“You want to get there or just crash into trees?” Pol called back.
“Maybe a little more warning,” Melisa said.
“Maybe don’t be scared of the dark,” Pol said.
Melisa ignored him.
I turned on my chest light and pulled it out of the X shaped harness Rojer had designed for it. “Let’s keep going.” I set the magnetized glowing orb on a bench and we got back to work.
We were about halfway done when James announced we were at the city. Through the windows we saw the dark ruins of a city that was much smaller than San Francisco. Spots of light glittered off of two rivers that wound through the crumbling buildings.
“Which building?” Pol asked.
“Not sure,” Lily said. “It’s long and wide and has a dome on the top.”
“You don’t know where it is?” Melisa asked.
“I’ve never flown there before.” Lily thought for a moment. “I feel like it’s in the middle of the city. I do know it has big areas of green nearby. Trees and grass and stuff.”
“So it’s near a park,” James said.
Lily shook her head. “More like in a park.”
We flew on, each of us watching the abandoned city unfold beneath the pod. We crossed over a wide river and the light from the pod’s propulsion units reflected back at us.
“There!” Melisa jabbed finger off to the left. “That’s a big park and a huge building.”
In the glow from the stars and sliver of moon, the building looked like it gave off its own soft light. It was massive. James banked the pod and aimed for a wide flat area near the building.
“It’s like a castle,” Pol said.
“What’s that?” Lily asked.
“A castle?” Pol sounded confused. “Oh, wait. Wanderers don’t do school?”
“We don’t need to,” Lily said. “We learn every day.”
“A castle is where queens and kings and stuff used to live,” Melisa said. “But I didn’t think the old country had royalty.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“Well, if a king or queen lived there,” Lily said, “they had way more space than they needed. It’s bigger inside than it looks out here.”
James set the pod down and we all grabbed a keeper. I put my chest light back into its harness. Lily extended her bow.
“What are the Outcasts like?” I asked.
“Strange. They do . . . things with their bodies,” Lily said.
The five of us formed a sort of diamond as we crossed a wide rectangle of cracked and splitting concrete. My chest light wasn’t bright enough to help much. The front of the building loomed tall and pale in front of us.
“Things?” Melisa asked.
“Decorating things,” Lily said. “And they think the Bug’s still around.”
“Which if they wear Papas, it is,” James said.
“I don’t get it,” Melisa said. “Decorating things? Like what? Paint?”
“Kinds of paint, yes,” Lily said. “But . . . just, you’ll see.”
Lily and I led the group to the bottom of a flight of stairs; the top section of them was completely covered by rubble. There had once been some kind of structure at the front of the building, held up by what were now deteriorating round pillars. Huge blocks of stone with flat sides littered what looked basically like a big porch.
“Up there?” I pointed my keeper at the stairs.
“Yes.” Lily started up. “And over some of these blocks too. The door’s set back a little ways.”
We got up the stairs and followed Lily up a small mountain of broken building.
A voice rang through the night from somewhere above us. “We’ve got guns and they’re all aimed at your ugly heads!”
Lights as bright as stars ignited all over the building, every one of them pointed at us. I closed my eyes, but purple and white spots already danced behind my lids.
“You’d better not be here to do anything bad!” The voice called out again.
“I’m Lily, a Wanderer.” Lily spread her hands out wide. “We’re here to trade.”
Silence came back. Then, “Wanderer? Which triune?”
“Ponderosa!”
I stepped closer to Lily. “Any way to hurry this up?”
“Be patient. They’re strange. Just . . . be patient.”
“And those other ugly blanks?” This was a new voice, higher pitched.
“They’re Pushers, trying to help their friends,” Lily said.
“What does ugly blanks mean?” Pol whispered.
“No idea,” Melisa said.
“Come up. Drop your weapons in the vault,” the first voice said.
The lights turned off, leaving us more blind than before. After our night vision had returned, we climbed the rest of the way, using our hands to get to the top of the last blocks. We wound across a cracked surface to a dark doorway.
Lily stopped and put out her hands. Something was hanging from the doorway, but every time my light hit it, it just looked like darkness. She found an edge of the material and pulled it to the side.
I went in first.
The bright light set me back and made me blink. How did we not see all this light from outside? When my vision cleared, I wondered if the incredibly bright lights outside had screwed up my eyes. A row of people—or people-shaped beings at least—stood in front of me.
The person, I guessed their leader, who stepped forward had two large hoops hanging from the top of each ear. A wide ring also pierced the nose. Her—his?—forehead was covered in a complex pattern of shapes. Not painted, but actually raised shapes. As if the skin had been molded like clay.
“Want to trade? Fine,” the person said. The voice was a woman’s. “Vault’s over there. Then maybe you blanks can find some taste, huh?”
Chapter 31
The place was completely bugging insane. We followed the lady, who said she was called Lyn, to the right through a room that had to be nearly the size of the cavern. The floor we were on was about halfway up the huge dome on the building, but it didn’t fill the entire space. It ringed the inside of the dome, with a dull metal rail lining it so that people didn’t fall over to the floor eight or ten meters down.
Not that you would hit the ground if you fell. The entire bottom floor was covered in thick clusters of people dressed in the strangest things I’d ever seen. Not clothes—metal, wood, whatever. One man had a frame of smooth wood propped on his shoulders and fastened with straps around his chest. It extended nearly a meter above his head. The frame held some kind of cloth or skin with bright swirls painted all over it. Another guy wore a single piece of cloth wrapped around his waist that covered the top half of his thighs. The rest of his bare body was painted, pierced, and covered in geometric shapes like Lyn’s. There were more people than it looked like the space could hold, all dressed and decorated just as crazily. And it seemed like they were all talking. And that they might not shower much.
I pulled my shirt collar up to cover my nose and mouth to filter out the thick smell of people.
Lily reached over and pulled it back down. “No. That’ll offend them. Don’t make these guys mad; they act like kids and throw fits.” She nearly had to shout to be heard over the noise. It sounded like a mixture of talking and something else. What was that?
James, Pol, and Melissa walked behind Lily and me, their eyes wide. The ring floor we were following Lyn around had people talking, eating, dancing, drinking, and—I turned away. Those two needed to find a private place. I looked back at Pol. He had seen it too. Was my face as bright red as his?
Lyn stopped at a door with two tall Outcasts sitting outside it. One, a woman, was sitting on a plain wood chair that looked like it had been built from scraps. The other, a man, was sitting on a harness that hung from a peg on the wall.
Turning to us, Lyn shouted, “This is the vault. All weapons go in here.”
The two tall Outcasts looked us up and down and smirked. The woman stood up, the tall, flower
y headdress she wore wavering. She put a hand up to steady it. A hundred bracelets slipped down her arm. Rings covered nearly every finger on her hands. That had to be heavy.
The Outcast woman flicked her wrist and a holographic readout appeared above a thin black bracelet. She tapped a combination of buttons and the door clicked open.
“Come on,” Lyn said. “Find space and put them away. You’re burning my eyes.”
Lily and I took the others’ weapons and shoved them in a corner. When we came out, Lyn was already several meters away.
“Let’s go,” Lyn said. “You need to get work done.” She squinted and took us all in. She made a gagging sound. “So boring.”
“Work?” All the people around us with their piercings and paint and weird shapes—was that work? “We’re not here for that,” I said. “We just need some fuel cells. And we don’t have much time.”
Lyn stood in front of Melisa and studied her. Cocking her head to one side, Lyn slid a heavily adorned hand down one of Melisa’s cheeks. “You, pretty girl, need work.” She stroked up toward one of Melisa’s ears. Melisa didn’t move. I figured she didn’t want to offend. “A few chains from ear to nose, at least.” Lyn stepped back. “And a nice circle on your forehead, with a point coming down your nose, would suit those high cheekbones just right.”
Pol was trying to hold back laughter. I tried to imagine Melisa with all that stuff.
“Um,” Melisa said. “Maybe later?”
Lynn looked coyly at her. “After your work’s done, come see me. I can do your paint.” She put her hands out and smiled wide. Even her teeth had shiny pieces stuck to them. “I suppose I forgot. Welcome to Dome Town, home of the Outcasts.”
Lily nodded. “Thank you.” She gestured for us to follow her. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but we need to trade for fuel cells.”
Making a sour face, Lyn waved toward the wide, packed lower floor. “You’ll have to find someone down there. Perhaps Mintz has some, but I don’t know.” Throwing another look at Melisa, Lyn walked away. “Remember, I’ll do your paint.”
I followed Lily to the railing, and Melisa, Pol, and James spread out to my right. “Strange? You said they were strange,” I said to Lily.
“Keep it down,” Lily said. “They’ll get offended at anything.”
“But this is—” I tried to take in the whole scene. “This is like, not even human.”
Lily raised an eyebrow at me. “Because you can say what’s human and isn’t? The guy who lived in an artificial world his whole life?”
I stood there, staring but trying not to be obvious. A trio of girls walked past, laughing loud. All of them had a triangle shape under their skin—but each shape was painted differently. They also wore pretty much the same clothes, shirts that showed off their stomachs and trousers that had been cut really short. One of them had a metal belt with two chains hanging from it that attached to a cuff on each ankle. She jingled.
A couple meters away, a group of young people probably my age were running in place as hard as they could, then falling to the floor. Each time one of them fell, the others laughed. Wait, they weren’t just falling. They wore Papas. They were purposely getting the knockout. As the second-to-last of them fell, the last one standing threw thickly painted arms in the air and shouted triumphantly.
More of the same madness was happening all over the upper and lower floors. Amongst all the noise, I felt like I heard something almost musical. What was that? I remembered the music file I’d found on the file reader.
“This is…” Melisa trailed off.
“Yeah,” James said.
“She said something about someone named Mintz,” I said.
Lily was watching us. “What?” I asked.
“You’re kind of funny to watch. You’ve never seen anything like it and you look like you’re about to faint,” Lily said. “Except Pol.” She nodded his way.
Pol didn’t hear her. He was totally engrossed in something at the far end of the lower floor. I followed his line of sight. A group of men and women had carved out a fair amount of space and were projecting a holographic image against a wall. The image moved. I realized that the holograph was somehow displaying what was going on right behind the people.
“Pol?” I nudged him.
“That is blaze,” Pol said. “They’re capturing an image and throwing it through the holographic projector in real time. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“We have to move,” I said. “Should we split up?”
“No,” James said. “Too slow getting back together. Let’s just go.”
“Come on,” Lily said. She led us through groups of people sitting, sleeping, shouting, and even doing some of the ‘work’ Lyn had talked about. As we passed, I watched a woman slide a needle through a young boy’s upper ear. The boy hissed in pain.
We came to some stairs and went down. “How did we not see all this light, or hear this noise from outside?” I asked.
“They’re weird,” Lily said, “but that seems to help them. They make all kinds of things with their printers downstairs. They created a material that blocks all light and sound and covered every window, door, and crack in the building.”
“And the electricity? Where are they getting their power from?” Pol asked.
“Pretty sure it’s from the rivers,” Lily said.
As we descended the stairs, we passed people going up or just standing on the stairs. Most of them made an obvious effort to not meet our eyes, although that had to be hard since they all stared at us as we passed. The rhythmic beat I’d been hearing ever since we got in the building had grown even louder by the time we got to the bottom of the stairs. I felt it in my chest. We followed Lily around a corner and stood at the edge of the mass of people.
“How do they do that stuff with their skin?” I gestured toward my head.
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “It’s only been going on for a year or so.” We dodged a group of Outcasts who were walking in time with each other. I watched them as they passed, realizing their arms and ankles were tied to the person next to them with some kind of fabric binding. So when one person took a step, the person they were tied to had to take one too. The group was smiling and laughing. They all had double circles shaped into their cheeks and foreheads.
“When it started, it was just a line here or there,” Lily continued. We wove through the crowd. I kept my elbows tucked in tight against my body. “These shapes are new.”
“It’s got to be some kind of molding material that looks like skin,” Pol said.
I leaned closer to him. “Yeah, but it’s under their skin.”
“No way,” Pol said. “It just looks like that.”
I watched one Outcast roll off a suspended seat and stretch. His seat was a long, soft-looking cloth suspended between two poles. The man tapped one of the fasteners and it slid off the pole. Then he pulled the fabric tight and, as we passed him, I heard the fabric winding into the fasteners. When it was all taken up, the fasteners were right next to each other. Now he just held a case that was the size of my shoe.
“Pol, did you see that?”
“What?” Pol’s eyes were everywhere. Between the strange people and the amazing tech they had, it was hard not to stare.
“That seat—although it could even be a bed—totally retracted into a case.”
“Really?” He looked around.
I pointed at the Outcast. “That guy. I wonder if you could suspend that from a couple trees.” An image of sleeping off the ground came to me. The fabric had looked comfortable enough.
“We should try to get one of those too,” Pol said.
“Yeah, but Lily said something about trading,” I said. “What are we going to trade for fuel cells, much less a thing like that?”
Pol frowned. “Good question.”
We stayed in a tight cluster and found our way around the edge of the room asking if anybody knew where Mintz was. Lily did the talking. We came to an area that
had tall piled walls of plasteel, rock, and wood encircling it. A woman a little taller than Pol stood outside, leaning on one of the walls. Her arms were caked with painted pictures of all kinds of things I didn’t recognize. Long, deep red hair cascaded in waves down her back and her face was pale. She’d done something to her eyes to make them look huge and she only had one piercing—a short stem right through the tip of her nose just above her nostrils.
Lily bent close and raised her voice. “We’re looking for Mintz?”
The redheaded woman stood taller and ran an arm up and down the wall. “Sure you blanks don’t want Magic Meg?” I realized the wall she was caressing had those words on it, with ‘Get Painted’ under them.
“Maybe later,” Lily said. “Do you know Mintz?”
Magic Meg spotted James and walked over to him. Except she wasn’t exactly walking. She swung her hips with each step and her feet barely lifted off the floor. It looked like dance-walking. “Now this is a blank I could work with,” she said. She tugged at James’s black beard. “Shape this like a dragon or tiger.” It was like the rest of us didn’t exist.
“My beard’s fine,” James said. He smiled and gently slid Magic Meg’s hand off his face. “Although I’m sure you would do a great job.”
Magic Meg surveyed us, her big eyes getting bigger as she took us in. “You all need some work. Have you seen yourselves?” She parted a dark cloth that covered the entrance to her space.
Was this where she lived? Or did she just work here? I had my answer when I glanced in. Cloths of all kinds and colors draped the inner walls, hiding the slapped-together look of them. More blankets and weird-looking cushions lined one entire side of the space—that had to be a sleeping area. A tall, skinny mirror hung on the wall just opposite of the doorway.
Seeing my dirty face, long messy hair, and ragged clothes reminded me of how long it had been since I’d jumped in a stream to get clean. I looked at the rest of my group. We looked fine—normal even. James was tall and dirty, like me—although my face was pretty much always red from the sun these days. Lily was brown from being outside her whole life. Pol’s face was darker than most of the Outcasts’ and his hair was flat black. Melisa looked fine, too. Her almond-shaped eyes, naturally darker skin, and long, wavy hair even looked good. Messy and dirty like me, but good. Nearly drowning under a building didn’t make you look your best.
Push (Beat series Book 2) Page 20