Prologue:
SPARK OF APOCALYPSE
It all started with a
girl, as so many things do. She was young, beautiful, curious,
slightly naive and idealistic, and such women have been the downfall
of nations. So proved this woman to be. She had a name, once,
something ordinary and forgotten. Now, her only name is Pandora.
This Pandora, like the one from ancient mythology, opened a box and
let evil loose upon the world. Only, this Pandora was
the box. The evil she loosed wasn't contained in a clay amphora, no,
this box was far more commonplace: the human mind. In the oldest
stories, Pandora was given a sealed jar and told not not open it
under any circumstances. So, of course, consumed by natural
curiosity, Pandora opened it. When she did so, out rushed all the
evils of the world, save hope, which alone remained.
This new Pandora was a
chemical engineering major, back when such quaint things as
universities still existed. She found a way to do something
incredible, like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Alfred Nobel. It had been
said that people only used 30% of their brain, so this girl, being
young and idealistic, found a way to unlock that elusive 70%. She
tested it on herself, being young and naïve. She was right, in that
she unlocked the rest of her brain using her chemicals and compounds,
and she was right in that she found herself capable of things far
beyond imagination. People had theorized in books and movies what
would happen: telekinesis, telepathy, empathy, perfection, terrible
and wonderful things.
Terrible, and
wonderful, indeed. Telepathy, telekinesis...yes, she discovered
these, and found them to be burdens; but the weightiest burden
Pandora unlocked was immortality. With her new, profound intellect,
she created the ability to put off sickness, invented regenerative
techniques to stave away Death's specter, she developed all this, and
more. But, like the ancient Pandora, what she opened couldn't then
be closed. She took a lover, our postmodern Pandora, a courageous,
foolish man, and together they conceived a child, and that child had
control over its entire brain. And so it went. Children born
thereafter were able to do nearly anything they wished...except
exercise restraint.
The purpose, it became
clear, for that millennial restriction on the human brain was to
protect mankind from itself, to protect men from themselves and each
other: nearly infinite power, but no understanding of the forces
wielded...the result was apocalypse. Not by nuclear holocaust, or
melted polar caps, or meteoroids, but because of one ambitious girl
who thought she could unlock the mysteries of the human brain. So
then, men murdered each other with bare hands, with lasers and plasma
rifles and fission bombs and empath hunters, with hate and hunger and
overcrowding.
See her now:
stumbling across a blasted plateau, bare feet catching on bleached
bones buried in the soil, hair thick and youthful still, lovely face
unlined by age, yet heavy and haunted with grief. She carries in her
gut the thickest of gall stones: the knowledge that she wreaked this
havoc, she created this hell, the road to which was paved by that
commonest of stones, good intention. She cannot forget and she
cannot die, while her lover lays long rotted in the wind-scoured
soil, her descendants stare out from caves in hillsides, lope through
empty streets of skeletal cities, gaunt and gangrenous apparitions.
Pandora, who carried in her synapses the spark of Apocalypse, now
wanders Earth trailing the ghosts of mankind behind her in an
ethereal skein of sorrow, palpable to her senses as voices singing
elegies and curses to her ceaselessly. She weeps, and regrets, but
she cannot close the box she has opened.
Chapter
1: The Walls of Detroit
Snow falls, thick clumps drifting and
hanging like a curtain of frozen fog, covering my tracks and muffling
my footsteps. I'm grateful for the snow, I had prayed and wished for
it, and had gotten it, miraculously. No one knew if Pandora's Curse
had ever given anyone control over the weather, but everyone wondered
in the generations following the Devolution. She had given us our
whole minds to control and in so doing unleashed chaos and
anarchy—true anarchy—upon us all. We had telepathy, telekinesis,
precognition, empathy, clairvoyance, increased physical strength,
endurance; she had given us near-immortality as well, through
regenerative medicine, anti-aging techniques. She had improved the
human race in every way imaginable, but in so doing had destroyed
human society. We overpopulated, brought technology to levels only
dreamed of in the most speculative science fiction, but society
couldn't handle it. People lost the ability to think and do for
themselves. There were no consequences. No one died, everyone lived
longer, but that only led to civil war, to anarchy, to the implosion
and collapse of social structure.
Then came Terrance McHale, America's
first dictator. He seized power from the bottom up, began as a petty
but ambitious drug lord operating in the blasted, war-torn slumtowns
of Detroit, and then he wrested control over the city, block by
block, having coalesced the various factions into a single united
force. Under his rule, Detroit eventually became a bastion of order,
the last hold-out of any kind of organization, and the de facto
capitol of what remained of the United States of America. The first
thing McHale did once his rule was secure was to build a wall around
it, a ring of stone and steel and razor wire.
The rest of the country fell city by
city, emptied by war. Buildings were blown up, streets became
territories fought over, then abandoned when supplies ran out;
industry and business collapsed completely, taken over and exploited
and ruined. Detroit survived, under McHale's iron fist and brutal,
bloody tyranny. McHale is a complicated man. He wields his power
much like Hitler and Stalin and Trujillo, with bloody-minded
absolutism, but he does so with the single intention of preserving
order. He carved a functioning community out of the ruins of dead
nation, and he has no intention of letting his little kingdom fall
apart, and so has no qualms about keeping his power consolidated by
any and every means necessary, defending it against the onslaught of
the other city-states still surviving: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas,
Chicago, and Atlanta.
I recognize the necessity for someone
like Terrance McHale, but I don't have to like him. His security
forces, which he calls the Fist of Peace, are little more than
glorified henchmen, an organized, well-equipped army of thugs, but
perhaps in such times as these that may be exactly what is needed to
maintain some semblance of order.
Whatever the case, it is these
hardened, shoot-first soldiers that I have to get past tonight, if I
want to get into Detroit, and I have
to get in. I've got too many Scavengers on my ass to stay out here
in the Wastes much longer. They've been tracking me for three weeks
now, despite my most desperate attempts to lose them. Now, with the
snow falling around me I just might have a chance, if they haven't
caught up and surrounded me while I was sleeping. They're sneaky
bastards like that. You think you've gotten ahead of 'em, you think
you've lost em, but then just when you really
think you're safe, there they are, the rotting sickly foraging
creatures. I don't even consider them people anymore; they're
little more than semi-human cybernetic amalgamations. Civilization
may have collapsed, but technology never really slowed down, it just
got twisted and misused, warped and made wicked, and now everything
becomes a weapon for the Scavengers, who got their name from their
habit of roaming the Wastes to kill anyone unlucky enough to get near
them. They steal the obvious things, of course, clothes, weapons,
power cells, food, but they can also take your bioelectricity. That,
more than anything else, is what frightens people about the
Scavengers.
Bioelectricity is
what powers technology these days. It was a known commodity for a
long time, but it wasn't until a young man named Takeshi invented a
way to harness bioelectricity to an automobile that it was any use to
society. He called the technology he invented Impulsion. His
development was borderline miraculous in two ways: one, he exploit
the heat and energy within the human body, and two, he created a way
to harness the increased mental ability unlocked by Pandora to
technology. I'm no engineer so I don't get the fine details of how
it works, but I get the basics. Somehow, the Impulsor takes the
unique signature your bioelectric heat and converts it into power,
which is stored in power cells. Then you use a mental impulse to
send the vehicle into motion. The amount of power you get depends on
the amount of mental acuity you possess. This Impulsor technology
was converted for use in pretty much every other facet of life after
that, at least until the collapse. It's used in cars, motorcycles,
elevators, phones, anything and everything that uses energy.
Takeshi's invention may have saved the Earth in terms of pollution,
eliminating emissions completely, but it couldn't save humankind from
itself.
The
most famous bastardization of Takeshi's impulsion technology was the
Impulsor rifle. It was inevitable, really, and everyone knew it. We
were all just waiting for the first person to come out and say
they've done it. And when someone finally did, the results were as
transformational as everyone expected. Impulsor rifles work the same
as cars do, converting the user's bioelectric signal into an
explosive force, storing the energy in rechargeable power cells. No
need for powders or intricate machinery any longer, just a few wires,
power cells, and induction plates. Guns still look pretty much the
same, but the bullets fired are more akin to the balls used in
muskets from the 17th
and 18th
centuries, but smaller. Impulsion rifles were silent, initially,
which was weird. Battles after the invention of Impulsor rifles were
bizarre scenes, men running and ducking, blossoming crimson blooms of
blood as they clutched wounds, screaming and dying and cursing, but
absent was the crashing deafening noise of gunfire. Then some
enterprising gunsmith developed the expansion chamber, a way of
exponentially increasing the explosive force of the rifle, and that
provided enough impetus for the projectiles to break the sound
barrier, so each bullet fired creates its own sonic boom
mid-trajectory. So now, when gangs or armies meet, the deafening
noise of gunfire is delayed, the boom happening after the rifle is
fired, and since Impulsors can fire bullets as fast as the person
using it can think, the sonic booms come in concussive chains that
are often as destructive as the bullets themselves.
I
hear a howl behind me, the piecing, ululating shriek of hunting
Scavengers. It's answered by howls in front of me and to either
side. Shit. They miserable clanking bastards did
surround me while I was sleeping. I lean back against a tree and
exchange clips in my rifle, check to make sure there are spares
readily accessible, check that my handguns are loose in their
holsters tied to my thighs. A deep breath, and I'm stepping silently
through the snow, ears attuned to the silence around me, listening
for the heavy treads of Scavengers. There, to my left. I crouch,
pivoting to face the approaching knot of creatures. They're still
quiet, so they haven't seen me. When they have prey in sight, they
growl and moan, chatter at each other in their slurred guttural
language. Scavengers hunt in large packs, splitting the whole group
into units of six or seven that spread out and surround their prey,
communicating with each other by means of those squealing shrieks. I
thumb the switch that turns off the expansion chamber so I can kill
them quietly and retain the element of surprise for a while longer.
They know they've got me surrounded, but they don't know exactly
where I am yet, so hopefully I can drop this bunch and slip out of
their noose undetected. If not, I'll have a hell of a fight on my
hands. These things don't die easily.
I
draw a bead on the first Scavenger I see, fire once, watch its chest
burst open. Before the others can howl in surprise I drop them one
by one, a single bullet for each; ammunition is scarce out in the
Wastes so I can't afford to miss. The only sound when I shoot is a
low, barely audible thump
of air followed by the wet crunch of
the bullets striking the Scavengers. There's six of them in this
bunch, I drop five before the last one has time to flinch. The only
problem is, it only takes a millisecond for it to bark out a warning.
Damn it. Not fast
enough. I hear the other groups hollering and hooting around me. I
splat the last one, jog over to the bodies and search them. These
haven't been scavenging long, judging by their still human-looking
appearances. They have two arms, two legs, one head, which isn't the
case with ones that have been out in the Wastes scavenging for a long
time. They acquire new parts, become more machine and less human.
These ones, so close to Detroit, have high-quality tech grafted on to
themselves, rather than the obsolete cast-offs that you'd see on most
Scavengers. These have human faces, four male, two female, all have
long, matted, tangled hair, the men have beards, all are scarred and
sickly. Their torsos also are normal in appearance, but after that
the resemblance to humanity ends. Cybernetic arms clumsily grafted
onto shoulders, hastily and poorly modified to be rifles, swords,
laser-cutters, and a few other less-identifiable objects; legs made
from rusting clockwork, all-terrain wheels instead of feet,
reverse-knees, anything and everything, all stolen from wayfarers,
scavenged from dumps and ruins and ghost-towns. Skin, where it
exists, is gangrenous and crusted and filthy. All the machinery and
hunger, the desperation and disease and insanity has twisted them
away from humanity into nightmare creatures. If you were able to get
close enough to them—and stay alive—to hear them converse, you
might understand one word in five or ten as English, the rest being
growls and grunts, howls, clicks, slurred and garbled words.
I hear three more
groups of them, behind and to my left and right, close and closing
in. I finish pawing through the corpses, finding three more clips of
ammunition, then I sling the rifle over my back and draw my handguns,
knowing that the cumbersome rifle will be little use in close
quarters combat. I lope off in a space-eating run, the gait of
someone long used to distance running. Detroit is only four or five
miles off, and if I can get away from these Scavengers I'll be home
free. Well, relatively. Nothing is certain: getting into Detroit
will be difficult in itself, as the Fist is notorious for refusing
entrance. Right now, however, simply surviving will be enough.
Shit.
Here they come. Just can't get away from them, the filthy
creatures. Eastward I run at top speed, ears and eyes searching for
any hint of movement in the white-blanketed landscape. I see one to
my right and send a round towards it at supersonic speed; the bullet
goes clean through its chest near the shoulder—spraying blood and
clockwork cogs everywhere—and into the next Scavenger a step behind
it, punching through that one as well and into the pine tree ten
paces further along. I might have put a bit too much power into that
one, but panic is pinching me with its claws, blurring the edges of
my control with desperation. I keep running, not stopping to finish
off the group like I know I should, but fear has my feet under its
control and I give in to it. I hear a growl over my shoulder, inches
away, accompanied by labored gurgling breath. A Scavenger has caught
up to me, moving with blinding speed on a chassis sporting four large
knobbed tires where its legs had once been. As it comes abreast of
me I can see that this one is a male, a thin, lank-haired boy of
eighteen or so. He has a makeshift machete in one hand and an
ancient pre-Impulsor-era pistol in the other. He veers towards me,
swinging the machete. I duck, stumble, he bashes into me and sends
me flying, slices open my arm along the triceps with a wild swing. I
hit the snow rolling, feel dirt and snow and pine needles mash
against my face and in my mouth, tasting bitter and cold. The
wheeled Scavenger is barreling towards me firing his pistol, I feel
the bullets whip past my face, three angry wasps buzzing by my ear,
he fires again twice more and one creases my thigh, but I barely feel
it through the adrenaline coursing in my system. I brush my eyes
clear and fire my own pistol once, feel a rush of satisfaction as his
head explodes. There are three more rushing at me now. I lurch to my
feet and fire with both pistols, the reports coming in such quick
succession that it sounds like a long peal of rumbling thunder. Two
bullets slam into the first one, dropping it instantly, two more for
the next and by now the third is barely five feet away and barreling
at me, growling rabidly and swinging a spiked club at my head. I
throw myself backwards to the ground and let him stumble past me,
firing upwards into him at point-blank range. His torso bursts open,
spraying gore all over me, and he drops to the ground. I wipe snow
on my face to blot away the blood. Five corpses lay strewn around
me, and I search each one carefully, taking their weapons from their
slack hands and clips from their ragged pockets. They have nothing
else of value so I leave them where they lay and take off through the
snow and trees of the primal forest surrounding the wall of Detroit.
I hear the rest of pack howling wildly behind me, running together
now that they have their prey on the run. I know they're gaining on
me, but I have no intention of waging a running battle against them.
I'm nowhere near that stupid. I sustain a flat-out run for another
ten minutes before I let myself stop. The snow is still falling
heavily now, obscuring my tracks within seconds. I pull my rucksack
off of my back and rummage through it until I find what I'm looking
for: three small discs—mines—and a length of razor wire. Working
as fast as I can with bare, numb hands, I fasten the razor wire at
chest height and plant the mines in the snow in an arc beyond the
wire. As soon as the trap is set I move off again at a full run for
the road, the remains of the freeway once known as I-75. Now it's
little more than a clearing in the forest littered with crumbled
chunks of concrete and rusted hulks of vehicles. It's the only way
into Detroit now, so I have no choice but to follow it, even though
my instincts tell me to stay far away from the open spaces—in the
open, the Scavengers have you at their mercy. I hear a cry of agony
followed by three massive explosions that send me sprawling into the
snow. I get to my feet and brush off the snow, waiting and
listening. Silence reigns the forest once more.
Damn, I'm good.
That feeling of
satisfied pride last for the thirty seconds it takes for the
adrenaline to wear off and the wounds to make their presence felt. I
wrap the cut on my arm with a strip of cloth from a pocket, examine
the crease along my thigh and decide it's not worth bothering with.
I put gloves back on my hands: the only downside of Impulsor firearms
is that they require direct skin contact to work. I set off
eastwards towards the road.
I
plod through the falling snow for three long, bitterly cold,
uneventful hours before the wall of Detroit comes into view. I
haven't been here before, I've only seen pictures and heard stories
of the massive architectural wonder that is McHale's wall. I stop
dead in my tracks half a mile from the gate and gape slack-jawed at
monstrosity before me. It is fully one hundred and thirteen feet
high and thirty feet thick, but those numbers don't really express
anything. The legend goes that when McHale seized power twenty years
ago, Detroit was mere months away from being completely abandoned,
like so many other cities. McHale's first act was to order a wall
built around Detroit. He organized a workforce of whoever was left
in the city to begin gathering materials by tearing down every
derelict building within fifty miles of the city proper, and when
enough raw materials were on hand, he began the construction of the
wall itself, supervising, designing, and doing actual labor himself,
it is said. The wall took six years of constant work to complete,
with labor coming from volunteers, paid crews, and forced-work gangs
rounded up by the nascent Fist of Peace. During this time McHale
also successfully defended his hold on power from revolts,
assassination attempts, as well as fending off assaults on Detroit
by Chicago and Cleveland. After that short, vicious battle against
Cleveland, McHale launched a massive reprisal attack, surprising the
city in the predawn hours of October 25th,
2123. His forces decimated Cleveland completely, overrunning it in a
matter of hours. Weeks of looting saw Cleveland in flames, with the
already-waning population scattering in every direction. Refugees
from Cleveland did eventually show up at Detroit, and, to McHale's
credit, weren't turned away, but were welcomed with a warning that
they had to either contribute, and abide by the law, or be turned
out. Word that Detroit even had
laws that were being enforced spread quickly, as rumor will, and
refugees began to pour into Detroit by the thousands. McHale
welcomed them all, put them to work on his wall and the ongoing
revamping of the city within the walls. When the wall was completed,
McHale ordered that the flood of incoming refugees be stopped and a
quota set. Other attacks were attempted on Detroit, but most were
turned away by the mere sight of the wall, and even the most
determined of attackers, Chicago, was repulsed within days.
I
approach the gate slowly, hands in plain sight, away from my weapons;
the guards at the gate are infamous for shooting first and not
bothering with questions at all. The gatehouse is a small armored
nook built directly into the wall itself, and it is here that
travelers are interrogated before being ushered through into the
city. The gate, imposing and gigantic, is built out of recycled
steel and titanium and wide enough to allow convoys of supplies and
military forays in and out, with a smaller doorway set into the
gatehouse to let people in and out. The wall and its defensive
arrangements are drawn straight out of medieval castle design,
including crenelations and Impulsor cannons along the top of the
wall.
“Stop there,”
a guard barks at me. He unslings a rifle from his shoulder and draws
a bead on me. He stops
a few feet away, lowers his rifle and looks
me up and down. “That musta been you, before, doing all that
shooting.”
“Yessir, it
was,” I reply, lowering my hands slightly.
“How many?” He
asks, slinging his rifle back on his shoulder and lighting a
hand-rolled cigarette.
“Five in the
first bunch. The rest went up in that explosion, I doubt there's
anything left to loot, but I didn't check. I'm seeking entry.”
“Where are you
coming from and what's your business?”
“I've been out
alone in the Wastes since leaving New York in the spring. Found a
few scattered towns here and there with some folks in 'em, but mostly
been on my own. I'm just looking for somewhere to hole up for
awhile. Don't really have a business, as such.”
“We don't take
slackers here, boy,” he warns. “You gotta pull your weight, one
way or another. Ain't nothing free here.”
“Nothing ever
is.”
He regards me for
several beats. “I suppose if you've made it here, on foot, from
New York, then you probably can hold your own. Run into many
Scavengers?”
“More than I
care to count, honestly. They've nearly taken over the Wastes
outside of New York. I had to fight my way out of there, literally
every step of the way. I must've taken out nearly thirty packs of
'em in the month it took me to just get clear of the ruins of the old
suburbs. Out here, outside of Detroit, there aren't quite so many of
'em, but they've got better parts, and they're better armed.”
“If you say so.
What'd you say your name was?”
“I didn't. Dez
Marlowe.”
“Welcome to
Detroit, Dez.” The guard put out an armor-gloved hand. I shake
it, breathe a sigh of relief. He opens the door and leads me down a
long straight dimly-lit hallway lined sides and ceiling with pipes
and tubes. The hallway terminates in a small room where my
belongings were searched and my weapons registered. After being led
by the same guard through another hallway identical to the first, I
found myself standing at the top of a stairway overlooking the dark,
sleeping city. They've built upwards, out of necessity. Walls
provide protection, but they also limit expansion, and even in these
harrowing, war-torn, hunger-ravaged times, population increases with
the years. I've heard they've also expanded downwards under the
ground, but that's more hearsay than fact. Few people leave Detroit
once they're let in, so it's hard to separate fact from fiction. I
guess I'll find out soon enough. I shrugged my bag higher on my
shoulders, loosened my guns in their holsters and set off down the
stairs.
Snow is still
falling in a wind-blown curtain of white providing only brief
glimpses of the city. The gate is centered on the central boulevard
of the city, a thoroughfare lined with high-rises, tenement
buildings, and small shopfronts by the dozen, the main artery of a
thriving city. I slog through the ankle-high snow down the street,
hunching down into my coat against the driving wind. I should've
asked the guard for somewhere to stay, I realize. Now I'd have to
trudge through this damned blizzard, freezing my hide off, until I
find somewhere that would rent me a room. Which might take awhile.
The city is silent
except for the wind skirling through the buildings. I pass an
intersection: a street sign tells me I'm walking down Woodward
Avenue. I've drastically underestimated the ferocity of this storm,
or it's intensified while I was in the gatehouse; either way, I'm
realizing that I have to find shelter, and soon. I've gone maybe a
mile when I see a sign through the snow: “Lodgers Welcome (cash
only)”, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Archaically,
a bell dings as I open the door. I stomp my feet and shake my head
as I approach the battered desk, at which is sitting an old man. He
has a few wisps of hair drifting over a liver-spotted bald scalp,
drooping, wrinkled, and gaunt features, a scraggly beard hanging from
his chin. His eyes, however, are sharp and alert.
“What'cha want,
boy?” He asks in a thin, rasping voice.
“A room,
obviously. It's cold as hell out there.”
“Sure is. You
look about froze t'death. Well, a single is $89, local credit or
hard currency only. Pay up front.”
“I just got in
from the Wastes, haven't exchanged anything.”
“Screwed then,
ain'tcha?” The old man chuckles. “Naw, I'm only messin' with
you. Here, gimme what you got, and I'll trade it for you. Got a
friend who does exchanges, see. Getcha a good rate, too.” I hand
him a thick roll of New York City bills with a handful of loose
change, and he thumbs through it, counting silently.
“Haven't seen
New York money in an age, I'll tell you. Don't get many from over
there anymore. How is it there?”
“Bad,” I say.
“Really bad. Scavengers have overrun the outskirts and they're
starting to push into the inhabited areas. Getting bolder every day
The Anarchists have the whole city on lockdown, and they're running
it into the ground in the meantime. Can't get a meal without looking
over your shoulder the whole way, weapons at the ready. Gangs rove
wherever they want, robbing, raping, killing, beating anyone and
everyone. 'Survival of the fittest,' is all the Anarchist Mob Patrol
will say. It's even worse outside the cities, too. Scavengers are
just one of the dangers. There's empath hunters, bandit gangs, even
a few cannibals here and there. A lot of places have gone wild,
taken over by the forest.”
“Sounds like
hell on Earth, to me,” the old man says.
“It sure is.
You have it good here.”
“I s'pose. Hard
to see sometimes. The Fist can be as bad as the gangs you were
talkin' about. McHale can and will do anything and everything to
keep what he calls 'the peace'. Arrests whoever he wants, on trumped
up charges, he's executed people, publicly, and people flock in to
watch like it's a fuckin' holiday parade. People are sick these
days, I tell you.”
“Forced peace is
better than free chaos, from my perspective. Anarchy is the death of
civilization, and AMP is the weapon used to kill it.”
“Heh. Well,
maybe you're right. I don't know if I can say. I lived here in
Detroit before McHale took over, and since he did, you can't move
without being afraid of the Fist behind you, watching everything you
do.”
“Lesser of two
evils, I guess.”
“Maybe so.
Well, here's your local credit, minus the charge for the room for one
night. Room's up those stairs and to the left. Best to you.”
“Thanks, you
too.” I find my room, small and sparse, smelling of cigarettes and
age, but warm and dry. I haven't been under a real roof in weeks. I
shed layers of clothes, spreading them out to dry in the small
bathroom, roll and light a cigarette, lay on the bed smoking it and
wondering what Detroit has in store for me.
* * *
A week passes with
Detroit inundated by a white-out blizzard that keeps the city stifled
and silent under a blanket of snow. It finally subsides on my eighth
day holed up in the tiny room, eating from a diner next to the
hostel, bored and restless but glad to have reached Detroit before I
was caught by this storm. I'm exploring the city the day after the
snow stopped, wandering aimlessly. Jasper, the proprietor of the
hostel, was right about the Fist. They are everywhere, poking their
helmeted heads into shops and restaurants and homes, thugs given
authority, throwing their weight around. I have a feeling it's only
a matter of time before I have a run-in with them.
If only I could
have known right that feeling was.
The
streets have been cleared of snow, and I've gotten to know this city.
It's buzzing again, people coming and going, buying, selling,
visiting, all this under the watchful eye of the Fist of Peace,
striding arrogantly down the street armed and armored, wearing thick
black spidersilk armor glimmering with the telltale haze of a
Repulsor Field, two-foot-long arc sticks in each hand crackling with
arcing electricity (thus the name). Arc sicks...I hate those damn
things, despite carrying a pair myself. I haven't seen anyone but
Fist members carrying them here in Detroit, but back in New York,
anyone who can get their hands on them has them. They're supposedly
non-lethal, but get hit with them hard enough and in the right
place—or wrong, depending on your point of view—and they're
plenty lethal. I saw a kid back in the Bad Apple get jumped by a
pack of empath hunters carrying arc sticks. Nasty bastards popped
him him straight in the throat a couple of times. Poor kid dropped
instantly, vomiting blood like a fountain, like something out of the
horrorshows, writhing and arching backwards so hard he snapped his
own spine. Those empaths probably had tweaked their arc sticks to
produce more juice. These Fists more than likely have theirs set to
low power, to stun and debilitate. I haven't seen them actually
harassing anyone yet, but I can see what Jasper was talking about.
They're everywhere, in everything, watching, spying, poking and
prodding and questioning, roaming the streets in groups of three,
which most people just called tri's. As I began to understand the
rhythms in of the city, I started to notice the changes in behavior
in people when the tri's were around and when they weren't. Groups
of kids would stand in shivering huddles, smoking, laughing, shoving
and rough-housing, acting the way kids have for centuries. As soon
as the tramp of booted feet on the sidewalks was heard, steps
clomping in the packed snow in unison, the kids would drop their
smokes in the snow, stamp them out ,whispering “a tri is coming,
better vanish!” And they'd do just that, disappearing into
doorways and alleys, reappearing when the tri had moved on down the
street.
I've
been in Detroit close to a month, pulling in some credits by doing
odd jobs for Jasper and his friends. I'm slogging through a fresh
dowsing of snow, well after midnight. Fat flakes float in the air,
swirling and drifting, settling on my nose and lashes, stinging my
cheeks. The air is still, the sleeping city silent in the thick,
muffled way of a late-night snowfall. The hood of my coat is pulled
low, the hem sweeping the ground at my heels. The only sound is the
skritch-skritch of my
boots in the hard-packed snow. My thoughts are long ago and far away
to when I was teenager in NYC, that crumbling Babylon. I had a
sister, then. We were only two years apart, she the younger.
Stubborn thing that she was, she was always sneaking out, taking off
with friends, hanging out in abandoned buildings, drinking, smoking
pot, being typical teenagers. Nothing anyone said to her made any
difference, she thought she knew it all, thought she could handle the
big bad city. The last time I saw her alive, I was yelling at her.
“Tamara, don't be stupid! It's dangerous out there! You're gonna
end up dead if you don't stop wandering out alone.”
Damn prediction
came true. My buddy Germaine brought her home, carried her in his
arms across three city blocks. At one point, he said, he had to put
her down to fight off some punks. She'd been raped, beaten bloody,
and strangled, left dead in the middle of the street. It was a night
just like this, unnaturally light out at midnight, snow-lit, silent
and still. Germaine kicked the door open, set her down on the couch,
tears and snot frozen in his beard, on his face. Germaine had had a
crush on Tamara for years. He'd been waiting for her to grow up
some, hoping, hoping.
That was the first
time I hunted someone down and killed them with forethought and
intent. Germaine and I went out, bought Impulsor pistols, a satchel
of clips and hundreds of rounds, ammo belts, holsters, the works.
Decked ourselves out like heroes from the 2D Western shows from
centuries past. We were gunmen. Killers for hire. Badasses out for
revenge.
Revenge
is exactly what we got. Her assault had been witnessed, but of
course, this was anarchic New York, when the AMP (Anarchist Mob
Patrol) was just starting to consolidate their power base. No one
did anything at all, as there was nothing they could do. But they
told us exactly who had done it: six local hoodlums, violent,
soulless punk-ass bastards. They gave us names. We hunted them
down, each and every one of them. Shot them in the knees, beat them
into shapeless pulps with our bare fists and booted feet, hung them
dangling twitching feet from the streetlights. I was never the same
after that. Kept the look, kept the attitude. Nothing mattered
then. Life was empty, just subsistence from one day to the next;
Germaine and I started boozing, partying, trying to kill off the
grief we both felt over Tamara, trying to drown it in liquor. That
lasted until Germaine got himself killed in a stupid brawl. I found
his body lying just off the road near the Brooklyn Bridge, barely
recognizable. I snapped, went blank. I don't remember the next few
months after that. I woke up in an empty tenement building in a pool
of vomit and blood, far from anything, with nothing but ripped,
stained, blood-stiff clothing. I never found out what happened to me
in the three months of blank memory, even under hypnosis or drugged
memory-dredging. Tamara was my only family, our parents having both
been killed in the New York Anarchist Revolt when we were kids. And
Germaine...he was as good as family too, so when I found his
barely-recognizable body, I had no one left at all.
I
left the empty building, stumbled through the chill spring air, mind
empty and echoing, soul shattered, heart hollowed and holed. I
gradually gained my equilibrium, physically speaking, and decided to
just keep walking. I made it three days nonstop before I collapsed
from hunger, pneumonia, and exhaustion. I remember falling,
tumbling, lying on my back andstaring up at a clear cerulean sky as
it spun crazily above me, thinking Thank God...I'm free...
No I
wasn't. Nothing is ever that easy. I woke up again, this time in
what seemed, against my better judgment, to be a cave. Flickering
fire-light, stalactites and stalagmites, the sound of trickling water
coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Yes, I was in fact in a
cave. A cave? Really? Ok, I
thought, I'm game. Now what?
“Awake,
finally?” A lilting, feminine voice, to my left. “Thought you'd
die for sure, more than once. You nearly did, at that. But yet here
you are, waking up, alive and well. Guess I healed you up right and
good, I did, aye?”
I sat up, dizzy,
confused, disoriented. When I stumbled and fell in the abandoned
ruins of suburban New York City, I hadn't expected to wake up at all,
yet here I was, alive, in a cave with a woman.
“Where am I and
how did I get here? Who are you?” The woman turned out to be
young, tall, short, spiked red hair, decked out in leather and
bandoliers and holsters. Beautiful, nubile body accentuated by her
mercenary gear. She was sitting against a stalagmite, braiding
strips of leather. Her eyes were a piercing luminous green,
glittering with amusement.
“You're in a
cave, you dolt, I thought that'd be obvious enough. As for me, my
name is Isis Munro. And as for how you got here, my brother Huginn
carried you. And your next question, why am I here...we found you
collapsed and near death outside New York, and Ignatius decided you
might be useful. I don't know why. He didn't say, and I'm not
inclined to question him. He knows things others don't. He is the
empath after all.”
Shit.
These were empath hunters. In a society of men and women with
powers and abilities that had toppled society itself, empaths were
the most feared, and the rarest. They have the ability to feel other
people, to tune into emotions. It seemed innocuous at first, but
after the Devolution of Society it was discovered that empaths have
other capabilities as well. They can detect people, they can walk
into an empty city and track down any living person, without needing
so much as a footprint. Simple enough, so what? In conjunction with
harvesters, the process becomes more sinister. Harvesters are people
with the power to suck out the energy from a person, store it within
themselves, and then transfer it into power cell. Harvesters grasp
their victim—their prey—by the temples, suck the poor dying
bastard's bioelectricity out and channel it into power blocks which
then are sold, used, or traded. Glow-leeching, it's called. Glow
harvested this way is far more potent than what comes from a person
naturally, but at the cost of stability. Glow-leeched cells are
prone to cut out without warning, or just explode, or surge and ruin
the tech. But, in a world where nearly every natural resource has
been tapped out or the facilities to process them have been
abandoned, the practice of harvesting pirated bioelectricity is
becoming more and more widespread, as a means of acquiring cheap,
disposable energy. Empath hunters are usually nomadic gangs,
post-apocalyptic pirates, and there's always at least one empath, a
harvester, and a few others as muscle.
Few people
targeted by these predators escape to tell of it, so my presence in
their camp, alive, is an anomaly that I can't quite figure out. I'm
not an empath, I'm not a harvester, I'm not much of anything special.
At least I wasn't then. Just a starved, sick, heart-broken kid with
nothing but the clothes on my back. The girl guarding me—and
guarding me she was, no mistake: she had an Impulsor pistol on her
lap, and she was watching me carefully—must have read my mind,
judging by her next words: “I don't know what Ignatius wants with
you. I told him just to let me harvest you and be done with it, but
he wouldn't have it. 'I've got plans for this one,' was all he'd
say. You don't question Ignatius, I've learned. He's never wrong.”
“He's a precog?”
I asked, referring to precognition, the ability to see glimpses of
the future. Precogs were even rarer than empaths and harvesters, and
far more disturbing. I've only met a few, and they were uniformly
bizarre, eccentric, difficult to be around, prone to outbursts of
violence, unable to control their precognition.
“No, he's not a
precog,” Isis responded. “He's a very, very powerful empath.
Powerful to the point of going beyond empathy into something else I
don't think we have a word for. You'll meet him soon. My advice? Go
with it. You can't do worse than where we found you, after all.”
She had a point, I realized. Whatever this Ignatius wanted with me,
it was bound to be better than wandering alone and aimless. And I
truly didn't care what happened to me.
And that is how I
became an empath hunter. I started out as just a camp-boy. I was
barely eighteen then, angry, hateful, and empty. I didn't care what
they did, who they did it to, where we went. I lit the fires, cooked
food, cared for equipment, and kept to myself. Eventually, though,
it was Huginn, Isis's brother, who got to me. He was a massive man,
over seven feet tall, hugely muscled, but he wasn't a lumbering,
stupid giant, as I expected when I first met him. He looked the
part, certainly, towering, strong enough to lift me up easily with
one arm, deep-set brown eyes. He was quick and lithe, for all his
bulk, graceful, gentle, and funny. Whenever the group sat around the
fire at night, he was the one to crack jokes and tell long,
convoluted stories. Where Isis was cruel, careless with human life,
cunning and violent, Huginn was the opposite, often upset by the
harvesting, more inclined to discuss the books, films and movies of
the bygone ages, philosophy, politics...he was an erudite and
educated man, but few ever guessed it. Even his sister often
underestimated him. He took a liking to me, I guess, and made it a
mission to pull me out the downward spiral of depression that my
sister's and Germaine's deaths had put me into.
The first month or
two were the hardest. The group I had been drafted into was large.
There was Isis, Ignatius, Huginn, and eleven others, and now myself.
We left the cave, part of a series of caverns outside what had once
been Albany, and moved south on foot. Ignatius refused to use
vehicles, apparently.
“They mask the
trail, confuse the scent,” he said. He was an unremarkable-looking
man, of medium height with unruly brown hair, brown eyes that were
always moving, eyes full of malice and intelligence, insanity.
“Can't hear them, in a car. Can't feel them. Find the prey, hunt
them on foot.” I stayed away from him as much as possible. He
would watch me, stare at me, musing, considering. It creeped me
out, feeling his eyes on me wherever I went, whatever I did. I often
wished he would just order Isis to harvest me.
Huginn took to
walking next to me. “Don't mind him,” were his first words to
me, rumbled in his deep, syrupy-slow voice. “He's a weird one,
sure enough, but as long as you don't cross him, you'll be fine.”
“He creeps me
out. Looking at me like I'm a pawn, like he's figuring out his next
move.”
“That's true,
that is,” Huginn said. “Don't mistake me, he's dangerous, not to
say evil. He'll kill you as soon as talk to you. Watch him, be
aware of him. Isis too.”
“Isn't Isis your
sister?” I asked.
“Yes,
she is,” he answered. “Doesn't mean we're alike, or that I agree
with her. She's one to be wary of, more than Ignatius in some ways.
Ignatius is a sociopathic genius, the most powerful empath I've ever
heard of. He can track six different people at the same time, feel
them, hear their thoughts and feel their fears, follow them each one
till they're cornered. It's not enough for him to just harvest them
though, he feeds on them, in a way. Not literally, he's no cannibal.
I just mean he thrives on terrifying his prey, he lives for the
hunt. Isis is just the same, worse maybe. She hunts with relish,
like a lioness, stalking, waiting, pouncing...She and Ignatius are
perfect together, and I can't leave them. They'll have me in minute,
and Isis is my only family, I can't just leave her. So I'm stuck
with them, stuck helping them catch their prey. And really, most of
the ones we catch aren't worth shit anyway. Starving, selfish, evil,
self-absorbed pathetic creatures barely recognizable as people.
Barely able to speak, illiterate. More animal than man, and we're
nearly doing them a favor, taking them out of their misery. But I
still hate it.”
“So I'm stuck
with them too, then?”
“Oh no, not
necessarily. You might get free of them. You don't have anything
holding you to them, except maybe that they saved your life.”
“I'm not sure
they were doing me any favors,” was my response, bitter and honest.
“I know. You
seemed angry when you first woke up, angry that we had saved you.”
“I was. I am.
I was dying there and glad to be.”
“Well,” Huginn
seemed to be choosing his words carefully now. “I can't say that I
know what would drive a person to that, and I won't pretend to
understand. But even in these times, there's always something worth
living for, I think. Maybe you just have to find out what.”
“Maybe there is
for you,” I said, “but not for me. There's no point to anything.
It's all shit. This country is dead, and nothing can change that.”
Huginn looked down
at me, and I could see anger in his eyes, but it didn't bleed into
his voice. “That's blasphemous bullshit, that is. Nothing is ever
hopeless. This country may be dying, sure, but it's not dead yet.
It just needs the right person to take control, to rebuild. It may
not be America as it once was, but it could be something, anything
better than it is now.”
I couldn't see,
then, what could ever be built out of the dead, ruined mess of
America, and I thought Huginn was a delusional crackpot, but it
didn't seem prudent to say so. Huginn seemed to sense my feelings,
so he changed the subject. I was glad he did, because I didn't want
the only person I could even nominally call a friend to be angry at
me, especially since he could break me in half with one hand.
After that, Huginn
was my constant companion, the only person out of the whole gang that
I could stand. The rest were bloodthirsty, cold and unfeeling,
symptoms of the disease that ravaged the country. They were cruel
and selfish, using their mental abilities for every least thing,
fighting viciously with each other for trinkets and gadgets and
scraps. I never bothered to get to know them, not even their names.
This angered them, and they made me their target. They hurled jokes,
pranks and insults, they picked fights with me, they forced me to do
their dirty work. For a long time I just took it in silence,
enduring it all. As with so many things, it Huginn who taught me
another way.
“They're just
bullies, boy. Show 'em that you won't take it, that you've got a
core of steel and willing fist, and they'll shut up, and right
quick.” I remembered the bully that had tortured me for months,
when I just a boy. My dad had given me the same advice Huginn was
giving me then, fifteen years later. Then, as a boy, I had faced the
bully, and got beaten to a pulp for my troubles. The bully had
beaten me up, badly, but I refused to stay down until I blacked out.
He would lay a haymaker on me, knock me flying. I would stand up,
swing at him, sometimes connecting, sometimes not. This continued
until I found myself lying on the ground, sight blurring and fading.
The bully had stood above me, looking down at me with what might have
been admiration. He never bothered me after that.
Now, I was faced
with a similar situation. Now, however, it wasn't one bully, bigger
and stronger and older than me; now I faced six bullies, each
different. I knew that I had to face them, and I had to do it on my
terms, and take what came from it. The problem was, these weren't
schoolyard bullies, these were hardened, callous killers. They would
slit my throat from ear to ear and leech my glow, leave me for the
vultures.
The
moment came all too soon. I was building a fire at the end of a
day's walk. One of them came up behind me, a man slightly older than
I, thin and sallow, unkempt, unwashed dark hair. He was fond of
knives, always flipping one in his hand in an calculated,
absent-minded way. Huginn was leaning against a tree opposite me,
watching surreptitiously. He caught my eye, glanced at the man
behind me as a warning. Huginn had given me an arc stick and a few
lessons in its use, and I kept it within easy reach at all times. I
palmed it and mentally sent a trickle of impulse into it, just enough
to make it buzz in my hands, a low, inaudible hum. I felt him behind
me, approaching on what he apparently thought were silent feet. I
shifted my weight, crouched before the fire I had been building. I
turned just slightly, enough so I could now see him out of the corner
of my eye, and I caught a glimpse of glinting silver, a long curved,
wickedly-sharp knife, his favorite, one I'd seen him use all too
often on hapless prey just before Isis drained them.
He
lurched towards me, knife upraised; I rolled to the left, felt the
tip of his knife whisper past my ear. Lunging to my feet, I cranked
the arc stick all the way up so it was crackling with bolts of arcing
electricity. Olsen, that was his name. I remembered Huginn talking
about him once, describing some of his nastier predilections. Olsen
cursed as he missed, and I saw his eyes go wide with surprise and
panic as he realized what was coming. Namely, my arc stick swung
with full force at his gut. The tip of the arc stick plunged into
Olsen's stomach just below the diaphragm; the electricity jolted him
violently, twisted his intestines and stomach into knots. He vomited
past me, blood and bile and half-digested food. I'd seen what a
gut-blow of an arc stick could do, and I'd stepped out of the way.
Doubled over in agony, Olsen was helpless, the fight gone from him
now. My first reaction was to let it be done, but then I looked to
Huginn, who drew his thumb across his throat in an age-old gesture
that meant, finish him.
If I didn't, he'd regain his strength and plunge that knife into my
chest one night as I slept. So I growled a curse, lifted the arc
stick and brought it down across the back of his head hard enough to
crack it and send blood dribbling down his neck. Olsen dropped to
the ground, bleeding from ears, nose, and mouth. His eyes were
rolled back in his head and he was in the throes of a seizure. I
couldn't let it end there, though, despite knowing he was as good as
dead. The rest of his cronies were watching, and if I showed any
weakness, they'd be on me like hyenas in an instant. I picked up
Olsen's knife and dragged it across his throat, pressing so hard I
nearly severed his head. As his twitching and seizing slowed and
ceased, I pawed through the layers of ragged clothes. He had little
of value besides knives, so I took the sheath for the one in my hand,
and another arc stick he had hidden at the small of his back in a
clever contraption, rigged so that he could reach back and draw it
like a gun, and there was a space for a second stick. I undid the
straps of the hidden scabbard and stuffed it the rucksack I'd taken
from Olsen.
His friends were
staring at me hatefully. I'd hoped that with this display, they'd
back off and leave me alone, but from the looks on their faces, I was
in for the fight of my life, and soon. Huginn hadn't moved the
entire time, but now he came over to where I was standing, looked
down at Olsen's corpse.
“Deserved it, he
did. Had it coming. But I warn you, his buddies will be after you.
They're just like him, but he was the worst.” Huginn turned at
walked back to where I had been making the saying over his shoulder,
“Olsen kept an Impulsor pistol in that coat of his. I'd check him
again.” I checked again, and sure enough, the crafty bugger had
rigged another holster for easy, hidden access. I took the pistol
and the holster rig, as well. I could feel eyes on me, watching,
assessing. They wouldn't wait long.
They didn't. One
came in the middle of the night, with a knife. He stood over me,
knife glinting in the dim starlight, hatred written in the lines of
his face. He lunged downward with the knife, a movement so sudden
and swift that I nearly didn't roll out of the way in time.
Unfortunately for him, 'nearly' was just enough. His knife plunged
through my blanket roll and into the sod beneath, stuck for a split
second. I was already up on my feet, Impulsor pistol in my hand,
muzzle against his head. An impulse, quick as a single synapse
firing...the man whose name I didn't know, a smelly, selfish coward,
died in a silent burst of gray matter. He slumped to the ground on
my blankets, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. I frisked him
quickly, found nothing but another Impulsor pistol, a few worthless
odds and ends, a few dozen credits. I dragged him to the edge of the
camp, just beyond the ring of light cast by the fire. I saw Huginn
wrapped in his blankets, watching. He nodded slightly, went to
sleep.
The others were
just as easy. One by one, they came for me, at night, from behind,
from afar, never up close and personal, face to face like men.
Cowards. I slaughtered them like the pigs they were, and if I didn't
enjoy it, exactly, well...I didn't mind it, either.
“You're a bit
too good at that, I think,” Huginn said to me after I'd disposed of
the last of Olsen's cronies.
“I'd be careful of that, If I were
you. Get too good at it, get to enjoy it, and it's worse than any
drug. Worse than being addicted to glow, in a lot of ways. Just
don't get to where you like it, is all I'm trying to say.”
I told him not to
worry, I didn't like it and never would, but deep in the pit of my
stomach, at the core of my soul, that small hollow where lay the
hardest truths about one's self, I knew I did kind of like it. I
knew, from the instant the tip of the arc stick zapped Olsen's gut
that I would do it again, and again and again, I would take lives and
find release, find some dark relish in the act. I knew it, and it
scared me, because I knew I didn't have the moral fortitude to resist
it. I think Huginn sensed it as well. He was more distant after
that, still my one and only friend, but there was a gap between us
where there hadn't been before. I had planned on talking to him
about it, but I never got the chance.
Huginn, despite
his warnings against developing a taste for killing, continued to
train me in various ways of fighting. Unarmed, hand to hand combat,
arc sticks, drawing, firing, and aiming the Impulsor pistols. It
turned out that I had a natural aptitude for firearms. I could draw
and fire the pistols faster than Huginn himself, and could group my
shots tighter as well. Ignatius was at the lead of the now-smaller
group. He hadn't said or done anything about the confrontations that
led to his band being winnowed down by seven. We were heading
towards Florida, he had told us. He was tired of the north, he
wanted somewhere warm. I think he'd also tapped out the entire
region around New York, harvested anyone one foolish enough to
venture out in a group less than twenty. He wanted fresh blood,
fresh glow. So, southward to new hunting grounds. It took us six
uneventful months of endless trekking, through empty cities, echoing
suburbs, vacant, war-blasted farmlands, but we eventually we reached
Florida. The only indication I saw that we had actually crossed into
Florida territory was a metal sign laying in the dirt next to the
highway we were following. It was large, rusted, dented,
bullet-pocked, and the words “Welcome to Florida, The Sunshine
State” were barely legible. I stepped on the sign, my boots making
tinny thumps on the metal.
“Well, here we
are,” I said to Ignatius, who was squatting in the dirt a few feet
away, his expression unreadable. “Florida. Now what?”
Ignatius stared at
me for so long that I grew uncomfortable. At length, he said,
“Now...we hunt. And then we find someone to buy the glow.” He
licked his lips, rubbed the pouch of glow-cells at his belt. He
stood up, sniffed the air, turned in circles a few times. Casting
for a scent, looking for a trail, I supposed. Apparently he sensed
something, for he abruptly took off in a quick, space-eating lope.
Isis, Huginn, myself, and the other four—nameless, faceless grunts
I never spoke to, never acknowledged. They left me alone, and I left
them alone, an arrangement which suited all of us. I knew they were
there, heard them conversing among themselves, but I never interacted
with them in any way. They were expendable, useless, base, vain and
selfish creatures, like Olsen and his crew. These four, however,
simply lacked the courage to attack me, having seen the fate of Olsen
and the others. The odd thing was, none of the others talked to them
either. Isis and Huginn ignored them as completely as I did, and
Ignatius only spoke to them to give them orders.
Hell descended
upon us a few days later. When I was a boy growing up on the
outskirts of New York City, I once stepped on a yellow-jacket nest
buried in the ground. One moment I was running around, playing,
pretending I was piloting a space-jet to the Mars Colony, and then
the earth erupted without warning, spewing a massive swarm of angry,
stinging yellow-jackets that surrounded me, got under my clothes, in
my hair, following me all the way home, stinging, stinging. The
ambush in Florida was like that. One moment we were walking in a
scattered group, chatting, Huginn whistling a merry, skirling tune,
then abruptly Impulsors were going off all around us in bone-jarring
explosions, and those four grunts were now literally faceless, one
two three, down in bursts of bone and brain and blood and the fourth
was throwing himself behind a chunk of concrete firing his own
pistols at nothing at all, firing blindly. Isis was hit, her
shoulder streaming blood and her mouth streaming curses, Ignatius was
pulling her behind the highway divider, firing his pistol much less
blindly, using his empath senses to track the attackers. Huginn and
I were left in the open and now we were drawing fire. A bullet
grazed Huginn's beard, drawing a curse from him.
“Over there!”
he shouted, pointing at a copse of trees a few paces from the
highway. I drew both Impulsors and fired off several rounds, felt
the concussion of the sonic boom before I heard it, watched the
pebbles and dirt underfoot jump with each detonation. Huginn was
pulling me towards the rusted, burned-out hulk of an old automobile,
pushed me to the ground behind it. I couldn't hear, for some reason.
I felt Impulsor concussions rolling over me like waves of thunder,
but they were felt, not heard, I saw Huginn's face in front of me,
yelling yelling yelling, pistol-wielding hands gesturing at the
attackers, now emerging from the treeline. Other explosions were
coming now, powder and fire explosions, grenades or bombs or mortars,
flinging dirt and concrete and limbs and blood in the air, but I
couldn't move, couldn't see except for a narrow tunnel of blurred
vision.
Then, suddenly,
Huginn's ham-hock fist connected with my jaw and sound returned,
Impulsor shockwaves and grenades and firearms, shouts and screams and
curses. I looked around me, saw Isis and Ignatius down behind the
divider, Isis still and bleeding, Ignatius still firing, but weakly.
Huginn was next to me, a rifle in his hands, eye pressed to the
scope, unhurriedly picking off the Scavengers, one by one. I picked
a target, a thin male with too many arms, fired a round at him,
watched him drop, felt a burst of satisfaction, drew a bead on
another target, dropped him, and then I had a rhythm, breathe in, one
shot, one kill, breathe out, each of my pistols firing independently,
my brain empty now, my entire existence dropping Scavengers. I saw
one lob a grenade at us, saw the small dot flying toward me. My
pistol lifted on its own, hesitated an eyeblink, fired. The grenade
exploded mid-air and I saw Huginn turn toward me, a look of
puzzlement and awe on his face.
It wasn't enough
though. They were too many. They were closing in, fast, surrounding
us. Huginn slung his rifle on his back, drew his own handgun, fired
it in the same cool, unhurried rhythm. I found myself on my feet,
rushing forward at the Scavengers, shooting as fast as humanly
possible, a succession of explosions that knocked the Scavengers off
their feet. I was in among them now, and they were rabid, snarling,
my nostrils filled with the smell of rotting flesh where man met
machine. I saw one of them aiming his pistol at me and I knew I
wouldn't dodge that one, felt panic hit my brain. The panic
activated something in my head, uncorked something long-dormant in my
brain.
My whole life I
had been surrounded by people with gifts from Pandora: telekinesis,
telepathy and the like. I never had much by way of talent in those
things. I had enough to fit in, so I wasn't a Blank, someone without
any abilities at all, but I had nothing to set me apart. My sister
was able to dig into people's heads, burrow deep inside to the most
secret places, read your most private thoughts and memories, and no
defense could stop her. My mom and dad were both kinetics, able to
move things mentally, no matter the size. Even Germaine was gifted
with the tech-touch, the ability to interact mentally with any kind
of electronic device.
Not me. I struggled through life feeling
mediocre at best.
Then, that day on
a rutted and ruined Florida road surrounded by Scavengers, I
discovered something within myself. Panic hit, slamming into me hard
enough to stop my breath. I froze, just for a nanosecond, thought to
myself: “Oh hell no. Not like this, not here, not now. Do
something!” In that frozen fragment of time, I pulled upon
every shred of mental energy I possessed, drew and drew and drew
until there blazed within my mind a hell-hot inferno, a supernova. I
held it in until I could hold it no longer, like a diver at the end
of his long-held breath; the Scavengers were upon me, firing, I saw
the muzzles expel bullets in slow-motion, syrupy-slow and impossible
like a raindrop at the end of a fern leaf drooping low low lower and
falling off. I saw the bullets spinning on their axes and saw the
Scavengers sweating and slavering as they coursed towards me and then
my pistols were raised and pouring out projectiles as I hurled myself
to the side, hit the ground rolling and came to my feet several yards
to the side and still the Scavengers' bullets were inching through
the air towards where I had been. Some small part of my brain was
reeling at what I was doing, slowing the time around me, or my
perception of time, or my own personal physical speed or something I
didn't understand at all, but I knew it had saved my life. I came to
my feet, blinked my eyes and released the mental tidal wave. The
Scavengers jerked and twisted in real time, blossomed brilliant
bursts of blood as they flew through the air, tossed like rag dolls
like clods of dirt by the impact of whatever force I had released.
They were thrown back by the impact of my bullets, then the invisible
wave struck them like a palpable wall and they burst apart into piles
of limbs.
Silence suddenly
stretched out and lay heavy and hard on us. I stood, out of breath
and sweat-drenched, blood spattered, surrounded by the bodies of the
Scavengers; all eyes were on me, awed and puzzled.
Huginn stood
slowly, looking in disbelief at the battlefield, at me. “What the
hell was that, Dez? What'd you
do? I saw it happen, but I can't
make sense of it.”
“I don't really
know. I saw them circled around me, about to all shoot at once and I
knew I wasn't going to make it, and I refused to let die like that.
Then something exploded inside me, kind of in my chest and my brain
at the same time. You saw what happened. I don't know...I don't
know.”
“I'd figure that shit out if I were you.” Huginn shook his head, a look of wary
respect in his eyes.
I eventually
learned to control it. It's tricky though. I can't do it all the
time, and not to that kind of intensity, but I can slow down time,
briefly, or stop it for a few seconds, and I can send out that
concussive wave, but I've never been able to duplicate what happened
that day. I'm not sure I want to.
* * *
A sound brings me
back to the present: a whimper, a shriek, scuffed steps slipping in
the snow. I pass an alley and pause at the mouth. I see a figure at
the end, a small female silhouette wearing a cloak, cornered at the
end of the blind alley, four hulking male figures facing her in an
inescapable line. The girl has an arc stick in her hand, waving back
and forth, trying to ward off all four at the same time. One of the
men feints, she cries out, jabs at him with the arc stick, misses, he
yanks it from her grasp, chuckling, jabs her in the side with it.
She contorts away from the tip, a scream juddering from her throat
that shivers the snowflakes as they fall. She's a sonic, I'd guess,
but she probably doesn't know it, or she'd be ripping them apart with
sonic blasts.
I pull my arc
sticks out, crank the flow to max so they're crackling and sparking
and arcing spitting electricity between the two tips. I take
hunter-silent steps in the soft snow towards four unsuspecting backs,
holding my breath, letting the psionic power pool in my core, let my
rage at cowards preying on helpless girls build it in exponential
bursts. I'm less than two feet away now, I send out a burst of power
that slows time to dream-slow sluggishness: the girl's face twisted
in fear and agony and rage, wisps of hair trailing across her face as
she falls, hands reaching for her, hands fumbling at belts, hands
loose on the handle of the arc stick. They're all nearly but not
quite frozen in time, unsuspecting and helpless. I'm darting forward
with the psionic burst, burying one stick in a kidney, twisting it so
the prongs rip flesh and pour searing bolts of blue-white energy into
the wound, the second stick finds a spine, gouging through the skin
to the lumbar itself and his body is folded backward in half, broken;
and now I take a step forward, spin on my heel, jab into a throat and
revel secretly as the thin skin breaks open and blood pours forth;
one more time my arc stick flashes out into the last man's chest and
bloody froth bubbles out of his mouth immediately. I release time
and all four fall the ground, several spouts of gore fill the air and
splash the girl as she collapses to the ground. She's down and
screaming, curled into a ball, expecting harsh cruel hungry finger to
rip her clothing and pry her legs apart, so when I kneel down next
her and touch her shoulder, tell her it's okay, it's understandable
that she shrieks, a blood-curdling ululation so unnaturally loud that
it sends me stumbling backwards, clutching my ears. She's definitely
a sonic. I pick myself up and approach her cautiously, talking
slowly and soothingly to her, telling her I wouldn't hurt her, she
was okay. She must hear me, because she peeks out from behind a
curtain of sticky, matted black hair, sees the bodies, dead and
bleeding in front of her. This elicits another howl from her, but
not a sonically-charged one. I stand over her, apologize for the
mess, reach a hand down to help her stand up. She shakes her head,
whimpers, shrinks back against the wall.
“Calm down,
darlin',” I tell her, with some exasperation. If the sight of a
few dead bodies affects her like this, in this day and age, then she
must be pretty sheltered, I figure. “I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm
helping you, ain't I? No one is going to hurt you. I'll take you
back home. Come on, now.” I grab her arm and pull her up, more
forcefully than I should, I guess. She lands on her feet, she's
thrashing and pushing, not listening as I implore her to calm down.
“HALT!” Shit.
It's the Fist, a full hand of them, five massive, armored brutes
wielding arc sticks and Impulsor pistols and lead-knuckled gauntlets.
It only takes a split second to realize how this looks. I turn
around slowly, hands in plain sight, empty.
“This isn't how
it looks,” I say. I point at the bodies on the ground. “These
guys had her cornered, I saved her—”
“Shut up! Hands
on your head! On the ground!” Not good. These gorillas aren't
going to listen. I consider, briefly, pulling my Impulsors and
fighting it out, but decide against it. I might be able to take
these five, but the sound of gunfire will bring more in a hurry, and
I can't take on the whole damn city. Besides...these guys look
salty. I lay down, hands on my head. It galls me to the core to
submit to anyone, but survival always trumps pride.
Rough hands strip
me of my gear: bag, weapons, harnesses, boot knives,
everything...except a few secrets they'd never find without a strip
search.
A muzzle presses
against my head and a gravelly voice growls, “Up, slowly. Any
movement I don't like, and you're a dead man.”
Another voice:
“Shit, Sarge, these guys are tore up! This fella may be telling
the truth. One's got his belt open and he's all hangin' out of his
pants.”
Sarge, the one
with his piece to my skull, says: “Don't care, Skerritt. Any one
gets killed in Detroit, it better be us doing the killing. He goes
in, he gets processed.” The bodies are rifled, a code is called
in, bodies for removal, send a vehicle for prisoner transport.
“Uh, Sarge?”
Skerritt again.
“What?”
“You know who
this is? The girl, I mean?”
“No, should I?”
“Yeah. It's
Layla McHale, sir.”
“Like, The Old Man's daughter? That Layla McHale”
“Yes, sir. That
Layla McHale.”
“Damnit. Is she
hurt? Coherent?”
“Doesn't seem to
be hurt,” Skerritt said, “she has a shit-ton of blood all over
her, but it ain't hers. She's in shock I think. This fella really
did a number on these guys, and I think it messed her up. You know
how the
Old Man keeps her locked up. Betcha she ain't seen anything
like this before.”
The sergeant
grunted grudging acknowledgment. “Prolly right, at that. She's
gotta be only the person in the entire world, then, who hasn't seen a
body killed before. Well, best bring 'em both to see the Old Man.”
