by Jay Posey
There was a commotion on the stairs below: a sharp digital shriek that escalated in pitch, a solid impact that shuddered the staircase. No time to look back. Cass flew on, a hind leaping to high places. Another flight. Another. Then, out of nowhere, the door. She’d almost forgotten it was her goal.
She slung Wren to his feet on the landing, hurried him to the heavy metal door. It was cracked open, inward. Just enough.
“Go ahead, baby, go through,” she panted.
Wren hesitated at the crack.
“Wren, go!” she pushed him, and he dug his heels in, resistant.
“It’s dark!” he cried, the first words from his mouth since he woke. “It’s still dark out!”
She ground her teeth, tried to force him through, but she couldn’t get leverage between the wall and the door. In a moment, it didn’t matter anyway. A Weir was there. On the landing.
Cass spun to confront it, expecting it to leap upon her full force. Instead, it halted, hunched but not crouched, scanning her. Cass reached behind her, felt for Wren, ensured he was there, shielded. At least there was no sign of the others. Cass just had to buy a little time. Just long enough for Three to catch up. She just didn’t know how she was going to do it.
The Weir seemed uncertain, hesitant. It glanced quickly away down the stairs, as if noticing for the first time that it was alone. This one was different from the others: larger, more muscular. Still a corpse, but one better preserved. It looked back at Cass, opened its mouth and squawked at her. A vicious howl of circuitry and menace; an electric wolf. Cass tensed.
“Come on,” she said internally, a silent plea for help. “Come on.”
The Weir flexed its hands, nails green in the chemlight. Still no sound on the stair below. Cass hoped that was a good sign. But she wasn’t fool enough to count on hope alone. She dosed again. She’d have to deal with the consequences later. If there was a later.
The Weir scanned her again. No, not her. Behind her. It was trying to get a bead on Wren. No more waiting.
Cass pounced.
Three was aware. Aware that he was aware. That was a start. Not a great one, but a start nonetheless. The left side of his face felt like it was covered in dry paint, or plaster. His neck felt strange. Definitely crumpled into a corner. A corner made of something hard. His legs wouldn’t move.
Bad sign. Broken neck, probably. He tried his fingers. They wiggled. Still had those, at least. He wondered how he would drag himself up all those stairs with just his fingers. After a thought, he tried his toes. Surprise. They wiggled too.
Oh. Something heavy, on his legs. Heavy, wet, and unpleasant. He finally opened his eyes, only just realizing he hadn’t done that yet. In the darkness, he could make out the outlines of things. Not really details, but shapes, beginnings and endings; depth, movement. The thing on his legs definitely wasn’t moving. Hazy memories started coming back now. Weir. On the steps. He’d gotten the first one no problem. The second one, that’d been a problem. The thing on his legs was the second.
The second. There had been three. Three. Another one, still alive, somewhere up above him. After the woman and the boy. The boy. Wren.
With no small amount of effort, Three rolled the Weir off him, found his blade buried through its middle. All was quiet up the stairs. Three didn’t like that at all. He forced himself to his feet, hissed at a searing in his side, between his ribs. He felt around, found something hard that hadn’t been there before. With gritted teeth he pulled at it, worked it free. Nail from the Weir. Punctured his vest. Must’ve broken off in the fall.
He left it with the Weir, and got his blade back, wiping it clean on the Weir’s ragged garment. His hands were sticky.
Three forced his feet up the steps, a slow, painful plod at first. Feeling worked its way back through his legs, and not a good one. He pushed on, brought himself to a weary jog. As he climbed, he looked up, spotted the landing at the top. Three more flights. A yellow-green light glowed there.
He hurried as best he could, reached the landing, stopped to take stock of the scene. The chemlight lay in the middle of the floor, showing it all.
Too late. He was too late.
The Weir was gone. Cass lay slumped against the wall, her shirt stained crimson from neckline to navel. A limp arm dangled over Wren, who sprawled motionless in her lap. The first graying light of morning slipped through the cracked door, and fell like a ribbon of mist over Cass’s pale form.
Three clenched his jaw, swallowed what felt like emotion crawling up his throat. Foolish. Too risky, bringing a woman and her child out beyond the wall at night. He should’ve known better, should’ve thought it through. Seeing those first rays of morning made him angry, reminded him of just how close they’d been to making it. He thought back over what had happened, tried to figure out where he’d made the critical mistake. He should’ve trusted the kid more, gone hunting for that second Weir. Or maybe they should’ve just stayed in the city, holed up and waited it out. Most likely, he just should never have gotten involved in the first place.
He slipped his blade back into its sheath, ran a hand over his scalp, down over his face, closed his eyes. Gathered himself. He’d have to find a place to bury them. A quiet place. Where they could rest. Three opened his eyes and forced himself to look again at the silent and grim monument to what the world had become. All widows and orphans, with no one to defend them.
A twitch. Three blinked, and refocused.
Fool!, he cursed himself.
Not dead. Unconscious. Or asleep. He’d let himself see what he expected to find, instead of what was there. Yet another mistake that could’ve gotten him killed. He’d lost count of how many of those he’d made in the past two days. Too many to still be alive, that was certain.
He crept to the pair, knelt at their side, placed his hand on Wren’s back. It rose and fell steadily. Three took a closer look at Cass, brushed the hair back from her face. She was drawn, pale, damp with a cool glisten of sweat. High cheeks, olive skin, full lips rimmed in white. From here he could see the split in her chin, still oozing, the source of the blood on her shirt. A welcome relief. He’d feared her throat had been cut. The knuckles and back of her left hand were spattered and crusted with a dark, drying fluid, and a quick inhale told him at least part of the story. Wherever the Weir was now, it wasn’t happy.
Three placed a hand on her arm, and squeezed gently. Cass jerked awake with a sharp inhalation, pulled back, stared at him with wild eyes. Recognition finally came, and she glanced down to check on Wren. Still sleeping, undisturbed.
“Are you hurt?” Three asked. The woman’s hand went gingerly to her chin, but she shook her head no.
“I’m fine,” she said. She looked at him with concern. He wasn’t sure why. “Are you going to be alright?”
“Yeah,” he answered, with a half shrug.
Cass reached up and touched the side of his face, high on the cheekbone, near his eye socket. The light brush of her finger felt like a blowtorch across his skin. Three jerked away with a hiss. He grimaced. More damage than he’d thought.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cass said with a pained expression. “I thought maybe the blood wasn’t yours.”
“Well,” Three replied, testing the wound with his own fingertips. The whole left side of his face was crusted. “I guess it’s not anymore, huh?”
The flesh around his cheekbone was hot and puffy. He pressed into it, ignored the sting, probed the bones beneath. His cheek was lacerated, and would bruise deeply, but otherwise the facial structure seemed to be intact.
“Where’d the Weir go?” Three asked, gritting his teeth through the ache that now radiated through his face and jaw.
“Back downstairs,” Cass answered flatly.
“It ran away?”
“Not exactly.”
“It fell,” said a sleepy voice from Cass’s lap. “Mama knocked it over the edge.”
Wren sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Three gave Cass another loo
k. She certainly didn’t look like one to take down a Weir. Slight of frame, maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds by Three’s estimate. Sure, she was juiced, but it took a lot more than a little chemical boost to deal with something that dangerous. Under his gaze, she just shrugged.
“Can we go now?” Wren asked.
Three didn’t take his eyes off Cass.
“Sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah,” Cass said, too quickly for Three’s liking. “Just tired. That was a lot of stairs.” She added a throwaway smile.
Lying. But she didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. Probably exhausted; hungry, thirsty. Three chalked it up to her being brave. He stood, and held out a hand to her.
She accepted the help, got to her feet with forced ease. Wren stood as well, and Three knelt beside him.
“You want a ride, kid?”
Wren looked to his mother for a cue. She nodded. Relieved. Wren clambered up onto Three’s back, and Three regained his feet, shifting Wren around to a comfortable spot.
“By the way, what’s your name?”
“Three.”
“Three? I’m Cass. My son is Wren.”
“Mister Wren,” Three said with a half-nod, “and I already met.”
“Where are we going?” Cass asked, picking the chemlight up off the floor, and extinguishing it.
“Somewhere you can rest,” Three said. Then caught Cass’s eye. “And we can talk.”
He gave the door a yank, and it swung open with a jarring screech. He didn’t bother to close it as they set out in the weak light of the early dawn.
Seven
Cass had made some early attempts to start idle conversation, but by mid-afternoon, the trio had fallen mostly silent, save for the sound of their footsteps on the dusty concrete. They pushed northward through the decaying sprawl, passing countless buildings; towering headstones in an unbroken urban graveyard, empty shells of life disappeared. Many shone with dull or flickering light from signs or rooms, half-lit by technology that long outlasted its creators and carried on ignorant or indifferent to their absence. Three kept a steady pace, slowing rarely, stopping less, and only when Cass or Wren absolutely required it. He himself seemed tireless.
Cass couldn’t help but wonder at the intensity of Three’s focus and concentration. Even after these hours, his eyes constantly roamed, scanning, searching out tracks of previous travelers, signs of passing scavengers, or worse. At first, Cass had thought it obsession on the verge of paranoia. Then Three had steered them clear of the first of the traps.
“Deadfall,” he’d said, flicking his head towards what looked to her like any of the other innumerable piles of scrap metal and abandoned scaffolding they’d already passed without concern. As they worked their way around it, though, Cass looked closer, saw the thin filament running across what had been their path, saw what it would’ve triggered had they tripped it.
“Why would anyone do that?” she’d asked.
“People gotta eat.”
“Yeah, but what could you catch out here? A Weir?”
Three shook his head grimly. It took a moment for Cass to understand. That’s when she’d stopped trying to make conversation.
The journey had been a slow, long march, punctuated by Three’s occasional forced breaks, when he would insist she and Wren wait together while he scouted ahead. Once in a while he would point out what had caught his attention: a steel-cable snare, or a deadly spring trap, one time even an improvised explosive. More often though he would just reappear, gather Wren upon his back, and wordlessly return them to their march, making any necessary adjustments to their path.
According to the satfeed, Cass calculated they’d covered just over twenty miles since they’d left the storm-water system. She was hesitant to check it too often though, for fear of attracting unwanted attention from those that might be skimming the stream for her. Still, she couldn’t help but take occasional peeks, in hopes of finding their destination. Three would say nothing more about it other than that she’d see it when they got there. And judging from the topdowns “there” could be anywhere. Or more likely, nowhere.
“How you doing?”
Three’s voice jarred her from her latest search.
“Uh, fine,” she lied, flashing a thin smile. “Tired.”
“Not much farther.”
Though relieved to hear it, Cass was puzzled. There wasn’t a town, or enclave, or even a fortified structure that she could see for miles around. But she was too weary to consider much. A weakness had come upon her before noon, one that seeped from her muscles down into the marrow of her bones, hollowed her arms and legs. Her fingers trembled and twitched. Every step took effort, and she longed for a chance to sleep. The last of the quint was burning out.
At one time, long ago, quint had been a tool, chems for synapses and reflexes that helped her do the job. These days, it was as essential to her body as water, or air. And she had none.
“Alright,” Three said, kneeling and letting Wren slide from his back. “It’s going to take me a minute. Wait right here.”
Before Cass could respond, Three was off and headed towards a nearby derelict building. He stopped of his own accord, and turned back, drawing his pistol as he returned. He held it out to Cass.
“Just in case.”
Cass took the weapon, felt its heft: weighty, but balanced. It felt almost alive to her, like some once-wild beast, now controllable but hardly tame.
“You know how to use it?”
She nodded, slowly. It’d been some time since she last held a gun of any kind, and never one of such magnitude.
“If you don’t, say so.”
“I do,” Cass said, “I just don’t want to have to.”
“You won’t,” Three replied, with a bare hint of reassurance. “But, just in case.”
He dropped a hand on Wren’s head and ruffled the boy’s hair.
“Be right back.”
Cass watched Three go back to the building. He surveyed it for a moment, and then leapt suddenly up its side, finding some handhold higher up that Cass couldn’t see. He scaled it expertly, precise but swift, fluid, as if climbing a ladder up to the third floor, where an empty-framed window gaped. Three disappeared inside.
For a while, Cass and Wren stood watching the window.
“Are we going to do that too?” Wren asked.
“No, sweetheart,” Cass answered, sounding more certain than she was. “I don’t think so.”
In truth, she was waiting for Three to reappear, to lower some kind of ladder or anything that might make the climb easier. Cass scanned the building, tried to see what about it might make it any safer, or even different, from the countless ones they’d passed along the way. Nothing stood out. It was as gray, drab, and run down as any of the others.
Minutes stretched. Wren sat down on the ground and tugged his shuttlecar from a pocket. He made soft whooshing noises as he ran it in lazy circles over his legs. Cass watched him for a while, smiled to herself, almost envious of his ability to find moments of childhood in nearly any circumstance. Moments which were far too rare, she thought sadly. Wren’s stomach growled loudly, and Cass’s heart sank; eyes welled. They hadn’t eaten in over a day. Wren hadn’t once complained.
He glanced up at her, smiling slightly.
“That was a big one.”
Cass laughed in spite of herself, felt a tear drop to her cheek as she bent down to kiss the top of her son’s head.
“Yeah, it really was.”
“You think Mister Three will be back soon?”
“Soon, I’m sure.”
Wren went back to his shuttlecar, flying it, driving it, crashing it, and Cass stood over him, scanning for any signs of Three. She ran her thumb back and forth on the grip of the pistol, absentmindedly feeling the checkering, trying to ignore the unrelenting weariness that clung to her, dragged her downwards, tempted her to lie down right there and sleep for a week, or forever.
Cass shook herself, inhale
d. Then caught her breath. There was a scuffling sound, like shuffling feet, coming from the building. No, not footsteps. Something like claws on metal, like a giant rat on a sewer pipe.
“Three?” she called. There came no answer.
Wren stood up, and hooked an arm around her leg.
The sound continued, grew louder. Not from the building. From under it. Grinding. Wren squeezed.
Cass checked the pistol, readied it, took it in both hands. There. Near the front corner of the building, by the alley. The concrete itself, or rather the ground beneath it, shifted, lurched. Something was coming.
Cass raised the weapon; aimed it. The ground lifted, raised, separated cleanly as if cut by a laser. A shape emerged from the hole: hooded, coated in gray dust, unnaturally silent, a ghost rising from its grave. Cass’s finger involuntarily tightened on the trigger.
“Really?” said the shape. The figure laid back its hood. Three. Of course.
Cass lowered the pistol immediately, felt her face flush hot.
“Told you you wouldn’t need it,” Three said flatly, though something in the tone suggested a smile behind the words. “Sorry. Took longer than I expected.”
He waved them over to the opening in the cement. Cass gathered herself and shepherded Wren over to where Three awaited them. When she reached the opening, she was surprised to find a set of steep metal steps, leading down under the street.
“Come on,” he said, “you first.”
Three held out a hand to her. She took it in hers, and he steadied her as she descended. Cass reached the bottom more quickly than she had expected. She found herself in a tight corridor, perhaps six feet in height and half as wide, smooth-walled and warm.
“Here,” she heard Three say from above. “Elevator for you, Mister Wren.”
Wren’s feet appeared in the opening, dangling in mid-air and descending slowly, body stretched and arms over his head as Three held his wrists above. Three made whirring noises as he lowered Wren, and Wren floated down into his mother’s arms laughing. Cass couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him do that.
