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This job was different from most others they’d taken on. The way the baron told it, some coldhearts had taken all the children in the ville. Why was a mystery; how was an even bigger one. Despite his best efforts, Ryan had been unable to understand what had occurred. All he knew was that the baron was willing to pay them a lot of jack to rescue the ville’s children.
While it was true that a ville was lost without kids—without the next generation a ville could do nothing but wither and buy the farm, at the mercy of an aging population and an outside world that grew progressively younger and stronger—still it was more than just altruism that had driven the baron’s desperate bargaining. The fact that one of the kids taken was his own had a greater bearing on his willingness to give ground than perhaps his people would have liked, had they been privy to the negotiations.
The thing was, with his own kid being involved, he was willing to pay a lot to get her back. Conversely, what information was he holding back that might make them decide not to take the job? Ryan wondered.
How had these coldhearts taken the kids so easily? What danger did they really present?
Perhaps that was part of the reason that he was trailing at a distance: caution for his people until they had a real chance to recce the situation.
But it had better come soon.
* * *
LIGHT BECAME DARK easily in the barren wasteland. Heads down, focused on keeping one foot in front of another at a steady pace that ate up the ground, ignoring the thirst that gnawed at their parched throats, the companions didn’t notice the passing of time. Suddenly the light around them became much dimmer, and the sands that reflected light and heat at them became much cooler.
“Dark night, how long have we been doing this?” J.B. asked in a voice that was barely above a croak. It was so quiet that it was hard to tell if he was talking to anyone in particular, or just to himself.
Nonetheless, Ryan opted to answer. Looking at his wrist chron, alarmed at how the heat and sweat in his eye made it hard to focus on its face, he said, “Too long, J.B. Hours. We should have taken a water break a couple of hours back.”
“Mebbe have plenty time do that,” Jak observed morosely, gesturing at the horizon.
Ryan followed the direction indicated by the albino teen. Although he could now see the group of people in the far distance much more clearly than a few hours previously, the horizon no longer blurred and obscured by the haze of the day’s heat, the group was greatly diminished from the one they had been following up to this point.
“What the fuck…” he whispered.
“Unless they’re walking off the edge of the world—and I wouldn’t blame them if it goes on like this—then I figure that the plains must be about to take a huge dip,” Krysty said with a wry twist to her tone.
“If that is so, then I would suggest we take advantage of the drop in temperature and step up the pace, lest we lose track of them,” Doc suggested. “It would, after all, be a great pity to come this far only to lose them in a hole in the ground.”
Mildred grinned. “Not like you to be understated,” she said hoarsely, the smile cracking her dry lips.
Ryan, however, was in no mood to take such humor at face value. “Shit,” he swore in frustration, “we’ll take in some water, then try to step it up. I know you want to rest, people, but mebbe we’ll get lucky and be able to take a break when we find where they’ve disappeared to.”
The other five all experienced a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomachs when they heard what the one-eyed man had to say. Yet each of them had already steeled him or herself for the difficult trek ahead, knowing that it was necessary, and that Ryan only spoke what they all knew to be true.
Without another word, they took great drinks of water to rehydrate and fortify themselves before setting off in grim silence for the target.
The way ahead was nothing but a hard slog. They had to focus on getting to the target, and not waste time and energy on anything else. Even the encroaching darkness and cold seemed to be peripheral to the goal that filled their minds. But before the blanket of night finally descended, and they had only the pale wan light of a cloudless moon to light their way, Ryan was able to see that the last of the group of people ahead of them had vanished from view. How far was the horizon from where they were? Apparently, always the same distance.
No, he thought, shaking his head a little to clear the muzziness that came with fatigue and the chill that crept into their bones. The question was, how much land lay between themselves and the horizon at any given time? That was how far ahead their prey was from where they stood now. And if he knew that, then he could work out how long it would take them to cover that distance and so find out where that prey had gone, and how long until they could even think about stopping.
The figures rushed around his head, producing a different answer with each thought, and making him question his own sanity. And yet that futile train of thought served a purpose: the longer and more complicated the train of thought, then the more distance it ate up without his noticing the effort it took to drag his body across the arid plain, gray in the moonlight.
In their own ways, and with their own trains of thought, the others did the same. It was a way of shutting out the cold, just as they had tried to shut out the heat.
So it was that they came upon the fissure before they truly had a chance to register what was up ahead. It had looked like nothing more than a patch of ground that was darker than the surrounding area. It was only that the land beneath their feet grew less smooth, rougher and more broken, that the presentiment of any danger became apparent. The pale light of the crescent moon had been little enough, but somehow the land around had seemed to soak up what little light prevailed.
Another time, perhaps, any of them would have noticed. But, tired and worn by their self-enforced march, they were receptive to the change before it was almost too late. Ryan, still in front, had registered that the ground was less certain beneath his boots, but had put this subconsciously down to a minor change in the terrain than anything that should take his attention.
Perhaps it was the night around them dulling his senses. Perhaps it was the dehydration and the introspection that had enabled him to counter this. Perhaps it was nothing more than the tiredness that came from a day’s march without any respite.
Whatever it was, it nearly cost him his life.
One moment the one-eyed man was wrapped up in thought, feeling and yet not registering the ground beneath his feet, the next, he was sliding forward as that ground gave way with an unexpected treachery.
Now the darkness around him made more sense. This was what the people they had been trailing had disappeared into: a fissure in the earth, running deep and almost sheer beneath them. Somehow they had wandered into a small ledge that jutted into space. Those who had gone ahead had known it was there, and had benefited from the light of day. For Ryan and his people there was no prior warning, and as his foot had come down on loose earth and started a slide, the momentum and weight of his body not only threatened to carry him over the edge and into the unknown dark below, but it also carried the risk of making the ledge crumble.
Krysty and Jak were nearest as Ryan’s leg skidded from under him and he toppled back toward the ground. He would have yelled, if not for the fact that his throat was so cracked that little more than a startled croak would emerge. His arms flew out in an attempt to balance himself and spread his weight, to stop the ground beneath him giving way any more than it already had. Without his realizing it, this gave Jak and Krysty the help they needed. As his arms flew back, they were both able to reach out and grab hold of him.
Yet even as they did, both were aware of the earth beneath them trembling and starting to crumble. An ominous groan came from deep within the ground beneath their feet.
Mildred, J.B. and Doc were lagging behind a little. Although it gave them more ground to make up before they could be of assistance, it also gave them the split second they each needed to snap out of their respective reveries and take instant stock of the situation.
To be too close would be to risk their combined weight causing the unstable ground to break up even more. To stay away would be to leave Jak and Krysty to try to haul Ryan back while the rock splintered beneath their feet. They had to move in and lend support while staying back enough to stop the ledge turning to dust beneath them, and dropping all of them into the abyss below.
Ryan had no idea of what was happening behind him. He knew only that the ground was falling away beneath him even as he scrabbled with his boot heels to gain some kind of grip. Each frantic attempt to gain a foothold had only the opposite effect. At the same time, he could feel his legs start to slip and his calves cramp as the jagged edge of rock cut into them. At the other end of his body he could feel an ironlike grip around each wrist, and his shoulders strained in their sockets as he was grabbed and hauled back while his momentum sought to carry him in the opposite direction.
He stopped kicking, realizing that his efforts were counterproductive.
At his back, Jak and Krysty could feel the movement beneath them slow as Ryan ceased to fight. Now more confident, but still cautious in case they started a slide of their own, they began to move back slowly, one step at a time. They staggered their steps so that first Krysty, and then Jak, moved, causing the minimum of disturbance and impact to the fragile earth beneath them. Within a few steps, each felt another hand reach out and grab them in the darkness. Mildred took hold of Jak, and Doc assisted Krysty. Each allowed the others to lean a little of their weight into them, so that it took some strain off the ground beneath, and allowed the stress to be carried over a greater area of ground. At the rear, J.B. planted his feet firmly on solid ground and took hold of arms that were stretched out behind Doc and Mildred. Bearing their weight, he began to slowly shuffle back, taking the strain and helping them to haul back Jak and Krysty.
It was a slow and painful process. Sweating with the effort, despite the chill of the night, J.B. could only relax when he could see, under the wan moon, that Ryan was several yards from the edge, and was able to dig in his own heels and push back.
When they were all back level with the line of the crevasse, they collapsed onto the ground, breathing hard.
Ryan raised himself up on one elbow. In the moonlight he could see the inky blackness that was delineated only by the jagged line of collapsing rock. They had hauled him back only just in time. He could still hear the faint sounds of falling dirt and stone where small sections of the lip continued to fall away.
Just in time. Timing was everything. A few seconds and he would have been gone before they could reach him.
Timing was everything. A day either way and they might not even have been out here on this cold, dark night.
Chapter Two
“Tell me where they are, Morgan. Tell me what they’re doing.”
Baron K leaned into the fire, so that his face was reflected in the upward glow. Shiny, bright and expectant, there was almost something childlike about him as he asked.
The old man sucked his teeth, then spit to one side. “Wish it was that simple, Baron. But if it was, I would have seen them coming, known who they were when they arrived and been able to do something about it.”
The baron shook his head. “When I look back, I should have seen it, too. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious that they were bad news. No, Morgan, they had a magic about them that was strong, and could mask a lot.”
The old man cocked his head to one side as he considered the man who was nominally his superior. Not at present. Right now it seemed that the baron was looking up to him as a superior because of powers he appeared to possess. His faith was touching, if a little misplaced. Morgan mused that if he had been the kind of man who wished to gain and use power, he would have been able to use the baron’s belief against him. For a man who had used a very physical and worldly grasp of power to gain his position, he had a vulnerable point that was unexpected.
But Morgan wasn’t that kind of man. He considered that running his own life was enough of a struggle, let alone taking on the task of telling others how they should live. He also had what he considered to be a sense of perspective. And from that he knew that the baron had overestimated what he could do. The baron believed in magic and power that was beyond the physical and human. Morgan didn’t. All those old stories were crap. It was true that he had a certain ability. He was a doomie, as he had heard others like himself be called. He could see things that weren’t there, or that were happening some way distant. But he didn’t call it magic. He came from a long line of those who carried the history of the time before the nukecaust. This role as a person who could recall the stories of the past gave him a kind of protection. He was treated with a kind of awe akin to those who could cure the sick. Doctors, as they called them once. With a wry twist of humor, he realized that he was one of the few who would know that word around these parts. Just as he was the only one who knew that doomies weren’t some kind of supernatural beings.
But let the baron believe what he wanted. It kept Morgan alive and relatively safe.
It was true, though, that he did possess that kind of doomie gift that enabled him to see from a distance. If he concentrated, then he could see what it was that he concentrated his attention upon. Viewing remotely, as some had once called it. Or second sight, which seemed a stupe name to him, as he could barely see now that he was getting on and his eyes ailed him.
The fire wasn’t really necessary, but it added a sense of occasion to what he did, as did the empty room and the silence around him. If he could shut himself off mentally, then he could do it anywhere. The most important thing about the fire was that it sent a shiver down the spine of the baron, and actually made him keep his big mouth shut. The worst obstacle that Morgan could face while trying to do this was to keep being interrupted by K’s incessant questions.
So now, with the baron silenced by his own sense of occasion, Morgan was able to settle down, to relax his body from the toes up, and to blank his mind by thinking of nothing, just seeing the flickering flames in front of him.
He thought of the six people he had met all too briefly: the one-eyed leader and his wiry sidekick, the one with the stupe hat and the odd obsession with hardware. They were the kind of men you’d want on your side in a fight, though you might not want to be their friends in times of peace. The other four comprised a strange and motley crew. The red-haired woman was a doomie. That much he had sensed right away. That made his task easier, as he could focus on her. How it worked, he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to know. It just did. The black woman and the old man were really odd. There was something about them that seemed aged beyond their looks, as though they came from another time. He would have loved to have known their stories. They would have been well worth knowing to tell again and again. And then there was the albino. Not a youth to know in times of peace, like One-eye and the Hat. But different from them. He had an air of wildness to him.
They were brave. He had to give them that. He wouldn’t have undertaken the mission, no matter how much jack was involved. When he thought of those they were chasing, a sense of cold, enveloping darkness came over him. Just letting that thought pass through his mind made him shiver.
Instead, he concentrated on the red-haired doomie. That was no great stretch, as to even let the thought of her beauty cross his mind brought the warmth flooding to his loins. He had to suppress a salacious smile at the thought.
Feeling more relaxed now, he began to get some impressions: faint at first, then confusing and jumbled even as they began to take shape. The agony of stretched muscles, and a feeling of danger—not hers, but of one close to her. The one-eyed man? He had sensed something between them, and now that seemed to be the overriding sense that he was getting.
It took greater shape, and he could see as though detached. Once inside her head and heart, it was suddenly as though he had been freed from this cage and was a bird flying high over them, seeing from above all that was going on. He could see now that they had wandered too close to the edge of a precipice when dark and fatigue overtook them. As he watched, he saw them pull One-eye clear. They were safe and he was relieved. For himself more than them, if truth be told. He didn’t relish having to tell the baron that they had bought the farm before they had found their prey.
And he was pretty sure that they hadn’t. They had to be on some kind of trail, as they had wandered into a region that he didn’t recognize. The fissure in the ground into which One-eye had nearly fallen was something he didn’t remember ever seeing in all his years. As to where the children and the darkling ones were…as a bird, he soared over the group that now lay exhausted but safe, and tried to stoop down into the fissure. He was looking for some kind of light. It was night, and they had to have some kind of torch to light their way, or fire to heat them as they slept. But no, there was nothing. No light and no sign of movement.
But he knew they were there, knew because he was forced to pull up and away from the deep groove in the earth, forced back by a sense of cold and black that was more than just the plains night.
Like a black claw around his heart, he felt it tighten and squeeze, making it hard for him to take breath. It seemed to last forever, that it would squeeze the life from him. Whatever it was, it didn’t welcome him.
Morgan snapped back to the here and now, darting his eyes away from the flame, thinking now of how his bladder was bursting, and how he might piss himself with fright. The very physical pressure was the perfect antidote to that part of his mind that wandered far in the night.
Dragging in his breath sharply, feeling the smoky air fill his lungs as though it was perfumed, he felt relieved to be back in this realm. And still alive, at that—at least, he did until he saw that K was staring intently at him.
“Well?” the baron asked simply.
Morgan considered this carefully.
“It is a long path, but as they come to the end of this road, they draw closer together until the point where they meet,” he intoned after some consideration.
K nodded sagely, as though understanding every word.
Morgan breathed a sigh and hoped that Red and her crew would make better progress than he. Otherwise he might have to find the words to tell K something that he really wouldn’t want to hear.
* * *
RYAN LOOKED INTO the abyss. It was hard to tell, under the pale moon, just how deep or shallow this crater was. It seemed to stretch as far he could see on either side of him, curving slightly to the left, but still reaching out into the darkness. Where it ended—if it did—he couldn’t tell. One thing seemed certain: there was no way across unless you went down.
J.B. joined him at the edge, staring down into the black. He took off his spectacles and calmly polished them, as though the events of a few moments before hadn’t occurred.
“They must have gone down,” he stated simply. “No other way.”
“But how?” Ryan mused. “Treacherous underfoot, and no path that I can see. Looks like a straight drop.”
“Does in this light. But that’s this light.” The Armorer shrugged. “Can’t see much in this. Mebbe it’ll be different when the sun comes up. That’ll be—” he tilted his wrist chron so that it caught as much of the moonlight as was possible, squinting to read the dial “—a good four hours. Can’t do much till then. I say we get some rest. We need it.”
Ryan sighed. “Four hours and we could lose track of them.”
J.B. smiled wryly. “Kind of have now, Ryan. No light to show where they are, which way they’ve gone. What are we going to do? Stumble down and risk our necks and then either go completely the wrong way or run into them when we aren’t prepared?”
Ryan’s expression echoed his friend’s wry tone. “I know, I know. Just seems like we’re losing so much ground this way.”
J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe… One of those times we can’t do jack about it. Might as well grab some z’s and wait till we can get a better picture.”
Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Not what we want, but just what is, right? Sense like always, J.B.”
They turned away from the edge. Now was the time to get some rest. Huddling together, for they couldn’t risk the beacon of a fire, the companions bedded down for the remainder of the night. They had a routine that was always the same in such situations: however much time was left of the night, they would divide watch equally among them. Looking up at the position of the moon, Jak elected to take first watch. The darkest of the night would soon give way to the gray of predawn, and he was the best equipped to cope with the inky blackness of night. His red eyes were sensitive to light, but at a time such as this, they were the best adapted of all of them.
While the others settled and soon drifted into the uneasy sleep that came with night cold and the hardness of earth with no bedding to soften it, Jak settled down on his haunches to welcome the night. As the breathing of his friends subsided into the settled snores and soft grunts of rest, he was able to tune out those noises and concentrate on the land around them.
Even by night, not all was quiet. The companions had seen little in the way of wildlife and fowl during the day. Those few birds that had stamina to fly from distant eyries were content to circle at a great height, patient in the hope of fallen prey. On the ground, the heat and inevitable depth of any water encouraged only the most hardy of burrowing animals. Any aboveground dwellers who dared to encroach on the arid wasteland would soon scuttle back to their havens, or perish in the attempt. By day, few would venture aboveground, and even those that did would be wary of any who passed over their burrows. By night, it was a different situation. The cool air would draw them aboveground to forage. Their snufflings, the patter of claws on hard-packed earth, the occasional yowl of conflict, and pain or mating—perhaps both—were clear to Jak and proscribed a symphony of hidden movement.
The creatures were harmless, their musk faint and bespeaking of the distance they preferred to keep from the larger creatures they instinctively identified as a potential danger. Jak allowed himself something that appeared as only a flicker, a twitch, of the facial muscles, but was a laugh to all who knew him. Possible food, if he could be bothered to hunt them, but no threat.
Very well. There was something else that was bugging him that he could check out now that he was sure they were safe. While the others slept unaware, he walked to the edge of the crack in the earth. Mindful of his footing, he edged as close as he could to the lip, gingerly feeling for loose earth and rock. He found a path that was sure enough underfoot for him to reach the very edge, so that he could peer over and scan the width of the deep trench. With his eyesight being attuned more to the night than any of the others, he expected to be able to see more than Ryan or J.B. had a short while before. There was no fire to light the path of their prey, but the trail of a group of people couldn’t fail to be read on such terrain. It would be impossible to move without leaving something in your wake. Maybe, if fortune favored them, he may even be able to make out something even blacker than the hole below: a darkness caused by a clustering of bodies.
Now on the edge of the abyss, he concentrated his attention on the space below, shutting out not just the sounds of his companions, but all the other noises of the night. Down there, somewhere, were enough people to be making some sound, to leave some indication of their position.
Jak stared into the abyss.
And the abyss stared back. With a lurching fear that swept over him like a wave, an emotion to which he was unaccustomed, he felt the desire to throw himself off the edge and into the welcoming arms of…what?
Breathing hard, Jak hurriedly stepped back and looked up at the sky. The night was ink-black in patches, dotted only with the distant diamonds of stars and the wan disk of the moon. It was cold and distant, hardly welcoming, yet somehow reassuring when compared to what he had just seen.
For the land below the lip of rock had seemed to disappear beneath a blanket of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. It was like a presence that seemed to have a life of its own, acting as a cover for whatever lay beneath it, and fiercely protective of its charge. It was almost as if it had tried to strike out at him when he dared to look beneath it.
Despite the cold weather, Jak was sweating. An icy-cold puddle formed in the small of his back. He turned away from the abyss to see that Krysty had awakened, and was now standing, watching him. Her hair was coiled around her neck, in an almost mirrorlike imitation of the sweat at his own. Even in the dark of night, he could see the unease and fear in her eyes.
“Not look down there,” he said softly. “Wait sunup.” He walked back toward the sleeping group. If she was to relieve him, then he wanted to find the oblivion of sleep as soon as possible. As he passed her, she began to step toward the edge of the abyss. Jak grabbed her arm, pulling her back so that she turned around to face him.
“No.” He said it simply and quietly, but there was a power in it backed up by the expression on his face and in his usually blank eyes.
Krysty tried to speak but nothing would emerge. It was all she could do to shake her head before taking up her watch with her back firmly to the fissure in the earth.
Jak sank down gladly against the sleepers, welcoming oblivion… .
* * *
BARON K SHIVERED as he recalled that day, shivered because he had no real memory of the day the children were taken. What had come before was still etched into his mind as though someone had taken a wag battery, cut it open and poured the gunk into his brain. And what had come after, when the whole ville had awakened from what seemed to be a stupor that could only have been induced by some kind of jolt was only too clear. But of that time—the time when the exodus had occurred—there was nothing.
And while Morgan stared into the fire, K brought back to mind the awful task of having to outline that moment to the one-eyed man and his crew as they had sat in front of him.
“You can’t tell us anything? But you expect us to go after these coldhearts with no real clue as to what they can do.” The man known as Ryan Cawdor had looked around at his people, all of whom were looking as incredulous as himself.
K squirmed. Part of the strategy that had made him a baron was to be in complete control of everything that went on around him. To admit that he hadn’t been was almost like an admission of weakness. And weakness was anathema to him.
“The only way I can explain it is that it was like the kind of sleep you get when you’re exhausted…when you’ve been on the road for days, and you kept traveling until every muscle is at breaking point, and your eyes are out on sticks with the grit of the road rubbing them raw. That moment when you’re just running on fumes one moment, and the next your body just gives up and you fade so quick you don’t even know it until you wake up and it’s dark, and your face is embedded in the dirt.”
Ryan sniffed. The baron had a colorful turn of phrase, but it served its purpose. He knew that feeling. They all knew it.
