm the data.”

  “Why don’t you check for yourself?” He nods at the freshly dug dirt.

  The GRUB looks at the mound. It returns to its byke, lifts an object from a concealed compartment panel. A scanner gun. Then it walks to the grave, its articulated parts making soft motor noises and clicking sounds. The GRUB passes the gun over the raw earth and takes a reading. Adam hears the fizz of static. Then it stops.

  The GRUB replaces the tool in the byke and turns to Adam again. It pauses, almost human. Then comes the mechanical voice, dull and even-pitched.

  “This property is no longer the abode of a Freeman. Your byke is no longer registered to a family with a living Freeman. You have one day to purchase a Race ticket or new accommodation will be assigned and you will register with the mine. Do you understand?”

  Adam looks at the GRUB. “You aren’t gonna ask me how he died?”

  “Trauma to the head,” the GRUB retorts. “Do you understand the order?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. I understand. I get it.”

  The GRUB retakes its seat, starts the motor and the two of them, side by side, wheel round and cruise back the way they came. Adam watches them until they are out of sight.

  Now he’s got nothing left. Nothing left to lose.

  Now he’s the last one standing. Just like Old Man Dagg’s hog. The last Stone.

  Now he will do the one thing he was born to do.

  Ride.

  He looks at the grave. “I’ll beat ’em, Frank. I’ll beat ’em all. I’ll ride, like you taught me. And I’ll find him. The one who killed you. I’ll take blood for the blood he spilled.”

  He pauses, feels the sting of tears. It’s not like him, this feeling. This need. It’s new. It stirs something in him. A darkness he’s never felt before. He’s appalled. But—most frightening of all—part of him likes the feeling.

  It’s a dry, calm morning. Windless. Still not too hot. The sky is a hazy indigo, filling up with dust. A few wispy cirrus clouds float high, where the sky is so dark it’s almost black. It’s going to be a perfect day.

  Adam falls to the ground and lets the sobs come.

  He rides wild and fast. He flies along the track. His tires are filled with air and he feels the road hard under him. He stands off his seat as he comes down a steep hill and the wind pulls at his jacket. He knocks his goggles in place, thumbs down a gear and soars.

  Adam opens his mouth and screams into the wind. Screams, until his tongue is dry and his throat is on fire. The screen of dead trees either side of the road flashes past him in a blur of gray.

  Here comes the wind farm. Hundreds of turbines, chopping the air, and, interspersed between them, flat solar panels angled to the sun. Then the power station, enclosed by a tall fence. A sign shouts at him. FORBIDDEN. KEEP OUT. His passing sends Race flyers scattering.

  Here comes the lake, black and wide, hiding its dark secrets. A smell of silt and damp.

  Here comes the core drill—hammering, plundering—rising to the sky.

  Through the Outer Ring he goes. The low houses and their furrowed fields, studded with the shells of wrecked and burnt-out machines. Through the Inner Ring. Looming apartment blocks—gray and bleak—housing the miners, the destitute, the dying.

  He passes two more patrolling GRUBs. They police the street in unison, their heads swiveling in perfect synchronicity. Left, right, left, right. They stop and watch him pass.

  He doesn’t stop. He keeps going.

  —

  It’s noon by the time Adam rides into the town center, right up the main road. Alone in the sun.

  His head is filled with noise: the crashing of glass, the smashing of plates, the crunching of debris under his feet, the dragging sound of boot heels�
��and a metal leg—on the wooden floorboards, the sickening whump of a body hitting the dirt and the sound of the spade dumping soil.

  He takes a long swig of water from his flask to clear his head, but his ears keep buzzing. He can’t escape the noise. And it’s not just inside his head.

  One full day before the Race and a dark tide is rolling into Blackwater. It’s not the same town he and Kane rode through yesterday. The main road is choked. Riders travel up and down, looking for trouble. And most find it. Fights are breaking out. Skirmishes everywhere.

  Adam is watchful. He knows how it works. The Tribes of Blackwater are legion and loyal to their own creed. Through the winter they remain circumspect, operating in the shadows, allowing the dominant Tribe—the Scorpions—to rule the streets. Until the summer, when the Blackwater Trail comes around, and all that changes. New Tribes emerge, like cockroaches from the cracks.

  Every summer it’s the same. They crawl in from all parts. Local and beyond. Outsiders from places Adam’s never heard of. Towns with names as mean as the kids who come from them. All of them demonic with their mirrored goggles and their bristling armor. Packs of malefactors, looking for a fight.

  Here are the Deads now, with their alabaster-white skin, dyed teeth—coal-black—and their plum-colored lips, painted eyes and long nails.

  Here are the Crows in their dark hoodies, with their red eye lenses and their faces hidden in shadow. Silent as the grave. They are known, at best, as artful pickpockets and, at worst, assassins.

  Here are the Dog Soldiers. Crazy, wild and barbarous. They’re easy to spot with their evil grins. They have a bizarre and gory tradition, the Dogs. They remove both their front teeth on induction and file their incisors to sharp points—signs of brotherhood to the pack. They ride close together, churning the dust. The Riders leer and crack loose shots with their slings.

  Here the vainglorious Hawk Nation, with their crimson jackets…

  Here the Daggers…Here the Snakes.

  Riders form alliances to survive. They stick together for safety in numbers.

  But not all of them.