Dead Man in a Ditch

by Luke Arnold

  I forced my eyes open but there were so many spots in my vision I couldn’t make anything out. My whole nervous system was vibrating and my bones were chattering against my joints.

  Then, a voice.

  “I warned you, young man! Look at me now!”

  Wentworth.

  My droopy-nosed, drunken Wizard friend from The Ditch was reclaiming the magic that had eluded him since the Coda. His manic laughter rained down from above. I blinked the sparks from my eyes and saw that he was standing up on the same lantern that I’d been hiding in when Warren and I first met Linda.

  I sat up but I couldn’t even uncurl my fingers. Wentworth hollered a murderous scream and held more pouches up over his head.

  “Do you feel that? We’re back where we belong!”

  BANG!

  The unmistakable sound of a pistol and the unmistakable sight of a lead bullet going through Wentworth’s brain. A glistening spray of blood filled the night sky as he fell backwards off the pole.

  He dropped slowly, as if his old body was made from dry grass and cotton. When he hit the ground, it was a different story. I don’t know how many pouches he had on him but they all went off at once. The lightning hadn’t left my body, but I had just enough control to roll over and turn my back on the explosion. It hit me like the head of a bucking bull. Wind, lightning, fire, ice and whatever the hell else Wentworth had stuffed into his britches all went up in a big kaboom.

  The Niles Company asshole in the charcoal suit who was responsible for the shot barely had time to smile before he was tackled by Simms who rolled him onto his stomach and put the cuffs on him.

  I couldn’t tell if I was cold or hot. I didn’t know whether I’d saved myself or if my back had been incinerated or frozen or turned into toadstools. Tippity and his followers were crawling under the bleachers, throwing out pouches to give them some space. Feet rushed all around me: the boots of coppers and mine-workers stomping through the old stadium grounds. I eased myself up to standing and reached trembling fingers around my back. It was sooty and damaged but no blood. My coat had saved me.

  I felt like I was getting up from a year-long nap in the sun. I was rattled to my bones. Cooked from the inside out. But I moved along with everyone else. I had to. Because I wanted to be the one to take Tippity down myself.

  The men in NC uniforms around me were charging forward. Maybe they were all hoping for the same thing I was. To take down the criminal who I’d made public enemy number one. But there were so many of them. Tippity had chosen the busiest Niles Company location for his battle. Of course he had. He wanted to make a statement. He wanted to show everyone how powerful he was.

  But Tippity wasn’t the real villain, was he?

  I stopped.

  What was being accomplished here, other than Tippity’s show of power? Sabotage, of course. If the war was just against the Niles Company then this would make sense. But Hendricks had bigger plans, and he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  This was a distraction. A decoy to keep us fighting each other while he went for something bigger.

  But what?

  The warehouse in Brisak Reserve was covered in ice, and stealing more pistols didn’t seem like Eliah’s style. Not now. He needed to do real damage.

  The kind of damage you can do with a storage house full of explosive desert dust.

  Shit.

  Pouches of every magical combination came flying out from the cracks in the bleachers. Charcoal suits fired back with their machines. Workers threw bricks and tools. Simms, having subdued Wentworth’s killer, was making her way around the stadium, looking for a way to get under the seats without being set on fire.

  Some feeling had come back into my fists and all they wanted to do was punch Tippity’s lights out. That would feel good. It would be easy, compared to the alternative. But this wasn’t my fight. Not really. My fight was with my old friend.

  I turned away from the fireworks, faced the shadows, and ran.

  80

  Hundreds of crates of exploding desert dust, each containing enough power to blow up a city block. Forget Tippity’s spells, they were nothing compared to what Niles had been hiding in his warehouse. Last time Hendricks was there, he’d just been shot and was close to passing out, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from seeing the potential prize we’d stumbled upon.

  Those heavy doors had been wrenched open by force, all bent back and twisted up on their hinges, but it was quieter here than at the stadium. No cops. No suits standing guard.

  I’d lost my knife but I still had my knuckles. I kept low, stretching my jaw and my joints to release the tension brought in by the electric shock. I heard a woman’s voice but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I stood just outside, listened, and heard metal moving against metal: they were closing the elevator door. I ran inside.

  Hendricks was in the cage, surrounded by crates. Linda Rosemary was beside him.

  My old friend’s eyes met mine. There was none of that joyful familiarity now. Not even frustration or disappointment. Just boredom, or something like it. He said something to Linda. I couldn’t hear what it was from the other end of the warehouse, but she stepped out of the elevator and closed the door behind her.

  Hendricks pulled the chain and the cage lowered out of sight, leaving Linda behind to stop me following him. Her gloves were off, literally, and it turned out that not all of the animal had left her when the magic did. Both of her arms were covered with mottled black hair. Her nails looked longer without the gloves on and were still as sharp as they’d ever been.

  I walked to the center of the room. She waited where she was.

  “You should have stayed in your cell,” she said.

  “And wait for the ground to crumble beneath my feet? How much dust did Hendricks take down there?”

  “Enough.”

  She took her first step towards me and kept coming.

  “Linda, this isn’t right.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what’s right, Soldier.” She was halfway across the room. “You’re the one that wants to hand over the world to the people who fucked it up.”

  She slapped me across the face. That might sound like mercy, but a fist would have kept her nails off my skin. A split-second after she whacked me, I heard the wet sound of my blood hitting the floor.

  I didn’t hit back.

  “This time,” she said, “a bunch of men on a mountain will not be the ones who decide what happens to me.”

  She came up under my chin on the next one. That was a rude surprise that knocked my teeth together. I had a sandy feeling in my mouth where a corner of a tooth crumbled away.

  “You’re right.” I spat the grit from my tongue. “It wasn’t fair. You had no say in what happened to you. So why do the same to the people of this city?”

  She didn’t want to listen. She wanted me to fight back. But I didn’t even defend myself.

  “You don’t understand!” She closed her furry fist and hit me in my left eye, snapping my head back. There were those stars again. “You don’t understand a fucking thing.”

  “I know.” I abandoned my brass knuckles and they clanged against the floor. She noticed the gesture, and it only seemed to make her angrier. “I know I don’t… I can’t, because it didn’t hurt me.” She kicked me in the chest and I dropped to my knees. “I don’t know how to look at this from a distance. So, you tell me what to do.”

  She raised her hand up high, took a full swing, and brought it down across my face. One of her claws caught my lip, tugged on it for a moment, then pulled straight through, leaving a bloody gash. I drooled a red river onto my chest.

  “Linda,” my voice was all fucked up from having two bottom lips, “you’re smart. Smarter than me. You’ve seen this city from the outside. You know what it is. But what if we can be better?” She used her left hand for the next hit. It wasn’t any easier to take; the Cat was ambidextrous. “We got the fires back. Do you know what that means to people? What it can do?�
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  She kicked me in the face. More blood on the floor. More sand in my mouth.

  “It will give power to the men who shouldn’t have it.” Was she crying? Was I? “It will stop the rest of the world from finding a way forward. This cannot be our new world.”

  “Then let’s find a better one. Tippity’s throwing spells out there! The cops are fighting back with bits of Unicorn horn! Doesn’t that sound like a new story to you?”

  She kicked me in the guts. I tasted bile. Lucky I hadn’t eaten anything in days.

  “Linda, what if there’s a chance?”

  “A chance for what?”

  It was still so hard to say it. I pushed myself up onto my feet and tried to stop dribbling.

  “For the magic to come back.”

  She looked disgusted, but it stopped her attacks.

  “The first day I met you, you told me that it was hopeless.”

  “And you told me I was wrong. That you could feel it, inside you, waiting to find a way out. I didn’t believe you because I don’t have it inside me. I don’t feel it. But I’ve seen it. Those fires are still here, right under our feet. Like they always were. Just like you said. So, what else is still here? If you let me stop this, I promise you, I will spend every day searching to find out.”

  I saw her think about kicking me back down, but she didn’t.

  “Why you?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Because I can. Because I should. Because I’m telling you I will. I’m not much, but I’m a man of my word.”

  She glanced back at the cage. Then she leaned over and looked me in my eyes.

  “Why do I believe you?”

  “Because I mean it, and you know it’s possible. But if we bring it all back, and you let these people die here tonight, you’ll never forgive yourself. Trust me. Better to regret the things you didn’t kill, than regret the things you did.”

  I saw it die in her. Whatever story she’d told herself to go along with what was happening, it faded away. She unclenched her fists and suddenly looked so tired.

  “He won’t send the elevator back up,” she said. “We’ll have to find another way.”

  I was shaking. My legs were like raw sausages.

  “You go find another way down. Be careful, there’s a war going on out there.”

  I stumbled towards the empty cage.

  “You’re just going to wait here while I do all the work?”

  One foot in front of the other, Fetch. Ignore the drops of blood and the way your vision is closing over as your eyelid swells up.

  “You might not make it in time,” I slurred. “Hendricks knows that Tippity’s distraction won’t last all night. He’ll work fast. I gotta get down there now.”

  I shook the metal wall of the elevator shaft. It was wire mesh. The holes were just big enough for four fingers or the toe of a boot. When I looked down, a hot wind hit my face and a drop of blood fell down into the endless dark.

  “You’re going to climb?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I grabbed the thick wire inside the elevator shaft, swung my body around and put my toes in the holes. My fingers were already hurting and it felt like my boots would slip at any moment.

  Linda’s look didn’t inspire confidence.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Today’s as good a day as any to stop being a prick.”

  She marched on out and I climbed down into the pits.

  81

  After a couple of minutes, the fear kicked in.

  The darkness from below rose up and covered me. Soon, I couldn’t see anything at all. Keeping hold of the wire with my hands was a tough enough job but finding my footholds was even harder. Whenever I found a rhythm, my toes would slip from the edge and I would catch myself on my tired fingers, cutting them on the cage.

  Time lost all meaning. Pain followed suit. Life threatened to join them.

  The fall would be enough. It was a longer drop than the five measly floors out the Angel door. My fingers were bloody and gnarled but refused to let go. My hands held on. My feet found their place. I waited for them to make a mistake, but they never did. I kept going, further down into the dark.

  The air grew hotter as I descended. Sweat mixed into the blood. The world turned orange then red. Finally, my foot reached out for the next bit of wire and hit a flat surface. I was right down on the bottom floor, standing on the roof of the elevator. It was made from more wire mesh, allowing me to see inside. All the crates were still there but they were open and some of them were near empty.

  I got on my knees and searched for some way to pull back the mesh and fit myself through. My fingers were useless. My sight was fuzzy. I couldn’t even close my mouth because my lips were cut and my jaw was swollen.

  If a thimbleful of dust could fire a piece of metal through someone’s skull, how much would it take to shatter the city’s foundations? Was Hendricks hoping to bring Main Street right down on our heads?

  My fingers were too fucked to pry back the metal. So, I jumped. Over and over. I smashed my feet down on the roof of the elevator, time and time again. It made a racket, but I wasn’t aiming to sneak up on Hendricks. I just needed to get down there. To see him. To speak to him.

  The mesh snapped away from the edge, piece by piece. My body dropped lower with each jump, and then the whole thing caved in. I fell through the ceiling and the broken wire tried to slice me into strips. My jacket copped most of it but I lost some more of my scalp. More scars. If I ever go bald, my head is gonna look like a topographical map.

  Damn, it was hot. I got to my feet and stepped out of the cage. The floor was red rock and the world was roaring. There was a tunnel up ahead. I went through it. A few steps around the corner, and there they were. The pits. Great glowing valleys spewing light as if the core of the planet was throwing itself an unending celebration.

  The wide path ahead of me split off into a spider’s web of naturally formed bridges and outcrops that had been reinforced with steel handrails and steps. I went up to the edge and looked down at the burning abyss.

  How impossible it must have seemed to some, way back at the beginning, that the power of those fires could be contained. That by putting a few brains together, they could tame that unruly, godlike energy and use it for everyday things like heating living rooms and toasting bread or making tiny figurines to put up on your mantelpiece. Such ambition. Such hubris. Such a ridiculous thing to happen.

  Humans could never have done it on their own. It took all those magical minds working as one. If Sunder fell apart now, we wouldn’t be able to put it back together. Not like it was. It was our messy little miracle and I knew that I couldn’t let it die.

  The fires didn’t give off any smoke but the steam and the haze made everything blurry. No wonder the workers covered themselves in Dragon spit before they came down here.

  There were mighty columns everywhere: rocky towers that balanced the city on their shoulders. I couldn’t see Hendricks but I guessed that he wouldn’t stray too far from his supplies in the elevator. I leaned against one of the columns for support and my foot slid over the sandy ground.

  No. Not sandy. Dusty.

  I was standing in a pile of explosives.

  “Oh, Fetch is a boy with a troubled heart,

  The things he loves always fall apart.”

  Hendricks was standing on the path. He held a sack in one hand, weighed down with the same substance that was under my feet. In his other hand, he had a little leather pouch.

  “Doesn’t know when to stop, ’cause he’ll never start.”

  He was so pale. The scars on his face stood out from his skin like insects crawling over his face. His eyes looked black.

  “Eliah. Please.”

  “Oh, what a lovely boy is Fetch.”

  The pouch came at me. I jumped back and thought I’d dodged the blast, but I wasn’t the real target. The pouch landed right where my feet had been and cracked open. T
he flames hit the dust, sizzled and exploded. I was thrown backwards, right towards the edge of the cliff.

  I rolled over, sliding on the rock. My broken fingernails scraped against the floor until my feet were off the edge. Then my waist. I dug in with bloody fingers, screaming, as the hot air kicked my ass.

  I stopped sliding, just in time.

  Just in time to see the column crack in two.

  The base of the pillar crumbled away and the whole thing came to pieces, dropping onto the path and tumbling over the edge. Where the column had joined the ceiling, there was now a gaping hole.

  Water rushed in. Who knows where it came from: city pipes or the Kirra Canal? A muddy stream poured onto the path, rushed over the side, and fell into the fires. Steam sizzled up, turning everything white. I pulled myself back onto the ledge, breathing in the wet and heavy air. I couldn’t see Hendricks anymore. I couldn’t see much of anything. Maybe he’d crushed himself. Maybe it was all over.

  I climbed over the rubble, sore and stumbling. Everything was slippery. Hot and angry. I was sweating. Bloody. Tired.

  A shadow through the haze. I moved through the steam, came out the other side, and glimpsed the true scope of where we were.

  Without the first column blocking my view, I could see the great clock face of the underground cavern. Each hour was a bridge, and between each bridge there was another endless pit. Hendricks was standing beside a mighty pillar at the very center. The column was even bigger than the one that had just come down. Bigger than of all of them. Two nickel pipes stretched up on either side of him, going right through the roof.

  He dropped the sack of dust at his feet, beside two more sacks of the same size. I’d just seen what one small scattering could do to a column of rock. This pile would bring the whole place down on our heads.

  “Oh, Fetch is a boy with half a brain,

  Lives his life in the eye of a hurricane.”

  He pulled a pouch from his pocket, but he fumbled it. The glass orb slipped out from the leather and dropped onto the floor. Acid sizzled on the pile of dust. Not enough to light it up. Not yet.