The Nethers

by M. E. Parker

  Rounder laughed. “You chose wrong. Nobody is a better gambler than Ren.” He shrugged. “Except for Megan. But whatever we do, we have to hurry.”

  Sindra drew a two-by-four grid in the dirt. She gathered four stones, and arranged two in the squares on Ren’s side of the grid and two on her end of the grid. “One move per turn. First to get both stones to the other’s starting position wins.”

  “I know how to play. But in Megan’s Point, we call this game sucker’s punt.”

  Sindra went first, a diagonal move of her left stone, recalling the strategy she’d learned in the Swill Pen.

  Rounder kept his eye on the Jonesbridge convoy. “If Myron hadn’t given away my telescope, along with every other thing I had, I might be able to see what’s going on down there.”

  “Yeah, well if Myron hadn’t given it all away, I’d be stuck with those cockrels in Jonesbridge.” Sindra countered Ren’s move. With each turn, Ren blocked Sindra’s strategy. In Jonesbridge, no one would ever play her because no one could beat her, but, as she slid her first stone into position on Ren’s home side, Ren slid her second stone onto Sindra’s.

  “The League it is. Let’s go get that wagon.” Rounder began the trek down the hill.

  “Sorry. I never lose at games. Except when I let Megan win. That’s more of a survival tactic than a game strategy, though.” Ren followed Rounder sideways down the hill.

  “I never lose either.” Sindra wanted a best two out of three, for her pride, and to keep from getting killed or captured by Jonesbridge defense forces.

  “Ren, you and Sindra position on the other side of that embankment.” Rounder pointed to a cliff that jutted out next to the road. “I’m going to the other side of the road. We’ll attack from both directions at the same time, take out the guard and the driver, and stop the mules.”

  Rounder dug through his pack and pulled out the pipe he’d smacked Megan with and two jagged shanks. Sindra and Ren each chose a shank.

  He cycled through several confusing signals: one for attack, another for wait, yet another for stop, all involving his thumb pointing one way or another.

  “We have to take them both out. No survivors. I’ll take the driver. You two get the guard.”

  Keeping low and out of sight, they traipsed over a ridge and into position. Now that they were close enough to see the details, the Jonesbridge firepower cast shadows over any hope that anyone could put up a fight against them. Sindra counted three mule-driven tanks. Twelve bull-nosed overloaders with cannon turrets, five troop transports, two wagons loaded with piss whistles, long-range artillery, and the machine Rounder called a steam walker. The amount of coal and slick they brought made one thing clear: Rounder was right. Jonesbridge had shifted priority from production in isolation to risking everything for something out here in the wasteland of the Nethers.

  The convoy left a cloud in its wake. One mule wagon with coal passed. Rounder gave a sideways thumb.

  “That’s go.” Ren started for the wagon.

  Sindra grabbed her arm. “That’s wait.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is. Look, here comes another wagon.”

  Ren stopped her attack and shot Sindra a sideways glance.

  Hunkered in the shadow of the ridge, they watched five coal wagons roll by, Rounder giving each a thumbs-down. When the last mule-drawn wagon in the convoy disappeared into the cloud kicked up by the machines, a single wagon rattled by, the driver urging the mules. The guard was pushing the wagon from behind as though he could help it go faster.

  “This is too easy,” Ren whispered.

  Rounder flashed a thumbs-up. Sindra ran for the guard as Rounder instructed, but Ren made for the driver. When the guard spotted Sindra he reached for his weapon lying on the coal. In the corner of her eye, Sindra saw the driver fall. She drew her shank, but as her eyes met the guard’s, eyes the same age as hers, Sindra froze. He was a prisoner in life as scared and expendable as her. She couldn’t bring herself to run him through with the shank as Rounder and Ren had pounced on the driver. Rounder climbed over the coal stack toward the guard. Ren ran around the wagon from the other side.

  “Sindra!”

  Rounder stumbled on the pile of coal. He slid down. The mules brayed. The wagon wobbled and lost a wheel, sending the load and Rounder cascading into Ren and under the heap. The guard ran toward the convoy as the mules broke for the ditch by the highway, dragging the wagon by one wheel.

  “What are you doing? He’s getting away.”

  “So what?” Sindra screamed. “What are they going to do? Stop their attack to track down some bandits in the Nethers?”

  “It was the easiest plan. All you had to do was take out the guard.” He pointed with both hands to the broken wagon wheel. Rounder chased after the mules. “And I thought Myron was a disaster.”

  “You know what, Myron would have come up with a plan that didn’t involve killing anyone.”

  Rounder unhitched the mules from their center pole. “Hurry.”

  They each mounted a mule, without time to remove the mules’ collars or bridles, and trotted off the road in scattered directions. The remaining mules ambled up the road.

  Sindra pulled the bridle on the mule’s right side, but the animal did not change course, trotting in the opposite direction from Rounder and Ren. The quick trot, the bounce of the mule’s gait, up and down, sent Sindra toppling off her mount. She hit the ground in a flurry of dust. “Rounder!” Sindra chased Rounder and Ren on foot while her mule continued in the other direction.

  Startled by the steam whistle of an overloader, Sindra looked up to see a scout team doubling back to the hijacked wagon. Rounder galloped up behind Sindra. He dismounted and helped her on his mule before they rode to the valley on the other side of the road.

  He shook his head the whole way, cursing under his breath, half in Gapi. “What is it about you and Myron? What a team you make. A two-slog destruction duo, Chasm-bent on getting everyone killed that’s big enough to die.” Rounder kicked the mule to keep her going. He loaded up on breath to continue his tirade. “How are you still alive? I don’t kill for Megan, but that don’t mean I ain’t still trying to survive. And it sure doesn’t mean I got a problem killin’ a Jonesbridge cockrel. We could’ve had a wagon. A mule team. Could’ve made our way to the League without any problem. These mules are not accustomed to riders. They don’t do well, you see.” He struggled to guide the animal in the direction he wanted her to go. “And sometimes they’ll take to stopping. Just like this. For no good reason.”

  “What? You’ve never messed up a plan? I only kill when I have to. And back there I didn’t have to.”

  Ren trotted up beside them. “Forgive her, Rounder. She’s the pretty one. Not the smart one.”

  Sindra reached over and grabbed Ren’s sash. The mules brayed, circling away from each other.

  “Enough of that.” Rounder sliced his hand through the air. “Mules are getting uneasy.”

  They rode for a while in silence, trotting down the dirt path toward Hardsalt, the settlement where the League commandant had set up operations. According to Rounder, he trained and ran his militia the way an army trained. Each member of the League’s coalition villages sent boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen to spend four years in defense corps. But only three of the original seven settlements remained, and Rounder was confident that they would coalesce into one big town to make their defense more manageable. Megan, Rounder claimed, had gotten a taste of their force when she tried to bring them her leadership a couple of years ago.

  After two days of riding, stopping, riding again, and urging the mules forward, Rounder stopped at a sign with two people shaking hands next to a skull and crossbones. “Hardsalt just up ahead. First thing we gotta do is get these mules some water.”

  As they approached, Rounder held his hand to his forehead to shade the sun. Smoke slithered into the sky from fires that dotted the horizon. He pointed to deep ruts in the grou
nd, wider than the path. “Overloader tracks.”

  “But they were headed for Mesa Gap. It’s the other direction.” Ren hopped off her mule to inspect the tracks. “These aren’t overloaders. They’re mechanized artillery. Long range.”

  “They brought two convoys?” Rounder joined Ren to study other tracks beside the path.

  “I didn’t think Jonesbridge had this much in their arsenal,” Sindra said.

  “They don’t.” Rounder studied the smoke on the horizon, fueled by the structures in Hardsalt. “These weapons ain’t just out of Jonesbridge. It’s coming from the front lines. Back from the war with the E’sters.”

  “Out here? Why?”

  “Ren, you been with Megan a while. What is that energy source she’s talking about? The one she claims Te Yah stole from her.”

  “I don’t know for sure. It’s Old Age tech she found buried in a vault. I didn’t go with her that time.” Ren squinted toward the sacked settlement of Hardsalt. “My guess is Jonesbridge aims on taking Mesa Gap and that power supply for a new order, one without coal.”

  “Mules need water. We need water. I told you we should’ve gone to warn Mesa Gap. We can’t go to Hardsalt now.” Sindra threw her arms in the air. “They haven’t left it unguarded.”

  Rounder tugged on the mule that refused to move. He started down the path on foot. “We can’t stay here. We have to see what’s left of Hardsalt. And yes, Sindra, that means you might have to do some killin’. You got a problem with that, stay here, and die with the mules.”

  “The only thing I got a problem with is you talking to me like I’m a kid.”

  Sindra and Rounder stood opposite each other at an impasse over what course of action to take, opportunities to flee ticking away with no resolution, until Ren began shouting. “They’re coming!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Myron awoke to a smoldering fire pit, flames dead, coals still white. Mah-ré and Gah-té sat across from him, staring out across the void of the Nethers. After Myron’s eyes adjusted to the morning light, his mind not fully cleared from the ceremony, he climbed down the ladder that led from the ceremonial fire pit to the place called Food Court.

  He searched for the old man who slept in the ruins of an Old Age vendor stall but found only a burlap blanket, a single shoe without a sole, and a pipe full of charred billet thistle. Myron jumped when he turned back to see the twins standing right behind him. They held hands and stared up at him as though Myron would know what to do next.

  “They threw you out, huh?” Myron didn’t know how much of his language they understood, but he wanted to talk to someone.

  The twins stepped forward when he stepped forward and moved back when he moved back.

  “Don’t take it personally. At least you got to have a look inside.” Myron burned with curiosity over what lay beyond the guarded wall, a settlement with entry standards and ideals, preserving civilization. His intentions—rescue Sindra’s baby and liberate Sindra—did not align with Te Yah’s. These were selfish intentions, Myron admitted, but he had not lied. For that, he should have been allowed at least a peek inside, but that would only tighten the pinch of being denied entrance.

  “What’s it like?” He pointed to the wall that rose into the sky above Food Court. “Inside.” He motioned again with both hands. “Mesa Gap?”

  The twins chattered in Gapi, stretching their hands high above their heads. Their eyes grew wide as they described Mesa Gap. Mah-ré drew a circle in the air and Gah-té formed a triangle with her arms. Mah-ré found a rusted piece of wire and bent it back and forth until it snapped in the middle. She kept one half and handed the other to Gah-té. They dropped to their knees at the same time and began to scribble in the dirt, one completing the image on one side that the other began on the opposite side. They operated as a machine, and when they finished, they looked up to Myron and nodded at what they’d drawn.

  He joined them on his knees and studied what they’d managed to draw in the dust. Lines going back and forth, circles—he couldn’t make out any of it, except squiggly lines. “What is that?” he put his finger on a string of circles.

  The twins opened and closed their hands many times, an action Myron could not decipher. He struggled to interpret what they described through their gestures and floor drawings.

  “What can we eat around here?” Myron made an eating motion, putting imaginary food to his mouth, chewing on air.

  The twins exchanged glances and spoke the same word at the same time in an identical tone. “Wat.”

  “What?”

  “Nop.” The twins bit their lips, produced a gnawing chatter, and brought their ears to a point. “Wat.”

  “Rat,” Myron said. “But what do they eat?” To trap a rat, he would need to know what attracted them and where to find one. He curled up his hand and put it to his eye like a telescope and searched the ground with a shrug. “Where are they? I haven’t seen any rats.”

  Mah-ré pointed with her left hand and Gah-té with her right, in the opposite direction of the rising sun to a barren valley between two plateaus. The twins again put on their best portrayal of a rat and acted as though they were eating something small, then pointed again at the valley. The landscape brought to mind another rodent that lived in such places—not quite a rat, something his grandfather called a hole bobber. The holes they dug left mounds, and their heads popped up over the mounds and bobbed back down again, a difficult meal to capture.

  “Let’s go.” Myron snatched the old man’s burlap blanket from the vendor stall and rummaged through the garbage heap in Food Court for a pipe. He knew of only one technique for snagging a rodent: cover and pound.

  The hike to the valley took longer than Myron anticipated, but, as they reached the plateau, he caught a sight that made him forget his hunger and all of his other travails. A pack of dogs, the ones the gate guard with Pyro had mentioned, scrapped for a single hole bobber. He spotted big dogs and small, some with fluff and others with short hair, some wiry, some fast, and some clumsy. They barked and growled, sticking their noses into the scrum when one of them emerged from the pack with the prize in its mouth. It was the tiniest of the bunch, not much bigger than the hole bobber. She had big ears and a nose that tapered to a point. She was a dog in miniature, with hair so short it resembled suede.

  The other dogs chased after another hole bobber, while the short-legged scrapper sat to feast on her prize. As Myron approached her, she dropped the bobber carcass and growled, showing her teeth. “That one’s yours. I’m not going to take it from you.”

  Myron reached down to touch her, just to feel her coat, and, without thinking, grabbed the dog around the ribs and picked her up. The dog squirmed and bit the soft flesh between Myron’s thumb and index finger. She flipped over in his hands. Myron bobbled the small dog, as if he’d grabbed a hot piston for assembly. The dog bit him again before Myron dropped her, head first, and she did a roll and skirted off in a circle.

  The flat lines that formed the twins’ mouths stretched into smiles before Gah-té erupted into laughter.

  Mah-ré also laughed. “Th—that,” she tried to speak Myron’s language while pointing at the dog that circled back around for the hole bobber. “That—a wahwahjita.” The twins chased the tiny cur back toward Myron. Blood trickled from his hand where the dog had bitten him. He watched the twins interact with the dogs and couldn’t recall a time lost in such abandon that nothing else mattered.

  The twins continued their chase as some of the other dogs returned from the pack and tried to steal the hole bobber back from the little one. As Myron went for another dog to pet, one with a thick, matted coat, the ground trembled beneath him. A thunderous crack pierced the air. The ground rumbled again, and the sky in the direction of Mesa Gap filled with a rising column of smoke that blackened the morning sun. The percussive blasts reminded Myron of the drums in the anthem of the Alliance.

  The pack of dogs scattered, whimpering. The biggest one cocked his head and pawed his ears
when ordnance whistled overhead. The feisty little wahwahjita that had left teeth marks on Myron’s hands ran in circles between Myron and the twins, barking.

  A piss whistle rose from just on the other side of the hill. It zoomed through the air in a high arc before landing short of the inside of Mesa Gap. The resulting explosion rocked the wall, sending some of the garbage used to construct it cascading into the decimated roof of Mesa V__ta Shopping Mall.

  Myron grabbed the twins by the hands and ran back toward Mesa Gap. Then he saw the Jonesbridge assault force crest the hill, heading straight for them, the first wave consisting of armored overloaders equipped with raised bulldozer blades.

  Most battles between settlements and clans took place at close range or with small weaponry such as shotguns and popcaps, arrows, or blades made of jagged scraps, with rifles and catapults as the only long-range fire power. Only armies boasted long-range artillery, so the fire that Mesa Gap returned came from their rifles, and struck the armor of the Jonesbridge advance. Ping, ping, ping, Mesa Gap’s bullets connected with nothing but iron before falling to the dirt with a thud.

  The protective barricade around Mesa Gap, more of a circumscribed heap than a wall, reached more than three stories toward the sky and stretched around farther than Myron could see. Within it was enough Old Age scrap to stock the Jonesbridge salvage yard for twenty years, a whole city’s worth of junk. At a distance, it resembled a patchwork mountainside. Up close, the broad base that spilled out at the bottom made approaching the wall an exercise in rock climbing just to get started.

  Midway up, reinforced guard posts contained spring-loaded catapults, and artillery-sized crossbows that hurled large objects from the wall onto the battlefield. The first of these that Myron saw was a big white rectangle, an Old Age machine for keeping food cold, arcing from the wall, falling, faster and faster, crashing with a plunk onto an overloader, where its doors popped open and it rolled over. Next up, an Old Age automobile carcass shot from the wall. It hurtled through the air to hit short of its target, but after it landed, it tumbled into a group of Jonesbridge foot soldiers, scattering some, crunching others.