Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  Shoup provided them when he stepped next to her. “Well, hell—Superman’s fuckin’ fortress.”

  Jakes turned on him, silenced him with a look, before he turned to Carrie. “You got any better ideas? And I don’t want to hear Emerald City.”

  She glanced at him, wondered if he might be joking, but he didn’t look like it. Pushing a hand into her hair, she shook her head. “At a guess? It’s not natural. Ideal shapes, no irregular crossing, no fragments. The Naica Mines—”

  “The what?” Jakes asked, voice sharpening.

  “Naica. In Mexico. When they drained it to mine deeper, they uncovered selenite crystals…gypsum, some of the crystals are over a meter in diameter and the main cavern’s half this size. This…this dwarfs everything. It has to be deliberate. I’ve seen synthetic quartz grown with hydrothermal synthesis—nothing on this scale. But it’s the light that’s really extraordinary. Chemical luminescence. The minerals must be absorbing photons from somewhere—there must be a low level radiation in the atmosphere. Nothing dangerous but enough to excite the electrons in the—”

  “Brody?”

  Turning, she blinked at Jakes. She’d slipped back into old habits, had forgotten everything but assembling and conveying information. It hit like a punch to her lungs how they might never get back to a world where reason mattered more than brutal survival. Throat tight, she looked away from Jakes, tracked Temple as he strode the path ahead, walking along a crystal bridge over an endless black abyss. What she wouldn’t give for six months to document this place—breakthroughs lurked here that would turn the science she knew on its head. She could feel them simmering in the crystals, a low level vibration that thrummed in her chest.

  “Defensible,” Shoup said, gesturing with his gun to the meter-wide bridge. “We need, we can blow that fucker.”

  She shook her head and leaned back to stare at the soft glow of the crystalline ceiling. “I don’t think we’ll need. We were working on perfecting EM pulses for subsurface mapping—the issue always came down to how do you handle highly conductive materials that return false reads. That’s got to be why they created this place—it’s a shield.” She turned to Jakes, started to gesture with her hands, fought to keep it to terms he’d actually hear. “It’s like radar. You sent out waves to find objects that’ll bounce back a read. To make a stealth plane, you eliminate the bounce, use materials that absorbs wave or deflects it. If these crystals are conductive—and I’ll bet they are, far more so than us—hit this with something to detect electrical activity…they deflect everything.” She waved again at the sloping crystals. Her fingers itched for a note pad. Was there something about these crystals that the Walker’s didn’t like—were they unable to feed off the chemical luminescence here? What could she use for materials analysis? Hadn’t Gideon mentioned something about how he’d been measuring ley lines? Had any of his equipment come through with him?

  Turning, she looked for Gideon to ask, saw he’d slipped ahead and had caught up with Temple. The two men stood facing each other, silent and staring, shoulders tensed. Temple’s hands tightened into fists. He glanced at them and back to Gideon.

  With a muttered word that fell indistinct into the open space, Gideon turned, strode away, deeper into the cavern. Temple watched him for a moment, his face set. Temple glanced back at Carrie—she had a quick image of Gideon in a room near water—but Temple turned to the side before the mental picture could solidify. He waved to someone out of view.

  The woman stepped next to Temple first, followed by a child, both with dusky skin that matched Temple’s, but wearing bright robes in a soft fabric. Others followed, eased out from behind crystal walls, from hidden corners and crevices—children mostly, some women, one or two elders, one man leaning on a crutch. Carrie stared at the careful expressions, caught the glints from belted knifes. Throat dry, heart beating fast again, she heard the double click of two safeties switching off.

  She put her hands up and out, shot a warning glance at Jakes, but he wasn’t looking at her. Stepping forward, she forced a smile that didn’t feel all that comfortable and didn’t last all that long.

  Stares flickered to her—dark eyes locked on her. Curious caution stroked into her mind in rapid, gentle flickering whispers. In a blur, she saw how this world had once been.

  Vibrant cities and thriving cultures—buildings decorated with family banners, streets crowded, rushing people, spreading suburbs, vast orchards, forests, open land where something like a yak roamed, tamed animals, wild ones, clashes between mountain dwellers and plains farmers, and the hurried rush of those who’d left the old ways for developing tech and cities. The imagery washed through in a flow, years passing in seconds.

  And then that world burst apart.

  She saw it in flashes. Lightning shot up from one building in the city center, from the roof with dual spires. The Rift opened, a slash in the sky. Edges—sharp balls of light—rained down. Chaotic disorder. Ruin, death, panic—run, hide, fight. A blinding light flooded the sky from that same building—the one with spires—and the world fell into shapeless gray.

  Shaking, Carrie managed to pull back from overwhelming despair. Turning away, she grabbed a deep lungful of air. The sights shut off as if she’d turned off a news broadcast, so did the misery, the swamp of aching loss. Heart thudding, shaking inside, she glanced at Shoup who stood still, staring blankly at Temple and the others. She looked at Jakes and told him, “This is it. This is what’s left of their world.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The crystals are the key. They made it difficult for the Walkers to find us. Unfortunately, difficult doesn’t mean impossible. And I wish I’d thought of hat before we realized the Walkers were hunting something specific—me. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

  Temple settled them with his family. Wife and daughter—and Carrie caught a brief image in her mind that Temple had had another child, in another house, another time. A boy verging on manhood, slim, tall, the look of his father in his wide-set eyes. The thin young face vanish in dazzling lights. She blinked—and knew he had not survived. He’d been taken by Walkers. She met Temple’s stare. Sorrow drew his mouth down in terrible grief. Temple turned away, pulled out large, flat pillows that he threw onto the floor.

  A fire burned in the center of the room, small and bright, the light amplified by the shallow stone bowl that held it. Phosphorescence glowed soft on one wall and Carrie trailed her hands over the material, had her finger glow briefly with bits of mineral that stuck to her skin. She had no way to ask about it, not with Gideon absent, so Carrie sat. Jakes didn’t.

  He gave a nod to Shoup and the two stepped into the tunnels that led from the main room of Temple’s living area, headed deeper into the back. Recon, Carrie knew. Those two wouldn’t be happy until they had the layout of Temple’s place down cold. For once, she didn’t mind the military mind-set at work. She wanted this place to be safe, too.

  Jakes came back, shoulders relaxed, face no longer fixed and focused. Shoup strode in, weapon slung over his shoulder, grinning and buckling his belt. “Indoor plumbing. God bless runnin’ water.”

  Carrie didn’t want anything, but she stood and walked back to where the guys had come from, to another smaller cave. Water slid down a wall, cold and spring-fed, she guessed. She washed, used the hole opposite, washed again, gave in and stuck her head under the water. Stripping down, she washed everywhere she could reach with her hands and no soap, dried herself with moss that lay in a stone bowl near the entrance. The moss itched, left a faint citrus scent. She found fresh, folded clothes on the floor of what seemed to be the main hallway, so she changed into dry soft trousers and a light, plain tunic that was snug, but almost fit. The trousers also had deep pockets, not that she had anything to go into them.

  She walked back to the main room in bare feet, carrying her shoes, her dirty clothes folded and in her arms. She had no idea what to do with them. Temple took them from her, disappeared down another tunnel. That left Carrie watch
ing Jakes and Shoup watch after Temple.

  “Fuc—”

  “Shoup!” With a shake of his head, Jakes gestured to Temple’s daughter, sitting opposite them, staring with the wide, solemn eyes of someone who has seen too much too young.

  Eyeing the child, Shoup muttered, “Just gonna say, freakin’ rabbit maze.”

  Carrie sat next to them on one of the pillows, folded her legs underneath her. “Don’t worry. I don’t think they even have vestigial ears. I’d wondered about Temple, but it’s obvious now that he’s not unique.”

  Twisting, Jakes stared at her. “What?”

  With a nod to Temple’s wife—and she was going to have to find a name somehow—Carrie made eye contact with the woman. The woman had been beautiful, still had remnant traces in high cheekbones and elegant lines. But sorrow had cut deep, haunted her eyes, and hard living had worn anything fresh or soft from her skin. Under soaring eyebrows, dark golden eyes fixed on Carrie. Movement slow, deliberate, Carrie pushed her hair back over one ear, tilted her head so the woman could see.

  In her mind, Carrie pictured an ear. The little girl grinned. The woman smiled as well, so Carrie knew she must be stumbling worse than an idiot at sending mental images. But the woman pushed back long dark braids and turned her head to show smooth unscarred skin over the soft plain of her skull.

  “They’re telepathic,” Carrie said.

  “Son-of-a...”‘

  “Shoup, I don’t give a freaking good night if that kid can’t hear. You watch your mouth, Airman.”

  Nodding, Shoup muttered something close to acknowledgment. Ignoring him, Carrie leaned forward. She had no idea how to picture her name other than as letters…or as someone carrying. She thought of Gideon, of carrying him down to that bed with Temple. The woman nodded, and a picture came back of dark clouds, icy rain. The woman turned, put a hand on the little girl’s head and Carrie smiled at the next image.

  “Her daughter is…Daisy or Flower? I think her name is Winter. Or maybe Rain. They don’t have spoken words for their names, only images.”

  “Freakin’ mind readers,” Shoup muttered.

  “Are they?” Jakes asked. He leaned forward as well, hands resting on his knees, body tensed.

  Carrie glanced at him and realized what he had to be thinking—the overly paranoid military mind-set at work. She shook her head, tried to figure out how to reassure him these people presented no threat. “They don’t have a spoken language. I’m not even sure they have a written one, but they had a sophisticated civilization which implies complex levels of communication. But this…it seems more like…sending and receiving pictures. It’s not…why would they want or need your every thought? Even if they are picking up that much, context would be required to make sense of it. We all tend to conceptualize—think in images. Memory flashes. Then we apply the construct of language. Words become symbols for us. So, unless you concentrate and visualize, I’m pretty sure any top secrets you have are safe enough.”

  She glanced at Rain, pictured Gideon and Temple as she’d seen them, sitting opposite each other, eyes open and staring. Communicating. She couldn’t hold the image, and the child grinned again, turned to run to Temple as he strode back into the room.

  Carrie glanced at Jakes. He nodded back to her, a short bob of his head, but he stayed tense and when the food came out he didn’t eat much. Carrie did.

  Temple and Rain served a paste-like substance that had to be a root or tuber, not quite mashed potatoes and not quite mushroom puree. Temple sprinkled dried leaves on top. Something like dried sticks that tasted like spiced chicken wing bones made up the rest of the meal. Temple poured water into crystal bowls and something fermented into other bowls he passed along. Carried sniffed at the fumes and kept to the water and her meal. She ate with her fingers, ravenous once she tasted the food. Gideon had been right—this was an acquired taste, but it grew on you fast enough when you were already half-starved. Jakes passed his drink back to Temple, but Shoup shot it down, shrugged afterwards and said, “Dog sweat.” Carrie lifted her eyebrows at him and he grinned back. “Moonshine? Hooch? Never found a place yet that didn’t have the grace of hard liquor.”

  Temple poured a second round for everyone and Carrie glanced at the bowls left out beside the fire. The ones that hadn’t been touched.

  She felt a stare on her and looked up to find Temple watching her. A quick image flashed of Gideon, alone near the cavern entrance. She frowned at Temple—why had he given her that? And did the ‘why’ even matter? She had unfinished business with Gideon. Maybe Temple had picked up on that. She also sensed that time might be running out on them. Gideon had said the openings to the Rift became less frequent the longer you were on this side. There might be a clock running on their ability to cross back home. If nothing else, they needed to get back home before the Walkers did.

  Joints aching, muscles protesting, Carrie rose.

  Jakes sat up, his hand going to the weapon at his side, the gun Carrie had given back to him. “Where—?”

  “Take it easy. And don’t shoot anyone while I’m gone.” She forced dry sarcasm into the words, wasn’t sure it hid any of her exhaustion. Picking up the bowls—one of mashed something with a half dozen meat sticks in it and one of water—she glanced at Jakes. He stared back at her and she wondered if he’d come along or order Shoup to go with her. But Jakes only glanced at Temple and looked back at Carrie again.

  “No promises,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Be back in an hour or we come for you.”

  “And I know that’s how long…how?” she asked.

  With a shake of his head, he unbuckled his watch, handed it over. “I want that back when you come back.”

  Juggling watch and bowls, she nodded and went to find Gideon.

  #

  Gideon watched Temple settle Carrie and the others. He watched from a distance, kept himself to himself. Temple’s people stayed far enough away from him. They respected privacy, for all that they could share their thoughts—they didn’t push into his mind, although he caught glimpses of the quick history lesson shared with Carrie, Jakes and Shoup. A rapid indoctrination so they’d know how important it was no one else died. He wasn’t sure that lesson would take.

  Hell, he wasn’t sure of anything, except he’d failed again.

  Moving away, he walked back to the entrance, stood guard—debated going out on his own. But he’d done that before and Temple had had to come after him. They’d both almost died that time, so he’d learned better. But he hadn’t learned enough. And none of it helped with the hollow emptiness eating a hole in his chest. Staring out at struggling desolation, at dust swirling up into thin columns, at a city that wasn’t quite empty, he clenched his fists. Stars would pop soon, faded from what these people had done to their atmosphere. But two years ago he’d been unable to see anything, so it must be getting better. Something had to be.

  “Where are you?” he muttered. He knew, however, that she was beyond his reach. Again.

  He hadn’t been fast enough, still had that damn heartbeat of hesitation when he looked into her face. He could still remember her last scream, her last breath brushing over his face as he grabbed her. He had the scar on his arm from where her hand—sparking light—had latched onto him. And he still needed to get her corpse into the ground so both their souls could rest.

  Pushing out a breath, he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. He went though his mistakes, drilled himself on how he had to do it different next time. Somehow, he had to dig out that instant of freezing regret. Hell, what he had to get was Jake’s gun in his hand. But could he shoot her? Would physical distance help him lay to rest her walking corpse?

  Carrie’s voice, soft and hesitant, jerked him upright and out of his thoughts. “Hey...” She let the word trail and he turned from the entrance. She lifted one of two bowls she held, stepped closer and offered it. “I brought you…well, okay, it’s half excuse and half you probably should eat.”

  He shook his head
. “I don’t—”

  “Can we go someplace? And I don’t mean to…just sitting down would be really good right now. Really, really good.”

  With a nod, he took the bowl from her and took her hand. He led her to the rooms Temple’s people had given him, not far from Temple’s. A small space with a fire pit, bedding, water, and a trickle of glowing light that slid down the wall in a thin green stream. Someone at sometime had carved swirls into the wall, beautiful abstract shapes lit by the phosphorescence, and Gideon wanted to hope that person still lived, had not died with a Walker inside. However, since the room had been given to him, the odds were against that. Carrie glanced around, scooped up a long shard of crystal that had fractured off the wall. She studied it for a moment before pocketing the crystal and putting her bowl down. He did the same before starting a fire.

  He dug the flint and steel from underneath the stone fire pit, showed her how to work them. She watched, eyes bright, had no trouble taking the flint from him and applying it to the moss they burned. It filled the room with smoky incense. With a fire going, he put his back against the one smooth, cool wall, slid down and onto the bedding that served as his couch. He left his wrists braced on his knees. Lifting a hand, he waved it at her and he wasn’t sure what to ask, but he said, “You don’t...we aren’t...?”

  Squatting near the fire pit, she looked at him. “Are you going to eat something?”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t.

  “Mind if I...?” She gestured to the bowl and he shrugged an answer. She dug in as if she hadn’t seen food in days—which was pretty close to the truth. She drank the water as well, refilled the bowl from the spring that wandered down the far wall in a silent trickle and brought it back to him.