Stray

by Evan Fuller

  19.

  Firepower

  There was no light except the flashlight beams flailing as they ran. Emery strained to keep up with his taller companion for the better part of a mile before they rounded a bend and saw a blinding circle of sunlight ahead. Green held up a hand and they slowed to a brisk walk. As they drew closer their eyes slowly adjusted. There were silhouettes appearing in the mouth of the tunnel and vanishing again with what looked like boxes in their hands. Emery tried to get a count. “Three guys?”

  Green shook his head. “Watch closely,” he whispered. “Four. You can only see three of ‘em at a time, but look at the colors of their coats. Blue, brown, green, brown. And one of the brown coats is a lot taller than the other. Now shh. You wait here.”

  The gateman ducked against a wall as he advanced; Emery did the same, but he stayed in place. One hand went to the holster. He prayed again that the revolver would have no cause to leave it.

  There were three silhouettes framed in the sunlight, then two as the first made its way outside, then one. Then the shadow of a much taller body broke off from the shadow of the wall. He closed with the other; the struggle only lasted a moment. The unconscious body was dragged back out of sight. There was no motion for a while. The other three came and went, seemingly unaware that their companion had vanished. And they came again and went again, only this time Green picked off the last one to leave. When the other two came back in they knew something was wrong; they drew knives and flashlights as they looked frantically for their missing comrades. They found both laid flat against the wall, but their flashlight beams didn’t illuminate Green: he was already behind them. There was a flash of motion and a shout. Emery slowly began to advance.

  In a moment the third man was incapacitated, and the fourth was backing away from Green, brandishing his knife and shouting for help. The blade looked like it had never been used before. As Emery drew closer he saw Green smile. The gateman would probably have no trouble with this one, but Emery figured he might as well make himself useful. “Hey!” he shouted.

  The man spun in confusion to face him. In the next moment his knife flew to the ground, and Green’s long arms were locking around his neck. He gasped and struggled uselessly to loosen the pressure on his windpipe. After a moment he went slack. “Way to take the fun out of it.” Green threw Emery a length of cord from a breast pocket. “Hands and feet,” he said. “You want no serious injuries, we have to work a bit extra.”

  “Alright.”

  Each of them knelt to bind one of the fallen men. Emery didn’t want to make the cord too tight for fear it might do lasting damage, but when Green inspected the knots, he ordered, “Tighter. You want these idiots getting up while we’re not looking?”

  Emery redid the knots. The first two men were already stirring; Green picked up one of the fallen knives and knelt next to them. “I’m a crazy mutt,” he told the man with a wicked smile, “and I got a fierce hunger for purebloods parts. So if you wanna keep all of yours, not a word out of you. Tell your friends the same when they wake up.” With a rapid thrust he drove the knife downward, burying the blade in the ground an inch in front of the captive’s nose. Emery couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for the man’s answering gasp. “Atta boy,” the gateman said, patting him on the cheek.

  There were only two boxes left in the tunnel, so they carried them out into the sunlight. Emery’s was far heavier than he had expected. The tunnel ended in a patch of forest on what Emery knew was northwest of the city wall, hopefully outside the perimeter. He wasn’t exactly sure where they were, but they couldn’t be too far from the sewer entrance. The open door was a half-foot thick steel barrier set in the mouth of the train tunnel, so overgrown that at any distance it must appear a natural cave. The area was so densely wooded that it would be hard to find unless one knew precisely where to look, and the outside of the steel was painted an unassuming brown and grown over with ivy. There was a cutaway slot at about shoulder level that could be opened or closed via a sliding panel on the inside. It was just the right width for guards standing within to aim a rifle barrel through it at would-be intruders. Given the outsiders’ generally low level of technological development, it was very nearly an impenetrable defense.

  It took the two of them to push the door shut. Green put a hand against the place where it met the wall, and after a few seconds the paint had sizzled away and the metal beneath his hand was glowing red. A while longer and it began to run, welding the door in place. “With enough time they’ll be able to force that, but it’s one more thing they’ll have to do.” He looked appreciatively at his hand; heat waves rose from it, distorting the air. “Feels good to be able to to that. To be honest, I kinda felt naked in there. Let’s not go back that way.”

  “Fine by me. So. Let’s see what we have here.”

  If they’d been expecting a few containers, they were quite unprepared for what they saw beyond the door. At least two dozen wood crates were piled several yards away, some like the two they’d removed, some twice that size. Green whistled. “If all this is medicine, Zakarova must be looking to cure every mutt from here to West Sink. Who knew he was into that, how do you say, philanthropy stuff?”

  “If it’s not medicine…” was all their effort going to be for nothing? Emery knelt to open one of the crates, but he found that it was nailed shut. “Hey, Green, could you—?”

  Green held two fingers to his lips. “You hear that?” He was standing very straight.

  Emery strained to hear what the gateman was hearing. A faint high sound like snapping wood, reverberating off all the trees in sequence. It was growing rapidly louder. A moment later, and the gunfire was accompanied by shouts and the roar of an enormous engine. The crawler was coming this way.

  By the time he’d pieced it together Green was dragging him behind one of the larger trees. “This is exactly what I wanted to not happen,” he muttered.

  “But if they haven’t seen us yet, what are they shooting at?”

  “For me, it’s enough to know they’re shooting, and you should know from experience how much fun it is being shot. Let’s keep it down for a minute.”

  Doing so seemed a wasted effort: by the time the crawler was in sight, the racket was so loud Emery wouldn’t have been able to hear himself speak. It barreled through the forest like a runaway train engine, snapping saplings clean in half beneath it, swerving wildly to avoid the larger trees. Another gunshot split the woods, and Emery stepped out from cover in time to see the driver slump and fall from his seat. The crawler hurdled toward the same tree he’d just abandoned; he saw Green escaping in his periphery as the vehicle crashed headlong into the trunk. The collision shook the ground; the crawler’s front end crumpled as it lurched to a stop. The tree keeled, leaning toward the injury as if deciding whether to fall. By the time its trunk tore from the stump and crashed thunderously down on the vehicle, what was left of the recovery team had scrambled off: the only bodies remaining on the crawler had stopped moving.

  As they ducked behind another tree, Emery had never seen Green so astonished. “You purebloods are just too much,” he managed.

  “We purebloods? Like I have any clue…”

  Suddenly they weren’t alone. A panicked-looking Chukwu rounded the tree, cradling a rifle and looking just as surprised to see them as they were him. Before he could level the weapon, Green had him by the throat. “What the hell is going on?”

  The man gasped until Green loosened his grip. “They just started shooting,” he wheezed. “I don’t know what’s—”

  He’d given away their position: a bullet struck the tree trunk, showering splinters. Green let the recovery agent go. “Well, they’re shooting at us now too. Truce?”

  The Chukwu nodded frantically and lifted his rifle to his shoulder. “Three left,” he told them as he lined up the shot. “I think.”

  Emery drew his revolver, knowing full well that if it came down to it, he couldn’t outgun a trained recovery agent. B
lack smoke was rising in a pillar where the crawler was pinned beneath the tree. Green was already off, so Emery leaned from behind the tree opposite the Chukwu. He looked down the barrel and scanned the woods, but another bullet hit the tree inches ahead and sent him scrambling back into cover. A pistol was useless at this range.

  The Chukwu agent’s rifle spat another shell. “Think I got one!” he shouted to Emery. “Should only be two more, unless there are reinforcements around here.”

  “I think we already took care of their friends, if that’s what they were counting on.”

  “What are you people doing out—”

  The man’s eyes bugged and he swayed. The other agent stepped from behind the trunk, pistol smoking, mere feet away. He was Vorteil, a year older than Emery at the most, but no less terrifying for that. His face was expressionless as he leveled the revolver at Emery, who didn’t even have time to turn. The gun bellowed again.

  It took Emery a moment to realize he was alive: the Chukwu was grasping the shooter by the legs with his good arm, and the shot had gone wide. The Vorteil lowered the pistol to finish his assailant, but finally Emery snapped into motion. He leapt forward and struck the Vorteil agent’s arm with the butt of his own gun, loosening the other’s grip. The Vorteil kicked his fallen gun out of the Chukwu’s reach and stepped back, but Emery had the barrel leveled at his chest. “Put your hands on your head,” he said breathlessly.

  “Okay, okay.” The agent nodded and slowly raised both arms.

  “Now, I want you to get on your knees, very slowly, and lay face-down on the ground.” He wasn’t sure what to do.

  “Shoot him!” the Chukwu urged.

  “No.” He was just a kid. “I’m not going—”

  The Vorteil recovery agent who was just a kid seized the opportunity and kicked Emery in the side, just below his arm. He doubled over, gasping, but kept his grip on the gun. In a moment the agent had both hands on the barrel and was wrestling it from his grip. He was counting on Emery not to pull the trigger. In a moment he’d have control of the revolver. There was no time to deliberate. Emery pulled the trigger.

  The first look on the boy’s face wasn’t pain or even shock, just dull confusion. He took a sluggish step backward and fell. He’d forced the gun downward, and the bullet had caught his stomach rather than his chest. On the ground he began to shudder. The gun and Emery’s hands and forearms were wet.

  “Again,” the Chukwu told him. He was clutching the shoulder where he’d taken his bullet.

  Emery looked helplessly at the boy dying on the ground. “I can’t.”

  “You already did, now do it clean.” He winced. “He’s going to take twenty minutes to bleed out, or you can let him go easy. Again.”

  Emery raised the revolver again. The Vorteil boy’s eyes were a cool blue, like Sander’s eyes. Emery shielded his face and pulled the trigger. A second later the shuddering had stopped.

  After half a minute Green rounded the corner. “There were four,” he barked at the Chukwu, “not three. You people need to learn to count.” He looked down at the injured Chukwu agent and the body just a few feet away, then back up at Emery. “Hey, good work, kid.”

  “Whatever.” He felt sick. He looked at the revolver in his hand, gleaming silver and red. It hadn’t been so hard to pull the trigger the first time, but now that he’d seen what it was like, he knew he’d never bring himself to do it again, regardless of what was at stake. He tossed the gun aside.

  It never landed: Green snatched it out of the air. “Hey,” he said, “if you can’t deal with this thing, I’ll take it. It’s just as likely to help you out in my hand as in yours.”

  “Yeah.” He tried to shrug the nausea off; he needed to focus. “Now that we have a moment,” he said to the Chukwu agent, “what’s your name, and what in the world just happened?”

  “I’m Thomas Okoro. I was on the recovery team for the expedition beginning today.”

  “I thought it was a Vorteil and Roccetti operation.”

  “They’re the circles investing in it, and they made up most of the team. I was working flat rate.” He grimaced as he shifted his hand over the bullet wound.

  “Green, you have anything for that?”

  “I brought one, just in case.” He reached in his other breast pocket and produced a salve. “This is it, though. These ridiculous clothes don’t have much storage space.”

  “That’s fine. Give it to him.”

  Green rolled his eyes. “Yessir.” He drew his knife and knelt toward Thomas, who looked alarmed for a moment but relaxed as Green began to cut his jumpsuit away around the wound. “We cleared the gates according to plan and had gotten just outside the perimeter when the driver veered off course. By the time the rest of us realized something was wrong, the Vorteil agents had started shooting.”

  “All of them just started wiping the rest of you out?”

  Thomas nodded, cringing again as Green applied the salve to his wound. “All—ahh, Jehovah. All the Vorteil but this one guy, Mike Borg. He’s… he was a good guy. We’ve been out here a lot together, and he always had my back. I guess he wasn’t in on whatever the others were doing. He was the first one they shot. I guess everything was going pretty much according to their plan until I managed to hit the driver.” He sat straighter up as Green stepped back. “I have some questions too. Who are you people and what are you doing here?”

  Emery began to respond, but Green met his eyes and gave a curt shake of the head. Emery sighed. “We can’t tell you that, except to say we’re not your enemy.”

  “Hey!” he shouted. “I told you everything you wanted to know…”

  “Yeah, thanks for that.” Green pressed the half-full vial into the man’s hand. “And for all your help, here’s something that’ll heal that hole better than your fancy medicine on the inside. If you can walk, I’d get out of here fast. Before long, things are going to get even crazier here.” The tree atop the crawler was beginning to burn.

  “What? Where am I supposed to go?”

  “Back to the Baltimore Street Gate,” Emery said. “The riflemen won’t mistake you for an outsider in that uniform. When they open the gate for you, tell Unity everything that happened.”

  “Right,” he said, an edge of hostility in his tone. “Should I tell them about you two as well?”

  “If you’d like. It might distract from what’s really important, though, which is that six Vorteil recovery agents attempted to hijack the crawler and kill the rest of you. If you do mention us, just say a couple well-intentioned passersby stopped to lend you a hand.” Emery helped Thomas to his feet. “All I can tell you is that whatever the crooked agents were doing, it’s probably the opposite of what we’re trying to do.”

  “Best get going,” Green said, “unless you’re fit for another fight. ‘Cause one’s coming if any of us stick around here much longer.”

  “Right. Good day, then.” Bewildered, Thomas turned and left them, wandering unsteadily southward.

  “What do you mean, another fight?” Emery asked when the injured agent was out of earshot.

  “Remember those eighty guys Zakarova is sending to help transport this stuff? Whatever’s in those boxes, there’s a lot more of it than we were expecting, and I don’t know how we’re gonna move them all before they get here.”

  “Oh.” Just past noon, and already Emery wanted nothing more than to be at home in bed. “Let’s go take a look.”

  They made their way back to the boxes. All of them were nailed shut, just like the one Emery had inspected earlier. “Well,” Green said, “I don’t have my toolbox on me, but…” he drew the revolver and pointed it at the corner of a crate.

  “For God’s sake, Green!”

  The gateman smiled. “Kidding, kidding.” As if Emery wasn’t on edge enough. Green knelt and began to pry the nails out with his knife. “That oughtta do it.” He rose to remove the lid.

  Emery braced himself for disappointment: the boxes could contain anythin
g, he reminded himself. But he was nonetheless unprepared for what he saw as the top panel slid off.

  “Bugger me with a muddy stick.” Green took a step back and put a hand to his forehead.

  “Definitely not medicine,” Emery whispered.

  “You got that right.” The gateman wrung his hands. “This changes the game out here entirely.”

  Filling the box, neatly arranged in between thin wooden dividers, rows and rows of silver revolvers glistened.

  Emery looked back and forth between the open crate and the others. “That’s impossible,” he began. “The manufacture of these weapons is really tightly regulated. I don’t even see how this many could exist.”

  “You people seem to have pretty lax regulations on just about everything,” Green said. “Let’s see what else we have here.”

  They pried open a sampling of the other crates. More revolvers, rifles, cases of ammunition. Suddenly Emery needed to sit down.

  “Not at all what I was hoping to find,” Green concluded grimly, “but anyway it’s good we did find it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “We need some support on this. I’m gonna send out a distress signal, call in the cavalry, whatever. Time for you to meet a few of my associates.” Green locked eyes on the burning crawler. “Makes my job easier. Fire and me, we get along.”

  Emery watched as Green made his way back toward the crash. His back was turned, but whatever he did, the sparse flames swelled suddenly to a furious blaze. The black smoke above began to contort, twisting into a spire that stretched up and up. Far overhead, it split into a dozen streams that shot toward the horizon in every direction. When Green returned, smoke was trailing from his nostrils with each breath. “Dunno how long they’ll take to get here, or how many will be able to make it. Or how long we have before that escort comes to crash our party.”

  “What are we going to do with the guns?”

  “We’ll take a box or two back to show the king. The rest of them… I haven’t gotten that far yet.” He turned. “Hey, Violet.”

  Emery hadn’t even noticed her appear. “Good afternoon, Green.” She nodded at Emery. “And to you as well. Our friend Green needs no help getting into trouble, but he seems to find the worst of it when you’re around.”

  Emery couldn’t quite tell whether there was a trace of humor in her voice. “It’s a gift, I guess.” He’d seen Violet before in passing, but he was beginning to get the feeling that he’d only ever see her in passing. She was difficult for his eyes to trace; the sunlight seemed to pass through her.

  She turned back to Green, sizing up the suit and hat. “Look at you. All dressed up like that, you look almost like a decent man. Now, what’s with the theatrics?”

  “Come see.”

  He directed her to one of the open crates, and Emery thought he saw her eyes widen. “That’s… unprecedented.”

  “You’re telling me. Sometime soon there’s gonna be eighty of Zakarova’s guys coming to pick these up.” At that moment a banging came from the tunnel door. “Oh, yeah, and some purebloods with guns might also be on their way once they figure that door out.”

  “Brilliant. And what do you propose we do?”

  Before he could respond, a young man approached them at a jog. “Did you walk all the way here?” Green taunted.

  “I landed as close as I could,” he panted. “Not all of us can hit a target like ye’, Green. We each have our talents.”

  “Right. Emery, this is Azure. He’s new to our little band. And this is the king’s pureblood friend who’s been helping us on the inside.” He was skinny, with blonde hair and an ill-advised mustache. Was he a replacement for Blue, the gateman Three Dogs had killed?

  “Yes, yes. Ye’ might be interested to know I touched down just a dozen or so yards from a large group of angry-looking mutts moving this way. They’ll be here in two minutes, about.”

  “Then from now till we’re the hell out of here, hold all questions.” A louder sound from the tunnel door; they were trying to force it open now. “Azure, I need you to whisk one of these boxes to the palace.”

  The younger gateman looked apprehensive. “I’m not as good at it as ye’, Green. Why don’t ye’ take it and I stay?”

  Green paused for a minute as though considering, then something dark came over his face. “Hold all questions,” he repeated. “Can you whisk one of these boxes from here to somewhere that’s not here without getting anything scrambled up?”

  Azure nodded. “I think so. As long as ye’ aren’t too specific about where.”

  “Great. I need you to get it to the palace, but for now, anywhere will do. Violet, stay with me till I give the signal, then get the pureblood home. The little one says yes, by the way, so bring her with you.”

  She nodded. “I hope you’re enjoying all this command.”

  Emery was lost. “Little one? What do you mean?”

  “Remember that part about holding all questions? Work with me, kid. What’ll happen to all this stuff if the crates are set on fire?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know what will happen to the guns. It will destroy the ammunition, though, and they’re useless without it, so that’s a setback, at least. But you’ll want to get far away as soon as the boxes start burning.”

  “Great. This should be easy. Although if either of you sees Amber or White later, I want to know what they were doing that was so important they couldn’t help out.”

  Azure nodded past the burning crawler. “Our guests are here.” Emery saw them too: a line of rough-looking men and a few women who were no less imposing. As they saw the crawler and realized something was wrong, the first of them began to run forward.

  “You take that crate and get as close to the palace as you can. Walk it the rest of the way. Violet, a distraction, if you’d be so kind.”

  Azure made his cut, a nasty one, and wrapped both arms around one of the crates. “Oh, boy,” he moaned. He dissolved far more slowly than Emery had seen Green do, into larger clumps of ash that drifted lazily away. But when he was gone, the box had vanished with him.

  Emery turned back to where Violet had been a moment ago, but there was no trace of her. As he turned back toward the approaching line, weapons drawn now, a flock of birds dove into their midst, no larger than sparrows but black as crows. It wasn’t enough to wound them, but many turned in confusion, forgetting the charge.

  Another blow against the tunnel door. It jerked this time, and chips of the melted metal broke off. They had a minute, maybe. “Fire-spitting time?” Emery asked frantically.

  “Not even necessary.” Green looked again at the burning tree. “Sometimes, kid, things just work themselves out.”

  Slowly, as if in a trance, the gateman strode toward the blaze again. The fire crept forward to meet him, spreading with unnatural speed across the bare ground. When the flames reached his feet, they leapt suddenly upward, wrapping in bands around Green’s arms and legs before enveloping him entirely. The men and women who had been advancing from the forest stood motionless, watching with as much amazement as Emery felt. Green turned, features indiscernible now, a vague human shape in the blaze. The river of flame poured forth with him at its head, and when he reached the piled crates, it surged forward at once. The crawler and the tree were no longer burning now; the fire had leapt onto its target.

  Green fell backward, visible again, suit and bowler hat burned to cinders. With another blow, the tunnel door burst open. The Vorteil who poured out from the opening were just as bewildered as the outsiders, but these bewildered men and women had rifles. Emery scrambled around the towering fire to where Green lay, hoping desperately that the flames would keep them from spotting him for a few precious seconds. “Get up!”

  Green was flat on his back; he opened a single eye. “I’m fine right here, kid.”

  “Green, come on! They’ve gotten through the door. If we don’t move, we’re dead a minute from now.”

  “Awe,�
� he mumbled, “gotta have a bit more faith than that.”

  The first riflemen had circled the fire and were taking aim now. Between them came Dr. Hanssen with an expression of fury the like of which Emery had never seen on his face. He was always so composed. He shouted the order, and the riflemen fired. But the volley did not find its mark: they were already being carried upward, floating in pieces among those strange black birds.