Beware the Well Fed Man

by Chris Capps

Part Two

  The composition of gunpowder, particularly the high density projectile recipe Serpentine, was one of the many bits of information passed down to the wasted Earth from the old world. When I returned to the Plexis just after dawn, I found Euclid out in front of the entrance, pouring soft wood fragments over the bonfire on a massive metal screen for blacking. The bits of wood smoldered and hissed in front of us as I arrived. The projection screen had faded with the coming of dawn, no longer glowing with horror for my fellow tribesmen to see. Euclid was writing notes on a rudimentary map he had stretched on the ground and weighted with painted rocks. He hardly looked up when I arrived.

  “So you met with them, then,” he said.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Crassus and I would have returned with the first morning’s light whether we met with the Thakka Cluster or not,” he said picking up a fragment of blackened wood and knocking it against the rim of a barrel, “I didn’t expect to see you again. The fact that you’re here suggests to me that you succeeded.”

  “Yes,“ I said nodding gravely. I was trying to summon the faintest confident smile. It couldn’t have looked convincing. Looking between me and his work, Euclid said,

  “We should survive this battle. I don’t know what comes next. I’ve never met someone from the Thakka Cluster. What are they like?”

  “Abrasive,” I said, “Unique. After spending an uneasy night with them waiting for my throat to be slit, I have to say this: they’re consistent.”

  “Consistent,” Euclid said, his eyes lighting up a little, “That’s good.”

  “No,” I said, “No it isn’t.”

  After the meeting with the matriarch, I had been witness to the nightly rituals of the Thakka Cluster from afar, cowering in a ditch and waiting for light to scare the real predators away. Profane inhuman screaming seemed to be a constant theme in each of them.

  Crassus emerged from the constantly moving line of Plexis tribesmen engaged in processing the saltpeter and the coal. He had in his hands a dish of water for the milling stone, which he discarded upon seeing me. He ran over and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward him and reaching around to slap my back,

  “You lived.”

  “What’s more, I found the Thakka Cluster,” I said grinning despite myself, “They have agreed to help us.”

  “On what condition?” he asked.

  “They will live in the Plexis.”

  Crassus pulled away, staring with furrowed brow and an intensity wholly unlike him. I looked away after only a moment from his judgment. Could he have done better? Could he have won their allegiance with nothing more than empty promises? No. These were people unmoved by the plight of outsiders He moved his own eyes to follow mine. By some uncanny fortune we found ourselves staring at nothing less than the projection screen that had promised horror by fire only a night before. He closed his eyes, sighed heavily,

  “Then all of the preparations are made. Victory will be ours today.”

  Still staring into the vast grey screen adorning the front of the walking city, I found myself shaking my head. It was a reflex, not for anyone else’s sake but my own. The vast machine that stood before us was something designed by another age. The smoke pouring from its chimneys foretold of mysteries beyond our comprehension. It was a device that had been lived in, operated for a long time even as the Plexis was still being born. Even if we could bring the great beast down with Euclid’s powder kegs, what would spill over the edge? What would we find ourselves facing once this hive of wasps had been toppled?

  “There,” Euclid said pointing as he joined us, “Just under the bent leg, to the left side. The outcropping beneath it is cracked. It could have fallen while the beast was still moving even. But now it has rested with that cracked ledge beneath its foot. The leg will descend along with the rocks, carving the Earth behind it and shifting its weight even further back. That evenness the plate values will lock the other legs into a cascade - into the dry and cracked soil. It will avalanche with the rocks.”

  “I’ll have to trust you on this,” I said, “I can’t imagine anything bringing something that large down.”

  “You can’t imagine anything lifting something that large up to begin with,” Crassus said, “So yes. You’ll have to trust us. I looked over Euclid’s equations. There‘s a wide margin of error, but not so large that the city is likely to remain standing afterward.”

  The outcropping was one of sandstone, with iron deposits riddled throughout. By no means did it look precarious, but with the leg resting on it a small crack had formed. A hairline fracture from our vantage point, but it could have been as wide as a man at this distance. A few powder kegs placed inside could easily blast it apart, removing the platform the city had placed one of its legs on. I tried to imagine the city’s vast claw being tripped unexpectedly behind it, being dragged down by the sudden weight, only to be followed by others in a cascade of shifting land. As I did so, hope began to gain traction in my mind.

  “Will the Serpentine be done in time?” I asked, looking over to where a small line of carts was forming at the door. Men and women were pulling loaded pallets into the Plexis, loaded with casks I figured to be filled with volatile black powder. Crassus and Ebon shared a look. In the distance I could see a woman standing next to a tied melthorse loading her rifle. She was wearing one of the red cocktail dresses advertised on floor nine.

  “The powder we need to topple the city has already been assembled, and delivered,” Crassus said, a hefty dose of compassion entering his voice, “The powder we make now isn’t for that.”

  “We make it in plain view now in front of the Plexis,” Euclid said, “They are meant to see this. From here it goes inside. To The Egg.”

  “The Egg?” I said, remembering the whispered words of my brother over the past months. Where is the light coming from? It comes from the metal egg. The radioisotope generator.

  “The nuclear core,” came Thunfir’s voice behind me, “I see that you lived.”

  “And you,” I said turning to see Thunfir standing behind us, “Are we going to blow up the Plexis if we lose?”

  “We couldn’t if we wanted to. We’ll breach the wall in the generator, though, and poison everything for miles around with blighted smoke and glowing waters.” He clapped his hand down on my shoulder, pushing me off balance.

  Blighted smoke and glowing waters. That was often the only legacy left behind in conflicts of this nature. I thought of the blue pools of glowing water surrounded by dead rats I had once come across in the wake of a particularly troubled blight storm. I remembered it clearly. Crassus and I had traveled for two days, drinking only the water we carried until we reached higher lands. Blight water death is painful and slow.

  A gunshot startled me from the fugue I had entered, wondering which side of us would commit the lesser crime if we lost.

  The tied melthorse fell sideways, sending a cascade of dust up as it further cracked the dried Earth. The iron in its blood would be mixed with the soil, used to process the next batch of Serpentine. It pumped out from the hole in its neck staining the yellowed sands and filling in the cracks. The woman, who had traded her rifle for a shovel, dug deeply into the now wetted soil, knocking away flies as she slopped the solution over her shoulder into one of the carts. The deeper she dug, the more dried Earth she found.

  From that spectacle I turned my vision just north of the glowing sunrise. A shadowed line of men and women were navigating the circumference of the hill around and behind the city. They were too distant to identify positively, but my trembling hands knew who they were. The Thakka Cluster had arrived.

  “How will we get the gunpowder kegs into the crack under the leg?” I asked Thunfir as his eyes too focused on the line.

  “That was done before you arrived,” he said with a wry smile, “Under the cover of darkness, of course. I oversaw the operation personally.”

  “How
much?” I asked.

  “Enough,” he said, laughing heartily, “Six of us resorted to filling bottles on our second trip. The casks of Serpentine were too cumbersome after the first one. By the third expedition we were carrying bags suspended from poles like a bindled well-dipper. I don’t think they were watching very closely. After the third trip we were singing drinking songs. If we were seen, they probably thought we were all drunkards. Introduce our smuggled cargo to the most modest of flames and I assure you, that rock will be no more.”

  Blue and red lights erupted from the plate of the spider city, cutting Thunfir’s laughter short. He grimaced and spat on the ground as the lights were accompanied by that mournful bleat echoing across the valley. He shielded his eyes against the lights and the brightening sun as he looked toward the city, “What is it now?”

  “I’m sure they’ve changed their minds and decided to leave us alone,” I said, hoping to disguise my fear, “Let me go with you.”

  Five minutes later we would be once again in the city’s shadow, approaching to continue our parley with Kitchains. When we arrived, the lights descended from the metal plate and focused in on us. The aperture above opened, only this time we did not hear the clicks and whirrs of a harness system. Instead, we heard a familiar voice. It was Kitchains, screaming,

  “No! Please! Stop this,