by J. C. Staudt
Many of these houses had served as zoom dens at one time or another, Merrick had no doubt, but they were all so old and rotted now that only wild animals had inhabited them in recent years. “Trying to heal that mutie child was a bad idea,” he said. “And it was yours, if I’m remembering right. This idea is way better.”
Raith sighed, but said nothing.
“The Kilnhurst Klick is one of the most violent gangs in the city,” Merrick said. “If anyone can help us take the north by force, it’s these guys.”
“I guess it’s about time I told you, then.”
“Told me what?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Who?”
Raith gestured toward the other Decylumites, who were inside the house taking a paltry midday meal of wild brambles and cactus meat in a thin nettle soup. “All of us.”
“Are you kidding?” Merrick asked. He waited. Raith didn’t make a sound to the contrary. “So you’re giving up the search for your friends.”
“No one we’ve spoken to these last weeks has seen or heard of anyone from Decylum. It seems there’s no one left to find.”
Merrick frowned. “What about my training? What about helping me fight the Scarred?”
“You’ve had plenty of training now to carry on by yourself. Repeat the exercises we’ve been working on and you’ll continue to improve. As for the city north, it sounds like you’re going to have plenty of help.”
“No, I won’t. You’re the key, Raith. You and the other blackhands. I—I need you. Now more than ever.”
“You don’t. You have throngs of people ready to do your will. We’re nothing more than faces in the crowd.”
Merrick’s chair toppled to the floor when he stood. He turned his back to Raith and gripped the balcony railing to overlook the street below. His hands ached, though the skin there was fresh and new.
This was the last thing he needed. His following had only just returned to its former strength. Raith and his blackhands were worth a dozen fighting men each, or more. Their presence was good for morale, too. Without them, he would never inspire the kind of aggression his army needed to break through the Scarred barricades. “Where will you go? Home? You don’t even know how to get there.”
“We’re going to Bradsleigh,” Raith said. “Theodar thinks we’ll find answers there.”
“Bradsleigh? Bradsleigh is a dinky little town in the scrubs. Why would anyone ever want to go there?”
“The Glaive family lives there.”
“No,” Merrick said, shaking his head. “The Glaives live in Unterberg. At least, the one I know does.”
Raith’s brow darkened. “You’ve met a living member of the Glaive family?”
“Yeah. He’s the guy I healed… the first time I ever used the gift. Can’t stand the dway. He tried to force me to go to Unterberg to heal his sick girlfriend.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Glaives?”
Merrick shrugged. “Beats me. He said his family built all these desert cities. Unless he was lying. I don’t think he had a reason to lie—not about that. He seemed pretty jaded about the whole thing, being from a rich family with that kind of a legacy.”
“What was his name?”
“Toler.”
“The man we heard about was named Daxin. He was said to be from Bradsleigh. Maybe there are more Glaives than we believed, living in different towns.”
“Could be.”
“We were told Decylum was built by Glaive Industries under contract from the Ministry. If any record of Decylum’s whereabouts exists, we’re hoping the Glaives still have it in their possession. Is it possible this Toler Glaive is still in Belmond?”
“Nah. I doubt it. The last time I saw him, the Scarred were sending a shitload of hot lead his way. Either he’s dead, or he and his buddies ran off before they could get him. Besides, that was back when I lived in the city north. The dway is a shepherd for Vantanible, Inc. Riding with the trade caravans, he pretty much gets a free pass into the north. Hasn’t been one of those in months. I wouldn’t be surprised if the savages got him during a raid. We could always look around for him once we invade the north. Of course, you’d have to stay and help me take it over…”
Raith shook his head. “We can’t stay, Merrick. The chances of finding one person in a city this big without knowing where to look… well, I think we’re better off trying the fates in Bradsleigh.”
“What about food and supplies for the journey? Do you even know the way there?”
“I’ve already spoken with Borain. He’s agreed to remain our guide for an extended period of time.”
“I’ll be glad to see that coffing savage gone. He barely talks to anyone, but he’s always shadowing us everywhere we go. I still think he’s the dway who tipped them off to where we were.”
“No one needs to be tipped off about thousands of people herding through the city, Merrick. And I’ve told you, it’s unlikely that he’s in league with the nomads, given his past behavior. I believe he’s an exile of sorts—maybe not from his people as a whole, but at least from the master-king’s armies. He refused to come close to the factory camp when we arrived.”
“Whatever you say. I’ll still be glad to get one sketchy dway out from behind me.”
“You’ve been awfully paranoid lately,” Raith said. “That’s only going to get worse until you stop feeding your fears with every conspiracy theory you can dream up. I worry for you sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need you worrying about me. I didn’t ask you to, either.”
“Soon you won’t have to trouble yourself over it,” Raith said. “We’re leaving tonight.”
“Good. The sooner I can start focusing on the finish line, the better.” He kicked the fallen chair aside on his way toward the balcony door. The resonarc was making him more irritable than he cared to admit. “I’m heading over to talk with the leader of the Klick. If you’re gone before I get back, have a nice trip.”
Raith neither moved nor responded as Merrick went inside.
The Decylumites occupied every available chair, couch and countertop across the open room within, which consisted of a half-gutted kitchen, a living room, and a formal dining area with a large, overbearing table. Few looked up from their meals as Merrick crossed the floor and trudged down the two flights of stairs to the ground level. He could’ve used a couple of dangerous-looking individuals to back him up during this meeting, but his pride kept him from going back to ask Raith for help. He’d be fine without the blackhands. Raith had taught him everything he needed to know; if the gangers tried anything, he wasn’t going to heal them by accident this time.
The Klick hideout, he’d learned from an informative follower, was aptly located in Kilnhurst Elementary School, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Kilnhurst neighborhood. The school’s parking lot and athletic fields were open to the surrounding streets, so there was no fence or other obstacle to get around. Merrick beat a direct approach, marching across the front parking lot toward the main entrance, where a row of doors awaited him. He could feel eyes on him, but he didn’t mind; he wanted them to know he was coming.
Merrick pounded on one of the many doors, then stood back and waited in the glow of the late afternoon. He thought he saw movement within, but no one came. He tried again, knocking louder this time.
A door creaked open; not the one he had knocked on, but the one at the leftmost end of the long line of doors. A woman’s face peered out, covered in what Merrick thought at first to be broad smudges of dirt. Shortly he realized the smudges weren’t dirt, but a web of neatly inked tattoos.
“What you want, dickhead?” asked the face.
“I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here,” Merrick said, too determined to be afraid.
The door opened wider. The woman came out, dragging behind her a signpost pipe spiked with nails. “Get lost,” she said. “Whatever shit-town rems you’re selling, we got the game on it.”
“I’m not selling anything,” Merrick insisted, hands raised. “I’m buying.”
She sneered. “Find a coffing seddy den, if that’s your shit. Clear it, jacknaggit.”
Merrick backed off a step. “It’s not dope I’m after. I want to hire you to help me with something.”
“We ain’t for hire, nutwaller. I got dways there and there who don’t take so sweet to zoomers like I do. Frigg yourself and go. Shit-sucker.”
“I’m not leaving until you let me talk to someone in charge.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Didn’t you just. It’s the sharps for you, cockmaster…” She raised the pipe and hefted it in two hands, taking a step toward him.
“I won’t hurt you if you just—”
She took a swing at him.
Merrick ignited his shield, a sphere of red.
The woman’s arms came out missing most of her weapon and one of her hands, partway up the forearm. Threads of skin hung like cobwebs, and Merrick’s gray trencher was spattered in bloodspray.
She looked down at herself and gasped. The pipe clattered to the ground. She fainted, but Merrick caught her by the shoulders and lowered her gently. When he ignited again, it was for the sake of help rather than harm.
The skin closed around the raw wound, leaving her short an extremity but very much alive. Her eyes rolled back, then focused on him in a series of woozy blinks. “What you did to me, shit-sack?”
“I killed you… and saved your life.”
She tried to spit on him. A few shining flecks shot upward, but the rest bubbled from her lips and dribbled down her cheek.
“Real grateful around here,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
“Coffing ugly, bittie-dick-choking zoomer,” she said, glaring up at him with malice in her eyes.
Merrick knew he wasn’t the most pleasant person in the world to look at. Not anymore. Not since the last gang he’d run afoul of had tried to kill him. And especially not since the muties in their tower commune had tried to finish what the gangers had started. He’d been stabbed, slashed, burned… even electrocuted, though that was his own doing. Yet the fates would rather see him horribly disfigured than let him die. They—or some crueler power—wanted him alive.
He helped her to her feet, only to be shoved away as soon as she found she could stand on her own. She knelt to pick up the hunk of melted slag which had once been the business end of her weapon. She then spent a moment studying the nub of her forearm.
“You some son-bitch,” she said, bewildered.
Don’t I know it. “Take me to the dway in charge.”
She dropped the mangled metal and pointed at the half-disintegrated remains of her hand, now lying in a puddle of gore on the sidewalk. “You give me this back? If I take you?” Her look was pleading, crazed.
Merrick shook his head. “I can’t do that.” At least I don’t think I can. He wondered whether he could attach anything to anything else—a foot to a forehead, or an ear to a groin—let alone two body parts that belonged together. He didn’t think so. The body heals as it’s meant to, Raith had told him once. Maybe if it had been a clean cut, like ham sliced with a butcher’s cleaver, he could’ve tried. This, however, had been anything but clean.
The woman’s gaze wandered to her shortened arm. Her eyes went wild again, sober with panic. She began to pant, halfway between pummeling him and having a meltdown. Her heavy breaths turned to loud, mournful sighs. Then she was wailing, grief-stricken. She ran shaking fingers over the end of her nub, as if to convince herself it was real.
Her expression vacillated like that for a while, moving between rage and panic and despair. In the end she settled into a stolid, numb whimpering. Merrick tried to console her a time or two, but all she did was curse him.
He was about to try going inside—to see whether she would let him pass without issue—when several of the doors opened. Out poured a handful of gangers. Tattoos covered their bodies in patterns of colored ink, much like the woman’s. Several of their faces were carpeted with them.
“You got a shit-ton of nerve, coming here all lonesome,” said one of the gangers, a towering man with rings through his ears and spiked studs along his lips.
“Who leads this gang. Is it you?” Merrick asked.
The ganger smirked. “Yeah, that one’s me. What all this shit is right here? You—” He looked at the woman’s nub, then at the remains on the ground.
“Your girl here tried to get rude with me.”
“Oh, you think you a real hard coffer.”
“I am,” Merrick said. “I’m as hard as the coffing rock you must’ve been living under if you haven’t heard of me.”
The ganger shared a glance with his compatriots. “That right? Who the coff is you?”
“I’m the healer.”
He gave Merrick a skeptical look. “You? The dway they back-fence being some miracle-maker?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed. “Okay, miracle-maker. Make us one.”
“I just did. She tried to take a swing at me and got hurt pretty bad. I healed her.”
“What this ass-bagger saying, Gweina?”
The female ganger was massaging her stump with her good hand, shaking her head, dazed and staring. “I dunno.” She swayed side to side. “I dunno.”
“What you did to her, miracle-man? What you did?”
“I told you already, I—”
The ganger shoved Merrick so hard he stumbled back a few steps. The others advanced, circling him. Merrick heard the clinking, scraping sounds of metal as the gangers drew chains, knives, and irons.
“I’m warning you,” Merrick said. “Stay back, or I’ll have to hurt you.”
The tall ganger laughed again and gave him another shove.
Merrick was ready this time. He caught himself on his back foot and stood his ground as the taller man bumped him, chest to chest. “This is your last warning,” Merrick told him. “Take me to the dway in charge of the Klicks, or I’m going to hurt you. All of you. And I won’t heal anyone this time.”
The ganger paused a moment to study him. Merrick heard the leather creak on the handle of his makeshift hatchet, a sliver of sharpened street sign wedged into the forked end of a shortened broom handle. He prepared to ignite, recalling what Raith had taught him. Your gift is powerful beyond what any normal person could expect. If you’re assaulted by someone who’s never seen our kind before, chances are he won’t have the psychological fortitude to process what you’re able to do. You owe it to him to offer a truce before you resort to physical harm.
Something in Merrick’s look must’ve made the ganger uneasy, because he moved away and said, “Back off, dways. Let this limp-gut show us his going. Make one, limp-gut. Show us.”
Merrick breathed a sigh. There was a moment where, had he ignited his shield, he would’ve slashed three or four of the gangers to pulp. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll show you. Throw something at me. Something you don’t want back.”
The ganger picked up a pebble and tossed it in Merrick’s direction. The shield flickered to life. The pebble bounced away in a splash of molten stone. Merrick held up the shield, gritting his teeth with the effort. “Throw something else,” he said. “Something bigger.”
The gangers looked around. One found a loose brick in the side of the building. They all backed away to watch him lob it full-force at Merrick from several fathoms back. The shield flared as the brick turned to liquid. The splash fizzed on the pavement, burning deep gouges into its surface. The gangers laughed, entertained by the display.
Merrick snuffed his shield. “There. Will you let me talk to your leader now? It’s important. I need the Klick’s help with something big. Are you the dway in charge?”
The tall ganger thought about it. “Isn’t no dway in charge here, assbag. Come with.” He waved Merrick forward. Then, to the others, “Watch him.”
The doors opened into the school’s lobby, an expansive narthex with staircases at both ends and a
high ceiling whose skylight windows glared on the bland epoxy flooring. The front office was little more than a tall box of shattered windows. A stepped semi-circular stage jutted from one wall, flanked by built-in planters full of dry, barren soil.
They ascended the far staircase and took the upper hallway into a pod lined with classrooms. There, in a common room where tables and cabinets and desks were stacked up like privacy walls, lounged a woman with coffee-colored skin who Merrick thought looked a lot like a barbed-wire fence. Spikes and rings pierced her face and ears. Her earlobes were gauged with rusty metal discs as big as bottle caps. Like others in her gang, she’d amassed a formidable collection of tattoos. In her case, the inked graphics covered nearly every inch of her skin from throat to forehead.
“Are you the head of the Klick?” Merrick asked.
She sniffed, staring at him. “There best be a good coffing reason you all bringing this shitkicker down here to cut in on my time. What is you, a lost dog?”
“No, Peri. He’s this miracle-maker we hear us about.”
Peri stood, midriff bared between a short leather corset and a pair of patchwork denim cutoffs. She came forward, giving Merrick her best intimidating stare-down. Merrick wasn’t intimidated, though. He’d faced the savages before he had any idea what it meant to be a blackhand. Now he was trained. Ready for danger. He was the most powerful being in this city. As Peri circled him close, bony fangs tinkling at the end of her necklace, spikes protruding from her skin and clothing, Merrick reminded himself of that. She can’t do a thing to me. None of them can. All they can do is help me, or stay out of it.
“You a idiot, mister? Or you just pretending to be?”
“I need your help,” Merrick said.
“Help dying? I got plenty where that’s from.”
The others sniggered.
“Help killing,” Merrick said. “Killing Scarred Comrades.”
“Klicks kill us plenty of Scarred,” Peri said.
Merrick knew that was a lie. Bravado. “Good, then you’ve got some practice. I want you to kill more. For me.”
“The Klick work for the Klick, jackhole. Nobody besides.”
