Applegate, K A - Remnants 03 - Them

by Them (lit)

  Look for other REMNANTS titles by K.A. Applegate:

  #1 The Mayflower Project

  #2 Destination Unknown

  Also by K.A. Applegate

  A NIMORPH S ®

  REMNANTS

  THEM

  K. A. APPLEGATE

  * * *

  AN APPLE PAPERBACK

  * * *

  SCHOLASTIC INC. New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney Mexico City New Delhi Hong Kong Buenos Aires

  For Michael and Jake

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE HOW DOES BUGS BUNNY DO HALF THE STUFF HE DOES?

  CHAPTER TWO YOURE REALLY JUMPY, YOU KNOW THAT?

  CHAPTER THREE IM THE PRESIDENTS SON, YOU KNOW.

  CHAPTER FOUR I HATE THIS PLACE.

  CHAPTER FIVE EVERYTHING DIES, HUMAN.

  CHAPTER SIX I THINK WE NEED TO HAVE A MEETING.

  CHAPTER SEVEN AN ALL-OVER SQUIRM.

  CHAPTER EIGHT IS HE SOME KIND OF MUTANT?

  CHAPTER NINE WE COME IN PEACE?

  CHAPTER TEN BOSCH.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN HERE THEY COME! HERE THEY COME!

  CHAPTER TWELVE DONT MESS WITH A MAKER.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN MOTHER IS CONFUSED.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE CHAMELEON.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN BACK TO THE SHIP.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN GET UP OFF YOUR KNEES AND DEAL WITH IT.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN WE HAVE TO RUN. CAN YOU RUN?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN KILLER EARS? KILLER EARS? WAS THIS GUY ON DRUGS?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN THE BABY IS HUNGRY.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ID RATHER BE AT DISNEY WORLD.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE I THINK THEIR BOSS IS COMING.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO FEED A FREAK TO THE FREAK.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE SING TO MY PEOPLE OF MY DEATH.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MMM, BABY WANT SOME NUM NUM.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE DONT TELL ME YOU ENJOYED ALL THAT.

  K.A. APPLEGATE REMNANTS 4 Nowhere Land THE SUN RISES, AND WITH IT , HOPE .

  CHAPTER ONE HOW DOES BUGS BUNNY DO HALF THE STUFF HE DOES?

  They named the pony Eeyore.

  He was a skanky-looking beast, shaggy and slumped over and hangdog. He was harnessed to a wagon that might fall apart at any moment. The big solid wheels creaked and wobbled. Neither pony nor cart would ever break three miles an hour. But they had managed to load the comatose Billy Weir into the back of the wagon.

  They had food in the form of pies. Not fruit pies or cream pies, but meat pies, and the exact nature of the meat was anyones guess. But it was food and they were hungry. They also had water. The water was in crockery jars that were no doubt supposed to contain mead or ale, but what did the ship know about any of that?

  Jobs, MoSteel, Olga Gonzalez, who was MoSteels mother, Violet Blake, who liked to be called Miss Blake, and Billy Weir, who managed to be entirely catatonic and then, at unpredictable times, frighteningly powerful, were the most normal creatures in view. There were other humans all around, but not humans as they were in reality, humans as they had been imagined by a long-long-dead painter named Brueghel.

  Pieter Brueghel the Elder had painted at about the same time that Nostradamus had written his prophecies, in the mid-1550s and early 1560s. That was, give or take, four-hundred-fifty years earlier than Jobs had been born, and not quite a thousand years earlier than the present moment.

  Jobs was fourteen years old. Or five hundred and fourteen years old, depending on your perspective.

  The Dutch painter could not have foreseen that his work would be inscribed on data disks that would find their way aboard a space shuttle called the Mayflower and from there end up being downloaded into an alien spaceship so vast it had at first seemed to be a planet.

  Jobs and his companions were walking through a live-action version of an old painting. A live-action, 3-D, solid-to-the-touch, undeniably real version created by who or whatever was in charge of the alien ship.

  Why? That was the question. And also how?

  The improbable set of circumstances had begun with the destruction of Earth by an asteroid. Jobs and MoSteel had seen the impact from space. Earth was a watermelon dropped from the third floor. When last seen, Earth had been smacked into three big, irregular chunks flying apart in stately slo-mo.

  But before that cosmic annihilation, humans had tried a desperate, last-minute, utterly doomed effort to save some tiny remnant of Homo sapiens. They had hauled a nearly antique shuttle out of storage, fitted it out with experimental solar sails and even more experimental hibernation equipment, and loaded up the so-called Mayflower Project with eighty humans chosen, according to time-honored ritual, from among those who had ties to, or influence over, NASA.

  The Mayflower had no possibility of succeeding and indeed no one had expected it to. It had no destination, no goal. It had merely been fired into space, fired away from Earth.

  And despite this it had been found far, far beyond the orbit of Neptune, out in cold empty space where good old Sol, Earths sun, was just another twinkly star.

  Found, recovered, picked up by the ship, by whoever or whatever ran the ship.

  Those of the Eighty who had survived the moldy death called cheesing, and death by mutated carnivorous worm, and death by micrometeorite, and death by mummification, had revived to find themselves in an environment created out of humanitys own creative patrimony. The ship had downloaded the Mayflower s data and created an environment based on human art.

  It must have seemed like a good idea to the ship. But at the moment, Jobs and his friends were walking beside a rickety pony-drawn cart through a gloomy landscape dominated by what was, according to Miss Blake, the Tower of Babel.

  Brueghels vision of the Tower of Babel, at least.

  It looked a bit like a wedding cake. A wedding cake constructed of crumbling sports arenas piled one atop the other. A wedding cake done in the colors of old parchment and iced tea stains.

  It was circular and there were layers, each one smaller in diameter than the one below. If construction had continued indefinitely it might have, in time, reached a sharp point. But construction had stopped at seven layers. It was a gigantic spiral ramp, and if construction had been sensibly completed it would have been possible to walk around and around the building and ascend to the top. But the Tower of Babel was a mess, with massive, tumbled-stone spurs defacing one side and blocking the rampway on at least three levels.

  And toward the top of the tower it seemed the builders had changed their minds, cut away the outer layers, and begun construction on a tower-atop-a-tower, a sort of miniaturized, modest version of the tower rising from the tumbled wreckage of the original building. This mini-tower had the look of a castles keep, or perhaps a sort of grandiose penthouse.

  Each layer was penetrated by high-arched doors and windows, and the mini-tower likewise. The doors on lower levels were tall enough to allow a giraffe to walk through without ducking. Doors higher up were of more human dimensions.

  The Tower of Babel fronted a harbor on one side. It had a low stone quay. The remaining three hundred degrees of arc was on land and loomed huge above a squalid, medieval city.

  It was this city that Jobs was walking through, leading the pony. From this distance the tower was so tall, so vast in extent, so massively heavy that it seemed impossible that the ground could support it.

  Big, MoSteel remarked.

  I wonder how tall? If we had a stick, we could cut it to the length of my arm and figure it out, Jobs said. All you have to do is hold the stick vertically and move back or closer till it appears to equal the height of the building. Then you just pace off

  Or we could just agree that its really big, Violet Blake said.

  Jobs
knew her finger was bothering her. Her missing finger. The empty space where her tenth finger would have been. She unwound the bandage and Jobs looked away, squeamish.

  The wound was still bleeding; it might go on bleeding forever. It was down to a slow seep now, a red ooze from beneath the cauterized crust and around the scab. It wasnt gushing at least. He winced just thinking about it.

  Strange how it doesnt just hurt at the knuckle where it was lopped off, Violet said through gritted teeth. It hurts at the tip. I mean, the former tip. The no-longer-there tip.

  Phantom pain, Olga Gonzalez said sympathetically.

  You should change that bandage, MoSteel said. He left the road and walked up to a peasant woman who was carrying a heavy bucket. Excuse me, maam, I need your scarf.

  MoSteel unwound the white cloth from the womans head. The woman said nothing. In fact, she never slowed or stopped or responded. Beneath the scarf was blank space, no hair, no head, just emptiness. A second later a new scarf appeared, wrapped just like the one MoSteel had taken.

  MoSteel handed the scarf to Violet. Would you like me to help you with that?

  No. No, thank you, she answered.

  MoSteel caught up with Jobs. Id feel bad about taking stuff from these people, but they dont seem to mind.

  I dont think they mind anything, Jobs said. I dont think they have minds. Theyre not real in the usual ways. They may not even be anatomically human, let alone have functioning wills.

  MoSteel shrugged. Maybe not.

  It never hurts to be polite, Olga, MoSteels mother, opined.

  I was raised right, MoSteel said with a wink for Jobs and a sincere smile for his mother.

  The system conserves energy, Jobs said thoughtfully. Thats why when you take the scarf away theres nothing underneath. The system doesnt need to create matter to fill in beneath the scarf; it saves energy, it just does what it has to do. Id bet some of these people dont weigh more than twenty pounds or so. You could pick them up and carry them. The system probably doesnt fill them in.

  Theyre three-dimensional illustrations, Miss Blake said.

  Olga looked skeptical. So how is it Eeyore can pull Billy? He shouldnt be strong enough if hes hollow.

  The strength doesnt come from muscles. It comes from the matter-manipulation system directly, Jobs said. He liked this sort of puzzle. It gave him a sense of satisfaction being able to construct a theory and defend it.

  Theyre like cartoons, MoSteel said. Because theyre drawings they can do stuff that doesnt make sense. I mean, how does Bugs Bunny do half the stuff he does?

  Jobs gave his friend a dirty look, which MoSteel reflected back as a gapped grin. Jobs knew when he was being teased.

  Why exactly are we heading for the tower? Miss Blake demanded.

  Its tall. We climb it, maybe well be able to get the lay of the land, Jobs said. Besides, the others will head for it. Maybe we can hook up with them.

  Are you sure you want to? Violet muttered.

  Violets mother, Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake, had taken charge of the Remnants. She was a dynamic, impressive woman. It had not escaped Jobss notice that mother and daughter didnt get along at all.

  My brothers with them, Jobs pointed out. Besides, strength in numbers and all that.

  Who do you think lives in the tower? Olga wondered.

  More Cartoons, Jobs said with a shrug.

  Maybe they have a cartoon bath, Violet said wistfully. A hot bath. With soap. And shampoo.

  They turned a corner and suddenly there was no more town between them and the base of the tower. Jobs hauled back on Eeyores bridle. They stood for a moment staring up at the structure, imposing and impossible and threatening.

  What was the story of the Tower of Babel? Does anyone know? Its a Bible thing, right? Jobs asked.

  MoSteel shook his head pityingly. You are such a heathen, Duck. The people made a tower to reach all the way up to heaven. God didnt like their attitude, getting above themselves and all. So he turned them against one another by making them speak all different languages. That way they couldnt cooperate and make any more towers to heaven.

  Jobs made a face. He was on the verge of saying that it was a stupid story. But MoSteel would be offended.

  An allegory of human pride, Miss Violet Blake said. A pretty good allegory if you wish to instruct people in humility.

  But not as good as an asteroid, Jobs said dryly.

  CHAPTER TWO YOURE REALLY JUMPY, YOU KNOW THAT?

  Yago liked the tower. No one else seemed to, but he did. One thing was for sure: If you wanted to be king you needed a castle. And this tower was the mother of all castles. It totally dominated the landscape, the biggest thing around by a factor of ten thousand percent or so.

  The upper floors had possibilities, definitely. He could see setting up a throne room there. He would have the whole mini-tower to himself. All the lower floors would be for various servants, functionaries, soldiers, and so on.

  Okay, it was a daydream, but what empire ever started without some crazy dream?

  I think we should see if we can make it a center of operations, Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake said, hands on hips. Depending on whether its already inhabited. I mean, its pretty impressive, isnt it?

  Tamara Hoyle was standing stolidly with her creepy baby cantilevered out on one hip. Such a chubby baby, such a hard, bony, bodybuilder mother. They fascinated Yago. Why didnt the baby ever eat? How could it seem to see with those empty craters where its eyes had been? And surely it was too big to be natural. He was no expert on babies, but that was one freak of a baby. He edged away from Tamara and the baby, eased around to the other side of Wylson Lefkowitz-Blake. For the moment Wylson seemed to be running things. Which was fine with Yago: He would play the loyal number two for now.

  I think it would be perfect, Yago said. I mean, look, the only way up is by following the spiral pathway, right? So couldnt you defend it with just a few people?

  The baby made a giggling sound and Tamara Hoyle snorted. If we had five hundred troops, yes, you could hold it. But altitude and interior lines only go so far. How do you even know if someone is climbing the far side of the thing? It would take a hundred men just to monitor the perimeter.

  We need to be someplace, Wylson countered. We need a corporate headquarters. A base of operations. Id far rather be up there than down here. If we can find a way to get some kind of radio system going, well, thats the highest point.

  Yago looked away to hide his laugh. Radio? Corporate headquarters? Where did Wylson think she was? Good thinking, boss.

  The baby looked away, bored, and Tamara shrugged, indifferent.

  Yago suppressed a shudder. He was right: In the end it would be the freaks against the normals. Tamara and the baby were the definition of freak. Them and Billy Weir, wherever he was, and of course, 2Face. He searched for and found her over by her father, Shy Hwang. Shy Hwang had a permanent mope glued onto his face, as though the death of his wife was a unique tragedy beside which the death of the entire human race paled to irrelevance. 2Face didnt seem as depressed, although who could tell with that half-melted face of hers? Hard to read her, though Yago had the definite impression that 2Face was a tough chick. Probably hot, too, back before her face was blowtorched. Half a nice face.

  And shed blown him off, thats what stuck. Hed tried to recruit her, back in the world, back in the before, hed offered her the chance to be his first fan. He, Yago, universally hailed by every teen fanzine as the best-looking guy in America. Hed been Teen People s Hunk of the Year two years in a row, unprecedented! Half the kids in the country had copied his spring-green hair and golden, cats-DNA eyes.

  And Candle Face had chilled him.

  Yago bit his lip and tried to move past it. It was five hundred years ago, after all, and it wasnt like it mattered.

  On the other hand, no one ever slammed Yago. He had dated Leonessa. He had dated Pet Proffer. Celebrities. Models.

  Chilled by a freak? Yago?

  He sensed D-Caf sidling up beside
him. D-Caf was a natural toady, a born bootlicker. Plus he had not an ally in the place. He was a killer, he was, the little twitch. That didnt bother Yago. Much. A leader used the human material he was given.

  Are we going up there? D-Caf asked. What do you care? Yago asked.

  D-Caf shrugged. I was just wondering. Its kind of creepy, isnt it? I mean, I dont know, its just creepy. Isnt there somewhere else we can go?

  Youre really jumpy, you know that? Yago said. D-Caf grinned and ducked his head. I guess I am.

  Heres what you do: Dont worry about where we go. Just do what I tell you.

  D-Caf frowned and looked uncertain.

  Yago drew him closer, leaning in for a false confidentiality. Your job is to watch 2Face. See, I think maybe shes a problem. So you keep an eye on her, and you tell me if she does anything.

  Like what?

  Just keep an eye on her, okay, Twitch?

  D-Caf nodded. Yago slapped him on the back. Good deal. Now get lost.

  Wylson said, Yago, tell everyone were going.

  Everyone consisted of Wylson and Yago as leaders; 2Face and her father, Shy Hwang, and her temporary ward, Edward, as likely enemies; Tamara and the baby, just out-and-out freaks; D-Caf, who was already halfway coopted; and then some unknowns: a kid named Roger Dodger who couldnt be much over ten, a kind of tough-looking chick named Tate, and a sixteen-year-old beast of a guy named Anamull, who looked like he might be of some use as an enforcer; finally, the two other adults, Daniel Burroway, who was some kind of scientist, and T.R., who was a shrink. Of the two, Burroway might be trouble someday, but T.R. was a worm.

  Yago made a mental note: Work on Anamull. Muscle was always helpful. As Anamull was demonstrating. He had cornered one of the automaton people, one of the fake creatures who inhabited this weird artscape, and was busy stealing the mans dagger.

  Not a bad idea, Yago thought. They should acquire whatever weapons they could, while they could. Who knew what was up in that tower?

  Anamull, Yago yelled. As soon as you get that knife, lets go. Tate? Shy? Lets go, boys and girls.