Armageddon's Children

by Terry Brooks

  He gave a mental shrug. Life before coming here didn’t matter anyway. The Ghosts had reinvented their lives in more ways than not. Customs and rituals were all new. Owl set the rules for eating, sleeping, and bathing. Hawk assigned chores. Routine kept them focused on staying alive. They did not celebrate holidays. No one except for Owl could even name more than one or two. They celebrated them in the compounds, he knew. Sometimes Tessa talked glowingly of those celebrations, but to him they sounded perfunctory and forced. There even seemed to be disagreement on the kinds of holidays worth remembering. It was just more clinging to the past. The Ghosts did celebrate birthdays, even though most of them no longer knew when their birthdays actually were. Owl had assigned birthdays to those who had forgotten them, and she marked them off on a makeshift calendar she had drawn on the wall. She didn’t know what day it was or even what year. She just made it up, and it became a game they could all play.

  Off to one side, deep in the shadows of a mostly whole building, something moved. Cheney went into a crouch, faced the black opening of the doorway, and growled softly. Hawk stopped where he was, holding the prod ready. After a few tense moments, Cheney turned away and started off again. Hawk swung in behind him, and they continued on.

  Sometimes he thought that it would all be so much simpler if they lived in the compound with Tessa and the others. Not that it would ever be allowed after they had lived on the streets for so long, but just for the sake of argument. There was safety in numbers. There was less to be responsible for and less to worry about on a daily basis. Food and shelter and medical supplies were easier to come by. Some of the people in the compounds still had special skills that street kids would never have. But there was something so abhorrent about compound life that it overshadowed everything that made it appear desirable. Too many restrictions and rules. Too little freedom. Too much conformity of the few for the benefit of the many. Too much fear of everything outside the walls. It was the old world in miniature, and if Hawk was certain of one thing in this life it was that the old world was dead and gone and should remain that way. Eventually, a new world would be born from the ashes of the old, and living in a walled fortress was not the way to make that happen.

  Darkness was almost complete when he emerged from the ash-and soot-blackened ruins of the city’s south end and could see clearly the dark bulk of the compound outlined against the gray skyline. Walls several stories high surrounded what had once been an arena and playing field, stretching away on four sides to occupy several city blocks. A raised metal roof rested atop a network of steel girders and wheels that had once allowed it to move back and forth on a track to open the playing field to the sky, but now was rusted permanently open. Barbed wire rimmed the tops of the walls and the perimeter of the compound in thick rolls. Watchtowers dotted the corners and heavy barricades blocked those entrances that hadn’t been sealed completely. A wide swath of open space separated the compound from the rest of the city; everything close had been torn down to prevent enemies from approaching without being seen.

  A sign with bits and pieces of its letters broken off and its smooth surface blackened and scarred proclaimed that this was SAFECO FIELD.

  Rumor had it that there had once been an adjacent arena that occupied the open space between the city and the compound. But terrorists had bombed it when it was one of the last active playing fields in the country and still fighting to maintain its traditions. More than two thousand had died in the attack, and much of the building had collapsed. Shortly after, the first of the plagues struck, wiping out fifty thousand in less than a week, and that was pretty much the beginning of the end of the old ways.

  Hawk made a circuitous approach to the compound, keeping to the concealment of the rubble and shadows. His destination was some hundred yards east of where he worked his way forward in a crouch, Cheney close beside him. Nothing lived in this part of the city because the men on the walls kept watch day and night; if anything was seen, they were quick to send out a sanitation squad to destroy it. Twilight was the hardest time for the watchers to spot movement in the debris, even on the more open ground, which was the main reason Hawk had chosen this time of day for his meetings with Tessa. He met with her on the same day each week with no deviation. If either failed to show, the meeting was automatically rescheduled for the following night. The time and place were always the same—nightfall in the ruins of an old shelter that had once connected to an underground light rail system.

  Hawk scanned his surroundings as he proceeded, searching through a mix of old bones, desiccated animals, and the occasional human corpse. He didn’t look closely at any of it; there wasn’t any reason to. Dead things were everywhere, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about them. He found the remains of street children almost every week, loners or outcasts or just plain unfortunates who had fallen victim to the things that hunted them. He no longer found the remains of adults; except for the Weatherman, those few still living outside the compounds had long since fled into the countryside, where your chances were marginally better if you possessed a few survival skills.

  Hawk had lost two of his own family in the five years he had been living in the underground. The Croaks had gotten one, a little girl he’d named Mouse. The older boy, Heron, had died in a fall. He could still see their faces, hear their voices, and remember what they had been like. He could still feel the heat of his rage at having failed them.

  It took him a long time to reach the outbuilding, working his way slowly and carefully through the ruins to keep out of sight of the compound guards, which sometimes required that he change directions away from the place he was trying to reach. Cheney stayed close to him, aware of his caution. But Cheney knew enough about staying alive to avoid being seen in any case. Hawk was always amazed at how anything so big could move so quietly and invisibly. When Cheney didn’t want to be seen or heard, you didn’t see or hear him. Even now, he would come up on Hawk unexpectedly, appearing from the shadows as if born of mist and darkness. If the boy hadn’t been so used to it, he would have jumped out of his skin.

  When he reached the shelter leading to the rail system, he slipped down the darkened stairwell to the underground door and rapped three times, twice hard and once soft, then stepped back and waited. Almost immediately the locking device on the other side of the door released, the door opened, and Tessa burst through.

  “Hawk!” She breathed his name like a prayer answered and threw her arms around him. “I almost gave up! Where were you?” She began kissing him on his face and mouth. “I was so sure that this time you weren’t coming!”

  She was always like this, desperate to be with him, convinced he wouldn’t appear. She loved him so much that it frightened him, yet it made him feel empowered, too. She gave him a different kind of strength with her love, a strength born of knowing that you could change another person’s life just by being who you were. That he felt the same about her reinforced his certainty that by being together anything was possible. He had known it almost from the moment he had first seen her. He had felt it deep inside in a way he had never felt anything else.

  He kissed her back now, as eager for her as she was for him.

  When she broke away finally, she was laughing. “You’d think we’d never done this. You’d think we’d been waiting to do it all our lives.”

  She was small and dark, her skin a light chocolate in color, her hair raven black and close-cropped in a silky helmet that glistened even in the darkness. Her eyes were large and wide with surprise, as if everything she was seeing was new and incredibly exciting. She exuded energy and life in a way that no one else could. She made him smile, but it was more than the way he felt about her. She had an enthusiasm that was infectious; she could make you feel good about life even in the bleakest of times and places.

  “Look at you,” she whispered. “All ragged and dirty and mussed up, like Owl hasn’t made you take a bath in a month! Such a boy!” She grinned, and then whispered, “You look wonderful.”
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  He didn’t, of course, especially compared with her in her soft leather boots and coat and bright, clean blouse. Compound kids always had better clothes. His jeans and sweatshirt were worn and his sneakers falling apart. But she would never tell him that. She would only tell him what would make him feel good about himself. That was the way she was. She made him ache inside and want to tell her all the good things he had ever thought about her all at once, even the things that he didn’t think he could ever tell.

  “How is everyone?” She steered him over to the concrete bench set against the far wall and sat him down.

  “Good. All safe and sound. Owl sends her love. She misses you. Almost as much as me.”

  Tessa bit her lip. “I wish she could come back. I wish things weren’t so difficult.”

  He nodded. “You could make things easier. You could come live with us. We don’t have a compound, but we don’t have a compound’s stupid rules, either.” He seized her hands. “Do it, Tessa! Come tonight! Become a Ghost! You belong out here with me, not inside those walls!”

  She gave him a quick, uneasy grin. “You know the answer, Hawk. Why do you keep asking?”

  “Because I don’t think your parents should dictate what you do with your life.”

  “They don’t dictate what I do with my life. The choice to stay with them is mine.” Her lips compressed in a tight line of frustration. “I can’t leave until…My father would survive it, but my mother…well, you know. She isn’t the same since the accident. If she could use…” She shook her head, unable to continue. “If she could just use…”

  She was stumbling all over herself, trying to get the words out. Stone blocks had crushed her mother’s hands when a wall in the compound kitchen had collapsed during an earthquake more than a year ago. It was an event that had changed everything for Tessa, who could barely bring herself to talk about it even now.

  Hawk dropped his gaze. “If she could use her hands again,” he finished, “she would have a purpose and they wouldn’t have an excuse to put her outside the walls.”

  Tessa nodded. “But it’s more than that. She’s crippled on the inside, too. She’s broken emotionally. Daddy and I are all she has. It would kill her if she lost either one of us.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “You know all this. Why are we talking about it? Why don’t you change your mind, instead? Why don’t you come live with me? If you did, they might let Owl and the others come inside, too.”

  His hiss of frustration betrayed his impatience. “You know they won’t let anyone come in from the streets. Especially kids.”

  She gripped his hands. “They would if you married me. They would have to. It’s compound law.”

  She held him spellbound for a moment with the force of her grip and the intensity of her gaze, but then he shook his head. “Maybe they would allow me in, but not the others. A family sticks together. Besides, marriage is a convention that belongs in the past. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

  “It means something to me.” She refused to look away. “It means everything.” She bent forward and kissed his lips. “What are we supposed to do, Hawk? Are we supposed to keep meeting like this for the rest of our lives? Is this what you want? One hour a week in a concrete windbreak?”

  He shook his head slowly, eyes closed, feeling the press of her lips on his. It wasn’t even close to what he really wanted, but what you wanted wasn’t always what you got. Hardly ever, in fact. They’d had this discussion before—had it almost every time they met. She had begun talking about marriage only recently, however. It was a mark of how desperate she was to find a way to bring them together that she was willing to suggest it openly when she knew how he felt.

  “Marriage won’t change anything, Tessa. I am already as married to you as I’ll ever be. Having an adult stand in front of us and say we’re married won’t make us any more so. Anyway, I can’t live inside a compound. You know that. I have to live on the streets where I can breathe. Someday you’ll want that, too. You’ll want it enough to come live with me, parents or not.”

  She nodded more as if to placate than to agree, a sad smile escaping her tightly compressed lips. “Someday.”

  He wanted to tell her that someday would never come. They had waited on it too long already. Until lately, their hopes and dreams had been enough. Time had slowed and all things had seemed possible. But now he was growing anxious. Tessa seemed no closer to him, no nearer than before. He saw their chances beginning to slip away and the weight of an uncertain world bearing down.

  He exhaled in frustration. “Let’s talk about something else. I need your help. Tiger’s little sister, Persia, has red spot. She needs pleneten. I promised Tiger I would see if I could get her some.”

  She looked down to where their hands were joined, and then up again. “I get to see you again tomorrow night if I can find some. I guess that’s reason enough to try.”

  “Tessa…”

  “No, don’t say anything else, Hawk. Words only get in the way. Just put your arms around me for a while. Just be with me.”

  They held each other wordlessly, neither of them speaking, the darkness around deepening with the closing in of night. Hawk listened to the blanketing silence, picking out the faint sounds of small creatures scurrying in the debris and of voices drifting out from behind the walls of the compound. He could feel Tessa’s heart beating; he could hear her soft breathing. Now and then she would shift against him, seeking a different closeness. Now and again she would kiss him, and he would kiss her back. He thought of how much he wanted her with him, wanted her to come away and live in the underground. He didn’t care about her parents. She belonged with him. They were meant to be together. He tried to communicate this to her simply by thinking it. He tried to make her feel it through the sheer intensity of his determination.

  And for the little while that Tessa had asked him for, everything else faded away. Time stretched and slowed and finally stopped entirely.

  But then she whispered, “I have to go.”

  She released him abruptly, as if deciding all at once that they had transgressed. The absence of her warmth left him instantly chilled. He stood up with her, trying not to show the disappointment he was feeling.

  “It hasn’t been that long,” he protested.

  “Longer than you think.” She hugged herself, watching his face. “But never long enough, is it?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  She nodded. “Tomorrow night.”

  “Do the best you can for Persia. I know it’s asking a lot.”

  “To help a little girl?” She shook her head. “Not so much.”

  He hesitated. “Listen, there’s one more thing. There might be something new on the streets. The Weatherman found a nest of dead Croaks down by the waterfront, by the cranes. He doesn’t know what did it. You haven’t heard anything about this, have you?”

  She shook her head, her short black hair rippling. “No, nothing. The compound sends foragers out almost every day. No one has reported anything unusual.”

  “They might not tell you. They don’t always tell kids everything.”

  “Daddy does.”

  Hawk nodded, not all that convinced that her confidence in her father was well placed. Adults protected their children in strange ways. He took her hands in his own and held them. “Just be careful if you have to go out. Better yet, why don’t you stay inside for a while until I know something more.”

  She smiled, quick and ironic. “Until you can go out and take a look around? Maybe you should worry a little more about yourself. I shouldn’t have to do all the worrying for you.”

  They stood close together in the darkness, not speaking, looking at each other with an intensity that was electric. Hawk was the first to break the silence. “I don’t want to let you go.”

  For a long moment, she didn’t reply. Then she tightened her fingers about his and said, “One day, you won’t have to.”

  She said it quietly and without force, but with a cal
m insistence that suggested it was inevitable. “I know I belong with you. I know that. I will find a way. But you have to be patient. You have to trust me.”

  “I do trust you. I love you.” He bent forward to kiss her so that he wouldn’t say anything more, so that he would leave it at that.

  She kissed him back. “You better go,” she whispered, pressing the words against his lips.

  Then she slipped through the doorway leading back into the underground and was gone. He waited until he heard the snick of the heavy lock, and then waited some more because he ached so much he could not make himself move. He waited a long time.

  HAWK WALKED BACK through the city with Cheney at his side, the sky roofed by heavy banks of clouds that left everything shrouded in gloom. The buildings clustered silent and empty about him, hollow monoliths, mute witnesses to the ruin they had survived. There were no lights anywhere. Once, this entire city would have been lit, with every window bright and welcoming. Panther had told him so; he had seen it near the end in San Francisco. Owl had read the Ghosts stories in which kids walked streets made bright with lights from lamps. She had read them stories of how the moon shone in a silver orb out of a sky thick with stars glimmering in a thousand pinpricks against the black.

  None of them had ever seen it, but they believed it had been like that. Hawk believed it would be like that again.

  He worked his way through the piles of debris, around derelict cars and cracked pieces of concrete and steel, and past doorways too dark to see into and too dangerous to pass close by. The city was one huge trap, its jaws waiting to close on the unwary. It was a place of predators and prey. Their shadows moved all around him, some in the alleyways, some in the interiors of the buildings. They were always there, the remnants of the old world, the refuse left over from the destruction and the madness. He felt a certain sympathy for the creatures that prowled the night, hunting and being hunted. They hadn’t wanted this any more than he had. They, too, were victims of humankind’s reckless behavior and poor judgment.