Borderlands: The Fallen

by John Shirley

  Then only two Primals were left, along with their shrieking Psycho Midget jockeys. They circled inside the crater, clockwise and counterclockwise, smashing equipment and heads. One of them unstrapped an explosive barrel from its lower back and tossed it at Crannigan, who ducked under it, so it exploded behind him.

  Crannigan came at the roaring Primal and the cackling Psycho with his Eridian rifle—Crannigan was firing into them, almost point-blank with the Eridian rifle, while another merc was firing at them with the rocket launcher. Two kinds of explosions merged, and the Primals went down.

  The Psychos were dead; the men converged around the Primals and crushed their skulls with the butts of their guns. It was a memorable sound, the crushing of skulls with gun butts. Cal was very much afraid he’d never quite forget it.

  At last it was done. It was quiet, then. Rans Veritas crawled out from his hiding place under an outrunner.

  Cal gagged and rolled over, to look at the sun rising above the rim of the crater. The purifying sun. The sun glared back at him. He closed his eyes and pretended he was back on the homeworld, lying on a beach …

  “Hey kid,” Roland said. “You okay?”

  Cal sighed, opened his eyes, and sat up, looked dully around at the blood and spattered brains and shattered bodies. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “You’re not hit or nothin’?”

  “No, I’d have been trampled, at least, but you pulled me out of the way. Thanks.”

  A gunshot—they both looked over to see Crannigan, pistol smoking, standing over one of his own men. He’d shot the man through the head. He glared at them. “What?”

  “Is that necessary?” Roland demanded.

  Crannigan shrugged. “Yeah. He was too badly hurt. We don’t have regeneration supplies we can spare. Couldn’t take him with me. It’s triage. What was I supposed to do?”

  “I’d have given him my supplies.”

  “I’ll tell you something else—he was our sentry. He dozed off right before they attacked.”

  Roland turned away in disgust. “Whatever. Let’s bury our dead.”

  It took them a couple of hours. The enemy dead they left for the skags and the trash birds.

  The only ones left alive in Crannigan’s camp were Rans, Roland, Crannigan himself, Cal, and one merc, an older guy named Rosco.

  “Hey!” Rosco said. He was a stocky, scarred merc with a flattop haircut and fatigues. “What’s that comin’ outta this Psycho’s head?”

  He pointed at one of the fallen Psychos. They all gathered to stare at the dead Psycho Midget’s body.

  “There,” Rosco said. “You see? In the back. The other Midgets have it too! They all do!”

  Something twisted out of the Psycho Midget’s body, just at the back of the skull—tech of some kind. Something no human being had ever created.

  Something alien.

  I’m only giving you water, you understand,” Berl was saying, “because I need you to not die on me before I figure out how best to kill you dead.”

  “Sure, Berl,” Zac said, taking another drink as he looked at the rising sun. He was just glad Berl had let him out of the ropes; had given him a canteen to drink from. A chance to rest. “I know that.”

  They were sitting up in the rocks, overlooking the plain, Berl a little behind Zac where he could keep an eye on him. They’d spent an uncomfortable night on this shelf of stone under the watchful eyes of Bizzy, who was squatting atop a large boulder nearby, legs sprawling over it to the ground.

  Berl asked, “You figure—that family of yours … they’re alive?”

  Zac turned around and glared at him. “They’re alive. Don’t question that. You can shoot me right here, goddamn you, I don’t care. But don’t say my family’s …”

  Berl gave him a snaggle-toothed grin. “Sure, young feller. Whatever you say. I hope they is. But you, now—”

  “I know, Berl. You told me already. You’re gonna kill me. When you get ready to do it, just do me a favor and shoot me. I really don’t think anybody deserves being melted by Bizzy. If you don’t want to waste the bullet, then bash my head in with a rock. Make it a big one so it’s over fast.”

  “Now don’t start feelin’ sorry for yourself, boy. Tell you the truth, I’m starting to think that maybe it was lucky you did what you did. I was thinking for a few years there, I’d like to go get me some more artifacts. Only, it was too motherbuggerin’ dangerous. Now maybe I got me a way …”

  “What do you do with the artifacts, Berl? They your retirement plan? Save ’em up and sell ’em sometime?”

  “Why, I’m long ago retired. I tried for a long time to find the Vault. Got clues but … couldn’t get close enough. This—this is my Vault. It’s not made by the same alien critters—and that suits me. And them artifacts … I just … I just like those things. You wouldn’t understand. They call to me!”

  “Wait …” Zac looked sharply at Berl. “What do you mean, ‘Now maybe I got me a way.’ Looking at me like that.”

  “You wanted to go there and get some more o’ them alien artifacts, right?”

  “Maybe. I was going to verify the crash site and, if I could do it safely, get one or two. I needed to get a sense of what was there before I could … Dammit, Berl, what have you got in mind?”

  “Fishin’! You ever go fishin’, young fella?” Berl’s chuckle had a particularly evil sound, just then. “I intend to go fishin’ right here on this planet! Using Mr. Smartass Zac Finn for bait!”

  “You’re going to cut me up and put me on hooks?”

  “No, no, I don’t need to kill you. Why, the Ship’ll probably kill you for me! But if I can use you to lure the monitor over to one spot, why, I can slip in the back way and grab me a few things. Then, maybe, if you’re still alive … and you might be … and if it hasn’t screwed with your brain … why, I might let you go. You could go right to hell for all I care, after that—or go off and find your little boy and that sweet squeeze of yours.”

  “Fishing. With me as bait …” Zac turned away so that Berl wouldn’t see his growing fury. Leave it to the cunning old hermit to come up with the most misanthropic way to degrade a man. He had to play along till he got a chance to disarm the old guy. Bizzy had to go off without Berl and hunt now and then. The chance would come …

  But there was another possibility too. Maybe all this was a break, after all.

  Then he looked out across the unforgiving landscape of the borderlands, and he snorted to himself.

  Sure. Tell yourself whatever you want—but this blighted planet is never going to cut you a break …

  “Here you go, boy,” Berl said, tossing him a small bag. “Have some skag meat. And I’ll even give you a nice Primal ball to chew on. Testicles make a man strong, ha ha! We need you strong! You’re gonna need all your strength, Mr. Smartass. You wait and see. Because if you’re not strong and fast—it’ll finish with you, one way or another, real quick and real ugly. Yessir. Real ugly.”

  Marla paced the confines of her cell.

  It was seven paces by five. A shelf was cut from the wall; it could be a bench or for sleeping. On it was a pile of old rags, probably clothing from former prisoners. I guess when you’re taken out of your cell to be eaten, you don’t need clothing.

  The cell was on the corner of intersecting carved-out corridors. The wall behind the bench was about a third of a meter thick, with the corridor on the other side. The other wall seemed carved out of a big piece of stone. The three walls were stone, scored by scratched-in graffiti: Kiss your ass good-bye; I’m going to poison the one who eats me; A Loving God would not have left me here; All Hail the Great Engineer.

  The floor was uneven stone, covered with a thin layer of dirt; a little light came through the steel bars that made up the cell door, from a lantern on a stone shelf in the narrow carved-stone corridor.

  Marla went to the door and tried it, hoping it was loose in its socket, or its lock rusty, but it held firm. She looked down the corridor and saw no other cel
ls.

  Just inside the cell door was a tin bucket, crusted with old waste matter. This was presumably her toilet. Nearby was an identical bucket about half full of water.

  She cupped some water in both hands, smelled it, and made herself drink some. She used another handful to try to clean her face, and press her hair into place. She needed to seem attractive—it was helping her stay alive.

  But again she vowed to herself that she’d die before she’d ever let the tunnel rats use her. After she was dead, the execrable Broncus could do as he liked with her. And probably would.

  “Move back from that door, prisoner!” growled Flemmel, stepping into view around a curve in the stone corridor. He was carrying a submachine gun. He was wearing his gas mask, and she only knew it was him by his voice.

  She took a step back. “Why? You afraid of me?”

  He pushed his gas mask back; it sat there like a hat, so she could see his scowl. He was as pale and chinless as Broncus; his nose was even larger, even more suggestive of an animal snout. One of his eyes was blue and the other brown. His upper incisor teeth were so long they’d cut into his jutting lower lip. “Afraid of you? It is merely a matter of procedure.”

  “You tunnel … people… . are a study in contrasts, Flemmel. Your talk sounds more educated than a lot of people on this planet and you seem to have a pretty good understanding of mechanics. But you’re …”

  “We’re what?”

  She’d been about to say you’re more barbaric than the other people I’ve seen, except maybe the Psychos. Instead, she went on: “You’re isolated down here. How do you maintain your, uh, high standards?”

  “We are descended from those who designed the mines. We are mining engineers. We pass on that knowledge, that speech. We know many things, many things. And you need to know nothing more—except that we know how to flense flesh from bone! So don’t try to tinker with my wingding as you did with Broncus! You cannot get around me!”

  She nodded resignedly. “I know a man of character when I see one, Flemmel. I find some reassurance in the fact that you’re my sentry—you’re guarding me as well as keeping me in here, after all.”

  He blinked. “Reassurance?”

  She turned away, smiling to herself at his bafflement, and went to sit on the bench, keeping her back to him.

  Suddenly, the suppressed emotion of the past day swept over her. She found herself silently sobbing—the weeping too powerful to express itself aloud—and she saw clear mental pictures of Cal, and Zac, on the gray beach of the Homeworld’s polluted ocean, Cal very small, Zac swinging him about by his wrists, the boy laughing. The mental image was more vivid than any holovideo. She could feel the sand under her bare toes …

  “Cal,” she sobbed, trying to speak to the images of her husband and son on the beach. “Zac … Look at me. I’m here …” But Cal tumbled to the sand, laughing, and ran off, Zac smilingly running after him …

  Were they dead now?

  All she knew was, she was in a stone cell, underground, in a place that smelled like a sewage treatment plant, shut away from the sun as well as her family. With only cannibals for company.

  Probably Zac and Cal were dead. So why should she live on without them? Even if the tunnel rats were to spare her—why would she want to live on, here, to bear their hideous, doomed children and slowly go mad?

  Why wait to die? She would never get out of here. Even if she somehow got past Flemmel, the tunnels were surely thronged with these vermin. She couldn’t get past all of them. Why shouldn’t she kill herself right away?

  She could lure Flemmel close and grab his gun—he’d probably shoot her if he did that. That would get it done.

  Idly, trying to decide how best to get herself killed in short order, Marla poked a finger through the rags, vaguely thinking to see if they contained lice. She saw nothing of that sort. They stank, though. Her hand struck a small, hard rectangle under the rags. She exposed it with a flick of her hand—and saw that it was a little notebook in a metal binder. She glanced over her shoulder at Flemmel, who was standing slumped against the wall, across from her cell door, staring at the stone floor, muttering inaudibly to himself. He wasn’t looking at her.

  She looked back at the little book and flipped it open. Instantly, she saw that it was a diary. Most of the pages were ripped away. She’d opened it to the remaining few pages.

  There was a date, from several years earlier, with a question mark after it. And then it read:

  Hymus is coming for another of my fingers today. They seem to have some superstition about my fingers because I’m a technician. They’re very primitive, except for a few little peculiarities. They have odd superstitions. They apparently believe if they eat my fingers, it’ll increase their technical prowess. They let me work on one of their trashy, wired-together mining machines.

  But if they keep lopping off my fingers I won’t have anything to work with—or to write with. I found this empty diary book and this pen in the pocket of an old coat left by a previous prisoner. It’s someone to talk to besides the tunnel rats—I guess I’m talking to myself, and whoever might find this later. Good thing the rats can’t read much.

  I might also use the pen to gouge out Hymus’s eyes at some point, if I’m swift. But I only have two fingers left on my left hand and four on my right, to do it with. Fortunately he gives me a spray of deadener to stanch the pain before he cuts it off. It doesn’t hurt so much. What hurts is despair. It’s strange how physical the feeling of despair is.

  I wonder who Hymus is selling my fingers to? I know he’s eaten at least one himself. I look at him and think of him chewing on my severed finger. He hopes to be the Great Engineer here soon, I understand.

  I hope he chokes on one of my fingers, and dies from it. I’d take such delight in that, were I to see it happen.

  Perhaps I might convince him my finger’s more potent if he bites it off when it’s still attached. Then I can shove it down his throat and choke him …

  But before I do anything that desperate, I must think about the soft stone about the ancient columns. There might be a way to dig at the cell’s corner, and get out to one of the corridors. They do sleep during daylight hours, though it’s always night down here. There are sentries at all times, but I could slip past one or two.

  Probably that’s a dream. But if I give up hope, I die all the sooner. I won’t give them the satisfaction. Keep looking for a way out! Keep looking! It must be there!

  It was signed. Two Finger Frank Finackus.

  Marla stared at the page. Were they going to start lopping off her body parts?

  But something else arrested her attention. There might be a way to dig at the cell’s corner, and get out to one of the corridors. They do sleep during daylight hours.

  Frank Finackus. Had he died here? Or had he escaped from this cell? And—was there a way out?

  Cal was relieved, very relieved, to get out of that crater, away from the stench of death, the memory of skull-crushing crunches …

  “You guys figure out what that thing was?” Cal asked, getting in the outrunner beside Roland. “I mean—that stuff sticking out of the Psycho’s head.”

  “That stuff” had been like jointed worms made of a strange, iridescent metal, short tendrils whipping out from the back of the skull …

  Roland shrugged, starting up the outrunner. “I’m not sure, kid. We got nothing but theories.” He drove up the ramp of sand that led to the edge of the crater, and over into the sunny morning, the light glancing painfully from the glassy surface of the plain. Behind them came Crannigan, Rosco, and Rans Veritas in the only other surviving vehicle, the sandtracker. It was slow, so Roland held the outrunner in check.

  “What kind of theories?” Cal asked, holding on as they bumped over a wide crack in the crude glass surface.

  “Well—Rans has seen skags with implants. Anyway, he says it seems to be implants of some kind. You know, wiring stuck in your head. Like that colony world Singularity where everyo
ne’s sixty percent gear. Cyborg types—I never could stand those snooty bastards. And I never needed any extra anything stuck in my brain. Anyhow, he says it’s the same technology as the crashed ship. It’s the same aliens. But … he says don’t touch it. Not that stuff. It can crawl right up your arm. So they’re not taking it as a sample. Some of the alien artifacts are safe to handle—and some aren’t.”

  “But—did the Psycho Midgets put that stuff in there themselves … or did something put it in there for them?”

  Roland glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “Can’t get anything past you, kid. You’re a quick study. Yeah. Seems like those things were put in there … Rans claims it’s the alien ship itself that does it. Maybe some kind of computer on the crashed starship, see. And it manufactures these gizmos, uses ’em to take control of people and animals, sends ’em out, sometimes, to protect itself.”

  “So it was watching us somehow? It knew we were getting close?”

  “Must’ve been watching us—or listening to transmissions. I don’t know for sure. Rans talks like he knows. But I don’t think he does.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “That’s another good call, kid.”

  Ahead of them the volcano loomed, its lower slopes perhaps twenty kilometers away. Roland had told him the volcano was their destination. It looked like it had been a complete, hollow cone, later broken open on the eastern side, its interior dark and misty. Anything could be waiting in there …

  Cal turned around, looked back at Crannigan and the others, riding in the sandtracker. “We’re getting pretty far ahead.”

  “Yeah. I’m keeping about this distance between us. I don’t trust any of those three. Rosco might be all right. But the other two … I hate to have them at my back.”

  “They need you, after that mess back at the crater. All those men killed. They’re shorthanded now.”