Vagrants (Vagrants Series Book 1)

by Jake Lingwall

  Talon grunted and stepped away with a small bow. He started shouting orders a moment later, his deep voice carrying throughout the small camp.

  “Jeff, is it?” Jane asked, extending her hand out to him.

  He glanced at Carlee, but she didn’t give him any other direction, so he stepped forward and shook the girl’s hand. She had a firm grip, despite her youth and stature.

  “That’s me.” He tried to be confident even though he didn’t remember anyone telling her his name.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jane said. She sounded like she meant it even if her voice was still distant. “Do you plan on accompanying us?”

  “You don’t know?” Jeff asked. She seemed to have the answers for everything so far. He didn’t mean it as an insult, but he didn’t mean it politely either.

  “Your decision leads to many destinations.”

  “That’s some real vague—”

  Carlee elbowed him in the side, where his missing arm left him exposed. He grunted and glared at Carlee, but she was still focused on Jane.

  “You must make your choice now.”

  “What are the destinations you see in your crystal ball?” Jeff asked.

  “I cannot see the future, Jeff.”

  Some shouting began behind him, and Jeff turned around to see two vagrants returning to the camp. They had been running for a while, from the looks of them. Both of the men were carrying large weapons, none so large as Stefani’s but big enough to blow a gaping hole in a leech if one stumbled into the camp.

  “It is time to leave,” Jane said. She smiled at him and stepped away calmly, moving toward one of the largest antigravity vehicles. It was now piled high with boxes of supplies. Jeff looked around to see the air rippling over another vehicle as the vagrants made more boxes appear on the tops of their vehicles. It was chilling to see objects appear out of thin air; it defied everything he had ever known.

  “Do you want a ride or a gun?” Carlee asked.

  “Hanging around with vagrants gets people killed,” he said.

  “It does,” Carlee said. “If you prefer your chances here with the Apostles on their way, I won’t question you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away from here.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Wherever Jane takes us.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “Load up!” Talon shouted, and vagrants around the camp started jumping onto the backs of the antigravity vehicles. The one that Carlee had created out of thin air was one of the smallest in the fleet, but it was still twice the size of the old broken-down one the mayor had been riding on.

  “Get in the back of the vehicle,” Carlee said as she climbed into the floating vehicle she had materialized earlier.

  “Listen to the lady,” Stefani said as she passed him.

  “I—”

  “You’re not stupid,” Carlee said. “You’re going to die no matter what. You might as well come with us and try to do some good before you go.”

  In the back of his head, he could hear Chad and everyone else who had ever cared about him enough to give him life advice shouting that going with vagrants was a bad idea. Not all people were hunted by the Apostles, but the vagrants were. That meant that any rational human being who encountered vagrants either killed them or got as far away as they possibly could. But Chad was dead.

  Jeff hobbled forward and mostly fell onto the bench on the far side of the floating transport. Before he was settled, the vehicle shot forward once again, using technology far beyond his comprehension to suspend itself several feet from the ground as it rocketed out of the old downtown.

  The noise of the wind was blocked by a nearly transparent force field that activated as soon as they started moving. Stefani lounged in the back of the vehicle next to piles of supplies, eating what looked to be freshly cooked hamburger. For the first time, he realized just how empty his stomach was.

  “What would you like to eat?” Carlee asked from where she was seated across from him. The landscape whisked away behind them at frightening speed.

  “Who’s driving?” Jeff asked. The women seemed so relaxed that he tried to make it sound like he wasn’t concerned about the fact that they were moving at a high velocity with no one steering the vehicle.

  “No one,” Carlee said. “You’ll need to place your order quickly. I won’t be able to press you anything if you wait much longer. We’ve already pressed here; they’ll track us if we do it again later.”

  “A pizza?” He wasn’t sure if he was being naive for asking for such a complicated meal, but it was the first thing that came to his mind.

  “Good choice,” Stefani said.

  He looked over just in time to see Stefani tossing him what looked like a rock. He caught it with one hand and looked at it curiously.

  “Don’t,” Carlee said.

  “You better set it down,” Stefani said.

  Jeff dropped the rock like it was going to explode. A moment later, it was gone, replaced with a steaming-hot meat-topped pizza, resting on a metal plate.

  “Ah!” Jeff tried involuntarily to get away from the pizza, but there was nowhere to go. He flailed like a child being attacked by a fly, sending the pizza flying to the floor of the transport.

  Stefani was beside herself with laughter, and Jeff looked over at her with amazement. He was too startled to be upset, but she acted like it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. After seeing the way she toted her gun around, it was odd to see her so lighthearted.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeff said as he looked down at the mess the pizza had made in their vehicle.

  “Don’t be,” Carlee said. “It’s not your fault. Pressing can be a lot to take in at first.”

  “You could say that.”

  “I’m going to get rid of that and press you a new pizza on your lap, OK?” Carlee asked.

  “Umm . . . sure.” He wasn’t sure if he was still hungry, especially for food that shouldn’t exist, but his mind was far past the point of making rational decisions.

  “Just stay calm,” Carlee said. She closed her eyes, and the air around the fallen pizza twisted, and the precious food dissolved into a pile of dust. He concentrated on controlling his breath as a fresh pizza appeared a split-second later on his lap.

  “Holy—”

  “Mind if I share?” Carlee said. “I pressed enough for the both of us, I think.”

  Carlee casually lifted a slice from the serving dish on his lap and took a bite. She chewed it and smiled, as if to show him that the food wasn’t toxic. He wasn’t sure he believed her. Something about the situation set Stefani off into another fit of laughter.

  “It’s good,” Carlee said. “You should eat.”

  Jeff forced a smile and awkwardly grabbed a slice with his hand and slowly moved it to his mouth. It smelled divine. His stomach ached for a bite, and his mouth watered, even if his brain was telling him he shouldn’t trust it.

  “He’s almost as bad as you were,” Stefani said.

  “I was worse,” Carlee said.

  “You might be right,” Stefani said. “But you were never scared of food. Everything else, sure, but never food.”

  Jeff looked over to Stefani and defiantly took a massive bite of the warm pizza. It was too good for the dark world he lived in, and he basked in every nuance of its flavor. Food was scarce and not varied in Fifth Springs. He’d only had pizza once before, but it had never tasted like this.

  “You like?” Carlee asked.

  “It’s amazing!”

  “Carl is quite the cook,” Stefani said. She had stopped laughing, and she had already finished her hamburger. She looked perfectly content, a far cry from the jaded warrior who had helped to rescue him. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, apparently ready for a nap.

  Jeff devoured the entire pizza, except for the three slices that Carlee ate. The landscape outside of their transport continued to whisk by at speeds he hadn’t thoug
ht possible for humans. Growing up in Fifth Springs, he had only ridden on a moving vehicle three times, and those had been slow, bumpy rides across the community on the mayor’s antigravity vehicle.

  Thinking about the mayor and the braves renewed his rage. They hadn’t used the vehicle for anything but saving themselves. All of the weapons of Fifth Springs had sat silently in the hands of the cowards while good people had died.

  “The transport can drive itself,” Carlee said. “I just set it to follow the vehicle in front of us.” It was the first time she had spoken since they had started eating.

  “I see.” Her comment was more interesting than his simple response implied, but he was still trying to figure how to be comfortable around vagrants.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Everything,” he said almost immediately. “None of this is as it should be.”

  “You may be right about that.” She looked at him with enough compassion that it made him feel uncomfortable.

  “I don’t need any pity.”

  “You weren’t getting any. I don’t pity the living.”

  “Then you must be full of pity.”

  She nodded thoughtfully and looked away from him. It only took a few moments of silence for him to regret saying it. Losing loved ones was the new normal. It didn’t make it hurt any less when it happened.

  Mountains had rapidly grown in the distance, and now they loomed over the vagrant caravan of antigravity transports. They had flown by small towns and wasted cities, but the vehicles hadn’t slowed. He didn’t know how far they had traveled, but he knew the distance was farther than he had ever expected to go in his life. Their caravan pivoted, racing south now, parallel to the massive mountains in front of them. He replayed the events of the last day over in his mind, again and again. Each time, it was harder to believe than the last.

  “Handsome is still here, huh?” Stefani said sleepily a while later.

  “Couldn’t jump out,” Jeff said, tapping the translucent shield above him. “Force field, right?”

  “How are the missing limbs feeling?”

  “They are missed,” Jeff said. Stefani’s sense of familiarity was unexpected, and it might have angered him before, but he appreciated it now. It was better than her complaining to Carlee about wasting time by keeping him alive. In fact, now that they were safe in the transport, she seemed like an entirely different person.

  “Carl still asleep?”

  “I think so,” Jeff said. “But it could be just one of your vagrant magic tricks or something.”

  “I wish there was a way to press myself to sleep . . . unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Magicians never reveal their tricks.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s just how the saying goes.”

  “Probably because then they would be out of a job,” Jeff said. He’d always been reluctant to teach anyone else in Fifth Springs how to fix technology, partially for that reason, but mostly because he didn’t really know how he did it. He would just tinker with things until he figured it out. That was a hard method to teach.

  Stefani chuckled and straightened in her seat.

  “Do you know how much longer we’ll be traveling?” Jeff asked.

  “I’m not sure. We don’t usually move this much at once. I guess those Apostles were pretty hot on our tail back there.”

  “Won’t they track us?”

  “They’ll try,” Stefani said. Her relaxed tone was infectious. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked about pressing. Most people want to ask about our miracles, as they call them, want to know how it all works.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you couldn’t handle it, and we’re slowing down,” Stefani said as she got to her feet. “You’ve got bigger things to worry about. Jane is going to want answers.”

  “What answers?”

  “She’ll want to know why an Apostle left you alive and no one else.”

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know why any of it happened.”

  “Good luck telling her that.”

  5 ASPIRATIONS

  “You are lucky to be alive,” Jane said.

  “I guess that’s a matter of perspective,” Jeff said. “Many think the dead are the lucky ones.”

  He was fairly certain this wasn’t a nightmare. Carlee was too pretty for that, and it was far from being worthy of a dream. His family was still dead, and his best friend had left him for dead. But here he stood, recounting most of the ordeal to the blond oracle.

  “And you’re certain others may have survived?”

  “I . . . believe so. Obviously, I didn’t see them. But I know I could have escaped if things had gone differently. It didn’t seem interested in being too thorough. I’m confident that at least some people escaped.”

  He didn’t tell them about the mayor, Sean, or the braves. In fact, he told them as little as possible. It was too personal, and he didn’t trust them yet. In his heart, he knew that Dane had made it out. He could feel it, but he didn’t present that as proof.

  “I see. The Apostle you encountered is a particularly heinous creature—Horus, offspring of Orion, one of the twelve originals,” Jane said.

  Jeff nodded intently. He didn’t particularly care which monster it was that had destroyed his people—they were all the same to him—but he already felt like he had been too loose with his mouth, especially here, in front of the gathered vagrants.

  They were congregated around a small energy cell that was configured to look and act like a small fire. It was late, but Jane insisted on hearing his account of the attack on Fifth Springs. He wasn’t sure why, as she seemed to know most of the details already. Of all the vagrants he had met, Jane was the one he wanted to be the farthest away from.

  “But that doesn’t interest you, does it?” Jane asked.

  “How do you know that?”

  His question earned a slight chuckle from Stefani, which was the first audible clue that any of the people sitting around the fire were still alive.

  “That answer wouldn’t interest you,” Jane said, “because it starts with the history of the Apostles that bore you so.”

  She stood as if the conversation was over. Talon, the man who made Canon look like a child, stood with her. Jeff had never backed down from a fight before, but Talon would push his confidence if it came to it.

  “Jane,” Carlee said, standing as well. “What are we going to do with Jeff?”

  Talon looked annoyed by the question, but Jane didn’t seem surprised by the interruption. She looked over to Carlee, and the two shared a brief look. There was a connection between them that Jeff hadn’t observed with any of the other vagrants.

  “You would have him stay with us?”

  “I would,” Carlee said. “I believe he would benefit from our company.”

  She picked her words carefully. It seemed that there was more to the conversation than Jeff understood. But that was hardly a new occurrence with the vagrants. Nothing they did or said made sense. Only Stefani’s flippant comments partially bridged the communication gap.

  “He’s a liability,” Talon said. His solid voice was unexpected to more than just Jeff.

  “Our wounded friend is an enigma to me,” Jane said. “I will search on it this evening. Please do the same, and we shall make that decision before we leave tomorrow.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow?” The Islander man whom Jeff had seen earlier asked the question. He sat next to two men who were older than Jeff and appeared to be identical. They even shared the same look of wanting to burn what was left of the world to ashes.

  “There are many questions this evening, which lead to many paths. Currently, I plan on us helping the people of Dallas next.”

  The vagrants gathered around the fire were not silent anymore. They didn’t go as far as to shout their prote
sts, but the murmurs were loud enough to get the message across. Jeff didn’t know much about the world or history, but he knew of Dallas. Everyone did. It was the only human city that had survived the Ascension and the following wars. It was an extremely exclusive community that existed outside of the comparatively feeble coalition of humans. No one was allowed to enter or leave the land surrounding the city.

  And no one was desperate enough to try to sneak in because Dallas was personally ruled and protected by Petra, the only Apostle Jeff knew by name, except for Bud.

  “Dallas?” Stefani was apparently the only vagrant brave enough to question to Jane.

  “Yes, that is correct,” Jane said. “Many paths are yet to be made, but right now, I believe it is where we should go.” She nodded her head and walked away toward her tent. Talon followed after her, taking a step for every three or four Jane took.

  “Well that’s great for you, Handsome,” Stefani said.

  “When did you start calling me Handsome?” Jeff asked.

  “After I figured out that Carl didn’t want me calling you gimp, or pirate leg, or hollow head, or lopsided, or—”

  “I get it,” Jeff said.

  “Are you sure? Because I could go on.”

  “No one doubts that,” Carlee said, entering the conversation. The vagrants buzzed in small groups around the fire, likely discussing Jane’s announcement.

  “Seriously, though, he is lucky,” Stefani said. “After that bomb drop, no one is going to be thinking or talking about our unsymmetrical new friend.”

  “Or what Horus is doing this far south,” Carlee said.

  “We have an Apostle close to us, so why not go to the one place we know we can find another?” Stefani asked.

  “She hasn’t led us astray yet,” Carlee said. “I trust her.”

  “And what if she decides Jeff gets to stay in Dallas?”

  “If he were so lucky, I wouldn’t fight it. Now, despite my nap, I’m tired. Stefani, can you show Jeff to a sleeping bag?” Carlee asked.

  “Sure thing, boss,” Stefani said as Carlee walked away purposefully to her tent.

  “I don’t think I understand her,” Jeff said.

  “Oh, boy,” Stefani said. She turned toward their transport, and Jeff followed after her as best as he could. It was difficult to keep up with her because he was still getting used to his new leg.