by Eric Wood
The Fire And The Free Cities
The Horsemen Chronicles
Book Two
Also by Eric Wood
The Horsemen: Embers of the Old World
The Horsemen: The Fire and the Free City
Copyright © 2019 by Eric Wood
All world rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-578-49373-2
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PROLOGUE
Before
The scientist struggled to find his access pass, trying to ignore the impassive attention of the military attendant waiting behind the security glass. He finally found the thing in his left front pants pocket, but also managed to spill some coffee onto his tie in the process. At least it wasn't on his lap this time. He produced the pass and gave it to the guard to authorize, half-wondering why this was still necessary after more than a year of coming through this same checkpoint and this same guard every morning.
If the guard wondered the same thing, he didn't mention it. He scanned the access pass and the gate rose. The scientist pulled his car into the parking lot and made his way to the underground laboratory.
"What is the status of project Mars?" the project head asked, before the scientist had even stepped fully into the lab. It was the same question the scientist heard every morning from the project director, and the scientist had the same answer for him today that he did every day.
"Still not stable, but we're getting closer each day," the scientist said.
"We need results," the project head told him, looking up briefly from the tablet in his hand. "Senator Reynolds is threatening to cut back our funding again.”
"I know, I know," the scientist said, "but this isn't exactly the kind of thing you can rush. We're altering human DNA on the fly here, not painting fences."
"I don't know what that means, and I don't care," the project head said. "Just get me results. Project Mars is our money maker —"
"And Project Zeus is what will change the world. I'm aware, Jed, I've heard you say it enough times. Can't you just give the senator some graphs on Project Pandora? Last I heard, Mary was already on stage 1 testing."
"Focus on your own project, Dr. Solomon," the project head said. "And get me results."
PART ONE
THE WILDS
1
His joints still hurt.
He had found, in his nearly two decades living as this new thing, that the joints were always the last to recover. He had some theories as to why this might be, but without access to a real lab, and time for the necessary trials — neither of which he would have anytime soon — they would have to remain just theories.
The important thing was that he had recovered enough to continue the work already begun.
Solomon put two fingers in his mouth and let out a quick, sharp whistle. Slowly — slower than he would either like or hope — Deacon rose from the shallow dirt depression where he had been resting. Considering the thing had been shot in the head, Solomon should be happy he moved at all. Well, his creature didn't have to do much beyond look like the old Deacon anyway. As always, the real work would fall to Solomon himself.
"It's time," Solomon told the thing that had once been the Ravager leader Deacon.
Deacon grunted in assent, the sound coming out like a creaking door.
"Words, dammit," Solomon chastised. "Use your words, Deacon."
"Right, words," the thing said, as if this was the most novel concept it could grasp. "I will use my words." Maybe it was.
"And you remember what you need to do?" Solomon asked, taking the tone one would with a child.
"Challenge. Kill."
"Close enough," Solomon said. "But make sure you follow my lead. I’ll handle the killing today."
An hour's worth of hard travel had brought them to the campsite. Around a fire, burned down to embers in the early dawn light, just over a dozen Ravagers slept. As they reached the edge of the camp, Solomon nodded to Deacon. Deacon raised the sawed-off shotgun he carried straight up in the air and pulled the trigger.
The boom of the weapon brought all the Ravagers to their feet instantly. The largest one (the one whose missing hand had been replaced by a crudely grafted-on machete, and who Solomon had long-established to be the leader of this band), approached them.
"My God and flaming wreckage," the lead Ravager croaked. "It's really you, Deacon. We heard you got shot. And blown up."
"Tales of my demise, friend-o, tales of my demise," the Deacon creature said, mimicking its old greasy charm perfectly.
"Well, I gotta ask," the lead Ravager — his name, predictably unimaginative to Solomon, was Hackblade — said. "What the hell brings you here to us? It doesn't look like you've got any War Band left. Just this tiny man. Who the hell is he, your manservant?"
The Ravagers all laughed at this. Deacon looked on dumbly for a second or two before it remembered its task and affected a wide, easy smile.
"You're right," Deacon said. "I'm plumb out of War Band. Plumb out of good Ravagers entirely." He jammed his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his hips, his smile taking on a predatory edge. Just like Solomon had drilled him to do, again and again. "That just happens to be why I'm here, ugly. Your War Band looks pretty good, as a starter. I'm here to take it."
Hackblade looked at him with a mix of confusion and contempt. A moment later he burst into laughter. The rest of the band joined in, but Solomon could already see the unease creeping into them. Deacon cast a quick, mindless glance his way, and Solomon gave him a near-imperceptible nod.
"Sorry Deacon, but this is my band. We're not exactly interested in a change in leadership." With that, Hackblade roared and stabbed forward with his machete-hand. The blade cut through the flesh of Deacon's midsection so deeply that the tip poked out from his back.
Deacon didn't react at first. But he also didn't fall; didn't falter in the slightest. Solomon allowed himself a small smile.
It had worked.
Deacon looked down at the blade and then locked eyes with the smaller Ravager. "Your concerns are noted," Deacon said. He brought his hands together on either side of Hackblade's head, where they collided with a meaty thump. Hackblade groaned and collapsed to one knee. Deacon took a step back, freeing himself from the other Ravager’s blade, then smashed a fist into his face. Hackblade collapsed to the ground and Deacon bent over him, raining down blows until the now-former War Band leader's skull was reduced to paste and bone shards. The rest of the band looked on in half-frightened, half-reverential silence.
Solomon had them, he could tell at once. One War Band would become two, and then three and four. Then they would have enough numbers to move on to phase two of his new plan.
After that, it would be time to visit some old friends.
2
The gas station, an Old World relic half-collapsed and decayed nearly to the point of non-existence, was only a small part of the ruins that lay just ahead of them. But it was the part they were looking for, the important part.
Of course, what they were really looking for, what had brought them this far west, wasn't a what at all, but a who. A very dangerous who. And she was still outrunning them.
Abigail and Sam stood side by side, looking down at the rubble that belonged to a world neither of them had ever known. It was a while before either of t
hem spoke. They didn't speak much, these days.
Each of them stood next to the small motorcycles they had driven the past two days and pushed much of today. Abigail had advocated abandoning the two bikes, rather than hope to find some hidden gasoline in this blasted-out and picked-over wasteland. It was foolish to waste the effort pushing the bikes, which were no longer anything but burdens. Things slowing them down. Sam, however, was insistent, in his new, quiet way. He continued to push along his now-useless transportation, insisting that they'd find more fuel soon.
That should have made Abigail happy — at least in the frustrating, foolish way that Sam's attitude had made her happy in the short time she had known him. But this new resolve was less Sam's old silly optimism, and more something new. Something she hadn't recognized in him before. A sort of resigned new outlook, like he was now seeing the dark, frustrating world as it was — how she herself had always seen it. But if he concentrated hard enough he could still trick himself into holding onto hope. Each morning he seemed to be trying to concentrate a little harder, and each morning he seemed to succeed in fooling himself just a little less.
"I've got a good feeling about this one," Abigail almost said. She didn't, but it felt like the right thing to say. It felt like what Sam needed to hear.
"We'll check it," Sam said. "We're already falling further behind by the hour. We need to find gas now if we're going to make up the time that we've lost."
Abigail nodded, trying to think of something witty to say, but Sam had already begun to move, pushing his bike down toward the ruins below them. She scowled, watching him advance ahead of her. Part of her wanted to give the poor boy a hug. That was the new, strange, and unfamiliar part of her. It was a small part of her, still, but to her unending consternation it was growing every day. The older, and much larger part of her, of course, wanted to strangle him. "Right behind you, sir," she mumbled as she trudged along behind him.
She hadn't known Sam long, only a couple of weeks. They had, however, been an especially eventful couple of weeks for him. For her too, if she was being honest with herself.
She remembered when she had first seen Sam. She hadn't thought much of him then — to her eyes he was little more than a spoiled Colony pup, out from behind his precious walls and in the real world for the very first time. Never in a million years would she have imagined him capable of the things he would do between then and now, nor how she would come to think of him as a friend, or — god help her, she wanted to hit herself for even thinking like this — something more. She was rarely wrong in her first impressions, and never when it came to a Colony dweller. She had always seen people for exactly what they were. Until she met Sam. She nearly laugh aloud when she thought about how foolish he had seemed then.
As they came closer to the remnants of the structure more details became clear, and Abigail's earlier estimations were confirmed. The gas station itself had been built over, not once, but many times, since the Horsemen outbreak and the collapse of the old order. Whether because the location held some sort of strategic advantage or by the simple inertia of habit, this place had been the site of at least three distinct strongholds in the twenty years since the Old World fell away. It took a discerning eye, and a lot of experience, to see the story written in what most people would call a glorified pile of garbage. Although she didn't have much, these days, experience and strong eyes were both things Abigail still had in spades.
She had lived her whole life in the Wilds, after all. And her teacher, while in no uncertain terms a very bad man, could not be accused of skimping on her curriculum. Abigail would venture she knew The Wilds and all their contents as well as any person breathing.
Yep, three clear lines of fortification, three separate forts, divided only by time. She wondered if Sam could see it, and she got as far as opening her mouth before the question died on her lips. She still needed to figure out how to talk to him. She didn't seem to be getting any closer to solving that problem, however, so she focused on what she could do. She analyzed the rubble in front of her. She knew how to do that, still. There was probably some sort of lesson in that fact.
The evidence was all right there, of course, staring you in the face. You just had to know where to look. The oldest and the newest walls, even in their present condition, were clearly the work of the Uninfected. The oldest, at this point little more than a rough outline in the dirt, were likely from something thrown together just after the fall. The newest set of walls — sad, mismatched rubbish, half-broken down, was probably less than a year old. The middle layer of remains was quite different from the other two, but no less familiar to Abigail. This place had been the home of Ravagers.
For an instant, her mind flashed back to Deacon's base, tucked into that High Plains basin. It was little more than a smoldering crater now, no thanks to her, but when she saw the remnants of the Ravager fort, she remembered how it was before, on the two occasions she’d visited the place. Those two visits could not have been more different.
Abigail had met Deacon, the psychotic — even for a Ravager — war leader, when her mentor, Solomon, had left her with him. She had met Sam after she escaped, after Deacon vowed to track her down, bring her back. Whatever deal Deacon and Solomon had struck remained mysterious to her. Deacon hadn't taken her for the crude reasons a man might purchase a young woman out in the Wilds, but for some reason far more important, known only to him. He had taken his reason with him to the grave the second time Abigail had come into his camp: in-between those two visits, Sam had lost so much. Abigail realized that in a way, every bad thing that had befallen Sam could be traced back to her. She scowled and shook her head. No one gets what they deserve out here: there's no point in taking on blame. And besides, she’d come back, hadn’t she? Even after Sam rejected her for what she was? And she had come with him this far, following after that damned spiky-headed Ravager and Sam's precious data drive.
Still, the mere fact that she almost felt guilty bothered her, and as she stood her bike next to Sam's and stepped over the first of the ruin's former walls, she noted for the thousandth time just how much she had changed. How much softer she had become. It would likely be the death of her. Sam would be the death of her. And she still couldn't manage to remember how to talk to the damned fool.
It wasn't going to help either of their moods when they found that there was no gasoline left in these ancient tanks, a possibility Abigail knew hovered around one hundred percent. Still, they had come this far; there was as little point in turning back now as there was in pointing out facts to Sam.
"You want me to —" she began.
"I'll check," Sam said, cutting her off. "You check the perimeter, make sure there aren't any Plague-Heads stumbling around."
She opened her mouth, about to tell him there weren't any Plague-Heads around, or they would have heard them by now. And furthermore, if he was so concerned about those mindless, puking zombies, he could check the damned perimeter his own damned self. She wanted to say all that, and a week ago she wouldn't have hesitated. And he probably would have shot back with some half-clever, half-ridiculous comeback that would have provoked an outward scowl and an inward smile from her. But instead of any of that happening, she just sighed and kept walking, going through the motions of checking the perimeter. What was happening to her? For the first time in her life, she really didn't know what she was doing.
She heard them moving a few moments before she heard the first one speak. There were at least two ahead of her, and two more to the right. Not Plague-Heads, so at least there was that. The petty part of her didn't want Sam to have been right about that. They were sneaking, whomever they were, and trying — poorly — to remain silent. Abigail pretended she was oblivious to the approaching men, but let her hand fall to her belt, fingers gripping the long, leather-sheathed knife that hung there. Despite herself, she smiled.
This, I know how to do.
"If you're going to try and ambush us," Sam called out behind her, "you boys may as
well get on with it. The suspense is killing me."
Damn, Abigail thought. He was getting better at this. So much for my chance at the witty one-liner.
There were six of them, in total. Four ahead of Sam, just beyond what was left of the high roof of concrete that once covered the station's pumps, and two more that had rose up a few yards away from Abigail. These two looked especially self-satisfied, obviously thinking they had been the ones stalking her. If only they knew.
"Now, now, son," the oldest and largest of the six — and the obvious leader — said, "just you calm down. There's no reason this has to go any worse for you than necessary.” All six of them were armed — five with rifles and one with a shotgun — and each looked like they had spent a good deal of time out here in the Wilds. Weathered and expressionless, all of them, just dirty enough to show they belonged out here, but not so much as to seem desperate or pathetic. They looked like hard men, used to descending on and preying upon unsuspecting travelers. Bandits, highwaymen, raiders; whatever you wanted to call them. Abigail was half-surprised it had taken this long for her and Sam to cross paths with one of these bands of locusts. Further east, these small bands of Uninfected predators were squeezed out by the much stronger Ravager War Bands, but here, they were the chief threat to anyone who dared to venture out into the spaces between established settlements.
Well, not the chief threat. The chief threat was the same everywhere, and it wasn't spoken of outside of hushed whispers.
"We'll make this as simple as possible," the lead bandit said. "First thing that's going to happen is you are going to take that rifle you got slung over your shoulder there and set it down on the ground, nice and slow." None of the bandits were pointing their weapons at either Abigail or Sam, not exactly, but the ends of their barrels were held in their general direction, and the men holding them gripped them in a casual, almost relaxed fashion that had the effect of somehow being more threatening than if they had been raised. Every bit of their body language, their grizzled facial expressions, said 'I can kill you at a moment's notice, and it wouldn't be any trouble at all.'