Midnight City: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  The woman’s breath quickened in fear. She saw a hatch set into the ceiling, and grabbed the string, yanked it open. The ladder to the attic descended, providing a stairway to the pitch black interior beyond.

  The footfalls were growing closer.

  Strange chirpings and whistles sounded from outside. Back and forth, from different directions. The sounds were electronic and distorted, and it only made them more frightening.

  Downstairs, the windows exploded inward. The front door blew apart as something punched through it. Emily screamed.

  Their mother didn’t look; she pushed her son and daughter up into the attic as fast as she could. When they were in, she told them to hide, told them to find a place in the back, out of sight.

  Emily cried louder, begged her mother not to leave them, but the woman insisted they move back, move and hide.

  Holt looked from his sister to his mother, unsure. More crashing from below, something big and powerful was searching the lower floor.

  Their mother told them everything would be okay. She told Emily she had to stay strong for her brother, had to take care of him, told her she was counting on it. The idea seemed to get through to the girl. She put her arms around Holt, started pulling him back and away.

  Holt’s mother watched them disappear into the dark for as long as she dared. Long after, Holt remembered the sight of his mother’s eyes, the way they seemed to commit every detail of him to memory before she finally nodded, smiled sadly … and shut the attic door.

  Above and outside, the sound of engines pushed into the house. One of the aircraft was hovering over it.

  The stomping of machines again. Much louder, much closer.

  Emily and Holt kept sliding in the dark until they hit the wall at the back. There was nowhere else to go. Holt hugged his knees and Emily wrapped her arms around him.

  From outside came new sounds. The sound of someone shouting. Holt couldn’t make out the words, but he recognized the voice. His mother.

  The stomping of gigantic feet went silent. More yelling, more shouts.

  The entire house shook as explosions rocked the ground. Emily gasped, hugged Holt tight as the roof threatened to cave in. More explosions, some kind of mechanical scream and whirring.

  They heard their mother shout again, heard her strained voice start to fade into the distance as it grew more frantic.

  Whatever was outside, however abhorrent it was, their mother was trying to lead it away. She was using herself as a distraction … and it was working.

  The stomping returned. Faster, heavier … and trailing after their mother. The roar of the engine above them grew louder a short moment, then buzzed away also.

  A minute or two later, the sounds of more explosions. But farther away now, much more distant. Whatever had been outside, it didn’t return.

  Holt and Emily hugged each other in the dark the rest of the night and through most the following morning before they worked up the courage to step out of the farmhouse.

  When they did, the landscape was black and charred as far as they could see. Houses and barns were smoldering ruins on the hills. And most shocking, in the distance to the north, sat something foreign and awful.

  An impossibly colossal black shape rose up from where downtown Denver used to be. What was left of the burning skyscrapers were completely dwarfed by the huge structure. It looked like a giant black wedge-shaped tower, and it was so tall, its top disappeared inside dark storm clouds in the sky. Even from this distance, they saw the lightning that crackled around it.

  And at the bottom, where the immense black thing met the ground, dark, meandering lines stretched back from it all the way to the horizon, winding toward the tower from all directions. Holt instantly knew what they were: People. Tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, all for some inexplicable reason marching toward and into that giant, vile structure in the distance.

  It filled Holt with dread. It was so much like a dream, a part of him expected to wake up soon. But he knew he wouldn’t, knew this was real, as impossible as it seemed.

  There was no sign of their mother. Whatever had happened, she was lost. And so were they. Lost and adrift in a world that was nothing like it had been the day before.

  Now they only had each other.

  23. WALTZ

  HOLT WOKE FROM THE DREAM WITH A START, stared at his surroundings in alarm until he realized he was no longer back there, huddled in the corner of that dark attic.

  With the realization came relief. And with the relief, as always, came the guilt. Holt pushed it down and away, as he always did.

  They’d made camp in the woods, several miles from the Drowning Plains. Here, the trees weren’t so densely packed as they had been, and the stars twinkled through from above.

  They’d run almost nonstop after their escape, the red glow of the flames reflecting off the night clouds above, chasing them until the sun finally came up.

  And still, they had run. The strange green and orange walkers were seemingly being overpowered by the unfathomable mass of Forsaken in those ruins, but there was no way to know for sure. They expected the aliens to explode through the underbrush behind them at any moment.

  When they could move no farther, they collapsed in the clearing. The sun was high in the sky when Holt, exhausted, finally fell asleep. Now it was night again, early evening based on the moon’s position. He’d been asleep for hours.

  Holt lay in his sleeping bag, thinking. The dreams hadn’t been this vivid in years. He’d done a good job of stuffing those emotions away, but both Mira and Zoey’s arrival into his life had clearly had an effect. Now the dreams were coming back, and with them, all the old feelings. One more reason to get rid of them both, he told himself. But those words were starting to feel very hollow.

  He looked over at Mira, who lay asleep and curled up protectively around her pack. The red in her hair glistened like copper in the flickering light from the campfire.

  “Did you have the same dream, Holt?” a soft voice asked from his other side. Holt rolled over.

  Zoey sat cross-legged near the fire, eating jelly beans from a small jar. Max sat in front of her on his haunches, tail thumping the ground like a metronome, watching Zoey’s every move. For every jelly bean stuffed into her mouth instead of his, he let out a small, sad whine.

  Zoey had almost as much of a sweet tooth as Max, Holt had discovered, and he’d given her the jar before he passed out. He wondered if she and Max had been eating them this whole time. He wouldn’t put it past either of them.

  The little girl tossed Max a green jelly bean. He caught it in midair and swallowed it almost whole. His tail resumed its thumping.

  “I give the green ones to the Max,” Zoey said. “I don’t like the green ones.”

  “Throw me a red one,” Holt said quietly, trying not to wake Mira. “Or a pink one.”

  Zoey frowned, but tossed him one of each. He chewed them slowly, savoring the sweet yet tart flavors. Then Holt remembered Zoey’s question.

  “What did you ask me?” he inquired. Maybe he hadn’t heard her right.

  “I asked if you had the same dream,” Zoey said. “You always seem to. I think it has to do with the invasion. And with a girl. Always the same girl.” Zoey tossed Max another green candy.

  Holt stared at her. “How do you know that?” he asked.

  Zoey shrugged. “Just something I see. I see lots of things.”

  Holt kept studying the little girl, unsure how to respond. He had grown to believe Zoey was not a direct danger; none of the “powers” she had shown so far could harm him or Mira or Max.

  But there was the continued threat of the Assembly.

  Three separate factions (that they knew of, anyway) were hunting her. Holt understood now why the Assembly feared the water. He’d seen its effects on them with his own eyes, the inexplicable black rust that consumed them if their machines broke down while touching it. And yet, those same walkers had pursued Zoey into the Drowning Plains,
a landscape flooded in water.

  Her ability to sense things was important. As was this new ability to read the minds of those near her in some limited way. But were those enough to warrant such an obsessive chase by the Assembly? Was it enough to justify the massive red army they’d seen in the Mississippi River Valley just two days ago?

  Holt knew it wasn’t, and that was what really bothered him. It meant they hadn’t seen all of what Zoey could do. It meant there were more surprises to come. And Holt wasn’t a fan of surprises.

  He reached for his pack, opened it, and pulled out the one radio he’d managed to take from the drugstore. The loss of that blue bag, stuffed with its priceless treasure, was still an almost tangible pain. He tried not to think about it.

  “Who’s the girl in your dream, Holt?” Zoey asked.

  Holt tensed at the question. “Zoey, that’s not something I talk about.” He placed the batteries in the radio and flipped it on. There was only static, and he tuned the dials, searching for any signal out there.

  “Why not?”

  “It just isn’t,” he said more firmly, trying to make his point. And it was true. With the exception of one other person, he had never spoken of Emily to anyone. And he had no intention of breaking that trend tonight.

  “Did the scary metal ones take her?”

  “Zoey…”

  “Was her name Emily?”

  “Zoey!” Holt yelled, fixing the little girl with a stern gaze. The sound of Emily’s name was like a slap in the face. The little girl’s eyes bore into him.

  On the other side of the camp, Mira stirred, but didn’t wake.

  Holt sighed, disappointed in himself. Zoey was just a little kid, after all. A little kid with a front-row look at his personal demons, but a little kid nonetheless. She didn’t know any better.

  When Holt looked back at her, her eyes were overwhelmed with sadness, and the raw emotion inside them struck Holt hard. He was suddenly full of shame; he hadn’t meant to be so forceful.

  “Zoey, I didn’t mean…,” he began, starting to get up.

  “I can feel how much you hurt, Holt,” she said. The words froze him in his tracks. “You hide it, real far down, but it’s there. You never let it get better.”

  Zoey voiced the observation with the same level of confusion as she would if she was asking why Holt wouldn’t remove a knife stuck in his chest. Holt stared back at her, unsure what to say.

  “Why don’t you let it get better, Holt?” she asked in her soft voice.

  It was a question Holt rarely allowed himself to ask. Mainly because he didn’t like the answer.

  “Because, Zoey,” he said slowly, his voice barely louder than the crackling embers of the small fire next to them, “I’d have to feel it all over again. And I don’t think I’m strong enough for that.”

  The sadness and pain slowly drained from Zoey’s face. “Maybe that’s because you’ve been alone too long.”

  When Zoey looked at him, she looked into him, below the surface. In a world where Holt had let very few people get close, that kind of look was rare. Perhaps the intimacy he felt with Zoey came merely by virtue of her strange powers, her inexplicable ability to automatically know what he felt … but did that make it any less real?

  The radio in his hands suddenly came to life. The signal wasn’t strong, and it was full of static, but it was a signal. Holt looked away from Zoey and tuned it in as best he could.

  Classical music, punctuated by bits of static, filled the forest clearing.

  The sounds of a hundred stringed instruments floated around them like individual pieces of air. Holt watched Zoey’s eyes widen at the sounds. She’d probably never heard music, Holt realized. It was a relic now, after all, a strange, forgotten remnant of the World Before.

  “What is it?” a groggy voice asked from the other side of the fire. Mira was awake, looking at him with her green eyes laced with the ever-growing black tendrils.

  “A rebel station,” Holt said. “Kind of far off, so it’s staticky … but we’re getting it.”

  A lot of survivors ran rebel radio stations throughout North America, broadcasting a variety of content that was mostly rebellion-oriented. Some of them had managed to power up the older existing radio towers that dotted the landscape’s urban ruins, but most were mobile. Smaller, hastily constructed transponders made by the more industrious and electrically inclined. They had a limited range, but what they lacked in power, they made up for in the ability to move and avoid Assembly gunships from homing in on their signals. Of course, Holt figured the Assembly could pretty easily find them if they wanted to. The reality was they probably just didn’t care.

  “I know this.” Mira climbed out of her sleeping bag and sat up, listening intently. “‘In the Fen Country,’ by Vaughan Williams.” The strings continued to pulse and meander around them, swelling and fluctuating in their battle with the static of the weak signal. “My dad loved Vaughan Williams, he played this one all the time.”

  “What was he like?” Zoey asked. Holt studied Mira along with the little girl. Max had given up on getting any more jelly beans, and was lying at Zoey’s feet, letting her rub his head. Holt wondered if Zoey could feel whatever emotions Mira was feeling right now.

  “I was only ten when the Assembly came. It’s terrible how fast the memories fade.” Even though the thoughts made her smile, her eyes didn’t lose their haunted look. “I’ve held on to … glimpses of him, just images, really: making pancakes, or writing, or working in his garden. He used to set me on his lap in the car and let me pretend to drive. My mom hated that—I guess she thought it was dangerous—but I always felt safe with him. I think she did, too. When the Tone took him, took both of them, they just … left me. Left me and walked away.”

  Holt looked off into the night at that last bit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zoey switch her gaze from Mira to him.

  “Neither of them would ever have left me like that,” Mira continued. “It was like watching who they used to be die.”

  Holt looked at Mira, and she at him. They held their gaze, mutual understanding passing between them. If he hadn’t been connected to Mira before … he was now. Holt felt the frustration build. How was he going to do what he needed to do? Survival dictated it, but …

  Mira looked back at him sadly, like she could sense his feelings almost as well as Zoey could.

  The music built into an outpouring of emotion and sound, climaxing in the air around them. And then it receded, faded, withdrew. Holt and Mira were still staring at each other when the voice of the radio station DJ emerged from the static.

  “Kid Cryptic, Cryptic Radio, broadcasting whenever and wherever he can,” the rapid-fire voice of a young boy said from the other side, across who knew how many miles of wasteland. “On the road to Midnight City this week, and if you’re hearing this, I’d bet you’re walking the same path. May our trails cross, and our journeys intertwine, my brothers and sisters.

  “That was another classic from Cryptic Radio’s very limited music collection. We got more tunes coming your way, pretty much the same from last hour, but before we hit that, got some news from the rumor mill. As always, take it with a grain of salt. Further the truth travels, the more a story it becomes.”

  Zoey got up and moved to Mira, sat in her lap. Mira smiled and ran her fingers through the little girl’s hair. Max padded over and sat next to Holt, his chin on his paws, and Holt scratched his ears.

  “I keep getting reports from survivors and traders coming from the south that west of the Chicago ruins, there’s a lot of strange Assembly activity.”

  Boy, was that the truth. Holt and Mira exchanged glances again as the voice continued.

  “Kids are reporting seeing not just massive numbers of your average, everyday walkers … but also ones painted a solid red. Yeah, if I hadn’t heard a multifarious quantity of reports of the same thing, I wouldn’t believe it either, but this DJ keeps hearing the same damn thing over and over. To make matters worse,
most reports say these red Assembly don’t get along very well with our home team. Hey, if we’re lucky, maybe they’ll wipe each other out.

  “One thing’s for sure, something bad’s going down out in Assembly land, and anyone hearing this would be advised to stay away from the Chicago Presidium’s territory for now. I’d find an alternate route, or just sit tight until it all passes over. Whatever it is.”

  “No kidding,” Mira said. Zoey looked up at her.

  “In the ‘good news’ category,” the voice continued, “Kid Cryptic has a target lock on a whole new set of CDs. I know, I know, I always say that, but this time, the trading source seems legit. And hopefully we can get something else to play besides the old school … not that there’s anything wrong with that. I love me some strings.

  “Remember, stay alert, stay alive, do what you gotta do to survive. Kid Cryptic is out.”

  The signal filled with static as the voice vanished. And then new music floated out from the speakers. Classical again, but older this time, with a very specific rhythm that came in sets of threes.

  Holt smiled, recognizing it. “It’s a waltz,” he said.

  “What’s a waltz?” Zoey asked.

  “It’s an old song made for dancing,” he said. “It has a certain beat, can you hear it?”

  The music pulsed and moved in triplets. Zoey listened.

  “One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, hear it?” he asked the little girl. Zoey nodded, smiling and reclining further into Mira’s arms.

  “My mom was a dancer before she met my dad.” Holt hugged his knees into his arms. “She taught me and my sister how to dance the waltz once. We were little, we stood on her feet while she did the steps.”

  “What’s a dance?” Zoey asked immediately.

  The question took Holt by surprise. Then he realized if Zoey didn’t know music, she definitely wouldn’t know what dancing was.

  The music continued to churn around them. It had been a long time, maybe years, since he had heard any form of it, and it made Holt smile. The difficulties of the past few days, the pain in his muscles, the exhaustion—they seemed to recede.