by Capps, Chris
"Should have taken the poison," he would say over and over again, passing by me and running his hand along the side of a long black metal table. Objects sang as they quivered and shook above me. Hissing blades, sizzling hot wires, dispensers of nightmare medicine. Though I never witnessed it, I knew the machine took delight in breaking its victims down, tearing them apart and reconstructing them with surgical precision as it asked the same question.
"What do they know? What do they know that you don't?"
My mind raced each time I heard it, coming alive like a soft scabby puzzle, pulling itself apart and trying to find a solution. And each dream ended the same way. The machine would roll a large circular blade across the table, opening the door to my other nightmare.
I laid on the cot thrashing feverishly against the pain as the cauterized flesh rebuilt itself, knitting back together in confused lumps and lesions. On morning fifteen I awoke with a cry and looked down to see the pain was beginning to lose the battle. I was finally a man capable of thought once again and I stared at my one leg and the stump no longer weighed down. Time finally to move.
Reaching for my crutch I hobbled into the blacksmith's shop and saw Freezy and Cyril there. Both were now in the act of crafting bullets, pouring the liquid lead down into casts which would cool into small spherical projectiles. Seeing the red hot spoon sent a shudder up my spine. Freezy stood, wiping sweat from her brow,
"Riderman! You're up!"
Cyril followed her, standing and bouncing over to the rolling table blade where a long dark red stain had bonded to the wood and turned deeper brown, nearly black. He lifted something off of it, holding it up with his one hand triumphantly.
"Freezy traded your map making gear for this," he said, "And a few items of yours." It was an empty half pant-leg with a single long piece of black steel running out of it down to where it terminated in a thin round spike, ribs running down it like a screw. Cyril unbuckled the upper section of it saying, "It took a while to get the mixture right. I never considered using actual bone as an additional support for steel, but here we have it. The leg isn't as heavy as metal, but not as brittle as bone. It's a mixture averaged out from both."
Looking down at it I could see the bone gleaming white from the upper and lower segments, wrapped in metal and fused to it by a means that must have taken some time for Cyril to master, likely one reason they were both now working overtime to produce the bullets. And yet as he held it in his single arm without care, the man gestured toward a stool with his eyes, and he had the most genuine grin I had ever seen on him. I sat on the stool, my bandaged stump of a leg stubbing outward as he pushed the socket up around it.
"Not your bones, of course," he said, "No offense, but your bones were garbage. I had to find something better. Something stronger. Try it out."
I stood, and found that the leg was uneven. It hobbled, and started sinking with the spike burying into the ground. I sat back down shaking my head,
"No good."
"Not to fear," Cyril said pulling something from the nearby table. It was a horse's hoof, drilled in through the top with a screw socket. He twisted it onto the bottom of the spike, tightening it with his one good hand, "Alright try it now."
The measurements were perfect. I stood now, the prosthetic hoof holding fast to the ground. I even lifted my leg and stomped it, relishing the white hot pain resonating in the stump. I was grateful that I had, in the last seconds before the amputation, made the decision for Freezy to cut just below the knee, allowing me to have one additional point of movement. It had worked out perfectly. Of course it had.
"That's how destiny works," I mumbled to myself.
"Walking is going to be a challenge," Freezy said from the fire, "I can only hope you get plenty of time to practice before you decide to go."
The belt attaching the prosthesis to my leg was tight, but not tight enough to break circulation as I walked. And the leg, while still heavy from bone and steel, was far more maneuverable than I had feared it would be. I walked easily across the room twice before reaching out for my first surface to support me. The pain was still there, but it was manageable.
"In short time I'll adjust," I said, "Cyril, I don't know what to say."
"Say you won't trundle off to the Northlands to die," Cyril said, his grin never leaving.
"Don't fool yourself, Cyril," Freezy said as she poured another spoonful of hot lead into the cast at her feet, "Man cut his own leg off because it wasn't healing fast enough. I never saw something like that before."
"Can't say it was much of a choice. The pain that stump's going to give you is just the beginning," Cyril said, "And you're going to start walking long before that heals fully, I'm sure."
"You healed well enough," Freezy said walking over and helping me regain my balance, "But some of that pain's never going to go away."
"Fair enough," I said. After a week of thrashing on a wooden slab the pain I now felt was somehow dull. It was as though something had dissolved deep within me, a capacity to really feel the same way. I was both aware of it, and completely ignorant of the sensation. It was strange. The only time it grew sharper, taxing my resolve to keep from wincing, was each time my weight shifted to the new leg. The padding inside the peg leg's socket was carefully crafted to minimize impact, but I knew this sensation would forever haunt me whenever I walked.
Fair enough.
There was a cane resting beside the table I was sitting on, leaning heavily on the end where either Cyril or Freezy had grafted a sphere made of bone - no doubt also from the horse - to serve as a handle. It was perfectly sized for my hand, and I relied on it heavily as I made my way to the front door.
"Freezy," I said turning to look back over my shoulder, "You don't have to follow me, you know."
But she would. I knew she would from the look she gave me, tilting her head and perking one of her eyebrows up in good natured mock confusion. Why she would follow me, why I knew she was leaving this all behind was as obvious as when I had seen it on that young man at the beginning of my journey.
She too had that hunger. She radiated it, scoured every opportunity to uncover the passage that would lead to riches and adventure. I don't think I could have blamed her.
She rose, taking with her a small bag and wrapping a hand around Cyril's back, hugging him close, saying,
"Thank you."
"Take care," is all he said back. And we were out of there.
Arrangements had already been made to start our journey when we got to Anna's house. Anna met us at the door with a loaf of bread and a final word of warning not to go wandering up North. We ignored her, Freezy looking at me with a smile in her eyes before shaking her head,
"Nothing's going to hold us here now."
I was happy enough to go, and I suppose that's why I missed it, why I didn't ask questions. I holstered my pistol and started moving leg over leg, propped up by my cane as we passed through the badlands toward our destination. Ahead the massive dust hills loomed, drifting away with the gentlest breeze and collecting in plumes across that animated landscape far away.
We walked. I was surprised by the time we made, and the lack of pain in my leg as we trudged further into the sun baked fields of dead wheat and grass. The whole morning I walked, my mind somewhere in a world between dream and reality.
"If you need to stop," Freezy said, "At any point let me know."
I nodded, eyeing a leafless dead tree up ahead as I leaned on the cane. The pain was increasing rapidly, soon making it impossible to control my breathing.
"I don't understand it," I said as clarity slowly emerged from pockets in my mind, filling with intense pain, "It's worse now."
"Let's take a rest," Freezy said with her hand fishing inside a bag at her side. I looked behind us. It had been nearly two miles. We hadn't even reached a single league. I could see the town behind us in the distance, the plumes of smoke from its chimneys trailing up into the sky, the dull grey mass of its buildings clumping up in the ho
t dry sun.
"Strange," I said as I stared down at the leg holding me up, "Wasn't like this before."
A dull wet stab in my elbow crook's biggest vein confirmed my worst fears. I looked over and saw Freezy holding the first of a handful of transparent and lettered syringes. She had taken my arm in her hand, pulled it out with the sleeve rolled up. After a moment of confusion, the relief that followed answered every question I had been brewing.
"I thought my recovery had been quick," I said flexing my hand into a ball and then spreading it open again, "What is that?"
"Something simple for pain," she said, gently pulling the needle back and wiping the vein with a white rag, "Keep moving."
"How many of those do we have?" I asked, realizing almost instantly that I was feeling much like I had earlier in the morning when I first woke up.
"Enough to get there," she said.
"More than that?"
"Enough to get there," she said, "Don't stop, we're being followed."
I looked behind us again, walking uneasily, and realized that the clump of grey houses and smoke trail chimneys were shrinking behind another shape, a formless black mass of walking men. The army. The troops who had ordered the bullets. They were behind us, gaining on the cripple and the girl foolish enough to help him. I felt at my hip for the pistol that had kept me alive till now. It rested loyally in its holster.
"They won't follow us into those tumbling mountains."
We kept walking, another six miles consumed behind us as the horizon blew apart and consumed itself, tumbling hills into hills and mountains into dark plumes of wind. All the while the army at our heels grew larger, magnified in proximity. I chanced a look into our wake and saw staggering melthorses, the men riding them, and a two-story carriage being dragged by a hundred men.
"Hide?" Freezy asked, as they drew near enough for us to hear the jeering laughter and a few lyrics from what must have been an ancient marching song.
"Where?" I said looking out at the featureless plain all around us. If we could have run, we might have breached the first rolling dust dune in time before they caught up to us. Instead, I simply stopped and turned, the pistol retrieved from its holster but hanging slack at my side in my free hand. Not my shooting hand, I realized.
Freezy stood there too, watching the legion of soldiers close in on us. The nearest melthorses whinnied and stumbled, their riders soothingly patting their sides and coaxing them to a stop. The lead man, riding up a hundred paces from the rest of the army held up his hand. He had a white mask wrapped around his mouth and nose to guard against dust and a wide brimmed hat. The sword sheathed at the side of the melthorse's withered body was old and worn, likely used more times than the rider could recall.
He glanced over his shoulder, calling back,
"A deformed man and a woman."
Yes. Just a deformed man and a woman. Surely not a threat to you. Let us go.
"That's them," another faceless voice called from the crowd a hundred paces back. The men were looking all around, each face a potential scout watching the horizon. It gave the men an appearance of being uneasy here, out of place. One of the melthorses at the front of the line crouched to the ground, threatening to tip its rider off as it laid its head flat in the sand, breathing heavily.
At the center of this bizarre congregation was the large wagon with a stairway leading up hanging out the front. Two long lines of men holding rope rested in the sun, taking off hats and wiping brows as the door to this wagon opened and a frail looking whisper of a man emerged, drinking our image in a long glare through bulbous eyes.
Heads turned to him from the army, and he spoke to one of the soldiers nearby. That man raised his voice, holding his hands to the edges of his covered mouth,
"Bring them!"
"Let's go," the rider above us said. Freezy's fingers drifted to her throat with a terrified,
"What? We're just travelers."
"Simple travelers, sir," I said leaning more heavily on my cane than I needed to, "We don't wish to cause you or your men any trouble. We have nothing to offer you."
"Please," the man on horseback said, "Do as they command. We're travelers too."
We walked between the twin lines of soldiers, every face scorched and dirty, and every reddened weary eye turned toward us. At first I thought the men were whispering as we passed, then I realized its uniformity. It was a prayer, its words obfuscated by the howling wind. We walked up to the carriage where the bald man with bulging eyes motioned for us to ascend before he disappeared inside.
With a look at Freezy I knocked my hoof twice on the way up the stairs, entering the darkness of the carriage within. Freezy closed the door behind us.
Inside was a small room with a stairway off to the side leading up and a blue cloth covered doorway on the opposite wall. There was talking coming from the curtain beyond. Cedar oil incense hung heavy in the room, overpowering my senses with the smell of far off and exotic lands. Nine candles were arranged along the staircase leading up, and silks and rugs covered every surface with jingling bells hanging from their edges.
"There," the bald man said pointing, "He's in there."
From beyond the curtain I could hear an old man talking. It was a powerful voice, aged by drink and sand to the sage withered husk of a near ancient storyteller,
"I don’t know what’s there now, as I never could bring myself to return," it said slowly, "I suppose after so many years, with the radiation dispersed, it now is like it was when we first spied the valley." I passed the room, my approach softened by the carpets underfoot. Cautiously, my hand passed to the edge of the curtain, pulling it aside as the voice continued, "And if someone hasn’t found a way to tame the fires there, you may still find a field of burning wheat."
I looked beyond that silk veil and saw that the room didn't have one man, but a small congregation dressed in white. The old man sat at the opposite end of the room. He was seated in a throne of dog skin, massive aged hands resting on a weathered sword. Each breath he took was labored - weighted, so it seemed, by every man he led. He had hanging at his neck a pair of shattered glasses. Leaning against his throne, wrapped in leather cord and adorned by velocitrops tooth, was an ancient hunting rifle.
But the thing that most caught my attention were the eyes. Those eyes watched me enter, long creases in cheek and brow, torn by time. The whole of his face was framed by a long dramatic white beard, braided along its edges and wrapped in places by leather strips. The armor he wore appeared to be ornamental, but it held together what the desert had left of his body with dented and cut steel.
At his feet, arranged around the room, sitting with feet tucked under dirty knees were four figures of varying age. A girl of about sixteen, a boy that could have been her twin brother, and a slightly older couple sitting leaning against the wall with straight backs. Their pale shining heads turned as I entered without sound, wearing thin faces drawn long beneath bulbous scalps. I walked into the midst of the congregation, pulling a chair from a nearby desk and sat down heavily.
"And here they are," the man said holding his palm upturned toward me, coughing into the other one, "What are your names?"
I looked to Freezy, who shrugged and shook her head.
"My name's Adon Still," I said, "but for the past few weeks I've been going by the name Riderman."
"Don't want to tell you my name until I know what's going on here," Freezy said.
"You're Freezy Breezy," the old man said, "And my name is Ebon. Ebon the Waste."
"Plexis Ebon?" Freezy said, her eyebrow cocking, "Destroyer of the East Scourge?"
"You're talking about that city we destroyed," Ebon said leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his metal stomach, "I'm sorry to say, but yes. I had a hand in that. They came across the dunes far outside their territory and tried to take something from us."
"Stories of fallen cities often reach welcome ears where I'm from," Freezy said. The white faced disciples at Ebon's feet had
turned now, their large eyes studying her. She noticed them, and fell silent.
"No," Ebon said, "I've said all I will on that matter today. Freezy, you will be glad to know we ran into your father and sisters on our way here. They were healthy. We told them about our quest and they were most cooperative. And they were rewarded with food and supplies to last them a month."
"That's nice of you, but I don't understand," Freezy said, "Why?"
"Ebon the Waste helps who he can," Ebon said.
"So what brings you this far North?" I said, twirling my cane between my hands, trying to look as casual as possible, "There's nothing in the Northlands."
"Isn't there?" Ebon said grunting as he righted himself in the throne. He held his hands outstretched in front of him and let the two eldest of his disciples grab his wrists and pull him up. With a lethargic grunt the heavily armored man stood, walked to the desk on the far side of the carriage room, "Something fell to the Dustlands, and we're here to make sure it isn't lost."
He leaned on the desk, pulling a drawer from within and pushing the button on a device on the table. It clicked and stopped its slow mechanical spinning. He took a reel from the top of the device, placing it in the desk and put a different spool on, running the strip from end to end and pressing play.
The device started beeping wildly, a harsh stream of sound scratching and peeling from it. Ebon held up a finger, pointing down at the box,
"Packets of digital data. Turned to sound and then to radio wave. Then broadcast to Earth over the course of several years. It's been in space waiting for someone to receive its call and send a signal back, to tell it where to land."
The spool twisted and whirred. The methodical beeping and crunching of audio cracked out in quick bursts.
"It took a long time to understand what it was doing, what it all meant. In truth, we didn't even have a computer to process the information."
