by Anna Mayle
“I’m sure they did,” Jacobi piped in and Enoch wasn’t sure if the naïve man believed what he was saying or not. “Angel’s aren’t monsters. Look at Enoch. It’s just a lot of them think a little differently than we do, and a lot of them are more desperate.”
“Why?” Cora asked softly.
“For hundreds of years they…we,” Enoch corrected himself. “We have been seen as the enemy, a solid target for human anger, usually ugly or unusual, inhuman enough that we don’t garner sympathy. Most Angels can’t settle in one place, because the moment humans learn there’s an Angel settlement, it’s destroyed.”
“If they can’t settle, they can’t grow crops.” Cora noted pensively.
Jacobi added to the thought, “And most people won’t trade with an Angel, so they’re forced to be nomad in a world where growing food is difficult, and it doesn’t occur naturally all that often. Not enough of it.”
Enoch nodded and they crested the hill. Below was a settlement. Beyond the greedy squalling of vultures and the ring of a lone wind chime in some unseen window, there was silence.
Cora leaned forward in her side car, probably searching for some small sign of life. Even though she had to know better than to think she’d find something. Some of the houses stood burnt until only their skeletal frames were left to greet newcomers, but many of the buildings were intact. The fields had been trampled and picked clean and the silo-like building Enoch assumed had once held grain was peeled open and empty.
“The standing houses make me nervous,” Enoch admitted. “Too many places to hide. We should go around.”
The girl said nothing but Enoch watched her spine bow and head lower in sorrow.
He glanced down at the wreckage again and sighed. “If you stay here, I’ll go scout it,” he bargained. “You will not follow me or we leave the instant I spot you.”
Cora nodded, eyes wide and hopeful behind her riding goggles.
“You know I’m not going to find survivors,” Enoch pressed.
She nodded, but he could see she didn’t believe it.
Jacobi spoke up, “There aren’t any cams or ports of any kind in there. I’ll be running strictly on what you see.”
It was a subtle warning, Enoch knew it. He would have no extra eyes. That was fine, though. Until recently, he hadn’t had anyone else to help him.
Of course, until recently, he probably wouldn’t have been this stupid. “Which house did you stay in?”
Cora pointed to one of the half burned husks with a trampled garden out front and a blue door still slightly colored despite the charred pieces. It had been a nice home, once. This settlement had been there for generations, building and thriving, until recently at least. It almost had the feel of a real town, one he might have seen as a child, before everything died and turned to rot and rust.
“Stay here,” he warned again, and drew the clubs from his back, lining them up along the side of his arm. It was a defensive position, not aggressive. If there was anyone down there, hopefully it would lessen the chance of an attack.
“We’re muted to Cora,” Jacobi announced in his ear. “We can hear her, but she won’t hear us.”
“Good,” Enoch nodded and stepped foot into the ghost town’s outskirts. “Keep out of the screen. I need to be able to catch movement in the waking world.”
The hacker had probably nodded his response because he was silent for a good while. “You know this is a bad idea,” he finally whispered, then went quiet.
Enoch appreciated that. It left him free to hear other things.
If there had been other things to hear. A settlement so far south, there was a good chance it would never see life beyond the transient again. Why they had chosen that particular location he could only guess. There were bones in the street, blown up against the sides of buildings by the strong southern winds. They weren’t all animal, not even mostly animal.
“Thank the skies Cora doesn’t have telescopics on her goggles,” Jacobi’s voice was muffled as if he were covering his avatar’s mouth.
“Yes,” Enoch replied softly and tapped Cora’s door with a knuckle.
Jacobi pulled a strong wall all around him in his dark place, hardening it against tampering. He closed monitor visuals to all but Enoch and painted the area white with a thought. The whole situation had him on edge, waiting for something to jump out of the shadows. Even knowing he had nothing to fear in the Network, the irrational sensation remained.
When Enoch rapped on the peeling and burned blue door, Jacobi half expected an answer.
A similar tap echoed through the audio feed and Jacobi jumped, eyes wide. “Enoch, tell me that was a glitch on my end.”
The Angel didn’t speak. He stuck the batons in his belt and stepped to the side of the door.
“Ah!” Jacobi whispered quickly in his ear. “Don’t stand there. Everyone knows people step to the side when opening doors in suspicious circumstances. Anyone intelligent will shoot through the wall and the door.”
Enoch nodded and pulled himself up by the doorframe to hang from the eves of the little porch, out of the usual hiding place. He reached down and turned the knob, pulled his hand back quickly to rearm himself, and waited.
No one came out. Nothing pierced either door or wall. Only more silence.
The Angel slid back to his feet and peeked around the doorframe.
Jacobi scanned the room quickly, running hiding probabilities and danger spots. It was fairly open. Then who…the tapping came again.
Enoch motioned to a hole in the roof where vultures perched, eating something. A small bone fell through and bounced on the stone and clay floor—tap, tap, tap.
“Is that,” Jacobi looked closer, terror forgotten. “Is that a finger bone?”
Enoch’s nod made the visuals shift up and down.
That could have been Cora, if they hadn’t wanted to keep her.
“That could have been Cora,” Enoch growled, a mirror of Jacobi’s thoughts. He made his way quietly as he could through bones and debris to the half-walled and half curtained areas that would have been private rooms.
They’d been reduced to scraps and chaos, but not everything was gone. A glint of a metal chain caught his attention under the torn curtains. A necklace, it was still polished with a white grey sheen to it, maybe some kind of steal.
“It’s amazing the Angels missed this.” Enoch picked the deceptively delicate looking thing up and studied it more closely. “Any metal is precious now.” He secured it in his pocket and kept hunting about. Nothing else was salvageable.
The trip back was a quiet and heavy one. Jacobi wasn’t sure what to say. They hadn’t found Angels, they’d found Cora’s people, though Jacobi wished they hadn’t. Enoch’s steps were as soft and cautious as they had been before, but there was a weight behind them.
“What do we tell her?” Jacobi asked before they reached the cyc.
The Angel didn’t answer, Jacobi understood. Once they were far enough from the settlement to have warnings of any impending attacks. Enoch pulled the chain, wire, and a bit of crystal or glass from his pocket and fiddled with them as he walked. He only glanced at his hands a couple of times, so Jacobi couldn’t see what he was doing.
“As little as possible,” Enoch finally suggested.
“What?” Jacobi turned focus from Enoch’s unseen hands to his words.
“We tell her a little as possible,” He clarified. “There’s a limit on how much darkness a soul can stand.”
Jacobi nodded and watched for the incline they were walking to smooth out and bring them to their girl.
Cora was out of her sidecar and running to meet them the moment they crested the hill where they’d left her. She’d taken the face guard and goggles off, so Jacobi had an excellent view of her face falling when she saw no one was with them.
Enoch knelt in front of her and pulled out the chain. There was a prism wired to hang from it, the steal curled in spirals and a single heart to frame it. The Angel held
it up and silently pointed out the rainbows it cast on the sand.
The little girl ran her hands over the chain sadly. Tears welled in her eyes but didn’t fall.
“Cora wearing rainbows,” Enoch said with a soft smile in his voice. He fastened the chain around her neck and tucked the prism carefully into the coveralls. “Our girl wears rainbows.”
She sobbed and threw her little arms around his neck. Jacobi had little visual then but a bit of her hood and back. He could imagine it though. The large, slightly terrifying man curled protectively around the waifish girl while she cried her heart out onto his shoulder.
I’ll be with you soon. Fifteen hours. I’ll be with you soon.
Once Cora had calmed enough, Enoch put the goggles and mask back over her face and settled her into the sidecar once again.
“Let’s go get Jacobi, okay?” he asked her.
Her tear dampened smile warmed Jacobi’s heart.
Enoch never looked back at the settlement as they went. Jacobi though he might have, if he’d been there. He supposed there was nothing of interest left in it in any case. They had the best part of it traveling with them.
* * * *
The journey was a quiet one, unsettling for it. Enoch had anticipated multiple attacks, especially off of Man’s Road on a fast cyc. There was nothing. He, Jacobi, and Cora might have been the last people left. A snerk over the earpiece and Jacobi’s giggle of “so much for preserving the species” told him the hacker had been thinking the same thing.
“Jacobi, have you been monitoring the north as we’ve traveled? Any changes?” he asked.
“Man’s Road has been completely razzed about the median line. Lower Walls are unresponsive but for corrupt data feeds, and upper are on lockdown. I’ve keyed into some disturbing memos, but not much else.”
“Disturbing?”
“They don’t want to open the Walls to the plague,” Jacobi said hesitantly. They’d been wary of muting Cora’s feed to them since the settlement. “They’re talking about alternative food sources.”
Enoch sighed, “Of course they are.”
“That’s…”
“Yes, but not unexpected. They’ve only seen the lower levels as servants and audience for a long time now. It isn’t so far a jump to cattle.”
“Cattle?” Cora asked.
Jacobi sputtered and changed the topic.
Enoch listened to the two of them contentedly. He couldn’t let his guard down, not out in the Waste, no matter how quiet it was. He could, however, listen to them as a backdrop of kindness to the barren landscape, cold for all its heat.
“Enoch’s smiling,” Cora tattled on him.
Jacobi chuckled. “He does that sometimes.”
“I can hear both of you.”
Jacobi’s chuckle slid into a teasing giggle and he asked coyly, “I could whisper sweet nothings into your ear.”
Enoch glared ahead and said nothing.
“You can’t make babies, right?” Cora asked suddenly.
“Angel’s aren’t sterile,” Enoch corrected her. “I can make a baby if I choose to.”
The little girl cocked her head, “But not with Jacobi, right?”
The cyc swerved a bit. Enoch swore and righted himself.
“So the mating rituals you’re doing aren’t logical, because you’re both boys and can’t make babies.”
“Oh my skies! Not logical!” Jacobi was laughing his fool head off. “She’s like a tiny you, Enoch!”
Enoch ignored the hyena in his ear and spoke solely to Cora. “That is not completely correct. It wouldn’t be logical if I meant to make offspring, but I have no use for them. I’m not skilled with children.”
“You do alright with me,” Cora pointed out helpfully.
“You came partially prepared,” he reasoned.
Jacobi’s laughter had been dying down, now it spiked again.
“Like food?” the child asked, not helping.
Enoch rolled his eyes and focused on the land before and around them. “No, not like food, you had been…trained.”
“Like a pet?” she asked.
“Jacobi, if you don’t stop laughing, I am muting you,” Enoch warned.
“S…sorry,” he gasped and hiccupped as he wrestled his mirth back under control. Finally able to speak again, he addressed the child. “Cora, sometimes mating rituals are done out of want of the other person’s—”
Enoch cleared his throat, just in case the hacker was going where he seemed to be going.
“Company,” Jacobi finished pointedly.
“I can be your baby,” Cora decided. “Then it’s okay that you can’t make one, because you and me and Jacobi make a good family.”
It wasn’t a perfect resolution to the conversation, but Enoch would take it. “Thank you, Cora.” He didn’t say that he’d had families before, watched them grow old, watched them die young. There had come a point where there were none left to love, and no love left in him to give. “You should get some sleep. We have a long way to go and I made that seat to lay back for you. Just curl up. We’ll wake you if anything happens.”
“Promise?” She asked doubtfully.
Enoch nodded.
The child was exhausted with everything that had happened. The moment the seat slid back and she laid down, her breath evened out. She fidgeted with her chain in her sleep until it was wrapped snuggly around her hand and Enoch monitored her nervously, to make sure she didn’t choke herself with it.
It might have been something he heard in Enoch’s voice, or just Jacobi’s uncanny ability to read his moods, but the hacker spoke up in the silence that followed, “Do you love me yet?”
Enoch sighed but didn’t answer.
“Just because you refuse to give love doesn’t mean you can’t feel it,” Jacobi pressed. “All it means is that you keep it and yourself from us. You torment yourself for it. You’re very adept at self-flagellation. Doesn’t the angst wear on you after a while?”
“Yes. It does,” Enoch admitted. “So do you.”
“Good. I’m working on wearing you down.”
“Do you know what you’re asking for, Jacobi? You will get old, Cora will get old. You’ll wither away and die and I’ll still look just like this. I’ll still be just like this. Do you want to wish that on any of us?”
“You’ve dwelt so long in absolutes and fact that you’ve forgotten that humans are defined by their ability to thrive on change.”
“I’m an Angel, not a human.”
“Same difference.”
“No, it’s really not.”
“I think you’re just scared of letting us in. You love us already, but you’re afraid if you say it, you’ll make it real. It’s already real though,” Jacobi insisted. “Just because you haven’t labeled it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
“Just because you want to see it doesn’t mean it’s there either,” Enoch countered.
“You know, we can keep having this conversation over and over or you can just admit you love me.” Jacobi kept pushing.
Enoch shook his head. “Extortion doesn’t suit you.”
“Then save me from my evil tendencies and just admit you love me,” the hacker suggested.
“You should sleep, too. No need for all of us to be awake through this.”
“I don’t sleep much, and I like this.”
Enoch was a bit confused, “And what is this?”
“The beginning of something good,” Jacobi promised him.
“I don’t love you.” Enoch reminded him.
Cora chirped up, half asleep. “Liar.”
Enoch just kept driving, Jacobi snickering in his ear.
Chapter Eleven
Pulling the cyc into Richmond was like riding through a steel elephant’s graveyard. Some of the towering skyscrapers had collapsed fully, others stood shorn of glass and any outer paneling, which left them nothing but skeletons of naked, rust covered beams. Everything usable had been stripped from them long ago. The met
als that remained weren’t worth the danger of retrieval. It left them abandoned twice over, well beyond their useful lives, decayed. With all the rust and sharp torn pieces…
“Cora, you are not to touch anything outside of the cyc here.”
The little girl of course had to question, “Why?”
Enoch sighed. “If you cut yourself, you could die. Or need more shots. Or both.” A fine end that would be, giving her all of those painful shots just to have her cut herself and die of an infection.
They moved on through the wreckage toward the older parts of the city. Some of the brick and stone buildings he was sure would have been left alone, most likely the ones outside of the city proper. That would be where they would find Jacobi. As he maneuvered the cracked and crumbling asphalt of the city, Jacobi chimed in. “I made something for you.”
A wave seemed to pass over them. The decayed and crumbling giants of glass and metal glistened like new, street lamps lit as they passed bathing everything from sidewalks to metal encircled trees in a warm glow. Trees that had green and growing leaves, birds in them…sidewalk cafés with people sitting at wrought iron tables, store fronts with displays, other traffic and pedestrians.
Enoch screeched to a halt at a red light. He felt sick. It wasn’t right, this wasn’t right, not anymore, not for hundreds of years. He ripped the goggles from his face and sat there on the rumbling cyc, shaking. The streets were empty, the city fallen and dead again.
“How was it?” Jacobi asked hopefully. “I pulled from everything I could find to build it up right, was that what it was like?”
“Why?” Enoch gasped.
“It was a present.” Jacobi said happily. “I wanted to give you…”
“It was cruel.”
Cora, whose goggles weren’t patched to the Network, was confused. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” both of them said together.
She rubbed her eyes and sat up with a yawn. “It didn’t sound like nothing.”
Jacobi didn’t speak right away. Enoch wasn’t sure if he was stewing or pouting. Finally he’d had enough.
