by Alex Wells
She didn’t have a response for that, and just waved him and his people in. Even angry and exhausted, she found herself wondering what could be done with the tractors, how they might benefit the town.
“Thought you were gonna deck him,” Hob said, amused, once they were alone.
“Wanted to. Would’ve felt damned good, too. But not given us more food for our bellies nor water to drink.” Mag swallowed against an upwelling of despair. “We gotta figure out water, or we ain’t gonna last long enough to starve.”
Hob sucked at her teeth. “You got enough credits to play with, we could mayhap do a raid on Primero or Segundo…”
Mag shook her head. “I don’t want you hangin’ here no more. You’re supposed to be gettin’ to that place the government man left for you. Work on figurin’ that out. And get my girl back.”
“Ain’t gonna do her any good if you’re dead by the time I get her back here. Don’t be fuckin’ stupid.”
Mag rubbed her face, shying away from the massive bruise on the side after the lightest touch. “Shit.”
“Why Mag, I do believe you’re developin’ a nasty mouth,” Hob said, obviously trying to lighten the mood.
Mag waved the stilted teasing off, a grain of an idea caught in her mind – the Bone Collector. She remembered Hob telling her about how she’d met that strange man, years and years ago. It was a memorable story, really, but suddenly it felt more important. Because maybe… “Hob, tell me how you’n the Bone Collector met again.”
Hob’s eyebrows went up. “Right now?”
“I’m askin’ right now.”
Hob shrugged. “Me’n Freki and Geri was shit-stirrin’…” She recounted the story, about kids on their first motorcycles, going out into the desert and finding a cave that they were never able to find again. One that had an underground lake in it, so fresh and clear that they could see through to the bottom like it wasn’t even there. And inside the cave, the statue of a man – the Bone Collector. She told about how a company man and a preacher man had shown up, one with some kind of gadget, one with a sledgehammer, and were going to take him away. How they’d made the snap decision to fight those two, killed their first men ever. And then the statue that was the Bone Collector had moved.
“A lake,” Mag said when she finished. “Underground. The water’s got to be somewhere. There used to be whole oceans here, to carry all that salt. Water don’t just vanish.”
“What you thinkin’ – gonna dig for it?” Hob asked. “You got the equipment, I s’pose.”
Mag shook her head. “It’d take too long, and we don’t know where. No. Can you call up the Bone Collector for me? I seen you do it before.”
Hob blinked her eye. “I can. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.”
Because you’re scared of him, Mag thought. Well, more Hob was scared of herself when she was around him. That was plain to anyone who had eyes and had known Hob as long as Mag had. But saying that out loud would just get an argument, and she didn’t have time for that either. “’Cause you ain’t ever had to ask him for something like this,” Mag said, diplomatically. “But it don’t hurt to try now.”
“Plenty of stuff hurts to try,” Hob muttered.
Hob put Mag on the back of her motorcycle and they rode out a few kilometers, to get into the dunes proper as the sun began to set. Then, as Mag watched, Hob took out one of those wicked silver throwing knives of hers and made a cut on her hand. A few crimson drops splashed down on the sand, and then Hob took out her handkerchief, already clouded with brown stains, and wrapped it around her palm.
Maybe thirty minutes later, Mag felt the shift in the air before she heard it in the sand. She’d touched him with witchiness. She knew him now. Felt his approach, like the sun creeping over the horizon. And when he stepped up out of the sand like he was coming out of a bath, he didn’t look surprised at all.
He still reached for Hob’s hand first, the one she’d cut, and smoothed his thumb over it. Mag watched, curious, feeling like she was spying just a little on a private moment.
“I’m surprised to find you here,” the Bone Collector said to Hob.
“Had somethin’ that needed doin’,” she answered, defensive. “And worked out, ’cause I know where we’re goin’ now.” Her gaze flicked to Mag. “Just gotta figure out how to get there.”
“I asked Hob to call you,” Mag said, even if part of her wanted to let Hob squirm a little more. “Hoping maybe you can help me.”
The Bone Collector’s pale eyebrows arched up. “Help you with what?”
“We got raided last night. Most of our supplies are gone. We need water. And… there’s got to be water somewhere, right? It rains sometimes.”
“There is,” the Bone Collector said. “Even though much of it has gone to the heart. You saw that. But there are rivers that flow underground, and lakes to catch them.”
“Can you make a well for us? I know you can… shape rock and such.”
The Bone Collector seemed to consider this. “Why should I?”
That wasn’t an answer she’d expected. A flutter of hope hit her, instantly crushed. The man’s blue eyes were so cold as he looked at her, like they’d never shared that dream. “We’re gonna die if you don’t.”
“What care have I for miners who do nothing but hurt this world and steal its lifeblood?”
No, Mag reminded herself, he might be human-shaped, but there wasn’t anything human in him sometimes. It was just easy to forget when he was around Hob. But she’d felt the alienness of him, something still terrifying but less discordant than the Weathermen. “We’re fightin’ TransRift. That’s how we got in this place. We got a common enemy.”
“I have people I hire when I need something fought,” he said, his eyes glittering strangely.
“Leave me out of this,” muttered Hob.
“And they do not dig,” the Bone Collector continued, ignoring her.
“Now look here,” Hob started. “Maybe you don’t give a shit about Mag, but I do…” She stopped when Mag laid a hand on her arm.
Hob would fight for her, Mag knew. To the ends of the world. And Mag would do the same for her. But this wasn’t about just the two of them. A movement had to be more than one person if it was to breathe on its own. Her own life wasn’t worth spit if she just let Hob hinge it all on her. “If you’re on our side, we’ll be on your side,” Mag said. “We dig where TransRift wants us to dig ’cause that’s the only way we got of surviving. Give us an alternative, and we’ll take it.”
“You’ll stop mining.”
She almost agreed to it that instant, because it was so easy. But what about when the government men came, and they still needed miners? Some people would take their chance to get off planet, but for many of them, Mag included, this was the only home they’d ever known. Even as the dry desert air tried to kill her by sucking every drop of water from her body, she knew in her bones she wouldn’t survive without it. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“I think this is exceedingly simple,” the Bone Collector said.
“That’s because you ain’t ever had to make a living,” Mag said. “I can’t make you care about us humans if you don’t want to. But I think you’re a fool if you’re gonna turn your back on the chance to get a whole passel of us who’ll listen to you and talk with you and deal with you instead of just tryin’ to wipe you out.”
“I survive,” he said.
“Your one-man war can’t be goin’ that good, if you keep havin’ to hire Hob,” Mag said, and was rewarded with Hob snorting. She grimaced at the smell of cigarette smoke, then; Hob must have gotten one out. She wasn’t even going to look, her eyes fixed on the Bone Collector’s.
“You are not one of them,” the Bone Collector said.
“Yes, I am,” Mag said firmly. “I don’t care how much witchiness I got flowin’ through me. There’s more in my heart than blood. We didn’t let TransRift divide us, and I sure as hell ain’t lettin’ you do it.”
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He tilted his head, his expression taken aback. Then he glanced over her shoulder, toward Hob, and that flat pissed her off. “You don’t look at her,” Mag growled. “You’re dealin’ with me.”
The Bone Collector looked at her again, really looked at her, and then nodded slowly. “I suppose I am.”
8 Days
He made the well in one corner of the churchyard, after pacing back and forth until the sun had come back up, muttering and humming under his breath. Mag, Hob, and a crowd that had to be nearly everyone who wasn’t on the walls or too hurt to move, watched.
The odd, colorless man stopped and crouched down to rest his hand on the black stones they’d used to pave the churchyard. Then he began to sing, a song without words – or at least words Mag could understand – that she recognized, somehow. She felt it flow in through her ears and the tips of her fingers, like she was leaning in and resting against his back, like it had felt when he’d somehow found her in that dream. She hummed along with him, then sang, the tune if not the words. Next to her, Hob stayed silent and simply lit her next cigarette on the smoldering butt of the one she was finishing. Nearby, she heard another voice come into the song – the weather witch. The miners around them drew back slightly.
She felt the rumbling beneath the ground, a shifting, a flowing. It moved with the words of the Bone Collector’s song, coming closer and closer like he was coaxing an animal to his hand. To their hands, she realized, because she was in it, bolstering him again, letting him lean on her like she so often leaned on other people. But it was a different sensation, companionable, an asking rather than demanding.
Under his hand, the stones of the churchyard folded in on themselves and made a round hole, which grew slowly outward until it was half a meter across. The Bone Collector held one last note, letting it trail away, then stood. “Be sure to cover that before someone falls in.”
Those casual words hung strange in the air, which now smelled dark and wet as that new hole breathed out. The churchyard sat so silent that the gentle, echoing splash of distant water on stone was loud enough to hear.
“Water,” people began to murmur. “He brought us water.” The Bone Collector smiled serenely, but Mag felt tension under that expression. He was waiting, just like her, for someone to shout out about witchiness.
And then there was shouting, but it wasn’t angry. It was a cheer, a roar of approval. The sound of people seeing their deaths postponed. The crowd closed in around Mag, Hob, the Bone Collector, and buffeted them with claps on the shoulder and back, even a few hugs – though no one dared try that on anyone but Mag.
“Water!” the miners echoed. “We have water! We can do anything, we have water!”
Chapter Forty-Four
8 Days
Hob found the Bone Collector leaning against the wall outside Ludlow, bright in the full sun. He had his head bowed, but looked up as she scuffed her boots in the sand. “You already tired?” she asked.
He huffed a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve stopped since you woke me up.”
Hob rolled her cigarette between her lips, then sat down next to him, an arm’s length apart and downwind. “I reckon you can sleep when you’re dead, same as the rest of us.”
He laughed again, and then leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed. “You have such a cheerful outlook on life.”
“Came by it honestly.” She let the silence fall, but it was too thick, too awkward. She didn’t know why the hell she’d followed him as he’d squeezed out of the crowd. Only Mag hadn’t needed her just then, and it wasn’t her celebration. “Thanks, though. You done a good thing.”
“I didn’t do it for you, so there is no need to thank me.”
“That’s why it’s a good thing.” She hadn’t liked it, when he’d looked at her instead of Mag for that second until Mag took his head off with a few words. Being in charge of someone’s life because you paid out to them, and you watched their back while they watched yours was one thing. Having that kind of power over someone like the Bone Collector made her feel like a thing to be traded. He didn’t owe her a damn thing, and she wanted to keep it that way. Even if she knew she would have used it in a second if she’d felt her back against a corner. Keeping Mag safe meant more to her than her own peace of mind.
As the silence stretched fit to snap again, she found herself looking at him from the corner of her eye. It seemed so easy, to let him be that little bit apart. It was sure as hell easier on her, because it meant not having to ask herself any questions, let alone answer them. But there was still that tug of what do you want from me, and it ran up against the shadow she felt coming on the horizon. There was always the chance, whether it was a big thing or a small thing or just riding off to get some goddamned supplies for Lobo, that it would be her last living moment. She didn’t want regrets, and she didn’t want to be Old Nick, dead-eyed because she’d killed too much of what she loved. She weighed those two wants in her hand: blood spraying indelibly across a ceiling, and the most infuriating person she’d ever known breathing softly against her hair.
She reached out and slid her fingers over his. The Bone Collector inhaled sharply, but he curled his fingers around hers, and pulled her hand in to rest against his chest. Hob frowned and tugged her hand away, long enough that she could pull off her glove. Aware of how intently he watched, she reached out again. And that was right, his skin as cool as ever against hers, no longer muffled by the glove. Maybe it had also been a mistake, because it felt too damn good when he stroked her fingers with his thumb. Something that small had no right to mean that much.
With her other hand, Hob flicked her cigarette butt away. It vanished in a shower of sparks. She got another out of her pocket, a little fumbling one-handed, and lit it with a snap of her fingers.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“I wish you’d quit your belly-achin’.” It helped, because if he hadn’t said anything, she might have gone and done something real stupid and tried to kiss him.
The low hum of a motor, the sound of chain mesh tires on sand made her look up, yanking her hand away from the Bone Collector as she did. Two familiar figures rolled along around the wall. She would have known them by their size and postures even if she hadn’t seen the paint and scratches on their helmets: Maheegan and Coyote.
They stopped a few meters off. Coyote pushed back the eye shield on his helmet. “Terribly sorry. Are we interrupting something?” The extra fruity tone of his voice was pure mockery.
Hob showed him her teeth. “I’m on a smoke break. The fuck do you want?” They were supposed to still be out, tracking the convoys. Just as well, Hob thought. She had those coordinates from Coyote’s shitbag of a brother now anyway.
“I’ve got a modest proposal for you,” Coyote said.
“Then I shall be on my way,” the Bone Collector said, pushing himself to his feet.
Coyote extended a finger to point at him. “Not so fast. It’s for you, too.”
Hob raised her eyebrows. “This better be good.”
The helmet muffled the sound of his voice, but Hob still heard Maheegan… cackle. “Oh, you betcha it is.”
6 Days
“I don’t see any fuckin’ ospreys,” Hob said, squinting out from under the camouflage net they all huddled beneath, out in the great saltpan around Newcastle. It was the dark of the night, and cold, which made her just a little grateful for them all having to be so cozy.
Hob had waited for the rest of her people to get back from the towns and handpicked her party carefully – Dambala, Coyote, Maheegan, Lykaios, Freki, Geri, and the Bone Collector riding on the back of her motorcycle and hating every minute of it.
“No, there’s one,” Coyote said. He passed her a scope, then extended his hand to point. “There, in the hangar.” Thankfully, for all it was black but for the stars outside, the city and the landing field were a blaze of lights, like the glittering shell of some alien insect with its claws sunk deep into the hardpan.<
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Hob felt Dambala shift uneasily behind her. After she took a brief look – sure was a big fucking osprey, which was about all she knew about those machines – she handed the scope to him.
“Are you fuckin’ serious?” Dambala said. “It’s grounded for repairs.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “You sayin’ it’s broke, Bala?”
“If it’s in that there hangar, it sure as hell ain’t at full operation,” Dambala said.
“We watched it come in yesterday morning and it was flying just fine,” Coyote said, a touch defensive. “Probably some backup system warning light that they have to inspect away.”
“You don’t know that,” Dambala said. “This ain’t some motorcycle with an overheat light you can ignore, you dumb asshole. I ain’t flyin’ somethin’ just to have it fall out of the sky.”
Hob still wasn’t certain how Dambala had suddenly transformed into a pilot, or why Coyote had known this about him. She wanted to ask, but it definitely fell under the no talking about anyone’s life before they were a Wolf rule. Stupid fucking rule sometimes, she thought.
“And,” Coyote continued in an entirely reasonable tone, which meant he was at his most dangerous, “it’s currently unattended. We’ll never get this sort of opportunity when they’re doing load and prep for the next flight.”
“And how the fuck you plannin’ on fixin’ it even if it don’t fall out of the sky?” Dambala demanded.
“Assuming it isn’t just a silly failsafe light we can put a bit of tape over?” Coyote asked. “Come now, old boy. You must have more faith in our dear friend Hati than that.”
“Coyote,” Dambala said, warningly. “Night flyin’ ain’t a fuckin’ joke either.”
“Both of ya, hush.” Hob took the scope back. It was true that there was a lull of activity on the landing field, because it was night, and because there was nothing there to load or refuel at the moment. She sucked at her teeth, thinking. “We get you in there, Bala, will you be able to tell pretty quick if you can fly it?”
