Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  Sally will be pleased.

  The master key makes it easy to open room 216 quietly, and I consider slinging Mere over my shoulder and making a run for it. But I don't know what the drugs have done to her; if she wakes up and freaks out, then I'm carrying the equivalent of a sack full of cats. I opt for stealth, though it is going to take more time. I sit and bounce on the edge of her uncomfortable bed until she stirs. Her breathing changes around the third bounce and her eyelids start to flutter. She turns, notices my presence, and opens one eye enough to look up at me. She burrows into her pillow, pulling it over her already messy and limp hair. She mumbles something unintelligible.

  “I'm not a dream,” I say.

  “You have to be,” she slurs. “Otherwise the rest is true too.” I stroke her hair. Other than when I held her out over the railing on the boat, it's the first time I've touched her when she's been aware of my presence. She whimpers slightly, and when she speaks, her voice is muffled by the pillow. “I can't feel anything,” she whispers.

  “It's the drugs,” I tell her.

  “That's what my last boyfriend said.” She giggles and I'm not happy to hear the sound. It's unhinged, disconnected, and we're back to a sack of cats. She's got quite a cocktail screwing with her head. My hands tighten on the edge of her bed, my nails tearing through the sheet and slick cover of the mattress.

  “Let's go somewhere else,” I try. “How about a trip to the spa? We'll have native children rub your feet.”

  “Don't,” she says. She flips over, keeping the pillow over her face. “You're making it worse.”

  I glance toward the door, mentally considering how long I've been sitting here. “I need you to come back,” I say. “I need you to walk out of here.”

  With a sob, she bolts upright and throws her arms around me, burying her face in the crock of my neck. She squeezes me tight and I embrace her awkwardly. “I hate you,” she says and then, without taking a breath, “I've been dreaming about you.”

  “It's just the drugs,” I tell her gently.

  “Before the drugs,” she says with a short laugh.

  I don't know what to say to that, and there's an awkward moment of silence between us. “We should go,” I finally say, feeling like I should be saying something else instead, but my ready supply of snappy one-liners has run out.

  “To the spa?” she asks, a dreamy smile on her lips.

  “Sure,” I reply, grabbing on to anything that'll keep her attention. That'll get her upright, compliant, and heading for the door.

  “What about the others?”

  I hesitate, and even in her addled state, she's aware enough to read my answer in my silence.

  “That's not okay, Silas.”

  This, of all things, is what brings her back to reality.

  “What do you want me to do? Release everyone?”

  “Yes,” she hisses.

  I regret my honesty and am about to reconsider how much I'm going to tell Mere when the light through the observation peephole flickers. I'm off the bed and at the door in a second, but I'm too late. I hear the lock click and the heavy sound of the key being removed. I have a set of keys too, though there is no keyhole on this side, and when someone puts their face up to the observation peephole, I slip one of the keys on my keyring between my fingers and jab it forcefully through the glass port.

  Someone is screaming outside the room as I return to the bed and grab Mere's arm roughly. “So much for stealth,” I say. “Come on. Spa time. Let's go.”

  I kick the door hard, and it comes off its hinges. The guy on the floor with his hand over his bloody eye looks up, other eye wide, and I punch him hard enough to snap several bones in his hand. The other security guard has a Taser, but it's cheaply made and breaks easily. A headbutt lays him out, and then I'm dragging Mere down the hall toward the stairs. The drugs make her clumsy and she stumbles twice before I pick her up and run with her in my arms.

  Half a sack of sleepy cats. It could be worse.

  The staircase is big and open, and it is easier to simply leap down to the landing of the first turn and then again to the lower floor. Mere is heavy in my arms, and she hangs on tight, her face pressed tight against my shoulder, as if she doesn't want to see what happens next.

  The two orderlies who had been watching TV earlier are alert now, and shortly before they spill out into the hall, I hear the distant drone of the alarm and the lights in the hall immediately shift to red. The tone and the color are meant to confuse and disorient any escaping residents, but those parts of my brain aren't in charge right now.

  The first orderly has a black nightstick, and he swings it sharply as he rushes me. I raise a shoulder and let the wooden stick bounce off harmlessly. I drop my shoulder and drive it into his chest, throwing him against the hallway wall. A picture frame cracks beneath him and glass tinkles to the floor. The second guy gets it into his head that if he targets Mere, I'll surrender.

  He's wrong. Very, very wrong.

  I hear a soft pop behind me, and fire explodes across my back. I stagger, nearly dropping Mere, and the hall is filled with a sickly crackling noise as my flesh burns and sizzles. I duck into the break room, depositing Mere on the nearby couch. The chairs scattered around the two small tables are plastic with metal struts, not terribly suitable for what I need. Ignoring the pain crawling up my back, I stagger over toward the counter where several modern appliances are sitting patiently, waiting for someone to put them to work.

  Yanking the pot off the coffee maker, I whirl toward the door and throw the glass container toward the man in the dark suit who is entering the break room, a long-snouted pistol held out in front of him. He sees the coffee pot coming and dodges, but in the seconds it takes him to get out of the way, I get my hands on the microwave and throw it too. It's bigger and heavier, but it flies just as readily. It hits him in the face, and something snaps. He drops like all of his strings have been cut.

  Another gunman is right behind him though. Same goofy looking pistol. When he pulls the trigger, his gun makes a staccato popping noise, hurling tiny round projectiles. They're like paintball pellets, but their contents are much worse. I dodge, moving slowly but more than fast enough to avoid compressed-air-propelled pellets. There's a design flaw someone hadn't considered.

  Realizing the limitation of his weapon, the gunman drops back into the hallway. It's a smart move, forcing me to come through the narrow frame of the door if I'm going to attack him.

  I'm not planning on it, though. There's a tall window on the far side of the room. That's where Mere and I will be going.

  I cross the room and slam the door shut. There's a deadbolt on the inside frame, and I slot it into place. The guy on the floor is still conscious, bleeding heavily from a gash on the side of his head. Grabbing his pistol and shoving it down the front of my pants, I collect Mere from the couch and dash for the window. She shrieks, clawing at my face, as she sees where I'm going, but I hold her tight and jump.

  * * *

  I hit the parking lot, the gravel chattering under my feet. The back door bangs open, and a handful of mercenaries run out. They've got more conventional weapons, and the night fills with the muttering noise of angry bees. Bullets spang off the cars around me, making more of a racket than the suppressed semiautomatic weapons being fired at me. I can't keep running with Mere; not with this much lead in the air. I dump her behind a van, and dart to my right, letting the night swallow me.

  I feel my body loosen as I let the restraints go. We train constantly to keep ourselves in check, to keep ourselves moving in such a way that humans don't freak out when they see us, and it's glorious to let these self-managed shackles fall off. I'm not anywhere near my full ability, not with my veins still fucked up with the chemical agent. Whatever is in the pellet I got spattered with is from the same batch. I can feel it soaking through the fabric of my jacket and shirt, and my skin burns like a thousand ants are all trying to slice pieces of my flesh off.

  There are four of
them and they move like a trained team—two focused on what's in front of them, one on either side, each sweeping their back trail as they move. It's a good tactic and they move well together, but they're too tightly packed. A single grenade could take out all four of them.

  Or a single Arcadian.

  I get a running start and launch myself off the front of a sedan, leaving a big dent in the hood. The closest of the quartet spots me as I sail through the air, but he can't get his gun up in time. My knees shatter every rib in his chest, driving shards of bone through most of his vital organs. Before he even hits the ground, I spring off him and take out the one on my left with a hard strike to his neck that shatters vertebrae. The one standing in front of me is still turning around as I kick him mid-spine, doing more damage than any chiropractic care will ever fix. The last one thinks he knows where I am, but I keep moving, dropping my right arm around his head as I pass. I spin, pulling his upper body in tight to my chest. He stumbles, losing his footing, and I tense my arm and bend at the waist. His neck snaps.

  I don't bother checking them; none of them are coming after Mere and me. I run back to where I dropped her, scoop her up, and head off into the woods.

  It's only as I reach the tree line that I realize there was a silver Mercedes in the parking lot that wasn't there earlier. There's no time to go back and check, and it might be a coincidence. I got what I came for; time to go. I run until my sides ache.

  Mere clings fiercely to me as I run through the woods. I try to dodge low-hanging branches and the trunks of narrow saplings, but I know her dangling feet collide with at least one tree as I speed through the woods. I cross a narrow creek and angle upriver, looking for a suitable place to rest.

  I could have gone back to the road, but that choice would have assumed Ralph was stupid enough to hang around and wait for me. On the one hand, it would have made for an easy getaway; on the other, the silver Mercedes was nagging at me. In the end, I didn't want to be in a car on the roads. Too structured. Too few exits and escapes.

  Plus I'd have to trust Ralph's driving.

  Mere winces as I set her down, favoring her right ankle.

  “Sit.” I indicate a grass-covered mound next to a row of red beech. “Let me look at it.” She complies quietly, and as I crouch to look at her, the pistol shoved in my waistband digs into my hip. I pull it out and set it aside.

  Mere pushes some of her lank hair back from her face, staring at the long muzzle of the gun. I notice that the sleeve of her shirt is ripped in several places. There are similar tears in her pants, closer to her bare feet, and a thin gash along the bottom of her left foot is stained with blood, a few smeared drops like tears.

  My tongue is thick in my mouth, and my hand shakes as I carefully bend her leg so that the bottom of her foot rests against the ground. Out of sight, out of mind. Her right foot is the injured one. That's where I need to be focusing my attention.

  Her ankle is tender and swelling already. I touch the skin, probing gently, and she hisses at me when I prod her too much. “It's not broken,” I announce, wiggling her foot. “We can soak it in the water; that'll help bring the swelling down.” I turn toward the creek, meaning to look for a good place for her to perch for a few minutes, but her gasp brings me around.

  “Your back,” she says.

  “It's fine,” I lie. I have no idea what she sees, but I can guess. There is no pain, which means I've already blocked out the nerve endings, leaving them to die in isolation. The flesh is necrotic, certainly, and given the way my shirt clings to me, I'm sure the melted slurry of skin and fabric isn't pleasant to look at.

  “No, it's not fine,” she argues. Her hands flutter as she talks. “I may be as high as a kite, but I know no one can run that fast—for that long. I saw you throw the microwave at that man like it was a… an empty milk carton. And—” Her hands start to flutter in the direction of my back.

  “There's nothing to do about it now,” I tell her. “Try not to think about it. I'm trying not to.”

  Her gaze returns to the pistol, and I know she's looking at the elongated barrel, and the bulbous shape attached to the back. It's a CO2 pistol—elegant in a way, but cumbersome in many others. The grip of the gun contains the CO2 cartridge, and there's a bulbous clump on the back of the gun where the hammer normally would be. I find the seal on the top and pop the blister open with my thumb. I shake out several of the pellets on the ground, unwilling to even touch them, and Mere leans over to pick one up. “What is it?” she asks, rolling the yellow-green pellet between her fingers.

  I reseal the hopper, and point the pistol at a clump of weeds growing around a small rock. When I pull the trigger, compressed air forces one of the pellets out of the barrel with a hollow pop. The pellet hits the rock, breaks, and its contents spatter on the weeds, which all but burst into flame for as quickly as they shrivel and blacken.

  “Defoliant,” I say.

  “Weed killer?” She stares at the blackened weeds. “But it never works that fast.”

  “You're thinking of herbicides which are a poison. Plants don't come back with herbicides. Defoliants are, like the name, meant to clear cover as quickly as possible. Agent Orange, for example.”

  She focuses on the tiny pellet between her fingers, her face moving through an exaggerated series of expressions. “This is Agent Orange?”

  I offer her a bitter laugh. “No, this is much, much stronger.”

  She shudders and drops the pellet. “And it works on human flesh too.”

  “I doubt it,” I say. Her head swivels around to look at me, and her pupils are still too large. I crawl over to the damp rock, and being careful to not touch any of the chemical stain, I pull it out of the ground. “Touch it,” I say when I return with the chemical-stained rock.

  “What?” She tries to bat my arm away. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Unfortunately, I don't think I am,” I say. “Please. Touch it.”

  “I'm not going to touch it.”

  I grab her hand and force it against the rock. She shrieks and pulls away, freeing herself from my now-loose grip. She tries to slap me with her other hand and I take the blow on my shoulder as I throw the rock away. It bounces into the underbrush where its taint can only hurt other plants.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she yells.

  “Do you feel anything?”

  She slaps at me again as I repeat my question. The words finally penetrate her outrage and she blinks several times before she looks down at her hand. “No,” she says. With a shudder, she wipes her hand on a nearby patch of grass and, as we watch, the stalks brown and wither. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “What is it?”

  “The perfect weapon,” I say.

  It all makes sense now. The lure of the whaling fleet, the aerosol dispersion trap on the processing boat, Secutores and their obvious watchers, the pellet guns: this has all been a test environment set up by whoever is funding Kyodo Kujira.

  They've finally figured out a way to kill us.

  FOURTEEN

  The trees are alight with the fire of dawn by the time we get back to my hotel, and Mere is asleep before I can cover her with a blanket. I lie down next to her—on my side since my back still hurts—and as soon as I close my eyes, most of the day vanishes. When I open them again, the light in the room has changed—the sun is on the other side of the sky now—and Mere isn't in the bed anymore.

  I sit up slowly, feeling an unnatural stiffness in my back. Mere is sitting in the overstuffed wingback chair, dressed only in the white cotton robe that comes with the room. She's reading the morning paper. Some of her hair is damp and her face is clean and pink. I can smell the lavender scent of the hotel's complimentary soap on her skin.

  “You don't breathe when you sleep,” she says.

  My mouth is dry—it's an unpleasant sensation—and when I move, I feel a layer of skin on my back cracking and shifting like loose shards of shale. “I'm a shallow breather,” I say.

  She lo
wers the paper and regards me. Her eyes are clear. Whatever they were doping her with at Eden Park doesn't linger long. “Just because I was drugged doesn't mean I wasn't paying attention. And that's not the only incident either. You picked me up like I weighed nothing and held me over the railing on the Cetacean Liberty. Do you remember that? And I saw Phoebe—”

  “You saw Phoebe do what?”

  “Gus—you remember Gus?—knows some Japanese. I asked him what ‘kyuuketsuki' means.”

  I was more curious about what Phoebe had done, but Mere has a point she wants to make. “What does it mean?” I prompt.

  She folds the paper and puts it on the table. Without a word, she gets up and walks to the heavy curtains that are keeping most of the light out. She yanks them open and the room floods with sunlight. I put up a hand to keep the worst of the glare out. My optics are sitting on the dresser next to the TV. I wish they were a little closer, but I don't move to get them. The light hurts my eyes, but I won't suffer any permanent damage. Not right away, at least.

  “This is stupid,” Mere says with a snort. She walks back to the chair and sits down. “I mean, there you are. Sitting in full sunlight. You came out during the day on the boat too.” She makes a noise in her throat and flaps her hand at my face. “Open your mouth. Show me.”

  “Show you what?” I ask, squinting at her.

  “Let me see your teeth.”

  I stand, my back complaining again, and close the curtains before I grant her request.

  My teeth are much like hers, except—

  “No dental work,” she notices.

  “Why would there be?” I point out.

  A laugh escapes her throat before she can stop it, and she puts a hand over her mouth as if she is embarrassed by the sound. “I'm sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “I don't—this isn't… I'm having a hard time…”