By the Feet of Men

by Grant Price

  Tagawa stretched out his limbs and buttoned his tunic. A streak of grease ran from his chin to his hairline. His eyes were glazed with fatigue, but the confidence was still there.

  ‘Better show you all how to do it, I guess.’

  ‘We’re going together,’ Victor added. ‘Or we ain’t going.’

  ‘Then get ready. And good luck the pair of you.’

  While they warmed up the Silkworm, Brandt trudged to his cab and retrieved a flask that sat inside the door. He unscrewed it, pressed it to his lips and rested a hand against the wheel arch. The bandage around his head was frayed and dirty, and his eyes were bloodshot. He returned to where Wyler stood and held out the flask. The former agent took it without a word and drank deeply.

  The Silkworm backed up. Tagawa guided her towards the girders at a crawl before putting her into reverse, tyres shedding clumps of dirt and slush as they revolved. He rolled her forward slowly once again, this time not stopping until the rubber kissed the concrete. Again he backed off, guiding the truck part way up the incline. The other Runners watched and waited.

  Tagawa gave it everything. The Silkworm screamed, cutting up the gravel as it bore down on the chasm. The others looked on with a mixture of horror and exhilaration.

  ‘Was zum Teufel?’ shouted Brandt.

  Hearst took a step forward, her fists clenched. Cassady dropped the binoculars on the track.

  The Silkworm hit the girders at ramming speed and bounced along the surface of the bridge. The engine twitched and thrummed. There was a screech and the chassis shuddered as the back tyre on the right teetered between concrete and air, and Brandt and Ghazi looked away. But before it could fall, the Silkworm hit the other side of the mountain, joined the track and raced along for a few metres until red lights glowed and the engine cut out. For a moment, there was no sound other than stones clattering down the face of the gorge.

  Brandt took a deep breath and cheered. On the other side, Tagawa and Victor stumbled out onto the trail and raised a couple of shaky fists. Cassady mumbled something indecipherable and picked up the binoculars off the floor. Wyler took another drink from the canteen. Ghazi said a short prayer to whichever gods were listening and wished he had even a few shreds of tobacco to smoke.

  Hearst was next. Her features were blank as she climbed into the bulbous cab. The bags under her eyes were as dark as her tattoos. She’d driven further than any of them.

  Cassady called Ghazi over. ‘Get the Old Lady ready, will you? They’ll be on us soon.’

  Ghazi tried to keep the shame out of his voice. ‘I can’t take her over the gorge.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m shot through.’ He held up a shaking hand. ‘If I have to do it, she’ll roll.’

  He held the other man’s gaze. He just couldn’t. It was that simple. Cassady had to understand, and he had to step up.

  ‘Okay,’ said the other Runner at last. ‘I’ll do it. Help Hearst line herself up. Doesn’t much look as though she’s about to follow the boys’ example.’

  As Hearst edged Orion onto the narrow bars, Ghazi stood behind the rig and watched the tyres. When he waved, Hearst nudged the wheel to correct the direction. Tagawa did the same from the other side of the gorge. Little by little, the beetle crept forward to the middle of the bridge. Ghazi swallowed. Reserves of adrenaline he didn’t know he had prickled in his chest.

  A frenzied shout from Cassady sent an electric shock through them all. ‘They’re coming.’

  ‘Get going!’ Ghazi screamed into the chasm.

  Orion jogged forward, but veered right. The tyre treads began to drift off the concrete and find air. Hearst fired the engine, and the truck whined and danced from side to side as she battled to stay on the bridge. There was a heavy thump as Orion left the girders and hit the opposite bank. Victor and Tagawa stood aside as the pantech pulled in behind the Silkworm. They slapped the blood-red body and shouted their relief. Hearst didn’t emerge from the cab.

  The faint snarl of petrol-fired engines rolled over the mountainside. As if in sync with one another, Wyler and Brandt raced over to Telamonian. Brandt opened the rear doors and hoisted himself onto the cargo bed. Seconds later, the end of a supply crate appeared. Wyler pulled at its rope handle and heaved. Brandt appeared again, holding the handle at the other end, and launched himself out of the truck. The two men darted across to Warspite with the crate between them, threw it down by the drop hatch, and returned for the other.

  As Ghazi watched them race from one rig to the other, he understood. But he didn’t give the realisation time to hurt him. Instead, he ran over to the Old Lady and uncoupled the hatch, and Brandt and Wyler lifted the first crate onto Warspite’s bed. Cassady appeared as they were struggling with the second one.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, disbelief wrinkling his brow. ‘You need to go now. We haven’t got time for this.’

  ‘Too large,’ grunted Brandt. Wyler gave a final push and the crate was inside. Ghazi tied it down with bungee cords.

  ‘What is?’

  Brandt slammed the drop hatch home, wiped his hands on his trousers and nodded at Telamonian. ‘She is.’ He sighed. ‘She won’t make it across. She’s too wide and the tyres are too large.’

  The guttural snarls of the petrol engines forced him to raise his voice. Ghazi’s eyes darted to the top of the long incline, but it was still clear. They had seconds left to get away.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Cassady gaped at the old man, confusion souring to anger and then helplessness as he searched the corners of his mind for an alternative that didn’t exist. The lines on Brandt’s face were deep with pain, but he radiated determination. He wouldn’t be persuaded. He reached out and rested a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay, Edward. I made it this far. That’s far enough for me.’

  ‘But we need you.’

  ‘No you don’t. You need to get the others away from here.’

  Ghazi turned to Wyler and asked the question he already knew the answer to. ‘Are you joining us?’

  The wild man’s jaw was set. ‘I don’t think so, brothers.’

  Cassady rounded on him. ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Remember what I told you when we were in Prestige? We’re all part of the same tapestry. I ain’t leaving him to face them alone.’

  Brandt squared his shoulders. ‘This isn’t necessary.’

  ‘I betrayed you once. I don’t intend to do it again.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do this.’

  ‘I know. No more discussion.’

  After a moment of consideration, the German nodded.

  ‘This is crazy,’ said Cassady. ‘You can come with us. Both of you.’

  The old man pulled himself up to his full height and fixed Cassady with a gaze that told him to stop.

  ‘What’s your plan?’ asked Ghazi quickly.

  ‘The dynamite,’ said Brandt. ‘Try to buy you some time. Here, take these.’ He held out his gimlet knives. Ghazi shook his head.

  ‘They belong with you.’

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ said Wyler. He grabbed Ghazi’s arm and pumped it. Then he pulled the crestfallen Cassady close and embraced him. ‘Keep going, brother. You have to make it. Don’t give up.’

  ‘We won’t,’ said Ghazi.

  ‘I’ll see you in the next life.’

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ said Brandt.

  A shout came from across the void. Victor stood in the road, hands waving for the group’s attention. The noise of the engines drowned out his words. Brandt raised a heavy hand and curled it into a fist. Victor stopped shouting. Tagawa appeared by his side, and his long, thin frame bent into a bow. Hearst left her cab and joined the pair of them on the track.

  A mechanical snort sounded at the top of the incline. ‘They’re here,’ said Wyler.

  The first machines rolled into view. Four-wheeled quad bikes on oversized tyres with a pod-
like cage protecting the two-person crew. Helmets concealed the faces of the riders.

  The machines kicked into gear. ‘Go,’ shouted Brandt.

  The four men ran to the rigs. Ghazi and Cassady strapped themselves in. Warspite rolled towards the girders. Behind them, Telamonian shuddered into life and pulled out into the middle of the trail. The quads scudded over the hard ground, pillion riders aiming brutal carbines over the shoulders of the drivers. Bullets fizzed and popped, but Telamonian’s huge body shielded Warspite from the worst of the storm.

  Warspite lurched onto the bars and the ground disappeared. Wind beat against the tarp and whistled through the grille, and it made the Old Lady sound as though she was screaming. Stray slugs clanged off the chassis. Cassady twitched the steering wheel to the left and gave her some juice. The truck teetered.

  ‘Calm. Calm,’ said Ghazi, struggling to speak over the raw fear that clogged his throat.

  Cassady did as he was told, steadying his breathing and then bringing the truck level again. The gunfire continued. Ghazi checked the mirror. Telamonian charged up the incline to meet the machines. Metal squealed against metal as it hammered into the quads, sending them spinning over the edge of the cliff. A group of sleek exoskeletons took their place at the top of the hill and began to rain fire down on the monster, which groaned as it weaved from side to side. Telamonian’s windshield became spiderwebbed. Under the hood the engine howled, and the great truck swerved into the exoskeletons.

  A terrible explosion sent shockwaves through the fibres of Warspite. Ghazi’s mind went blank as a fireball grew in the side mirrors. Cassady held the wheel steady and put his foot down, and the Old Lady leapt towards the opposite bank. The tyres bit into the rock face and she clambered onto the mountainside. He cut the power.

  Ghazi’s trembling hand found the door and he forced it open. He slid out and spent a long moment bent over at the waist suppressing the urge to vomit. He staggered over to where Tagawa, Victor and Hearst stood, their faces set as they viewed the destruction on the other side of the gorge. Flames licked at the overgrowth. Near the top of the incline, the remains of Telamonian belched black smoke. A quad lay on its side, its unmoving crew a few metres away. A rumble sounded further up the mountain, and several car-sized rocks tumbled onto the trail. The path was blocked.

  Orion left first. Hearst didn’t speak to any of them. Victor wiped his eyes and swore into the void until Tagawa led him back to their truck and set off along the narrow path. For the first time in many days, Ghazi and Cassady were alone. Silently, they checked the crates in the back. A few bullets had made holes in the tarp, but none had pierced the wood. Both men threw back a pill. Cassady slipped into the driver’s seat once more and stoked the engine. A dead weight sat on their shoulders. The Koalition had won the first battle, and the Runners had paid the price.

  Part III – On the Run

  1

  ‘I’m worried about Hearst.’

  Cassady pushed up the peak of his cap and squeezed his eyes shut and open a few times to chase away the ripples that appeared in front of him. He’d drifted off. The trail was dark. The roof lights lay dormant, and they were running on a single headlight to avoid being detected by any drones ghosting between the peaks. A few branches snatched at them from the sides of the trail, but the landscape was still dominated by rock. The harsh edges of the cliff-side and the skull-sized stones strewn across their path suggested the route had been cut out in a hurry and then never maintained. It was difficult to tell whether it was preor post-Change. In some places it became so narrow that the Old Lady had to scrape her body along the cliff, and both men in the cab would wince as the smell of rock dust and metal drifted through the windows.

  Hearst. She’d been driving solo for nearly four days now with barely a break. He knew why Ghazi was worried, but he didn’t have a solution. They were all strung out. ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s swerving all over the road.’ His co-driver spoke in a monotone. ‘She can’t keep going on like this.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it? We don’t have enough drivers to rotate.’ Pain buzzed in the back of his head. He removed his hat and rubbed his temples. Light from the single lamp splashed against the cliffs. ‘I guess I could ask Tagawa.’

  ‘They’ll be feeling the strain too. Better to keep them together.’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just telling you.’

  ‘She’s tougher than you think.’

  ‘But not indestructible. She’s been driving since the highway. We can’t push her until she breaks.’

  ‘We won’t,’ he said, cutting the conversation short. He opened his canteen and sipped the cool water they’d taken from the mountain. It had no equal. He’d forgotten what it was like to take a drink without the chlorine aftertaste. He searched for something else to say.

  ‘You need another pill?’

  ‘If I have one more, my heart will probably give out.’

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘It feels like there’s a fly trapped inside it.’

  The pantech crawled along. Contact with an outcrop of rock sent more shockwaves through the chassis. Cassady’s teeth chattered.

  ‘Brandt wouldn’t have made it through here,’ he muttered.

  ‘I was thinking the same thing.’

  Ahead, Orion’s taillights flashed on and off as the trail became more twisted and kinked.

  ‘He and Katarina were links to the old world,’ Ghazi continued. ‘Soon there won’t be anyone left who was born before the Change.’

  ‘You can’t stop time.’

  ‘But once we break with the things that came before us, they cease to be real. They become part of history.’

  ‘That’s how it’s always been. And always will be.’

  ‘Right, but in our minds we’re always yearning for the world to return to an ideal from the past. We want to be in Eden again. The truth we choose to ignore is that the world will never be like it once was ever again. It’s gone. We’re trapped in an endless cycle of trying to recreate what people before us had. We only look backwards.’

  ‘Not when we’re young. I was always looking to the future.’

  ‘Yes. But younger minds have no say in things until they become old. And then it’s too late.’

  Cassady looked at the outline of his partner’s dark face. It was bearded now, like his own. He didn’t know what to say to him. He ran a finger across his forehead. The skin was cracked, dry and covered in grit. A sharp aroma rose from his body. Lice moved in the seams of his clothing. He was decomposing.

  The cliff faces retreated and the trail became wider. They had more room to breathe.

  ‘I was thinking about Wyler, too,’ said Ghazi. ‘Why he chose to stay with Brandt. Our moral compass can steer us in directions others would consider horrific, can’t it? It steered him wrong even though he wasn’t a bad person. It led him down a oneway street. If you can’t see the other options around you because you have your nose to the wall, you start to think you’re right. You fail to see the world around you, and then you’re shocked when somebody pulls you away from the wall. That was what happened to him. I don’t think he even thought of Renfield as a human being. Not until it was too late.’

  Cassady watched Orion’s headlights. ‘A person should obey that moral compass of yours though. Otherwise they could end up doing anything at all, totally without context or consideration. That compass comes with boundaries.’

  ‘Still, the moment you lay down your own rules is the moment you ignore the wider rules of the universe. Those are the ones we should be listening to. Forget right and wrong as we understand it, because it goes well beyond that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start with that.’

  ‘Exactly. Because life is much more chaotic than we want it to be and its vastness scares us. That’s why we devise systems of what we think is right and wrong, good and bad. It’s shortsighted. Life isn’t t
here to be simplified or boiled down. Wyler thought that dying with Brandt would right a wrong. But it’s not as clear-cut as that.’

  Cassady was silent for a moment as he reflected. Ghazi never stopped searching for answers, not even now. ‘I just hope they’re having a drink up there with Kaja and Renfield.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Orion’s taillights jogged from side to side and the vehicle yelped in the dark. Cassady imagined Hearst hunched over the wheel, battling to stay alert. The track angled upwards again. Ghazi shifted the stick and Warspite groaned with the effort.

  The timepiece flashed. It wouldn’t be light for hours. Cassady cracked the cap on the pill bottle and shook one into his palm. His body begged for him not to take it, but he tossed it into his mouth and swallowed. It was nearly his turn to take over at the wheel again.

  Orion stopped on a small plateau just before dawn. The sky was the colour of iron, and gelid clouds circled the peaks and blocked out the sun. The trail had become much steeper, and the pantechs had to dig in for every metre of progress. On their right, a sheer drop into a valley promised death if they made a wrong move.

  Cassady stretched out his legs where he sat as he waited for Orion to move off again. His knees and his tailbone throbbed in unison.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered. He glanced at Ghazi, whose eyes were closed. They’d started switching places on the hour. Every minute lasted ten. As he peered through the glass, Orion’s taillights died. He pressed down on the pedal and the Old Lady groaned as she fought her way up the hill. Eventually she hit the plateau, and he pulled her in behind the beetle. Ghazi awoke with a start. He coughed and groaned.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Hearst has stopped. I’m going to check it out.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. Let me find a fleece.’

  Cassady put his cap on, zipped up his creaking flight jacket and jumped out. The air was a pane of glass that was ready to shatter into a thousand pieces. He shambled over to Orion and threw open the door. Hearst was slumped over the wheel, eyelids fluttering, chin resting on top of the moulded plastic. Her arms and neckline were bare. He held her hand between his and rubbed it.