by Grant Price
She prepared the words in her head before she spoke. ‘To have five more minutes to breathe the air.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘Better to exist here, now, than to not.’
‘Consciousness is its own reward?’
‘Yes. This,’ she said, waving a hand at the cab, ‘whole world. Better than nothing. She helped me understand that.’
Cassady thought for a moment. ‘My whole life I’ve felt like I’m on the run. From hunger, drought, violence, other people. From myself. And ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted to escape that feeling. I always hoped there was something more. But I’m starting to think maybe there isn’t.’
He rubbed his eyes and struggled to work some saliva around his mouth. She reached underneath her seat and threw a canteen onto his lap.
‘Drink.’
‘What is it?’
‘Water.’
‘It’s yours.’
‘Drink.’
He tossed the dead piece of root out the window, unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The liquid was warm and foul, but it wet his mouth and opened his throat. He held it out to her.
‘Keep it. You need strength, Cassady.’
10
‘I had a family once, Ghazi.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘A husband and a baby boy. They were taken from me long ago, when I was little more than a child myself.’
‘What happened?’
‘When the refugees first crossed the northern waters into Scandinavia, we welcomed them. We tried to help them and accommodate them, but it did not last long. The hotter it became, the more bombs were dropped, the more communities collapsed, the more refugees we found on our shores all wanting to head further north. There were just too many. We didn’t have the resources. The bloc’s infrastructure was pushed beyond breaking point. That’s when the government set up the other camps, in secret. For the executions. Did you read about them? It was the only way to control the influx. At least, that’s what they hoped. They ran liquidation shifts day and night and the skies turned black with incinerated flesh. But the boats kept crossing the waters and the people kept choking the roads, destroying the landscape, filing into the cities like a conquering army because it was all they could do. Petty battles flickered like fires between the population of the bloc, the army and the refugee groups. Even far in the north I saw the snow painted blood. It didn’t take long for the collapse to happen: the government, law, order, society itself. Chaos became normal.’
‘Didn’t you try to get out?’
‘Only when I could see there was no hope of staying. You have to realise that the days and nights in Sweden were still cool. We had ample freshwater supplies, too. To give that up and move south wasn’t an easy decision to make. But at least in the south the dead outweighed the living. We thought we might find a place where we’d be left alone.
‘The same boats that had been used to take refugees from the south to the north were now being commandeered to ferry people in the other direction. There were many bodies on the shore. The smell was like the flesh of the Earth itself had turned gangrenous. My husband didn’t like it, but I made a deal for a skiff to take us across. For the sake of my child.’
‘What was the deal, Kaja?’
‘I will not say. But after I paid what I agreed, we were betrayed. There, on the shore. They used axes to chop my husband down where he stood. He didn’t see it coming. They pierced my stomach and left me for dead. And they took my son. I do not know what for. But I am sure he did not live long.
‘I hovered between worlds for a week before I chose to remain in this one. I sterilised the wound, bound myself, and returned to the place where everything had been taken from me. I buried what was left of my husband. I looked for my son, but I did not find him. What I did find was a small motor boat hidden in a hut. It didn’t have much fuel and I nearly capsized it more than once, but I managed to cross the sea and one of the great lagoons and landed on a spit of land thick with possessions, bodies and waste. That was how my new life started.
‘I walked for a long time in search of purpose. The external material world faded. It held little importance to me. I ate and I drank and I rested, but other than that I lived inside my head. I don’t think I talked to more than three or four people during these two years, but I had conversations with myself – with my soul – which helped me to understand the meaning of existence. One day I knew I was ready to return to this reality. A week later, Hearst picked me up on the road and I’ve been running with her ever since.’
‘Do you still think about your husband and son?’
‘Every day. I see them at night when I close my eyes.’
‘If you had lost everything, why didn’t you let go? You were hovering between life and death. It would have been easy.’
‘Because it was not my time, Ghazi. As I walked the lands, I gradually understood that I hadn’t lost my family at all. My husband and my son are waiting for me. When my time to leave here comes, I will see them again.’
‘You believe that?’
‘I know it.’
11
It was time to knock on the door to the closed land. The moisture on Cassady’s hands made the map wilt. Sketched on it in pencil was Lupo’s trail, a single-lane tightrope between the peaks. The old scientist had said the road was safe, unwatched and in good enough condition for the rigs to use, but they would only know for sure once they found a way in and began their climb. He could send one of the pantechs ahead to make sure the road was clear, but if it wasn’t, it would be the same as singling out one of the crews to die. It wasn’t an option.
That was if they even found a way in. He ran his finger along the northern edge of the mountain range. He’d been this far south just twice before, and Brandt was the only one in the group who ever had laid eyes on the wall. He’d said it was easily twice as high as Telamonian and bristling with razor wire. The ground in front had been ripped up and was studded with barriers, obstacles and destroyed vehicles. They’d all listened to the stories of how, in the first years of the Change, desperate armies and militias had tried to force their way into the zone, but had been decimated by IEDs, camouflaged bunkers and the soldiers of the corporations. Cassady hated the uncertainty. The deaths of Renfield and Kaja couldn’t be for nothing. He wished somebody would tell him what to do next, how to keep the rest of them safe.
He glanced in the side mirror. Still no sign of the others. Hearst wasn’t letting up. Their rendezvous point was an old refinery marked on the map just a few kilometres further on from where they were now. Soon they would have to navigate the second of two bottlenecks. The first had been clear. The area was dead.
‘You want me to take over?’
She shook her head.
‘You need a pill?’
Her reply was drowned out by the sound of something bouncing off the side of the truck.
‘What was that?’ he shouted. Hearst wrenched the wheel to the left to take a tight bend. Cassady checked the mirror and caught a glimpse of a spear lying in the road and three figures emerging from the undergrowth. The rig screeched around the corner.
‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said, ducking back into the cab. But Hearst wasn’t listening. Her body was rigid. He peered through the windscreen and understood why.
The second bottleneck closed around them. Vehicle hulks dotted the road, dragged into place to form a rough gauntlet. Behind them, armed men and women in loincloths waited behind a barricade flanked on either side by a pair of crude towers.
Hearst stamped on the accelerator. Cassady buckled his harness and held on to the door frame. They smashed into one of the vehicle bodies, sending it spinning. Orion lurched to her right, but a flick of the steering wheel put her back on course. Hearst swerved around the remains of a pre-Change tank, but clipped a car beyond it. Cassady clenched his teeth and tightened his grip. In the towers, human forms aimed longbows at the rig, holding off until they could do maximum
damage. The barricade filled the windshield. A man in a green robe stood on top of it. He whirled a staff, pointed at the truck and shouted to the defenders.
The engine click-clacked and the wheels kicked up plastic and stones. The needle on the speedometer twitched into the red. A vein quivered on Hearst’s temple. They braced themselves for impact. The robed man leapt from the barricade and moved off the road, and the others followed his example. An arrow thudded into the hood. Orion barrelled into the bulwark made of wood and plastic and metal and Cassady and Hearst were thrown forward in their seats, belts biting far enough into their collarbones to draw blood. Hearst wrestled to keep control of the truck as it bucked. Debris spilled over the hood and bounced off the windshield. The engine hummed once more and switched off, but the momentum continued to carry them along the road. Then the shouts of the people outside were replaced by a metallic screeching noise. Tremors shook the vehicle’s occupants to the bone.
‘The tyre,’ shouted Cassady.
Hearst hit the brake. The screech became a wail. Orion wheezed once more and stopped dead some distance from the barricade.
‘Secure it,’ said Hearst. ‘Quick.’
They locked the cab doors and attached metal plates to the windows and windshield. They wouldn’t hold forever, but they offered more protection than the glass. Hearst squeezed between the seats into the cargo hold, reached up to the ceiling and pulled the crossbow free. She hooked a piece of tubing to the bow and dragged it around to the notch above the grip. After pulling the tubing back until the bow locked into place, she flicked on the safety, slid a bolt into the channel and secured it. She handed it to Cassady as he joined her, and lifted the lid off a storage hole next to a crate of medical supplies. Cassady moved to the back door and placed his ear to it. They had seconds left to prepare. Hearst appeared beside him with a cudgel wrapped in barbed wire and an ad hoc metal shield large enough to cover his chest.
‘Swap.’
Cassady gave her the bow and slipped the nylon straps of the shield over his forearm, then picked up the cudgel. His machete lay on the floor beside him.
‘Don’t you have a pistol? Or a rifle?’ His mouth was dry enough to hurt.
‘No.’ She stripped down to her vest. Cassady unbuckled his utility belt and tried to slow his breathing.
Rocks and other projectiles rained down on Orion. Somebody screamed commands. The tramping of boots against the road sounded like a rockslide.
‘It’s the Zuisudra.’
‘Yes.’
‘See the crank in the green robe?’
She grunted.
‘I’d say he’s one of their priests. Go for him if you can.’
‘If I’m hit, close door. She tapped the bed with the bow. ‘Hollow under here. Space for one.’
He nodded. ‘You ready?’
The voices screamed murder.
‘Open left door.’ She hefted the crossbow. ‘Keep me covered. No sudden movements.’
He grabbed the door handle. Despite the fear, his hand didn’t shake. Hearst’s determination helped. He crouched, covered his body with the shield as best he could and pushed the handle.
Even before the door had fully opened, the first bolt whistled past his shoulder and buried itself in the forehead of an onrushing figure in rags. He gasped. A group of twenty bore down on the pantech, faces ulcerated and dirty and distorted with bloodlust. The priest in the green robe stood near the destroyed barricade, surrounded by a cluster of armed children and adults, and shouted commands.
An arrow slammed into the door, but failed to pierce the plate metal. Cassady looked past the attackers on the ground to the towers, where a pair of archers aimed at Orion’s back doors. They were a problem. Another arrow thumped into the ground in front of them. The sound of Hearst clicking the second bolt into place rang in his skull and he tensed and leaned to his left. She fired. Another attacker dropped. Terror wrapped itself around him.
The horde halted their advance, a few paces out of range of Cassady’s cudgel. The attackers hissed at the bald, scarred man standing in the doorway and waited for somebody else to be the first to take him on. A toothless woman screamed and she and three others dived forwards. Cassady’s mind became blank. He no longer saw people, only targets. He lowered the shield and whirled the cudgel. It crunched into the head of a tall man and he fell. An arrow intended for him hurtled into the back of the toothless woman and she collapsed. Blows from a bat rained down on the shield and his arm shuddered with the impact. He bellowed in pain and swung again, hitting nothing. To his right, a blunt dagger lacerated the air, on course for his arm, but he managed to bring the shield around in time to stop it. His chest heaved. Sweat burned his eyes. More blows pummelled the metal. His shield arm felt as though it was broken. The blunt dagger found his trouser leg and tore a deep gash in his thigh and he fell back and screamed because he was about to die.
Hearst’s crossbow sang again. The bolt took a chunk out of the man wielding the dagger, and the weapon fell onto the cargo bed. Desperately, Cassady dropped the cudgel and grasped the blade, then lifted the shield just enough to glimpse a sight of hard flesh. He lunged with all his strength and dragged and twisted the dagger until the body fell away. Nobody else tried to attack. He clambered back to his feet and tested his shield-bearing arm. It wasn’t broken. An arrow hit the shield and the force of it pushed him to his knees. He threw himself forward and hid by the back door that was still closed.
Now four more attackers peeled away from the main group and closed in. Hearst fired. ‘Three bolts left.’
A woman swinging a chain raced to Orion’s rear doors. Cassady leaned out and slammed the shield into her head. As she fell, he narrowed his eyes and looked beyond the dwindling group. The bowmen in the towers prepared to fire.
‘Get down,’ he shouted, ducking back behind the door. Hearst rolled to the side. An arrow flew through the opening and buried itself in the medicine crate. The second glanced off the top of the truck. The attackers seized their chance and climbed onto the cargo bed. With movements born of defiance and desperation, Cassady jumped up, dodged a wild swipe of a sword and butted a man under the chin. His hand found his machete and he roared, ducking, pushing and slashing. Hot metal bit into his arm, but he ignored the pain and kept punching and cutting until only one attacker remained. Blood stuck to his eyelashes and ran down his neck and he didn’t know whether it was theirs or his, but the thought of dying now gave him strength and he seized the final man by the throat, bludgeoned his head against the side of the rig and hurled him at another fanatic who was trying to climb inside. Panting and shaking, he beat his chest with the hilt of his machete and shouted for them to keep coming. His thigh burned. He looked down. His trouser leg was dark and soaked through. He tested his weight. He would manage.
‘Raise the shield,’ shouted Hearst. She appeared beside him and pulled back the tubing until the bow locked. He lifted the shield in time for another arrow to thump into the edge of it, bending the metal inward. The noise of the mob had died down. The attackers hung back, unwilling to grapple with the demons in the red truck. The priest continued to twirl his staff and scream commands. He pushed the throng of children towards the poisonous vehicle, urging them to join the attack. They stumbled forwards, dragging weapons that were too large for them.
‘Him,’ said Hearst, looking down the body of the bow at the priest.
‘Do it.’
She waited, the meat around the crooked scar twitching. An eternity passed as the attackers searched for their misplaced courage and edged closer to the vehicle that dripped with the blood of their fellow zealots. The children came closer. Cassady suppressed the urge to tell Hearst to fire. Dull pain rolled over him in waves. The straps on the shield cut into his skin, and the tape wrapped around the machete handle was wet and sticky. A body hanging out of the door gurgled, but didn’t move. He peered out. In one of the watchtowers, a white-haired man frantically tried to restring his broken bow. In the other, the bowman c
alled for somebody to bring him more arrows.
Hearst held her breath and squeezed the trigger. The bolt jumped away from the block and flew. For a moment it looked as though it would hit the target. But one of the children moved at the wrong moment and the bolt sheared through her cheek. Her scream roused the attackers into action again. They raised their weapons and charged.
A horn boomed and the priest whirled around. Hurtling towards the bottleneck was 12 tons of armour-plated tactical vehicle. It batted the blackened wrecks aside like they weren’t even there and trampled over the remains of the blockade. The brakes squealed and Brandt dived out while Telamonian was still moving. The old Runner rolled on his shoulder, sprang to his feet and ran at the robed man. Gimlet knives flashed between his knuckles. The few men and women still near the smashed barricade brought their weapons up, but Brandt didn’t stop. He slashed the knives across a man’s eyes, and a one-two combination to the midriff knocked another to the floor. The priest gnashed his teeth and raced towards him, whirling the staff above his head. Brandt checked his run and dropped to his knee, and the man’s staff sailed overhead. A powerful fist to the stomach bent the priest in two. The staff fell from his hands. The vicious gimlet blades opened his throat. The Zuisudra followers backed off, staring in terror at the golem who had just murdered their leader without breaking a sweat. And now another one emerged from the rig, a curved blade in hand and a grin on his bearded face. Wyler and Brandt stood side by side and begged for the mob to attack.
Cassady peered out from behind the door, transfixed by the brute strength on show. Hearst nudged him.
‘Cover me.’
She aimed the crossbow at one of the watchtowers and followed the movements of the white-haired bowman, who had repaired his weapon and was now turning his sights onto Brandt and Wyler. She fired. The bolt hit the man in the side. He reeled, staring at the wound with disbelief, and fell over the side of the tower. She reloaded quickly and loosed her final quarrel into the mass of bodies. Then she leapt out without another word, not once breaking stride as she scooped up a club and slammed it into the skull of the nearest threat.