Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Five hammers came down in unison.

  Karina wrapped her arms around Althea, unconcerned her chest was bare and bloody. After a tight embrace, she leaned back and locked eyes. “I don’t blame you… I’m glad you stayed.” She squeezed again, and leaned back with a silly grin. “You’d better mend him. You’ll feel bad if you don’t.”

  Father removed his jacket and wrapped Karina with it.

  Althea giggled with relief through tears and offered a begrudging sigh. “Yeah…”

  he cart squeaked along, a rickety wooden thing held up by old mountain bike tires on either side. Althea pushed it down the winding path leading to the enclosed farm at the southeast corner of town. Crumbly dry dirt caused her to sink ankle-deep in the ground every so often. The orange of the late morning sun flooded the area with warm light and shifting shadows between the stalks of corn and other planted goods set between rows of metal piping.

  At the sight of her approach, two dozen people left their tools in place and came over to get the water and lunch she had brought out to them. The man who usually did this was old and weak, and it gave her a chance to spend time with Karina. When the crowd had thinned, Althea scooped some of the ground meat into tortillas and sat next to her sister on the remains of a concrete wall. The farm workers clustered in groups of conversation around the cart while they ate.

  “So… Now that this is your home, are you ready for a real dress?” Karina asked in a teasing tone. “Or are you still feral?”

  Althea lifted her eyes from the food, making a cute snarl as she mimed a dog tearing at its meal.

  When their laughter subsided, Karina tickled her in the side. “In a year or two, you can just wear my old ones. I guess we can wait.” She ruffled her hair. “Are you okay?”

  “Mrf?” She had a mouthful of ground chicken and beans.

  “The other day, with Hector…”

  She looked down, swinging her legs back and forth. “I have never been so angry. He hurt you. It just happened. I know it hurt. I did it to myself once, but not that much.”

  “Why?” Karina gasped.

  “I don’t like handcuffs.” Althea stopped eating, gazing into her plate.

  “Oh.” Karina pulled her into a momentary hug. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. Father and I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

  Althea smiled and shifted sideways on the crumbling wall. She put her feet up and leaned into Karina. “I’m happy.”

  Karina put an arm around her as they chatted idly about a couple of chores they would do later once she got off work.

  “Will you clean my hair tonight?” Althea tilted her head to look up.

  “Bath night’s not for two more days. Once a week, remember? It takes wood or charcoal to make enough water hot.”

  Althea sighed. “Brush it?”

  “Okay, but you’ll do mine as well.” Karina gave her a light nudge. “C’mon, I gotta get back to work. The others are looking at us like I’m lazy.”

  “Awright.” Althea hopped down and stretched.

  “Don’t forget the water man.” Karina called out in a sing-song tone as she strode back among the rows of vegetables.

  After running around collecting plates and stacking them on the cart, Althea meandered around the edge of the planted area to a jagged metal structure made of patchwork sheets welded together in a shape that resembled a clockwork mushroom. From its roof, a jumble of small copper tubes sprang out like the legs of a spider that had fallen butt-first into a hole and got stuck. She gazed down their length, out over the field where trickles and drops of water fell onto the crops.

  She slapped the door a few times with an open hand after her knock was too feeble to make noise. “Hello? Water Man?”

  A throat noise, barely intelligible as speech grumbled from within.

  “Are you hungry? I have food and water.”

  More noises, though they sounded beckoning this time. She grasped the handle of the door and shoved with all her weight against the monolithic slab. It creaked a rusty groan through the darkness on the other side, leaving her winded by the time the gap was large enough for her. After catching her breath, she ladled some of the meat mixture onto a pair of tortillas and poured a cup of water. She carried the food through the opening, stepping with care along plates of metal stamped with raised diamond shapes. The wet, sometimes oily, surface threatened to take her feet out from under her as she avoided a minefield of sharp scraps, old tools, and invisible slippery spots.

  Ahead, lit by a beam of sunlight from a single round window, a heavyset older man wrapped in the largest pair of leather coveralls she had ever seen sat next to a wall full of small wheels and valves. Face and arms smeared with dark grease, his massive, armor-tipped boots skidded in a futile attempt to slide a wheeled chair to the left to reach one of the knobs. The smell of fermented sweat mixed with a metallic taste in the air, and the fragrance of something worse drowned out any trace of the food.

  “Here you are.” She smiled and set the plate down.

  Jowls wobbled as the large head swung around to look at her. Studded with white fringe that caught the light, his loose cheeks came to a halt just before he finished appraising her. “Wot we got ‘ere?”

  It occurred to her she had never seen this man before; perhaps, like her cart, he could not fit through the door. “I’m Althea.” Her grin at the idea was hard to hide.

  “What ‘appened to Aldo?” He picked at the tacos, inspecting them.

  Althea imagined him counting every grain of rice. “Aldo is feeling tired and sick today, so I am helping.” She tapped her big toe on the floor while gazing around at the strange machines full of knobs and valves. “He isn’t sick, just tired.”

  Satisfied his food was in order; he flipped the tacos closed and took one to his mouth. “You should be off, ‘fore Ornry smells ya. He don’t much like kids. Ate the last one what came in here.”

  She gasped, taking a step back in shock before she realized he was exaggerating. “That’s not nice to say.”

  “Hmmf,” he mumbled. “The bones are in that box.”

  Althea frowned; his emotion told her he was lying.

  A large, broad-headed dog with small eyes scrambled around the corner, claws scraping for traction over the smooth metal. His coat looked like someone spilled strong coffee randomly over a white animal. The skiff-skiff-skiff of uncoordinated locomotion made the water man shake his head.

  Bushy collections of white eyebrow came together. “Best run off now ‘fore he gets ya.”

  Ornry made a whining growl as he clambered to a stop against Althea’s legs and knocked her into the workbench. After a moment’s glance and a tilted head, he licked the strip of exposed skin across her stomach. She giggled and crouched to pet him, getting a face full of tongue in the process.

  The water man stopped eating, and blinked at her. “Well hrmf. Ornry don’t much like no one. You ‘ave a dog before?”

  She pulled the animal’s head away from her face long enough to blurt. “Sort of.”

  “Well.” He resumed eating. “You must be okay then. If Ornry likes ya. He’ll bite ya tho if’n ya bother me wit too many questions.”

  The dog spun itself in a circle and flopped on the ground with a belabored wet exhale. She crouched near him, amid a cascade of leather strands bunching against the floor. Balancing on her toes, she rubbed his side with both hands. The dog adjusted himself, exposing more belly.

  Althea smiled at the fat man. “Ornry likes you ‘cause you give life to the town.” She worked her fingernails through the dog’s fur, making his day.

  “Bah.” He slurped the meat sauce from his fingers.

  “It’s true.” She gave him an earnest look. “You send water to the fields and make food grow. That is life.”

  “Fancy way puttin’ it. I just water the damn garden.” He grumbled, searching for his drink. “G’won now, git on outta here. Place is startin’ ta stink of kid.”

  Seeing the water man
grimace as he shifted to grab the cup of water, she stood and approached him. Ornry convulsed on the floor, trying to stay close enough to receive skritches while lying on his back.

  “Are you hurt?” She weaved through his effort to not look at her.

  “Bah. Jes’ me old leg wound, acts up now and then.” He scooted the chair back, rotating away.

  Ornry whined.

  She stooped to rub his belly again. “It must hurt a lot if you never walk.”

  He glanced back at her with an imperious lifted eyebrow. “What makes ya think I don’ walk?”

  She blinked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “’Cause you’re so big.”

  The innocence in her reply left him unable to be angry at the insult. He babbled for a moment before his brain assembled a line of words to push out of his mouth. “This job makes me sit all day long. It be important. All them wheels and valves don’t turn themselves. Gotta send just ‘nuff water here and there, not too much… not too little.” He bit a taco, murmuring while he chewed. “Check filters, change carbon, maintain pressure.”

  Ornry whimpered as she crawled over to the man and knelt on the frigid metal, peeling the leg of his pants up. His hands slammed into the knobs, making little needles in their round windows shake. Sweat broke out on his face.

  “Don’t touch it.” He gasped. “Damn it all, go away! I don’t need no children in here gummin’ up the works. Yer gonna touch somethin’ and it’s gonna break.” The pain in his voice made her determined to help. “Take me a week jes’ ta figger out what you broked.”

  When he reached down to shoo her hands from his leg, she grabbed his oily fingers and concentrated. As she told his mind to stop accepting pain, a look of dumbfounded elation came over him and his continued grumbles about how annoying children were came to a woozy halt. She got the sense it had been quite a long time since he had been without it. Working the cloth up and away from the fester to which it adhered, Althea discovered the source of the other unpleasant smell―the leg was rotting.

  She re-swallowed her lunch, and sat back with an arm across her face, looking up at a man lost in euphoria. Ornry protested the intensified stench, rolling away and putting a paw over his nose. Once acclimated to the smell, she touched the hot, sticky shin and focused on the forming shapes of his tainted essence. For minutes, she fought with the corruption, feeling him shudder and gasp. There was much to be corrected, poison in his blood and rot in his leg.

  Ample fuel for her work lingered in his gut. At her urging, his body consumed stored fat reserves for energy to rebuild the muscles. Warm putrescent jelly slid through her fingers and down his leg, expelled by her effort. When the swelling receded enough, she wrenched his boot off and tossed it to the side. The smell unleashed caused her to dry heave twice. She gritted her teeth and commanded his body to rebuild pathways so the blood-shape could reach into his blackened toes. Over the next few minutes, the rot receded. The Water Man slumped in his chair, so lost in the absence of his perpetual agony he scarcely noticed what she did.

  Ornry ran from the reeking boot; a moment later, his nose peered out from under a shelf of boxes.

  A jagged shard remained within the shifting red presence. She found a bit of metal stuck in his leg a half inch below the knee, a fragment of an old spearhead lurking under the skin. It lodged in the bone and she could not move it, either with psionics or her fingertips.

  “Water Man?” She opened her eyes.

  He had swooned into the valves and knobs, lost in the throes of relief. Her voice nudged him and he let her guide his fingers onto the strip of aluminum at the center of a glistening red crater.

  She patted his hand. “You are stronger than me. Can you pull it out?”

  He picked at it, wiggled it, and tugged. Half aware of what it was, he managed to get it to move a little. “Pliers.” He pointed at a shelf.

  “What?”

  “Get the pliers.” He gasped, waving a swollen hand in the direction of a bucket of strange things.

  She crawled to it, holding up a screwdriver. “This?”

  “No. Pliers, ya little clown.”

  Dropping it, she grabbed a wrench.

  “No, that’s a wrench. Two thingees to the left. No, that’s a damn hammer, ya lil’ fool.”

  Her hand moved from item to item at random until he yelled, “That’s it!”

  Althea scurried to his side and handed him the tool. The water man stuck one end into his leg and clamped it around the shard. He grunted and twisted it, rocking the pliers back and forth a few times before the shard pulled free with a faint squish. Thick, dark blood oozed out of the hole; she put her hand over it as fast as she could react. He let the pliers clatter to the ground, looking away from the sight of her arms soaked in his blood. She used the rest of his drink to wipe the leg clean. The poison was out of him, the rot gone from his leg, and he smiled.

  Ornry came back, tail wagging, and rested his chin on the water man’s knee. She gathered the remnants of the sick and took it outside to bury. When she returned, he was flexing his toes, aghast at the sight.

  “How d’ya do that?”

  The effort left her fatigue visible, but she smiled nonetheless. “I see life inside people. I know where the sick is hiding and kick it out.” She leaned against the desk. “Why didn’t you go see Doctor Ruiz?”

  “Bah, doctors. He’d just give me an aspirin.”

  Althea blinked. “It was in your leg, not your ass.”

  The water man stared at her. When he realized she was serious, he bellowed with laughter, pulling her face-first into the undulating sea of flesh that was his chest. Patting her on the back twice, he let her drop to her feet. “I haven’t had a laugh like that in a long time.”

  She bit her lower lip and shrugged at the dog.

  “I knew Ornry liked ya for a reason.” He patted the dog. “What kinda dog did you say you had?”

  “A really big one. Nice, but kinda dumb.” She grinned.

  “Mmm. Ornry here’s smart as a… um…” He searched the room for a metaphor. “Aw hell, he’s real smart.”

  The dog nosed at the unworn boot, whimpering and snorting.

  “Yah, should prob’ly clean tha damn thing.” He picked it up, cringing away from the odor. “Worse’n I thought.”

  “Small hurts left to rot are as bad as big ones.”

  “Yeah…” He gazed at the innocence in her eyes. “Spose’n yer right about that.”

  ridescent wisps of auburn fire shimmered through gaps in the dying wreckage of old Querq. Althea leaned on the broom and squinted at the sight. Tall buildings had always made her wonder what kind of mystics could raise such things from the ground. The waning light brought with it the anticipation of Karina returning home. Smiling, she resumed her sweeping trek across the front porch, shooing the dirt out of the realm of man and back to the Earth.

  She felt it in the boards first, a vibration that made the tiny particles of sand haze up into a blur above the brown-painted wood. Then came the sound, a heavy thrumming rumble not of this world. At last, she saw it. A behemoth of metal and chrome came around the corner at the far end of the street. A metal beast like the one the slave-catcher had, only larger. The front glowed with unnatural light, and a strip of the same ran above a window she could not see through.

  The abandoned broom hit the porch with a sharp clack as she fell over herself in search of the safety of the house. Without conscious thought, she ran to the kitchen and crawled under the sink, shaking with her head tucked between her knees. The evil sound ebbed to nothing, but she remained breathless. They would be on foot now, looking for her. She would not be taken; she would not make a sound. Not even the uncomfortable clump of skirt beneath her backside would make her move to ease it.

  Perhaps an hour passed in dread silence until creaks in the floor hinted at the approach of a stealthy kidnapper. Althea closed her eyes lest their light give her away. Breaths, warm down her leg, felt thunderous and had to stop. The worst
part about having a home was how it changed her world. Being kidnapped used to be just another day; now it was dread incarnate. She remembered the gas station, the dog, and called out with her mind for Father.

  The approaching weight ceased. Althea glanced at the gap between the cabinet doors, at a shape blocking the light, and braced for the worst.

  “I thought I’d find you here.” Karina’s voice came from just outside the door. “You dropped the broom.”

  Shifting her weight off the tangle of leather, Althea pushed with trembling fingers at the panel of wood. Light split the darkness in which she cowered, tinged with the green glow of Karina’s dress. Althea tried to force the fear out of her face as her sister pulled the door the rest of the way open.

  “Guess I’m still feral.” A hesitant smile broke through her terror for an instant.

  Karina sat on the floor, coaxing her from the cabinet to an embrace, staying with her and patting her on the back until the trembles ceased. “It’s okay, Thea.”

  When calm arrived, she looked up. “There was a monster in the road.”

  Karina smiled and ran a hand through Althea’s hair. “It is a truck.”

  “A driving machine?”

  “Yes. Outsiders have come to trade. They aren’t looking for you. They bring supplies.”

  “Karina? Althea?” Father entered the front room with his rifle poised, his voice touched by worry.

  “In here,” Karina shouted as they stood and went to him, holding hands.

  The rifle slung over his shoulder, he caught them both in an embrace. “Is everything all right? I had this feeling something was very wrong.”

  “We are fine.” Karina smiled. “The truck spooked her.”

  “I’m sorry.” Althea looked down. “I was so scared, I called for you.”

  Father muttered and glanced around, confusion obvious in his eyes. He dismissed his unease at seeing them safe. “It’s just Harold and his boys come to trade. Got some new blood with him… Black girl, I think.”