by Martin Kee
She wobbles, stumbles, looks up again, and Chaz is gone.
Small figures emerge from around the spire, their bodies decorated in bone and teeth, leather and scale. They study her, chattering in that odd language. It’s casual, like a group of farmers trying to decide what to do about a sick horse. Then one steps forward and unfurls a fifth and sixth limb, carved and polished bone. It vanishes below the screen as Valerie mutters something unintelligible. And then he hears the cutting, the sawing. More poachers start to work on her. The camera sways with the rhythm of the butchers’ tools.
Kendal shuts off the tablet, hands shaking. His breath feels shallow, hard to catch. He might throw up. Outside, wind has swept up dust and sand, obscuring the spire. But he needs air. God, how he needs air. The rock walls slant at crazy angles around him, the roof—fifty tons of rock and sand—feels like it might collapse at any moment. He sees himself buried alive.
“Enjoy the show?”
Kendal startles, almost dropping the tablet. Chaz stares through the darkness with shadowed eyes. There’s no way to know how long he might have been watching Kendal, no way to know just how long he’s known about the tablet. There isn’t enough light to know what the man’s thinking at all, not that Kendal would know even on a bright day.
Kendal swallows. He tries to make words, but his throat feels paralyzed.
“What did you see?” Chaz asks, raising his voice over the wind outside.
“Nothing. Just reading.”
“With earbuds in? Come on. Which video was it? The one where we crash? The going away party? Was it the one where the little fuckers eat her alive?”
No point in pretense now. “You let her die.”
“And tell me something, kid. In my situation, what do you think you could have done?”
“You had a gun. You could have fended them off.”
Maybe he’s nodding, maybe he’s thinking. In the darkness, there’s no way to know for sure. After what feels like minutes, Chaz answers.
“I saw them only when it was too late. When she went down, I realized my leg had locked up. Day late and a dollar short, I know. But by the time the charley horse went away, I was watching a dead person. They moved so fast, and it was already almost as dark as it is now, you see? What would have been the point with both of us dead? And you—I never would have found you, Kendal, never would have saved your life with her mask. So in a way, you should be thanking Valerie. You live on because of her.”
Kendal doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to answer such a tangle of logic. The cave feels claustrophobic now, too tight to breathe. Kendal shoves the tablet away, starts to crawl past that staring, unreadable face.
“Where are you going?” Up close, he can see those coal-black eyes.
“I need air.”
“You aren’t running off on me now, are you? Remember, no matter what, we’re in this together. You and me. We finish this together, and we get off this rock. Neither of us is able to do this alone.”
Kendal doesn’t reply, simply scrabbles out the cave. He squints against the dust and sand, drags the breather with him, sucking from it, holding a sleeve up to protect his eyes. It stings. Everything stings now. The sand feels like a hundred thousand needles on his skin.
Then he remembers Valerie and manages to pull the mask away just before he vomits next to a rock. The world spins, the spire looming like a giant sequoia above him, hidden in a veil of red clouds. Panic. He wants to run, but where? Now he wishes he’d never left the village, never even got on this ship. Trapped with a madman, his only chance to get off this world, but to what end? What if no ship comes? Does he just stay with Chaz forever?
Miles and miles of desert lie between him and the village. And even if he did go back, what would he be going back to? Hard labor? He checks his new breather. It’s probably enough to get through another six months, maybe even a year if he’s careful. The fact is, he can’t stay. There’s no reason to stay. He’s stranded on this island and without the ship—pinned to the desert by a giant needle—there’s no way he’ll ever get away.
Something moves in the sand behind him, and he turns to tell Chaz to fuck off. He’s made up his mind, and nothing Chaz can say will change that.
Instead, Kendal hears his own name in birdsong piercing over the howling wind.
Chapter 36
BEX CAN barely make out anything through the dust. In just the short amount of time since they started down after Scoop, the wind has picked up considerably. She wonders if she’ll even find her way out of the desert after this.
“Scoop!” she calls.
Behind her she can still hear Veerh yelling after her, his voice getting lost in the wind. She knows she’s too far out, separating herself from the group, but it’s Scoop. She has to get to him before he runs off again.
She repeats his name-call, pulling on Bindo’s reins as her feet sink in the sand. Her eyelids, evolved to deal with this kind of climate, have half-closed, allowing the nictitating membrane to cover her vision, making it even harder to see clearly. All she can follow is the general direction she saw the giants headed. To her right, the WorldHorn rises up into the Godcloud, vanishing into red dust and murky light, carrying messages to the dead. She can only make out the vaguest outline of the structure that rests at the very top.
Behind her is still calling after her. She turns, facing the wind, seeing his spidery shape trudge forward. It’s enough. He’s close enough. As long as she keeps him in earshot she knows she can’t get lost. Just a little further and she should find him.
“Scoop!” Behind her, Bindo grunts, slogging stubbornly behind her, agitated by the wind and dust. They press in against a flat upright face of rock, just enough to fend off some of the dust.
Bex pushes through the dust, rounds the corner, and there he is. He’s on all fours, crawling out of a cave, his head turned the other direction.
“Scoop!” she calls and starts rushing towards him, and stops. She feels a tickle of fear in the back of her head. Bindo sees it too and lets out a bellow.
The giant straightens up to his full height and turns to see her. Hair covers most of his face in a dense pelt. The eyes, partially hidden beneath a strip of cloth, peer from beneath a thick brow, small and cold and dark. He pauses for a moment, says something in that slow, moaning voice of theirs, and bares his teeth.
*
Kendal doubles back towards the song, sand pelting his face. The cave is almost invisible. He squints, nearly crawling back in the direction he heard his name.
Then he hears a different sound. A squeak—the sound of a small animal in distress, and another sound, the low, frightened bellow of that ox.
Heart racing, Kendal lunges across the deep sand towards the noise, fumbling along the rocks and dirt until he nearly crashes into the towering shape standing just outside the cave.
Chaz smiles, holding a small ragdoll by the neck with one hand. In his other hand, he holds leather reins. The ox-thing tugs at the bridle, eyes wide and scared. But not as scared as the look on the Younger’s face. She sees Kendal and calls his name, her voice faint and weak.
“I guess they were looking for you after all,” Chaz says. He gives the Younger a little shake. Her legs sway, unresponsive. “I think it thought I was you. What a shitty run of luck, right?”
“Put her down—”
“Oh, fuck you,” Chaz says. “You had your chance to impress me. I thought maybe you had a point back in the forest, but now look. These assholes just keep showing up.” He leans in to speak to the captive creature in his grip. “Don’t you? You’re certainly bigger than the others, your little goat here is probably pretty tasty too. You wanna barbeque?”
Kendal’s mind races. I could tell him I know her, but then that’s leverage. I could just beg, but he wouldn’t care. I’m smaller than him. And he has the guns. “Chaz, more are coming. We don’t have time to do that. You know we don’t. We have to get to the ship.”
Chaz looks up through the dust cloud at t
he spire, and for a moment, Kendal thinks he might have a window. Just lunge at him, push him down, throw him over the ledge. Just a second too long, he realizes as Chaz faces him again, eyes small and cold.
“Get my pack,” he says.
“What?”
“Get the backpack. The one with the HEP bricks.”
“Now?” Kendal looks out at the spire. “I can barely see.”
“Even better. It means they can’t see either.”
Kendal walks past him into the cave, passes the Younger in the man’s grip. Her eyes follow him, wet and scared over the vise of Chaz’s hand. The ox tugs at the leash. Chaz looks at it, then tucks the reins into his belt.
“Just get it,” Chaz says. “We got a job to do.”
As long as he’s doing what the man wants, he knows she’ll be unharmed. Still, he wants to apologize to the Younger, wants to say how sorry he is that he got her into this mess. But he doesn’t have the words, doesn’t speak the language. All he can do is whistle his name.
“Yeah, enough of that.” Chaz squeezes and the Younger’s eyes flutter.
Kendal takes a step. “Stop it.”
“Then get the fucking backpack.”
Hands come up. “Okay, okay.”
Inside the cave there are two packs, and he grabs the one with the HEP, dragging outside, trying to stand. A gust of wind makes him stumble sideways.
“Careful with that,” Chaz warns. “That backpack is our last chance to get out of here.”
From the cave, Chaz directs him forward along the lip of the crater, towards the trench. Through the sand and grit, Kendal can almost make out the spire, shooting up towards the sky. Beyond it, he can barely make out the small tents and praying pilgrims—if that’s what they really are. Bioluminescent lanterns glow like lightning bugs in the distance, and Kendal feels a pang of homesickness. The spire casts an immense shadow along the sand, and as they cross that terminator, Kendal feels a slight chill.
He’s alone. No matter what he does, he’s alone. Live alone, die alone.
“Pick up the pace, kid,” Chaz says behind him. “I wanna have this set up by morning.”
From the corner of Kendal’s sight, he can see the man wave the gun, aiming it at the Younger, at the ox, at him, the gestures almost at random. Unpredictable. Every now and then, Kendal tries to check on the Younger, see if she’s even still alive, but Chaz doesn’t give him the chance.
“Then what?” Kendal asks.
“Then the ship falls, you get your little friend back—don’t act like I don’t know, I heard you whistling to it—and then we go our separate ways. Maybe the Emergency Orbital Beacon does its job, maybe it doesn’t. But as far as I’m concerned, you and I have nothing left to say to one another. You’ve made your choice. Seems to me, you’d rather just die on this rock, surrounded with ragdolls. And that’s fine by me. But I’ve got other places to go.”
Walking down to the opposite side of the spire from the camp, Kendal finds it difficult not to trip in the deep sand. It tugs at his feet. Once or twice he almost stumbles, then remembers the high explosives on his back. They reach the base of the spire, as wide as a city block, and Kendal drops the backpack.
“Good. Now take out the bricks and don’t do anything stupid with them.” He pats the extra gun on his hip. “All it takes is a nanosecond to light up this half of the desert.”
“What’s really in the ship?” Kendal asks. He unzips the pack, unloads the bricks and places them in a tight semicircle along the base of the spire. Chaz follows him, a couple steps behind. Be can almost feel the man’s breath, checking each brick. “The servers aren’t really there, are they? Or at least, not in any working condition. So what’s in the ship?”
“Weapons, mostly,” Chaz says. “The armory behind the bridge is almost a solid block of ceramic and foam. I’m guessing it survived the crash, and can survive another thousand feet to the ground.”
“Guns?” The answer surprises Kendal enough to turn and look up at the scruffy, bearded man. “That’s it? Guns?”
“I believe in survival, kid,” Chaz replies. “The longer I can last here until the EOB does its job, the better. I’ve seen what these things are capable of.”
And now they’ve seen what we’re capable of, Kendal thinks.
He places the rest of the charges as Chaz watches on. As the sky begins to lighten, the dust storm ebbs. But under the shadow of the spire, it may as well be night. Stark lines stretch up the crateral slope, pointing towards the trench. He can see the symbols now, painted there earlier, a few feet up from the sand. After placing the last brick, he rests his hand on the smooth, polished surface. Vibration runs through his palm, up his arm like some hidden, eternal heartbeat.
“Stop slacking,” Chaz says behind him.
Kendal stands, and nods to Chaz.
“Okay. We’re done, I guess.”
“You guess?”
Kendal shrugs. “I’m not an explosives expert.”
“No. No, you’re not much of anything, are you.” Chaz takes a few steps closer, inspecting the neat rows of charges. He nods, still holding the small creature in his grip, the small pack animal attached to his hip by a leash.
“What happens now?” Kendal asks.
Chaz points the gun at him. “Now you run.”
“What?” Kendal looks from left to right. “What are you talking about?”
“Run. Go.”
“Go where?”
Chaz points the gun at the far side of the spire, out from under the shadow. “You run that way. You lead them away.”
“What about her?” Kendal points to the prisoner.
“Her? Listen to yourself.” Chaz laughs. “Listen to what you call it. Did you fuck this one too? Is that how you know its sex? What the hell kind of freak are you?”
The man laughs. It’s not the insult that bothers Kendal. It’s the fact that he’s lost. No gun. No friends. No ship. No home. His breath feels ragged in his chest, the sand pelting his face.
“I did what you said. I set the charges.” Kendal points at the blocks laid out along the vast wall beside him. “I did everything you asked. Now let her go.” He hears his voice crack, hears the pleading, the whining, and hates it. He knows there are tears on his face, can feel them mixing with the sand and dust, running into the corners of his mouth.
“Please,” Kendal adds. His voice comes out as a pathetic squeak. “We had a deal.”
“This was never a deal,” Chaz says. “I wanted to see how much you’d do while I held this little guy prisoner. I guess the answer is quite a bit. Now, though, I think I might just keep it and this goat-thing around. Might come in handy if the locals try to interfere with me. A little insurance policy. Now run. Or I start grilling this one up right here.”
The Younger stares at him, eyes wet. He can’t read her expression. Fear? Resignation? I wish I knew how to say I’m sorry I got you killed.
“I’m sorry,” he says to her. “I don’t know how to fix this. I never should have left.”
She whistles something back. Fresh tears well up in his eyes. They cut through the dust, rolling down his cheeks. Chaz grins.
“Ho-lee sheeeit! Are you crying? You’re crying over one of these little things?” He tilts his head in curiosity, his voice softer now. “What the hell did they do to you there? What sort of brainwashing did they do?”
“She… took care of me.” Kendal glances from Chaz to the little creature. “She took me in. I probably would have died that night, but she took me in.”
Chaz nods. Slow. Solemn. For a moment, Kendal thinks he sees genuine sympathy in that face. “Yeah, they did something awful to you in there. Kid, I can’t even imagine, but I owe you this one.”
And with that, he takes the gun and places it on the side of the Younger’s head.
*
What an idiot she’s been. Anger, more than anything, seethes through her as she hangs from the giant’s fist. Instinctively her legs have gone limp, playing dead,
but it’s a stupid, useless bodily strategy. The giant has no intention of releasing her.
They speak to one another, their voices a low gurgling song. But she picks up other things in the overtones. Nuance. Complex staccato punctuations. Scoop, worried; something about the weapon in her captor’s hand; a kind of gun, but not like a seed gun, certainly not like anything she’s ever seen. Where do the bullets come out? Where do you reload something like that? It looks to her as if it’s just a solid piece of ceramic with a blackened tip at the end of the barrel. She wonders if maybe that flips open to spit out the bullets.
All this is fine for keeping her mind out of what could actually happen, what might actually happen. The other giant is clearly the one who killed Kloe’l—brutal, huge, and completely feral.
Kloe’l stands beside the giant now, her ghost watching all this with amusement. Sometimes she’s walking along in the sand, other times riding an oblivious Bindo, but her smug expression is always the same.
I asked if they were dangerous and you said they weren’t. You told me they were friendly. Kloe’l looks out at the WorldHorn, as Scoop plants more of those funny bricks along its side. What do you think they’re doing with those? Building a house, maybe? I will say this: Your minion is certainly a good worker. Just look at him go.
Scoop diligently plants the bricks, lining them all up in a perfect row along the base of the Horn. But now he works for this other giant. Now he’s someone else’s worker, and Bex can’t tell if he’s doing it because of her, or in spite of her.
Her captor moans something in their language, shakes the weapon, and Scoop speeds up his work, turning to grunt and groan in return.
She thinks she knows Scoop well enough to know that he’s not happy; but now she’s not sure. He’s either doing this because she is in immediate peril, or he’s simply joined forces with one of his own.
But then he looks at her, his face wet with tears. He moans something long and loud her direction.
“I know,” she says. “I know you can’t help it. He’s one of you, your brethren. You have been alone for so long, and now you have someone else. I get it. It’s okay.”