Mutant City

by Steve Feasey

  ‘No, no! It’s fine, look.’ Rush hurried across and showed the big guy how to turn the little handle to reinvigorate the light. Having done so, Brick jammed the thing against his nose so the light shone straight into his eyes. His breathing slowly returned to normal. ‘No more dark?’

  ‘No more dark.’ Rush said. ‘Any time you want to, you can give the little whirly thing a spin or two and have all the light you need.’ He stared up at the hulking figure, knowing in that instant that he’d acquired a new travelling companion. The thought didn’t fill him with joy. Rush and Dotty had survived a week in the Wastes because of their ability to disappear whenever there was danger, hiding and waiting until it had passed. How they were going to do that with this hulking giant in tow was beyond him. And this thing with the dark was a problem. Whenever in doubt about their safety, Rush would go through the night without a fire or a light. But the alternative was to leave Brick here. Leave him to the werfen, the cannibals and the dark he feared so much. Rush sighed. ‘Before she left, Maw also said you were to come with us.’

  ‘Us?’

  Rush gave a short low whistle through his teeth, and the rogwan came hurrying over from where she’d been snuffling among the debris.

  Rush nodded at the creature. ‘This is Dotty. She found you under the ground.’

  When he saw the creature, the big man’s tear-streaked face broke into a broad smile. He moved his arm and was about to reach out and pet the animal when Rush stopped him.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’m not sure how she’ll react.’

  With a crestfallen look, Brick withdrew the hand. ‘She’s pretty,’ he said.

  Rush looked across at the little creature, who was at that moment sitting on the ground with one leg lifted in the air, her head craned around so she might lick her own rear end. Despite his growing love for the animal, he thought Dotty might well be the ugliest thing he had ever laid eyes on. ‘Yeah . . . I guess.’

  When the big guy finally climbed out of the hole, he momentarily lowered the light and took in the devastation all about him.

  ‘Everyone gone,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘Brick all alone.’

  ‘Rush,’ the boy said, holding out a hand. ‘That’s my name. It sounds like “hush”, but it’s spelt with a ruh. And you’re not alone, Brick. You have Dotty and me now.’

  Having moved what he hoped was a safe distance away from the devastated settlement and the werfen, in a little hollow surrounded by boulders, Rush threw caution to the wind and lit a fire. He spitted the clagbat and roasted it over the flames, sharing the meat with Brick. Dotty had gone out hunting in the darkness and waddled back after a short time with a bellyful of some poor unfortunate creature. She flopped down next to the fire and fell asleep instantly, farting loudly in her slumber in a way that, despite his ordeal, made Brick laugh. The big man ate an enormous amount, and moaned when Rush told him he couldn’t eat the portion of meat he planned to smoke for the next leg of their journey.

  As they sat by the little fire, Brick humming tunelessly and staring into the flames as he rocked back and forth, Rush explained that he was heading for City Four and the mutant township that had grown up outside its wall.

  The humming stopped. ‘“Go to City Four” – that’s what the voice said,’ Brick muttered, nodding to himself.

  Rush froze. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, but the giant simply stared at the fire as if hypnotised. He simply repeated what I said, he told himself, eyeing the man through the flames. There was little doubt in his head that the big guy ‘wasn’t all there’, and that travelling with him would be burdensome. Not to mention that if he always ate as much as he had tonight, he would be a nightmare to feed in a landscape where food was difficult to come by, even with Rush’s unique skills. Nevertheless, Rush couldn’t abandon him. The voice in his dream had told him to collect something at the trading post. Was Brick that something? Unquestionably, somebody had gone to great lengths to hide him, even if doing so had cost them their own life. The thought reminded him of Josuf and his own sacrifice to save his young charge.

  ‘So what do you think about coming along with me and Dotty?’ He nodded back in the direction of the ransacked settlement. ‘You can’t really go back there, can you?’

  ‘Brick’s Maw might come back.’

  The horrific scenes he’d witnessed through his spyglass replayed in Rush’s head. He took in the big man’s face and sadly shook his head. ‘She’s not coming back.’

  ‘Rush sure?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The big man’s shoulders began to heave as he silently wept.

  They sat like that for a long time, Rush allowing himself to grieve too in a way he hadn’t before. Eventually Brick let out a long sigh. He straightened himself and nodded his huge head up and down as if he’d come to a decision. ‘OK. Brick and Rush.’

  Rush held out a hand. ‘Rush and Brick.’ His hand dis­appeared all the way up to the wrist, but the handshake was surprisingly gentle.

  ‘Brick tired,’ the big man said. And with that, he lay down on his side, closed his eyes and, like Dotty, fell fast asleep.

  Rush watched the pair for a few moments before hunkering down and pulling his collar up around him to stave off some of the cold. After a few minutes he realised he’d neglected to feed the fire before settling down. It would almost certainly die without more fuel, but he’d got comfortable and the wood he’d found earlier was a little too far away for him to reach. He sighed and closed his eyes, concentrating on the logs until he connected with them, feeling them with his mind as surely as if he was touching them with his hands.

  He hadn’t done this for a long time, and never with anyone as close by as Brick was. Josuf had told him from a young age he wasn’t to use his gift. The stone throwing was one thing – he could always put that down to luck if anyone saw him do it – but this was something altogether different. The firewood shifted a little, as if disturbed by an animal or something unseen beneath it. Then three pieces rose up, wavered in the air for a second, before slowly moving over the fire and dropping gently down into the flames.

  Rush smiled to himself as he closed his eyes. It had felt good. It had felt . . . right.

  Rush

  Forced to travel by day because of Brick’s refusal to do so in the dark, the two of them should have been easy targets for bandits or anyone else intent on attacking them.

  How they avoided being seen in those first few days – walking across desolate scrubland with no cover as they headed for the distant mountain range – was a mystery to Rush. Travelling like this went against everything he’d done up until now, and despite their luck at not being spotted, he found himself doubting if he’d done the right thing by persuading Brick to hook up with him. As the days went on and their good fortune continued, Rush, a natural pessimist, became convinced that bad juju of some kind was merely building up, and the longer they went on undetected, the worse it would be when Lady Fortune finally turned her back on them.

  Sure enough, on the third day their luck nearly failed them. The sun had almost dipped below the horizon; spiky shadows reached out across the ground, like long dusky fingers trying to hold on to what remained of the day. Rush, failing to notice the hole a burrowing animal had made, stepped into it and fell. The loud shriek he let out brought Brick hurrying over, asking the teenager over and over what had happened. Hissing through gritted teeth against the waves of pain, Rush was unable to answer at first, and when he did, he was short with the big guy, telling him to back off and leave him alone. Brick made camp, bringing covers over to Rush and telling him everything was going to be all right. But lying wrapped in the rough blanket, Rush knew how far from the truth this was. The slightest movement of his ankle sent waves of agony shooting through him, and there was no doubt in his mind that the bone was broken. That being the case, he would almost certainly die out here. Shivering beneath the thin covers, and trying to block out the pain, he eventually fell asleep.


  The next morning, Rush woke to discover his ankle was fine. He flexed his foot, stunned to discover no hint of pain. Getting to his feet, he tentatively tested it a few times, and then stood fully upright, leaning so it bore all his weight. There was nothing to suggest he’d injured it in any way the previous day. He gawped stupidly down at the limb, shaking his head in astonishment.

  ‘Better?’ Brick asked.

  ‘Wh . . . ? Er, yeah. Better.’

  ‘Good.’

  They set off in the direction of the mountains again, Rush in the lead and the humming Brick bringing up the rear. Walking like this, the younger mutant didn’t notice how the big man now had a distinct limp. It didn’t last long, and by the time they stopped again to rest, there was no sign anything had ever been wrong.

  They carried on for two more uneventful days. Five days in total had passed since they’d set out from the outpost, and now the pair had finally reached the foothills of the mountain range they were headed towards. The vast rope of mountains stretched out as far as the eye could see in both directions, as if the earth had spewed up a natural barrier to stop travellers from reaching whatever might lie on the other side. From way off, the two had selected a particular peak as the one they would cross; it was lower than those around it, and unlike its neighbours, there was no indomitable-looking summit reaching up into the clouds. Instead, it appeared as if the uppermost part of their mountain had been neatly sliced off with a knife. ‘Like the top of an egg!’ Brick had said.

  If Rush had had a sense of impending doom before, it was positively crushing now the mountains loomed ominously over them. He took to stopping every few minutes to scan the ridges and bluffs with his telescope, looking for signs of movement or the flash of reflected sun on a spyglass pointed back in their direction. When Brick asked him what he was looking at, or bugged him to let him have a go with the telescope, Rush would snap back at him or simply ignore him altogether. When they struck camp at night the forebodings of danger were so bad that he was unable to sleep, imagining that whatever might have been watching them all day would use the cover of darkness to creep down and cut their throats. This lack of sleep did nothing to improve his mood, and neither did Brick’s constant tuneless humming, which was slowly beginning to drive him mad.

  The morning they were to begin their ascent proper – the low foothills finally giving way to tougher, rockier terrain that they were forced to scramble over – Rush opened his eyes to the sight of Brick grinning at him from across the ashes of the previous night’s fire.

  ‘Morning,’ the big guy said, poking a stick into the grey-and-black mess. Having consumed all their dried meat, and failing to find anything to hunt in this desolate wasteland, there was no food for them to break their fast.

  Rush ignored him, rubbing his eyes and getting up to stretch his legs and back. He looked up and groaned at the thought of starting such a climb on an empty stomach. It didn’t look too bad from down here, but there were a couple of areas higher up where he thought they might need the aid of the rope they’d brought along from the ruins of Brick’s former home.

  ‘Where’s Dotty?’

  The big man shrugged. ‘Hunting?’

  Rush scanned the landscape – a gloomy vista of tumbled, broken rock with the odd tussock of stiletto-grass here and there. It was unusual for her to leave them so early in the morning; she normally hunted at night. At least she would be starting the day with a full stomach. Who knew? Perhaps, after she’d gorged herself, she might bring something back for the two of them, though he wasn’t going to hold his breath on that one.

  Brick’s humming started again, punctuated this time by a tap-tap-tap of the stick on a rock.

  Rush fought the urge to tell the big man to shut up, and angrily began shoving their things in the knapsack. It occurred to him that maybe he should have left Brick back there in the hole. Maybe, in the long run, that would have been the best thing – for both of them. He’d asked himself time and again why such a big man had been shoved in the bolt-hole when he could have been better used to defend the place. And every time he came up with the same answer: because whoever had put him there must have known he was of no use in a crisis. That, no matter how big he was, he couldn’t be relied upon to help when danger struck.

  Rush shook his head. Like it or not, he was stuck with the big guy. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, setting off without so much as a backward look.

  ‘Are we nearly at the top yet?’ Brick asked for what seemed like the hundredth time that fateful morning.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Brick hungry.’

  ‘Rush hungry too.’ He winced. He was even beginning to talk like the dummy now. ‘Just shut up about food, will you?’ Except for some foul-tasting norgworms they’d managed to dig up and cook into a soup, neither of them had had anything to eat in nearly forty-eight hours.

  They were on a narrow rutted path that might have been made by animals of some kind. Rush was hoping they were mountain goats, and he salivated at the idea of killing and cooking one.

  ‘Rush grumpy today.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, Brick’s being a pain in the arse today. And if he wants to –’

  He came to halt. The route they’d been following dis­appeared up ahead, falling off the side of the mountain in what must have been a landslide. Now there was nothing but a sheer wall of rock that, even with the rope, would be impossible to climb. Rush swore under his breath and looked helplessly around him. Frustration gave way to despair and he was about to announce that they would have to turn back and pick another mountain when he saw the cascade of trailers hanging over a darker patch of the rock face. He walked over to it, pulling the curtain of plant matter aside to reveal a narrow fissure that could have been formed at the same time the mountain fractured and the path was lost. What was left was a high, thin corridor just wide enough for a person to go through. The light didn’t penetrate beyond the entrance, but when he shouted into the void, he could hear how far his voice travelled. He was suddenly aware of Brick standing by his side.

  ‘We’re going to have to see where this leads,’ Rush said, nodding into the gloomy passageway. ‘Of course, it might not go anywhere. If that’s the case, we’ll have to turn back. But having come this far, I don’t think we can leave without checking it out.’

  ‘Dark in there.’

  ‘We’ve got the torch.’

  ‘Still dark.’

  The boy rounded on the hulking figure next to him, his top lip drawn back in a snarl. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that! But take a look about you, Brick. There’s no other way for us right now. We either see where that leads –’ he jabbed a finger in the direction of the opening – ‘or we go back the way we came, where we know there’s no food, kiss goodbye to the time we’ve already spent getting this far and try another mountain that we hope doesn’t have any dark places on it!’

  Brick stared at his feet. ‘Your lip looks funny when you get angry,’ he mumbled.

  Rush took a deep breath, calming himself. ‘Look. I’ll take the torch and go ahead first. The way my luck is running, it’ll be a dead end. But if it does go somewhere that looks promising, I’ll come back and we’ll go through together. How does that sound?’

  He was answered with a shrug.

  He held out his hand. ‘Torch.’

  Brick dug around in his pocket and came out with it, putting it in the boy’s hand.

  ‘Look at me,’ Rush said, suddenly feeling a little guilty for having shouted at the big guy. ‘I won’t be long. Stay here and wait. See if you can spot Dotty. I know she’ll find us, she always does, but I’d rather have her back with us when we go through.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Brick said. He added something else, but Rush was no longer paying attention. Something about ‘bad things coming out of the dark’.

  Rush soon left the daylight behind. If he turned to look back, he could still just about make out the figure of Brick standing close to the entrance, but ahead the inky darkness was co
mplete. The little cone of light thrown out by the torch didn’t penetrate far, but it was enough to show Rush that the fissure carried on deep into the heart of the mountain. The floor of the passageway soon began to get steeper and, despite the fact that this quickly blocked off any sight of the light behind him, he was grateful that the incline meant he was heading up and not down. He came across pinch points where he had to turn sideways to get through, as well as sections where the cleft opened up. Water intermittently dripped from above so he was soon soaked to the skin. At one of the sections where the passage became wider Rush realised that the mountain above him might not be as solid as he’d hoped. Rocks and rubble littered the floor, making the going underfoot different here: muddier than the hard surface he’d been walking on until now. He shivered, trying not to think too much about the vast mass of rock above him. He swung the torch up, but it hardly made any impression on the darkness overhead. Shining it towards the floor illuminated tracks. His heart quickened and he crouched down to inspect them more closely. Cloven-hoofed animals had passed this way. Mountain goats perhaps, or maybe sheep? The animals had used this pathway in the past, and that meant it led somewhere.

  He had no idea how long he’d been walking – it prob­ably seemed much longer than it really was – but there was a smell and it was getting stronger. An eggy, foul stink that made his empty stomach clench. He stopped for a second when the light from the torch began to dim again. As he was about to wind the handle to recharge the dynamo inside, he sensed a very faint light up ahead. He frowned, thinking he must have imagined it, but it was there all right. Somewhere up ahead was the tiniest hint of daylight. He switched the torch off and carefully carried on in the direction of the glow, putting a hand out to use the wall beside him as a guide.

  He stood in the entrance to a cave. A small break in the rock high up in the roof away to his left allowed in a shaft of light which fell at an angle on to the huge lake dominating the subterranean space. The surface of the water shimmered in the darkness as hundreds of jet-black droplets rained down from overhead. But neither the lake nor the narrow shore that surrounded it held much interest for Rush: he only had eyes for that small hole in the cavern roof, a hole that might be their way back out to the mountain again.