Proxy

by Alex London

  “Quiet down!” Knox yelled at the thunder. “I’m trying kiss a horse!”

  The three of them rolled on the ground laughing. The horses whinnied and grunted. In time, the laughter faded. They went back to listening to the wind and the storm. Syd’s memories prowled at the edge of his mind like a panther. It was hard to remember what he’d just thought was so funny.

  After a while, Knox broke the silence. “I’ve never slept outside before.”

  “Me neither,” said Marie.

  “You get used to it,” said Syd.

  The silence settled again. Knox filled it with a worry that had been on his mind.

  “If we find the Rebooters, do you think they’ll let us go?” Knox wondered aloud. “I mean Marie and me. We’re patrons. And my father’s . . . well . . . you know.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re with me,” said Syd. He startled himself by saying it. He had to think for a second, to decide if he meant it.

  He guessed he did.

  “Do you know what you’ll do when we get there?” Knox wondered.

  Syd shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “You will,” said Marie.

  “I don’t get why you’re so sure of it,” Syd told her.

  “Because I have to be,” she said.

  Syd put his head back on his hands and looked up at the sky. It was a funny thing. Marie was running to something while Syd was just running away. He was afraid neither of them would ever really get where they were going.

  Syd listened as Knox’s breathing changed, slower and deeper, letting out tiny snores. He felt the rise and fall of Knox’s chest next to him and soon after, Marie’s. He kept his eyes open. He didn’t want to see the holos his memory was conjuring, the dead he’d left in his trail.

  He didn’t meant to sleep, but suddenly, he was on the steel table in the middle of the factory, strapped down, but watching himself on the table from above and there were the men in white suits and blue latex gloves. There were the screams and the explosions.

  The nightmare unfolded like always, but this time, when the needles came, he knew. The blood. They were infecting his blood.

  “One more,” the man said, as always, before he tossed the baby Syd over the railing and jabbed the grown Syd in the birthmark.

  But this time, when the man said, “Yovel,” Syd knew he meant forgiveness, and this time, when the baby fell, someone else was there to catch it.

  It was Knox, staring up, his green eyes glistening as the baby cried in his arms. The man’s body lay crumpled on the floor beside him, dead, and Syd also knew who this man was.

  His father.

  Syd’s eyes snapped open and he was lying on the canyon floor, looking up at the underside of the rocky outcropping. The opposite wall of red stone glowed gold with the first light of another day.

  Syd felt a heaviness on his chest and saw that beneath the blanket Marie and Knox both had their arms around him, resting across his chest. He fought the urge to reach behind his ear to touch the birthmark. He kept still and listened to the morning.

  The only sound was the breathing sleepers and the occasional snort of the horses. He’d never heard such a quiet. He tried to stay as still as possible, not wanting to wake the other two. He liked the warmth of their bodies beside his, liked the weight of their arms across him, as if they were holding him down to the earth to keep him from floating away. Knox’s heavy forearm twitched slightly and Syd’s heart pounded against his rib cage so hard that he wondered how it didn’t wake him.

  He knew once they were up, the ride would begin, the fear and the pressure and the looming unknown. But lying down in that half sleep, the nightmare fading and the day not yet begun, he could feel at peace.

  Of course it didn’t last.

  Memory burned away what was left of sleep. No sense lying there any longer.

  He pushed himself onto his elbows, letting the sleepers’ arms slip. Knox opened his eyes and quickly retracted his arm, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His hair stuck up on one side and his eyes were puffy. He noticed Syd looking at him and he cleared his throat.

  “No breakfast in bed?” Knox said.

  Nobody laughed. The humor was gone and might as well have never been there. They stood and began to pack for another day’s ride. Syd wondered how far the canyon lands went. He hoped close to the Interstate. If they had to cross open plains, the drones would be able to target them easily.

  “Hey, Knox, I think you’d better ride with me today,” Syd said.

  Knox turned around and the glisten of his eyes startled Syd, made him think of the dream.

  “Sure, that’d be—” Knox started, when a low rumbling cut him off. He looked in its direction in time to see a torrent of brown water, frothy and churning, smash through the canyon walls.

  In a scream of water and rock, the flash flood tore the horses from the ground, engulfed Marie where she stood. Syd had just enough time to catch a look of surprise cross Knox’s face before the water sucked him under. A heavy object smashed Syd in the head and the world went brown and red and black.

  [41]

  KNOX COULDN’T BREATHE OR see, and the only sound was the roar of water in his ears. One moment he’d been talking to Syd, the next he was underwater, spinning wildly, legs over his head, bent backward, slammed hard against the rocks, smashed down and thrust up, turned around, gagging, choking. He clawed desperately for the surface only to smash into rocks and realize he’d been swimming sideways.

  The feeling was like a hundred car crashes, a thousand punches in the face, a stampede of horses running him over. Knox knew he was about to die and the irony of drowning in the desert was not lost on him.

  He gave up fighting.

  That’s when the flood spat him up to the surface, half dead, and he grasped and clawed at the air to stay on top of the raging water. Broken branches sank when he grabbed them, debris smashed into his legs, and he felt the sting of drawn blood. A great sucking pulled him below again, his mouth filled with water, but he swam furiously up and vomited it out, reaching, striving, stretching for anything to keep him up.

  He caught an object, large and bristly, and he hauled himself onto it, half in the water, his chest resting across it and he knew, then, in the bright, living sunlight, that he was rafting down the canyon on the dead body of Marie’s horse, Justice.

  He clung to it. Water splashed over him; the horse’s body pounded into the cliff sides and cushioned the blows. He looked around the churning chasm for the others, but saw only angry foam and roiling mud. He sank his head down against the damp fur of the dead horse and coughed. The water was thick and oddly sweet and it left a gristly coating of sand in his mouth and his nose.

  The flood snaked through the canyon and disgorged itself and its moribund passenger across the sizzling hardpan of the desert floor in a jumble of broken trees and rocks and scattered supplies.

  Knox dove off the horse’s body just before it rolled on top of him. Its hoof smashed into his shin so hard that he yelled, but he’d gotten free in time. He’d be bruised, but nothing worse.

  He crouched, spluttering on his hands knees, studying the cracked ground in front of him. He caught his breath. In, out, in, out. He was alive.

  He looked up.

  The flood had spat him onto a plain at the edge of the canyon lands. The earth was pink and yellow, run through with dark cracks, and flat all the way to the horizon. The heat shimmered off it, creating strange patches of dancing air, and far-off cloud banks pointed gray fingers down from the sky, jabbing them into the earth. It took him a moment to realize they were tornadoes, half a dozen of them, twisting and turning around one another and lifting huge clouds of dust into the air.

  Where he crouched, the sky was clear and blue and empty. Not a cloud above. Not a drone either.

  Knox scrambled to his feet and stood, his clothes sagging off him, their pockets weighted with mud.

  Along the ground, the flood had dum
ped all the scattered ruins of the canyon—odd bits of garbage, broken rocks, scrubby trees uprooted and smashed, all the supplies that they had pilfered from the bandits, the mangled corpse of Marie’s horse, the writhing, screaming whining body of the other horse, nameless, not yet dead, but clearly on its way.

  And there was Marie, her face bloodied, as soaked and half drowned as Knox, sitting up in the dust. Steam rose off her as the desert air sucked the water from her clothes. She appeared shimmering, vaporous.

  Knox looked for Syd, and saw him, lying flat on his face, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other pointed forward like an accusation. He wasn’t moving. He too steamed as he dried, and the vapors made it look like a ghost was rising from him, a heap of mud and ash.

  Knox ran to Syd, threw himself down beside him, and rolled him over. Syd’s clothes were shredded and tattered, all of them brown with dried mud. The only way to tell what was cloth and what was his proxy’s skin was that the skin was seeping blood through the grime that coated it. Syd had a gash on his forehead and another on his thigh. Knox listened for breathing, but heard none.

  He felt for a pulse—his executive family emergency crisis training finding a use.

  He felt no pulse.

  “Stay with me, Syd,” he muttered. “Not like this. Don’t let him kill you like this.”

  Knox knew the flash flood wasn’t his father’s doing, but still, the malevolence of nature seemed somehow connected to the vast accumulation of brutality they’d suffered at his command.

  Knox tilted Syd’s head back and reached into his mouth. Syd’s teeth tickled the back of his hand. His fingers found a clump of mud, and he scooped it out, digging Syd’s airway free.

  He felt Marie standing behind him now; her worry palpable on the back of his neck. He didn’t turn to look at her and she didn’t question him. She’d had EFECT training too.

  He rested one of his hands over the other, linked his fingers, and set his palm onto the center of Syd’s chest. Then he leaned forward, straightened his arms and pulsed, up and down, compressing Syd’s chest as hard as he could.

  He held one of his favorite Tragic Harpie Bingo songs in his head and crunched up and down to the beat, manually pulsing Syd’s heart. He knew he’d crack a rib or two in the process, but he’d done worse to Syd in the past. At least this time, the pain might save his proxy’s life.

  No.

  Not his proxy.

  His friend.

  “Come on!” he yelled at Syd. “You knockoff! Breathe!”

  Knox worked to a quick sweat in the desert sun and the sweat dried to a salty paste almost instantly. His arms ached from the chest compressions. The mud that caked Syd’s body hardened and cracked around him like a shell.

  Knox set his head down on Syd’s chest and listened.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Do you want me to—?”

  “No,” Knox cut her off. “I’ll do this.”

  He sat up and hit Syd, pounding his chest with a full fist. Then he interlocked his fingers once more and hummed the same song once more and once more began crunching and crushing and becoming Syd’s heartbeat. Every downward thrust of his arms moved the blood through Syd’s body and kept him alive.

  A few feet away, the dying horse let out a choking shriek, and Marie left Knox and walked over to it. She picked up the double-barreled weapon, snapped it open to check if it had any of the explosive cylinders in it and snapped it shut again. Knox knew what was coming next. He closed his eyes and kept pumping Syd’s chest. He grunted with the effort and keeping his eyes shut tight.

  There was a too familiar bang and then the horse was silent. Knox didn’t open his eyes.

  He had no idea how much time had passed. It was a lifetime if it was a minute. Under the scorching desert sun, Knox could not imagine a time when he was not pumping his proxy’s blood through his body; he could not imagine a time before or after. All he had was this moment and the vow that Syd would not die on the desert floor.

  He stopped and pressed his head to Syd’s chest again.

  He listened. He counted. He listened some more.

  “He has a heartbeat!” he announced. He’d never been more proud of anything he had done in his life. It was amazing how fragile the human body could be, and how so many people walked through their lives not knowing how it worked or how to fix it when it stopped. If Syd had been out here with a patron who didn’t remember his training, he’d have died. Maybe there was some destiny at play, Knox figured. Maybe he wasn’t a useless, spoiled rich boy after all. He was a lifesaver. He liked the feeling.

  Circulation recovered, Knox rushed to the next step of the training. He checked for breathing again.

  Still nothing.

  His heart sank. He hoped Syd’s brain hadn’t already died from lack of oxygen.

  He tipped Syd’s head back, squeezed his nose, and pressed his mouth over Syd’s and blew air into his lungs.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  He pulled away, looked up at Marie and shook his head.

  “He can’t die like this,” she said. “He’s not supposed to die like this. Don’t stop. Breathe for him. Do it. Just breathe for him.”

  Knox leaned over Syd again, squeezed his nose, and filled his lungs with air again.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Syd coughed.

  His body heaved beneath Knox and he gagged; he strained. His fist pounded the earth and he rolled to the side, vomited a pool of muddy water, coughed, and rested onto his back, gulping air. His eyes were open wide to the cloudless sky.

  “Syd!” Knox cried out. “Syd, can you hear me?”

  Syd didn’t answer and Knox was sure he’d been too slow to bring him back, that Syd’s brain had given out, that he was alive but completely brain-dead. Knox had failed Syd again, just as he’d failed him their whole lives. He let him die.

  Marie knelt on the opposite side. Her purple eyes shone behind her muddy mask. She put her hands on Syd’s head. “Please, Syd, tell us you can hear us. Blink if you understand.”

  Syd blinked and he tilted his head toward Knox. He spoke, his voice scratched and strained. “I guess . . . that was . . . our second kiss.”

  His lips cracked a smile, the teeth blinding white in the sun.

  Knox leaned back onto his calves and rested his hands on his knees. He exhaled, relieved.

  “Marie?” Syd looked at her.

  “I’m here,” she said, an urgent kindness in her voice, like that nurse Knox remembered from the hospital. Another side of Marie that Knox had never seen before. He looked at her looking at Syd. Covered in blood and mud and dust, she had never looked more beautiful to him.

  “Did your resurrection hurt this bad?” Syd asked.

  Marie smiled. “I didn’t have Knox breaking my ribs,” she said. “Next time I suggest a private hospital. The sheets are softer.”

  Syd smiled and leaned back against the ground to steady his heartbeat and catch his breath. His side ached, his head throbbed, and his throat stung as if he’d swallowed half a ton of scrap metal, but he was alive and he savored the feeling. He got to spend another day on the earth; messed up, cruel, and dangerous as it was, it was the only place he wanted to be.

  He could have lain on the desert floor for hours, just breathing, had his eyes not found the black shape buzzing over the canyon, black wings against the deep blue sky.

  A drone.

  It dropped down the cliff face and passed over them on the flat desert, low enough for Syd to see the round casing of its weapon systems. It circled for a second pass. Knox, Marie, and Syd looked up at it. The patrons leaned over Syd, covering him with their bodies, and he hoped that the protection they afforded him would hold. The drone banked hard left and disappeared at high speed over the horizon.

  “They’re coming,” said Knox.

  Marie looked up and saw a massive vehicle racing over the desert floor, heading right in their direction. It ra
ised a huge cloud of dust and heat rippled the air around its body.

  “Guardians?” Knox wondered.

  “Better not find out,” Syd suggested. Knox helped him up and they scurried to the edge of the canyon that had spat them out in the flood. Marie stopped halfway and ran back to the scattered debris in the desert.

  “What are you doing? Are you glitched? Get back here!” Knox called.

  Marie squatted down and rummaged in the debris for more of those cylinders for the antique weapon. Once she’d found them, she sprinted back to the crook of rock where Syd and Knox had hidden themselves. They watched the approaching machine.

  It had cut the distance between them in half already, hovering just above the desert floor. Its body was heavy steel, pocked with rust and patched with other discolored metal, topped with a weapons turret. A mishmash of solar panels and wind turbines surrounded the turret, and in the front, where windshields should have been, the hovercraft had only metal slits. Its engines shrieked and rattled, crying out, to Syd’s ears, for repair. It bore no corporate logo.

  “That’s not a SecuriTech vehicle,” Knox said.

  “Freelancers,” said Syd. “Scavengers. Maybe bandits.”

  “Like the ones we left in the cave?” Knox chewed his lower lip.

  “Maes gang,” said Syd. “I’d prefer not to find out.” He knew that if they had to run, his broken ribs wouldn’t let him get far. Hopefully, they hadn’t been spotted.

  Marie aimed her weapon at the approaching hovercraft, as if it could do anything to a machine that size. It was more for the comfort of something to do, than for the utility of doing it. There was value of going through the motions.

  They lay side by side in silence, just like when they’d slept huddled together, Syd in the middle. They waited for the hovercraft to pass.

  Except the hovercraft didn’t pass.

  [42]

  WHEN THE MACHINE REACHED the bodies of the horses and the scattered debris from the flash flood, it looped around and settled down onto its landing gear in a cloud of dust. Its engines cut out with a loud rumble and the rear hatch opened with a hiss.