Across the way, just past the dog, Aadore could see a familiar building, or at least familiar parts of what had once been a building. It now leaned sideways out of the heap of concrete into which it had settled when it fell. The structure’s familiar boxiness, its iron shingles and black windowsills, reminded her of home. At last, and just before the dreaded fall of night, they’d arrived in District Twenty-Two and her apartment was only a heart-pounding dash away through the street ahead. However, they needed to be calm. They needed to be as gray and silent as the fog. For District Twenty-Two crawled with the unliving.
On the way here, their progress had been slowed by chattering hordes of the damned. Sean’s awareness had helped prevent any encounters; on two occasions, the creatures had been busy eating a screaming wretch, or wretches. At the moment, Sean looked tired. They had not stopped since leaving the swamp of filth, and Aadore knew his senses must be overtaxed. Whenever he walked now, he needed to lean on both Aadore and his cane. He could no longer run—another reason they moved so slowly. It had taken them hourglasses to slink a mere ten city blocks. One to go, thought Aadore. They were almost there.
Hoisting Sean up, she moved out from the protective shadows and into the street. Her brother wheezed in her ear, and the clacking of his cane on stone sounded like a cowbell summoning the monsters in the fog. Aadore tipped her head, silently telling Skar to hurry onward to the concrete shelf she spotted in the distance. It looked as if it had once been a wall, but it had tumbled onto an aqueduct that itself had been vomited up from beneath the cracked street. With each tremble of his body, Aadore could sense the bursts of pain her brother endured; it took all the energy he possessed simply not to fall. As she assisted him, his skinny hands sank like an eagle’s claws into her flesh. “We’re almost there,” she lied; in fact, they’d barely passed the dog.
Sean looked down, counting steps, focused only on putting one foot in front of the other. The game worked for a while, until his wooden toe hit the edge of an upturned cobble and he stumbled, flinging his cane and nearly taking his sister to the ground. Aadore saved them both from the worst, her grip and footing strong enough to keep them from tumbling. Up ahead, Skar—almost sheer and intangible now, a ghost in the fog—came to a stop. Aadore motioned him onward with a hand. She and her brother had to rest a speck. Sean panted against her neck, and she rubbed his back. In her arms, his body felt like skin stretched over a skeleton. She dreaded the conversation they must one day have about his years away in the military. “I had a whole evening of fine things planned for you, Sean,” she whispered. “A phantograph show, your favorite foods. I even found an elusive fragrance…a silly gift, the smell of the Feordhan. Do you remember that? From when Father, Mother, you, and I took a vacation with the Els?”
Sean did. Memories of ripe salt, spume, and earth were among the few that had not been damaged during his tortures. When his mind had drifted from his body and off into the past, driven away by pain, he had sometimes splashed in the frigid rush of the Feordhan with a younger, smaller Aadore. As the hungry night drank what light there was and the shadows deepened by the speck, Sean thought of what that memory meant, and of what this experience meant, too: devotion, family, love. All too abruptly, the memory of salt and innocence was dispelled by the stink of rotten, wormy meat. Although Aadore hadn’t yet seen them, Sean noticed the shadows lurching to her side. Because Sean loved his sister, no matter how distant in years and experiences they were, it was easy for him to whisper, “Leave me, and run.”
Suddenly, Aadore saw the hunched shapes. Shite, fuk, and damn, she thought in a flurry of curses. Three unliving creatures materialized out of the grayness to her right. She didn’t scream at the horror of their scabby bodies, their blood-soaked clothes, the waggling entrails in the emptied gourds of their bellies, their hanging jaws, concave heads, or wobbling eyes. She knew she could run. Sean, though, would be able to manage a few steps at best. She debated dragging him, but the creatures were only paces away now, too close for her to cover much ground. Fighting seemed the best option, and she gripped her blade. What Aadore never considered, not even as her brother pushed at her and the rotting creatures staggered forward to eat them, was leaving Sean to die alone in the streets like the dog they’d seen. They were brother and sister of iron. If they were to die today, they would do so proudly and bathed in the spoiled blood of their enemies. Aadore hadn’t fought a person before in all her life, and yet her heart galloped in excitement. She prepared to unleash her steel—
DING! DING! DING! DING!
Objects that rang with the hollow acoustics of metal bounced and spun in a symphony somewhere on the street. Brother and sister couldn’t tell from where the noise came. The unliving, with their disintegrated noses, ear-nubs, and gelatinous eyeballs, somehow sensed the shrill sound. They seemed confused for an instant, torn between pursuing their original prey and hunting this new ringing. The ringing—its crystal echo, its vibration—won out. Before Aadore had drawn her blade more than a finger from its sheath, the creatures had dashed off like mad wolves after a bleeding hare. Aadore and her brother didn’t move until they were sure the unliving had ventured far enough away. They then hurried to retrieve Sean’s walking stick and made an athletic lurch toward the sanctuary where they hoped Skar and Ian now safely hid. Aadore was still wondering what it was that had saved them when they reached the stone shelf and ducked into its shaded embrace. The sound? The pitch? The echoing? One or all of them had led to their survival.
Skar lurked in the dark against a boulder of wreckage. The great man pulled the brother and sister down into his squat. “They appeared right after we’d settled in,” he whispered, “dropping off the top of this tunnel. I feared they were going to come at us and got my ax ready. Ian and I froze. What a good lad he is; his silence is unnatural, but good. I watched the dead things from here, watched them turn back the way we’d come. They were wriggling their disgusting faces, holding out their hands like old maids lost in the dark. They can’t see shite, I’d wager. Can’t smell either. I figure they sense only sounds, the kinds of sounds you don’t need ears to hear.”
“Go on,” whispered Sean, fascinated.
“I’m an army man, as you know. But I spent some time in the navy, too, and had a few tours sailing above and under the great blue wonder. Had to stay on a submersible for a week—feels as if you’re a tinned fish. Anyway, while I was down there, I heard the noises the great lords of that domain make. We used to shoo them away with our own noises and horns when they got too close to the submersibles. Some of the sounds were exceedingly strange—not noise so much as force—and came in quick succession. I don’t have anything in the way of fancy technomagik to draw on here, but I figured if I made enough noise, created enough vibrations, I might scramble the hearing, if you can call it that, of these dead folks. I threw away all of our drinking cans, and some spoons and other trash. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” said Sean. “You saved our lives.”
Aadore contemplated the behavior of their enemies. Was it possible that the monsters would have shambled right past her and Sean if they’d kept perfectly still and silent, or if she’d thrown her clattering sword as a distraction? She couldn’t think of a scenario in which she would want to test that hypothesis. Nonetheless, her thoughts lingered on their seeming luck thus far. She wondered if the cold, determined silence that the three of them had employed every sand—their bravery and refusal to shriek and flail like ordinary victims of doom—had been as much responsible for their survival as Skar’s bombardment of cans. Regardless, the man had acted quickly, made every effort to save them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Think nothing of it, milady,” he replied.
“I’m a lady’s maid, not a lady,” corrected Aadore. “I suggest we keep moving, and keep quiet.”
Confident that the creatures couldn’t see her, Aadore took out her glinting blade and pointed it down what looked like a concrete underpass of sorts, which wa
sn’t very long and seemed to emerge into a gray, smoky space. The sword served as a poor torch, though she wielded it as if it were one. She strode ahead, no longer afraid of the things in the dark.
IV
Night reigned in the misty city, and Aadore could see only the shadow of her building. The rectangular edifice tilted to one side, though it appeared sounder than the complexes to the left and right of it, which had been pulverized and swallowed by the earth. Curtis and Master Jenkins had been in those buildings, Aadore realized, and an angry sorrow pinched her heart. Once they’d entered her building, they tried to move quietly, but they were not alone for long. Windows shattered, bodies rose from blood-soaked mattresses, corpses crawled out from under boards. In sands, a swarm had appeared out of nowhere. Although the creatures could not see, they could sense life nearby. The three survivors stumbled up a rickety hallway, which was groaning from its cracked plaster walls, and felt as if they were running through a funhouse. The last push required a delicate shimmy along a toothy ledge of wood, created when the staircase had collapsed into a heap several floors below.
It was a good omen, Aadore decided. She and her companions had been able to prevent themselves from falling: the clumsy dead things below would almost certainly not be so fortunate. From beneath came the commotion of the dead blindly hunting for food, dragging their wet feet, stumbling into walls and each other in their race to find something warm and red to consume—and not only to consume, she remembered, flashing back to the shrieking, bleeding, amputated men they’d passed during their travels. Dozens of men not quite dead, being hauled by the unliving deep into the fog. Perhaps they would not all die, or turn. Perhaps some had Wills that were too strong. Grim and quiet as graveyard mice, Aadore and her new family had watched those abductions from the shadows. Even now, armed, with the cans and scrap metals they knew could distract the monsters, they doubted they would have chosen different. Those diversions—forks, wire, metal twists, nuts, and bolts all capped in glass jars—must be held in reserve for themselves, for use in moments such as this one. Once they had moved free of the ledge, Skar reached into the second sling-bag under his arm, produced two jars filled with rattling trash, and then threw them down into the dark.
SMASH! CRASH! SPIN! RATTLE! SPIN!
The noise was extraordinary and continued resonating for a few specks until all the scattered bits had settled. Under the broken landing, voiceless hunters squeezed cawing sounds from their carcasses, and rushed toward the noise. Skar peered over the edge and watched a flock of lumpy shadows converge and claw at each other, before creeping back to the others. “That should keep them busy and off our trail,” he whispered.
“Let us hope they’re all down below,” replied Sean.
Taking Sean’s caution under advisement, they skulked through the halls of Aadore’s building. This place, once so familiar to Aadore, now made her skin crawl. Apartments had been abandoned, their doors flung wide open. Their upturned tables, unpacked suitcases, and knocked-over furniture told tales of hasty flight. Some of the disorder could be blamed on the earthquake, although it seemed most of Aadore’s building had survived the shocks and aftershocks. Dust fell upon them as they walked, and the walls groaned and creaked, continuing to lament the need to hold themselves together. Aadore wondered if the building was sound. The frenzy downstairs dulled, the dark muffled their senses, and the three felt quite alone up here. They encountered no life or unlife on their way to Aadore’s apartment.
Her door was closed, unlike the others. Aadore stepped toward her home, but was suddenly restrained by Sean’s bony grip. Tired, pale, and clinging to consciousness as he was, he had immediately heard the noise coming from behind the wood—the small bellows of lungs. Someone was sleeping, or trying to be still. Using military hand-signals, Sean held up two stiff fingers, then swiped them from Skar toward the door. Heeding the command, Skar handed the child to Aadore and pulled his ax from his belt. Aadore passed Skar her house key, then stepped back to grant him control of the situation. Skar put the key in the lock, turning it so slowly that the click might simply have been a natural creak. Skar tested the handle, placed his shoulder to the door, and pushed it open a few fingers. As the door swung open fully, Skar flew into Aadore’s apartment. Outside, the two heard a yelp, then a small scuffle that ended with a thud. Aadore and Sean knew who had won the contest even before Skar emerged, lugging a moaning, slumped man out of the apartment.
“Seemed to be squatting in there,” said the ogre. “You know this fellow?” Skar pulled the man up by his collar.
Aadore at once identified the brown-haired, dizzy man. “Curtis,” she hissed. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’ve managed to avoid that fate thus far.” Curtis groaned. “Although this gent here almost ruined my luck.”
“He’s fine,” she said. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend?” Skar wasn’t convinced. “Friends don’t break into their friends’ houses. How did you get in there, anyway?”
“I know how to pick a lock; it’s hardly a science.” Curtis fought to wrestle the hand from the back of his clothing—about as successfully as a kitten trying to free its collar from a low-hanging branch. “Tell him to release me!”
Aadore nodded to Skar. “You may let him go.”
Skar had one more question for the man first. “You have any bites? Any scratches that won’t heal? Any touch of a fever?”
“What? No. I was perfectly healthy until you clobbered me on the head.”
“I guess you’re all right then,” said Skar.
After releasing Curtis, the ogre tried to make peace by straightening the fellow up a bit and sharing his crooked smile. Curtis wasn’t interested, and hurried to Aadore. He clasped her hand. “It’s so grand to see you,” he gushed.
“A bit of a miracle,” replied Aadore.
“I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I don’t know if you’ve seen what happened to my building.”
“I did.”
“Who are your companions?”
“My brother, Sean. The gent that bashed your head is a friend of ours. His name is Skar.”
“He has a mean punch. I’m glad your brother is alive. I didn’t want to ask the question.” Curtis tapped the head of the little fellow peering up at him; the baby grabbed his finger and grinned. “And this?”
“His name is Ian.”
“Another miracle.”
“Yes, he is.”
Curtis finished shaking Aadore’s hand, which he had meant to do instead of engaging in this prolonged caress.
“Enough jabbering, you two, we need to get inside and stay quiet,” commanded Skar, and shoved Curtis ahead.
They moved into Aadore’s simple apartment: open cans littered the kitchenette, and the reek of piss came from the open-concept lavatory—though none could blame Curtis, as there was no water for flushing. There was also an odor of wet, mossy sewage that Aadore could not place. She did not ask what her pink negligee was doing balled up next to the pillow and rumpled bed sheets. She didn’t recall leaving it there. Perhaps Curtis was lonely; and she’d always known he was a bit of a pervert.
Curtis had thrown extra sheets over the windows, and the makeshift curtains were parted, letting in soft slats of gray light. Aadore noticed that Sean’s foldaway bed and her privacy screen had been shoved into a corner near the lavatory to make room for a bit of construction or destruction in the wall. Dewy pipes tied in dripping tourniquets gleamed in the hole there. Several glass bottles littered her table. Inside them shimmered clear liquid—not the milk or brewed summer teas for which they were generally used. Nearly every bottle she owned appeared to have been taken from her cupboards and arranged on the table.
“Oh, that,” said Curtis, watching her stare from the wall to the bottles. “I’m handy with a wrench and a hammer, as you know. Well, you probably don’t know that, as we don’t know each other terribly well. But I am handy. Locksmith, builder, repairman: I’ve done it all. I’ve been
called on by my neighbors to fix their awful plumbing more than once. All the pipes in our buildings run to and from the same reservoir and sewage. However, to save crowns on the bills, the water doesn’t flow constantly, but sits in the pipes on each floor until there’s a large enough demand or accrual of shite. A weighted valve is then triggered, and everything starts to move. That’s why some days, the tap runs nearly dry and last night’s dinner floats in the bowl for longer than it should. I tapped into a few of the water mains on this floor and drew out as much as I could. Seemed a smart thing to do, as there’s no technomagik to purify things now.”
“Very smart,” agreed Aadore.
“Clean water?” gasped Sean.
He hobbled to the table and helped himself to the contents of one of the glass bottles. Sean moaned in pleasure as he drank. Skar joined him, signaling his delight in the indulgence even more sloppily and noisily. Water had never tasted so sweet, so nourishing to these men. Aadore wasn’t as interested in clean water as the men were, though she grabbed a bottle on her way to the bed. There, she removed her weapon, her shoes, her pack—anything that felt encumbering. Free now, she sighed. Aadore took a few sips of water, spilling more than she drank, and then gave Ian a few draughts, too. Once they had sated themselves, Aadore lay nose to nose with Ian and stared into his warm gray eyes. His gaze was the color of uncertainty, the color of change, she thought, before losing herself to sleep.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 27