The top level was a mess. The entry and what looked to have been a meeting room were the worst. It was clear from the positions of the bodies that something had happened down here. People didn’t die of starvation or suffocation crawling over each other in a vain attempt to escape. Someone, he’d thought from his very first trip through, had decided the air and the food would last a little longer if there were fewer sharing it. He had bleakly wondered if he might do the same. He’d long since learned not to second-guess himself.
They reached the entry. Alex powered up the lights and glanced over his shoulder at the sharply-indrawn breath behind him. Lena’s face was pale but set. The body closest to the door through which they had entered was the most horrific.
He lay spread-eagle on his back, exactly as he had fallen. Skin, shiny and brown with age, had shrunken onto his bones. His mouth gaped in a centuries-long silent shriek while empty eye sockets stared up at the ceiling. Both hair and clothing were wispy and tattered. The brown-stained front of his shirt had several large, gaping rents in it, giving testimony to the wounds which had caused his fall. He was the worst. Once they got past him, the rest were too tangled to pick out the same level of detail.
Alex walked through the mass of desiccated, air-mummified bodies to the secured outside access point ahead, placing his feet carefully to show Lena where to step. He began the process of powering up the new security and keying it open as Lena and Jackson made their slow way down the path. The door cycled open, and Alex pushed at it, freeing them.
As they entered a final staircase up inside the long-abandoned and weathered building, Alex whispered an admonition to them. “No speaking at all from the moment we hit the surface. You keep your eyes on me and do exactly as I signal. Lena, we do not relax until we are within cover of the canyon two miles to the west.” He gave Jackson a look meant to remind him they did not ever relax.
The building itself had mostly collapsed, leaving a skeleton of support beams and door frames. Only the rear wall and the stairwell remained intact. Alex slid from frame to frame, taking stock of the surrounding area.
They were doubly lucky. There was no one around—not many Scavengers would bother with an area as picked over as the former Air Force base, but Neo-barbs might move in anywhere they could find rudimentary shelter. Plus, dark clouds skimmed low. Not only would the temperatures remain cooler, but their shadows would be less defined. Anything making them less noticeable as they moved across the plains to the canyon was a good thing.
He gestured them forward, and first Lena then Jackson joined him. Alex headed out, and they followed, an irregular arrowhead darting from the scant cover of the building.
Tall grasses, overgrown bush, and the occasional scrub pine covered the plain. As they moved further away from the base, they passed through what might have been a farmed field many years before. The crop now grew wild, and Alex moved into high alert. Wild grain always caused worry. If food grew, any nearby people would be desperate to collect it.
They were almost to the canyon when dim shadows crawled up over the opposite lip of the canyon ahead, moving away from the river ahead of them and toward the first of the low, broad buttes rising out of the plain on that side. He dropped to the ground. Lena and Jackson did the same behind him.
It was a small party, but still bigger than Alex’s three. They weren’t in the well-made uniforms of Council security. Scavengers were vicious opportunists who’d be dressed in the mixed colors of whatever they’d managed to find, steal, or remove from the bodies of those not as strong. Even from this distance, he noted the telltale rough, earth-toned clothing marking them instead as Neo-barbs.
The group was well armed. Each of them carried a bow or crossbow in addition to blades of various lengths strapped to their sides. He guessed they were a hunting party. So long as they continued in the opposite direction, he was content to let them go.
He waited until the Neo-barb party moved well away out of sight and hearing range. He back-tracked along their route to be sure there were no stragglers. The group had moved off toward the buttes ahead. He signaled Lena and Jackson to follow, and the three of them scuttled over the final stretch of open ground to the canyon.
The canyon narrowed as they passed, its steep sides choked with brush. The threatened rain stayed in the clouds as they cut south through the canyon to the Snake River. It was greener along the shoreline where the vegetation grew thick. The growth made for slower going, but it provided better cover. Alex hung back, watchful and wary, and let Jackson lead them up the river until late afternoon.
A piercing three-note whistle sounded from the underbrush ahead of them and off to the side. They stopped, and Jackson answered the whistle in kind. Alex joined them, waiting for the man on sentry duty to appear.
When he rose from the brush, he asked for the password.
“Bellwether.”
The young man nodded. “Thank you, sir. Our camp is just ahead, in those pines.” He pointed for them.
“Any activity?”
“No, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Alex nodded. “Keep a close watch. We saw some neo-barb activity in the area when we were hiking in.”
“I’ll be staying behind and cycling back when you all go, so I’ll watch your back.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. They were headed toward the north side of the buttes, but it’s good to know we’ve got you back here.”
Alex lead the way up behind a rocky rise with scrub and pole pine clustered around its base on either side. He set his pack down and looked around. The base camp wasn’t much, but it was protected from weather and view.
They were alone now. Only one man stayed behind to watch from the rear. The other two were at the observation point, where they stayed for the duration of their shifts.
Lena slid her pack off and eased it down to her feet. She rolled her shoulders and then leaned down to take up her water and drink.
“Cold camp?” she asked him after she’d swallowed.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “That’s standard out here this close in.”
Jackson bent to claim a small area. He set his pack down and then leaned back against it, propping his legs up with a sigh of contentment.
She did the same at the far edge, away from Jackson.
Alex still felt restless. He glanced around. “I’m going to make a quick circuit, make sure the campsite is as good as they think. Check in a little more thoroughly.” He threw the younger man a sly look. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Jackson blanched. Lena challenged Alex with a look, lifting a brow at him as if to remind him of the kiss they’d agreed not to mention again. He swallowed his mischievous chuckle and stepped back into the trees and brush.
20
They set out in the pre-dawn dark. Moonlight made artificial lighting unnecessary for this portion of the trek. The now cloudless sky cooperated, and the twilight glow lit the route before them. They hiked an hour up the river to the yawning mouth of the canyon that led to the prison. Their observation point was a third of the way into the canyon, up high on the steep canyon wall. They cut up and around now, to come at it from above.
Silence had been important earlier. At this point, it became critical. Alex was hyper-aware of every rock grinding under foot and every cricket that stopped singing as they passed.
As they perched above the opening to the canyon, Alex paused. He cocked his head, listening. He could hear the soft sound of the river being churned by a paddlewheel and voices floating across the water to bounce back from the sides of the buttes running along this section of river. A steamboat headed down toward them. He cursed silently.
They couldn’t know if it would stop here, for the prison, or continue down the river. If it stopped, was it delivering supplies, or picking up cargo, likely of the human variety? Was this the long-overdue transfer they’d been watching for? The sounds were faint. Sound carried oddly over water, giving them no clear idea of how far out it was.
>
They entered the canyon, working over the sharply slanted wall, and then made their slow way down and across the right side of the butte that formed one of the inner walls of the canyon. The observation point hid the observers behind scrub and trees near the top of the butte, just to the side of an overhang.
The prison itself had been built along the curve of the butte, nestled at its base in the far opening of the canyon where two buttes rose up beside each other. The canyon ran between them from the river to the plain beyond. The plains spreading out from the prison on the other side were farmed, the labor to work the farms provided by collared Spark prisoners. The mouth of the canyon behind it had been reinforced and fortified against both water and intruders.
That was fine with him. They weren’t trying to get in; they only wanted to watch the activity of the guards and prisoners. If Lena got an eyeful of the collared Sparks so she’d understand why he and Thomas had worked so hard to build a viable alternative to the Council, even better. Yes, these particular men were criminals. But it wasn’t a leap in logic to guess how easy it would be for the Council to decide the easiest way to guarantee power would be to use the collars on all Sparks. It was barely a hop considering the recent delivery of a box of the damn things to each zone’s Council agents, likely precipitated by the loss of Lena.
If Thom and Alex could move Zone to Zone, they would have accomplished a bloodless revolution, ending the abuse and harnessing of Sparks. Well, not exactly bloodless, he acknowledged, but they were doing all they could to avoid any large-scale fighting or casualties.
As the three of them approached the OP, two shadows rose from the ground. The men they were relieving lifted their gear silently and moved toward and then past them without a word, handing off a pad of paper to Alex as they passed. Jackson led Lena and Alex behind the brush-covered twining trunks of a pair of pines. A long, narrow ditch had been carved out of the canyon-side between the trees and a large rock jutting back up the side of the butte beside the overhang. The three of them settled in.
It would be a tight fit for three, but Lena was small and they’d make it work. Alex settled in next to her behind the juncture of the trees. Their bodies were hidden behind the earth. He reached back for his binoculars, rare and prized, and held them to his eyes.
“Normal guard movement, focused in and not out,” he breathed. “Nothing else stirring. We’re good.” He glanced back at Jackson, who nodded acknowledgment. Alex turned to the activity report he’d been handed as the other agents scooted away. It said much the same. He folded it up and tucked it away until he needed to scrawl his own update on it for the team who’d relieve them.
She pulled her legs up and tucked her arms in between them and her body. She appeared content to wait out the dawn, and with it, the promised camp activity, in silence.
Dawn came more quickly to the prison at the edge of the plain than it did to them. Their position on the near side of the butte guaranteed them several more hours in the shadows. As the first fingers of light crept over the buildings below, activity began to stir.
Alex peered through the binoculars, first at the river, where he noted the paddleboat still hadn’t appeared, and then at the prison. “Shift’s changing,” he told them in an undertone, “won’t be long now before the first crews are sent out.”
He was right. Not even a full hour later, double doors opened up onto the yard and prisoners filed out. They formed into double rows. As the first of them headed out, turning to the left and heading out to the plains and the farms, more exited to shuffle into the center of the yard and form into lines.
Alex looked again, scanning over the men, trying to decide which provided the best angle.
“Let me look.” Lena said, her voice less than a whisper, muted by concern of discovery and by the numbers of the men below.
He glanced at her, nodded, and passed the binoculars over, pantomiming what each of the knobs on top did to sharpen her view and vary the amount of light, although the amplification was almost unnecessary now in the strengthening light.
As she put them to her eyes, he leaned in and spoke into her ear. “The best, closest angle to get a look at the collars they use to keep them from Sparking is along the edge of the butte, right before they cross out of view behind it.”
She nodded without commenting. She did focus down at the base of the butte as he suggested. He noted her heavy swallow and the thinning of her lips. She had not been collared in the room back at Azcon. Her experience had been traumatic but brief. They had to live with the current every hour of every day. After a moment, she slowly scanned to the side and up, returning her view to the prison. She was silent, but the anger radiated off of her in physical heat that Alex, sitting so close, could feel.
Lena stiffened. She sucked her breath in and her hands clutched around the glasses. She leaned in, as if getting those few inches closer to the scene far below would make what she watched clearer. Alex turned back to the prison. He didn’t see anything amiss—or not any more amiss than so many men like them being tortured, criminals or not. A smaller group of eight, not the usual twelve, caught his attention. They were smaller than the others, as well, and more rag-tag. Had the Council brought in boys?
“There are girls down there.” She kept her words low, but furious. She lowered the binoculars and passed them to him. Her face was pinched and mottled with rage. “In the yard. There are girls. Wearing those collars. I highly doubt they’re criminals.”
Alex looked at the rag-tag little group he’d marked as different. It had to be them. The view through the glasses arrowed him down the hillside as if he were standing right outside the yard.
The girls stood still, some of them shivering in waves in the peculiar way Lena had when she’d had the current flowing through her on the table. They weren’t cold. They were fighting a constant flow of electricity.
One of them, the tallest, seemed Lena’s age. Her long, dark blond hair hung lank around her shoulders. Her pale eyes burned with the same fury Lena’s did. The bright uniform was too snug across her full chest and hips and too short at the wrists and ankles. The collar snugged against her neck had a small chain of lights flowing one to the next in a constant stream of light, like a macabre red slash across her throat. He shifted his view to look at the others.
The rest were girls: two teenagers, thin and awkward; a couple of pre-teens; and three smaller girls. The youngest was no more than five or six. Beyond a doubt, if she’d been a boy, she’d have been sent to the Ward School. They all would have. But they were girls. When their parents had taken them for testing, they’d have been powerful, unpredictable, and marked as capable of producing dangerous and uncontrollable children and sent here. How long had this been going on? How had Fort Nevada’s spies missed this?
The littlest girl had enormous brown eyes, almond-shaped, with dark smudges of exhaustion and fear hollowed out beneath them. Her black hair was unkempt. Her collar, clearly improvised and too big for her thin neck, held her small chin up in an unnatural position. The lights running across her throat moved through their pattern slower than on the woman, but her body shivered constantly nonetheless. Alex swallowed bile.
“We’re not leaving them here.” Lena’s voice brooked no arguments.
He lowered the binoculars and returned her gaze. Her face was serene and terrible.
“No,” he agreed, “we’re not.” The words came before he’d even thought them through, but they were true. It didn’t matter how much they complicated things. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and passed the binoculars to Jackson. His soft exclamation told them when he’d found the girls.
Jackson leaned over, careful not to jar the lip of the hole they hid inside. He started to speak, hesitated as he looked at Lena, and then plunged ahead, voice no less emphatic for being barely audible. “Sir. We’re supposed to—”
“I know what our objective was, Ward. It’s changed.”
“We were to keep her safe at all costs, sir
. Has that changed?” Though his voice never rose above a whisper, Jackson challenged Alex.
Lena made a noise of disgust.
“No. You’ll be leading Lena back to Herrons and then returning here—”
“The hell he will!” Her exclamation was a strangled hiss.
“Lena, listen.”
“No. You listen.” She remembered to breathe the words in spite of her fury. “Those girls are me. If I hadn’t blown up that building, I’d be down there with them. This is my fight. Tell me different!”
Alex sighed.
It was all the answer she needed. Determination set her face. “I’m not leaving them. I’m not going back. I can remove the collars. And I’m more dangerous than either of you.” The last she whispered with absolute certainty.
He stared at her.
She stared back, refusing to give way.
Jackson sighed, leaning away again.
Alex finally turned back to study the rag-tag group who were heading out between the gates now with a guard on every side of them. There were four men to watch over eight girls, two more than went with each larger group of men. It seemed the Council was afraid of them.
Instead of following the dirt road winding away to the plains, the girls were led toward the reinforced canyon mouth. They followed the first guard up a rough path over the berm, and then continued down the other side into the canyon.
Lena reached out and gripped Alex’s arm.
He nodded. This movement and the distant sound of the paddle-wheel moving down the river were likely no coincidence. These girls were the big transfer. They were being moved. Without a means to follow, he would get one shot at planning their rescue.
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 148
