Shattered Lands

by ALICE HENDERSON

  “You know how much we could get?” the woman said to her companions.

  H124 knew it wasn’t a lot, enough to feed them for a day, maybe two, but it was enough to make all four of them targets.

  At last they reached the atmospheric shield. Though the hole was right at the top of the retaining wall, they still had no way to reach that high.

  As more people filed in beside the woman, H124 knew their time was running out. Down one of the alleys, a building’s facade had collapsed, its guts spilling into the street. An old gutter pipe lay on top of crumbling bricks and mortar. “This way!” H124 told them, and they veered off into the alley, moving faster.

  She hurried to the drainpipe. It was rusted in places, but it would work. “Help me with this.” She gripped one end of it. Byron picked up the other.

  Many of the buildings along the street had toppled in antiquity, or were slowly crumbling away. But one midway down looked promising. “This way!” she urged her friends. The trailing citizens had been leery for a while, keeping their distance, but now they gained momentum as more joined their ranks. A murmur spread through them.

  Above, one of the floating signs glided past: Give a heart. Get a meal.

  H124 stopped in front of the edifice. Empty now, it had lost its front door long ago. Inside, she could see steps leading up. “In here!”

  She and Byron fed the awkwardly long pipe through the door. She hurried up the stairs, Byron in tow. Outside, the people hesitated in the street, not following them in. H124 kept climbing until they were on the fourth floor.

  She left the staircase and chose a room on the side facing the shield. People had been sleeping here. Dirty makeshift beds covered the floor. Her stomach lurched at the sight of some rotten meat in one corner, the putrefied remains of a human leg, partially hidden under a tattered blanket. A knife stuck out of it. Dirk hurried over, pulling out the blade.

  “That’s disgusting,” Astoria told him.

  “You’d rather we had no weapons?”

  “Point taken.”

  The amber light of the shield glowed through a shattered window. “Help me feed the pipe through to the shield,” H124 told Byron. She set her end of the pipe down on the windowsill, and she and Byron pushed it out until it touched the top of the retaining wall.

  Below, she heard the unmistakable sound of the amassing mob entering the building. “Don’t let them get out!” she heard the original woman cry.

  She wondered why they didn’t want to leave with them, why they hadn’t started scrambling to do just that as soon as the hole in the shield had become obvious.

  But she knew if they were like her, they’d been fed lies about the outside world, that no one could possibly survive out there. Here, though it was deplorable, it was a familiar mode of living. And even though they were all slowly dying of starvation, it was a hell they knew. Better that than the unknown.

  With the pipe in place, all they had to do was cross it to freedom.

  They could hear the mob ascending the stairs, voices clamoring.

  “You first,” Astoria told Dirk.

  He reluctantly moved to the window. “This looks precarious.”

  “Just climb across the damn thing,” Astoria cursed.

  And so he did, climbing out the window and balancing on a small ledge, until he grabbed on to the pipe. He hung from it, crossing hand over hand. As he moved, the pole rolled erratically, threatening to come off the top of the wall. Byron and H124 held it as steady as they could, and Dirk just barely made it to the other side.

  After hauling himself up, he knelt atop the wall, holding the pole steady.

  “You next,” H124 said to Astoria.

  Astoria needed no convincing. She ventured out the window and onto the pipe, swinging over to her brother.

  “Now you,” Byron said. H124 stepped over the sill just as the mob reached the door. Dozens of eager, dirty faces pushed into the room. “Go!” Byron held his end steady while H124 swung across. She looked down to see that dozens more denizens had gathered in the street below.

  “Up there!” one of them shouted, pointing at her. She glanced back as she reached the wall, the room now swarming with hungry people. Dirk grabbed her hand and pulled her up onto the wall.

  “Hurry!” he shouted to Byron.

  The crowd surged forward, snatching at Byron. He punched a man, then flung a woman’s arm away as she grabbed on to his jacket. He dove out the window, taking hold of the pipe. Swinging onward, he reached the halfway point as the mob grabbed the far end of the pipe. Picking it up, they rolled it back and forth, causing Byron to swing wildly. He tried to keep moving, but couldn’t get a good hold. Beneath him, the masses swarmed, waiting for him to fall.

  Dirk held fast to his end of the pipe, but the swelling mob in the room suddenly shoved the other end off the windowsill. That end came crashing down to the street below. Dirk still held the far end, and H124 seized it too.

  Byron dangled just a few feet above the crowd, who leapt up, trying to grasp his feet. He climbed the pipe, hands sliding off with every new grip; it was too wide to get a good one. He pressed his feet together on either side of the pipe, and inched upward.

  The crowd grabbed the pipe, trying to shake Byron off. En masse they were too strong, and H124 could barely hold on. Dirk reached down and grabbed Byron’s hand. As he pulled him up, H124 and Astoria grabbed the pipe and wrenched it away from the crowd. They hefted the tube up and shoved it through the hole in the shield wall, creating a way down on the other side.

  Astoria was the first down. She lowered herself over the edge of the wall, gripped the pipe and slid down, landing upright.

  Dirk motioned for H124 to go next, and she followed Astoria’s example, landing in a squishy field of fecal matter and urine, the rivers of waste that oozed out of Delta City on all sides. Mercifully, she remained standing.

  Dirk slid down next, followed by Byron.

  They were safe. They bent over, catching their breath. H124 looked back to the top of the shield. Moments later it buzzed, and the hole sealed. They’d made it. She looked to the others. Dirk lifted his dreads off his forehead, wiping away the sweat with his sleeve.

  Now they were outside, ragged and worn, with no PRDs or any way to contact the Rovers or Badlanders for a lift.

  “What now?” Astoria said.

  “There’s a weather shelter about a day’s walk from here, I think,” Byron suggested.

  “You think?” Astoria cocked an eyebrow.

  “I’m pretty certain.”

  Dirk stared into the darkness. “In which direction?”

  Byron scanned the horizon. “I think there’s a unique-looking hill . . .” Finally he turned back to them. “It’s too dark.”

  “You’re saying we have to spend the night out here in this reeking mess?”

  He grinned sheepishly.

  “Let’s find some high ground,” H124 suggested, pointing to a nearby rise. “And get away from the wall. Find some cover. We can catch some sleep and start out in the morning.”

  “Sleep?” Astoria said. “The inside of my nose is already seared from this stench. I don’t even want to think about what it’ll do to my lungs if we spend the night out here.”

  “You’ll just have to be tough for a change,” Dirk said, already flinching in preparation for the punch that landed on his arm. “Ow.”

  H124 led the way to the rise, covering about two miles. They crested the hillock, moving mercifully out of the thick sludge. She hunted around for some decent cover. But out here, with no trees or shrubs, it was a challenge. Then she found a place on the hill where a small landslide had broken free. An overhang remained where the dirt had slid down, and it was just big enough to shelter them beneath it. They scraped their boots off as best as they could, then laid their jackets down under the overhang.

  “
I’m exhausted,” Dirk said as he slumped down. “Don’t remember ever being this tired.”

  H124 lay down near him, staring out at the sky. They couldn’t see any stars here. The light pollution from the dome obliterated them.

  They settled into silence, and soon she heard the soft breathing of her comrades around her. It lulled her to sleep.

  * * * *

  H124 woke up as someone moved past. She propped herself up on one elbow, watching Byron crawl out from the overhang. For a moment, he was silhouetted against a dazzlingly blue sky. She squinted, and the glare made her tear. The sun had been up for a while.

  She joined him on top of the hill, followed by a groggy Dirk. Astoria trudged up with them, still trying to scrape off her boots. Byron brought a hand up to shield himself from the glare. Sweat poured off his neck and face. It had to be a hundred and five out here in the open, maybe more. He studied the landforms around them, finally pointing to a hill with a notch in it. “There it is! The landmark. The weather shelter’s roughly that way.” He pointed southwest.

  “Roughly,” Astoria repeated, the derision dripping from her voice.

  Heat waves shimmered off the ground, and the air was so hot it hurt to breathe. The acrid stench of excrement stung her nostrils.

  “Let’s try it,” Astoria said, “if only to get out of this reeking hell hole.”

  H124 walked ahead of the others. As they came off the hill, her boots squished and slid in the brown rivers.

  After walking in silence for a while, Byron moved alongside Dirk. “What did they do to you back in the cells?”

  H124 looked over her shoulder, slowing.

  Dirk closed his eyes and swallowed. “They wanted to know Badlander movements. Camp locations. Where we hide the Silver Beast. I told them I didn’t know.”

  Astoria chimed in. “Those bastards. They threatened to kill Dirk if I didn’t tell them. But I kept my mouth shut.”

  “Thanks for having my back, sis.”

  She smirked. “Figured torture would give you some backbone.”

  Dirk swept his arms wide. “Meet Astoria, ladies and gentlemen, the sister we all wish we had.”

  “Big sister,” Astoria added.

  “Only by two minutes,” Dirk put in.

  They walked on, resuming the silence. A mile out, H124 spied a vehicle shimmering in the heat. “Look!” She picked up her pace, but realized she was only kicking the stinking mess around even more, so she slowed down once again.

  She hoped it was Chadwick and the Beast, but the shimmering heat toyed with her, making the vehicle appear and disappear. She started to worry it wasn’t even real. Then it came solidly into view. Her heart sank. It was an old Badlander methane bottling truck. The engine and roof had been blown clean off. A skeleton sprawled across the driver’s seat of the scorched interior.

  When the others caught up, Astoria sighed. “Life doesn’t last too long for a methane bottler.”

  “Must have set off a spark somehow,” Dirk said, circling the truck. “It’s a total loss. Looks like it happened years ago.”

  H124 stared down at the skeleton. To die out here alone, in this river of shit, was a terrible way to go.

  They kept moving, no shade in sight, as the afternoon wore on. Finally they cleared the fecal river and moved along caked brown earth. H124 shuffled her feet, removing the last of the excrement.

  “So gross,” Dirk said, scraping the sides of his boots with the knife he’d found during their escape.

  “That knife is too disgusting to use for anything. You going to cook with that later?” Astoria chided him.

  “It’s not so bad. I could sterilize it.”

  “No amount of sterilization will ever be enough.” Astoria gave an involuntary shudder as Dirk wiped the blade off in the dirt, then pocketed it.

  The terrain grew a little more hilly, and each time they crested a rise, H124’s body cried out for water. The heat was intolerable.

  The hills grew steeper, with stands of dead trees stark against the blue sky. A fire had swept through here long ago, leaving only dead trunks. The black soot still showed in many places, while others were white and sun-bleached. A few times they rested in the meager shade of the thin trees. These weren’t even big enough to guard their entire bodies, so instead they stuck their heads in the dark, cooler shadows from time to time before pressing on.

  Cresting the largest hill, they came to a sudden stop. Fear flooded through H124. At the bottom, just a dozen yards away, stood four Death Riders. They’d parked their jeep by a fire, and were cooking some kind of unidentifiable white meat on a spit.

  They looked up, and spotted them instantly.

  Whipping their rifles up, the Death Riders trained them on H124 and the others. Two jumped into the jeep and raced away, spraying up dirt. A third talked eagerly into his PRD.

  From nearby she heard multiple engines roar to life and accelerate. Rising to the surrounding hilltops, the clamor of machines deafening, the Death Riders streamed toward them.

  In minutes they were completely ringed in. Death Riders stood in the beds of trucks, fifty-caliber guns locked and loaded. One climbed down from the cab of the largest truck, and strutted over. He wore the top halves of human skulls as spaulders on his shoulders, and a vicious scar ran down his face. The wound had taken his left eye, leaving a puckered hole.

  Her eyes were drawn to an unusual pattern on the side of his jacket, which was made out of a strange leathery material, tanned and stretched. The intricate pattern had been drawn laboriously in ink, featuring some kind of mythical creature with wings and claws, spirals of fire shooting out of its mouth. It looked like something a Badlander would have tattooed on his body. She sucked in a breath, gazing around, realizing what the jacket was made out of. And all of the Death Riders wore that same material.

  “Looks like we found this afternoon’s entertainment!” the man shouted.

  Around them, the Death Riders started pounding on the doors of their cars in unison, a thundering chorus of fists on metal.

  “Round ‘em up!”

  A team of Death Riders emerged from the back of a truck, carrying hefty chains. They surrounded H124 and her friends. Astoria lashed out, grabbing Dirk’s knife from his pocket and darting into the throng. Blood splattered as the dirty blade struck home, felling one of the men. The Death Riders poured forth, falling on H124, Byron, and Dirk and bringing them hard to the ground. H124 fought back, but manacles snapped around her hands and ankles, and the weight held her limbs down. Death Riders swarmed over them, the reek of their bodies bringing the sharp odors of sweat and caked blood. She recalled the citizens in the transport, grabbing, kicking, shouting. She felt just as helpless now as she did then.

  Then the Death Riders dragged her to her feet, forcing her toward one of the trucks, where they clipped the chain onto the bumper. Next to her, they attached Dirk and Byron, still struggling in their bonds. They seized Astoria’s knife, five of them sitting on her while they wrapped her entire body in chains. “Can’t wait to see this one fight,” one of them growled, and she spat in his face.

  He laughed, then slung her up into the bed of a truck.

  The lead Death Rider climbed back into his vehicle and gave a sharp whistle. The caravan lurched forward, taking up the slack on H124’s chain. She stumbled as it yanked her forward. Pulling against his bonds, Byron tried to free himself, but he, too, lurched forward, marching along behind the trucks.

  Dirk gazed wide-eyed at the jeering, bloodthirsty Death Riders.

  H124 didn’t know where they were taking them, but a cold fear washed over her as she lumbered on, captive once more.

  Chapter 15

  After half an hour of being dragged behind the caravan, H124’s arms and legs ached. Dust from the trucks billowed around her in a thick cloud, making breathing impossible. She coughed and spat out dirt. Her bo
dy ached for water. Beside her Byron struggled with his manacles, trying to slip out of them. Dirk only stared out silently; she worried he was in shock.

  In the bed of the truck, Astoria rattled her chains, cursing and threatening the Death Riders. They only laughed.

  The trucks slowed, and the one she was chained to came to a halt. Then it revved its engine, winding through a series of silver spikes sticking out of the ground. It lunged forward suddenly, and H124 was yanked off her feet. Seeing the spike looming up before her, she tried to roll, but it struck her arm. She heard a sickening snap, and an intense pain shot up her arm. The truck started dragging her, but all she could do was cry out, rolling onto her back to cradle her arm. Still the manacles pulled at her, sending rivulets of agony up her shoulder.

  Byron rushed over to her from the neighboring truck, his chains barely allowing him the reach. He reached down and lifted her to her feet. Blood streamed down her arm where the spike had bitten through it, and she could feel the bones grinding together inside. It was broken. She gritted her teeth as Byron helped her keep her balance, tears cascading down her cheeks.

  They wound through more spikes, Byron helping her stay upright. Ahead lay a large circular structure, and the trucks pulled up to it. At least a hundred vehicles were parked there already.

  Unhooking them from the bumpers, the Death Riders forced H124 and the others to march toward the wall of the huge circle. They opened a door of iron bars, shoving them through. Beyond lay a cement hallway, dark and reeking of the coppery scent of fresh blood. As a rough hand slammed onto her back, she stumbled against the wall, steadying herself with her shoulder. Behind her, two men dragged Astoria in chains. She kicked and writhed on the dirty floor as she slid along.

  “Get her out of those chains!” Dirk shouted at them. He bent to help her, trying to lift her, but one of the Death Riders kicked him in the back, spending him toppling on top of his sister.

  They drove them forward, paying them no heed. At the end of the tunnel, H124 saw an open steel door that led to a large cage. They passed through the open ingress. The cage looked out over an expansive view of an arena beyond.