Judgment

by Sean Platt

  Everyone boarded the bus. No one stayed behind, as if they’d decided to take a family road trip rather than barreling into the monster’s mouth.

  Cameron had to go. Peers said he was the one chosen by both key and Ark to pull the metaphorical sword from the stone. Once he looked the issue in its eye, he had to admit he’d been feeling the pull for a while. He had dreams about finding the Ark again, even though word had clearly been passed around that it was right there, smack dab in the center of Ember Flats. Until the Den and its overabundance of information, Cameron hadn’t actually seen the thing on its enormous plinth, but every traveler knew where the archive rested. Every barman in every backwoods watering hole knew where it stood. In every city they’d fought through — every burg they’d eventually fled, holding their belongings and female members close — people had known where the Astrals had taken the prize they’d finally found in Horeb’s guts. But so many other things made sense, too — like why the Astrals hounded them constantly but never truly attacked them anymore. Why the Mullah, who opposed the Astrals, did. And why Cameron increasingly sensed that running from what had happened was only delaying the inevitable.

  Meyer had to go, with Kindred by his side. The two halves — Kindred able to sense the Astral collective and Meyer with his former prisoner’s knowledge — would be needed if they faced the Ember Flats viceroy. The network was severed; they had no idea how the other capitals had fared or how far they’d fallen. They’d found a tyrant viceroy in Roman Sands, the Astral duplicate of some famous human soured — the opposite of Kindred’s softening. He’d told the others, as they’d run from those guarded walls, not to judge the Astrals harshly for that one. Kindred had discovered he wasn’t truly Meyer Dempsey, but it was unlikely the same would happen for others. The Roman Sands viceroy probably thought she was the real Liza Knight. The human had gone bad, not the Titan who’d assumed her shape.

  Clara had to go because she was Lightborn. Cameron liked that least of all but knew it was true. She could see the path ahead, at least a little, and speak to what lay beneath the surface of Astral consciousness.

  And because Clara was going, Lila and Christopher were, too. Because Lila and Clara were going, so was Piper. Charlie was their analyst and Jeanine their militant, having effortlessly stepped into Nathan’s cruel shoes. And after that there was nobody left besides the Pall, now unseen for the trio of days spent in the Den refueling, resting, deciding to trust the man who’d been watching, who’d saved them from what may or may not have been an actual Astral siege.

  “I don’t understand why we’re not being followed,” Cameron said, looking through slats in the bus’s sides, where windows should have been.

  Jeanine was beside him. Cameron would rather have had Piper at his side, but that would mean accepting her presence, and he was still hoping that at some point before hitting Hell’s Corridor he’d manage to shoo her and a few of the others off the bus.

  “He has satellite feeds, like Nathan had,” Jeanine said. “And I get the feeling he’s made deals with whoever’s controlling these roads. Or maybe he’s the one who controls them.”

  But the difference between Andreus and Peers was that Nathan had built himself an army. Peers had only Aubrey. Two mild-mannered Brits, controlling the Middle East by themselves.

  “Nathan had access to satellites because the Astrals gave him access in trade,” Cameron said.

  Jeanine didn’t answer. There was no good answer to most of what was happening. They could believe Peers just so happened to keep an eye on their group despite the effort they’d taken to hide themselves, the many waypoints they’d taken over the years, and the month they’d spent in a massive junkyard of entirely defunct vehicles, pinned down, subsisting mostly by hunting rats. They could believe that Peers got the gasoline to run his hybrid bus by raiding a mostly unguarded Astral refining station in the desert as he claimed — and that he and Aubrey had modified the bus by themselves, including adding the four thirty-gallon tanks behind the rear partition. It might be true.

  Lies were being told; Cameron wouldn’t allow himself the luxurious stupidity of pretending they weren’t. But Kindred said that Peers wasn’t Astral, and neither were Aubrey or Nocturne, both of whom had come along as well because a party isn’t a party without a butler and a dog. But Cameron couldn’t work out a harmful angle to the possible lies. Hell’s Corridor took no bribes. If they were overtaken, the painted cannibals would devour Peers and Aubrey just the same.

  “You should talk to him, Cameron,” Jeanine finally said.

  “Peers?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what? Benjamin?”

  “About this. About all of this.” She gestured to indicate the bus, the fortunate fuel, the lack of pursuit by Astral shuttles or road warriors, the fact that they’d been talked into going at all.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Ask him if he’s telling the truth.”

  Cameron thought she must be kidding, but Jeanine’s eyes were hard and serious.

  “Right.”

  “You’d be amazed what happens when you’re straight with people. One day, a man came into the Republic claiming to be lost. And Nathan said to him, perfectly reasonably, ‘Tell me something. Are you telling the truth?’ He blurted out that he’d been sent to kill Nathan, then he became one of his best lieutenants.”

  Cameron looked back out the window. Something flashed in the corner of his eye, momentarily became a long column of shifting-color smoke, and then was gone.

  Without a word, Cameron stood. He sat beside Piper then leaned against her as the bus rumbled on. He was asleep ten minutes later.

  He woke an unknown time later when Piper rose to use the onboard bathroom. The day slipped by with little conversation. Cameron milled up and down the aisle, restless, hating the quiet. Meyer and Kindred took the back seat for a pow-wow — low, subtle, quick words whispered in their strange little language. Lila and Clara had either brought or found a deck of cards because they began playing Go Fish. Piper pulled her battered Vellum from her pack, recently charged after a long quiescence in the Den’s abundant power. She hadn’t added new books to the thing in half a decade but always found something to read when power allowed. The same books over and over or new-to-her stories she’d stockpiled before Astral Day, Cameron never knew.

  Day became evening. Opposition ignored them. Evening became night. With the sun’s departure, Peers announced that the headlights made the bus too obvious a target and pulled off the road. Never mind that the bus — which was large, silver, and not silent — had been a target all day. Never mind that there was a shelter at the ready, and Peers pulled them right into it.

  They made a small fire. Jeanine and Meyer stood sentry. Some hours later they traded — Kindred and Christopher took a turn. Cameron considered speaking to Piper and then Jeanine, rallying a group to mutiny or leave. Instead he found himself sitting on a rock, knowing only four things: They were headed to Ember Flats. The Ark was in Ember Flats. Cameron would need to open the thing if they could reach the city and resist arrest long enough to reach it. And Peers, no matter his motivations, would take them there.

  Aubrey sat beside him.

  “You’re wondering about Peers.”

  Cameron looked over. The firelight barely reached this far, but there was a moon. He could see Christopher’s arms burdened with a rifle, standing just a few dozen yards farther on.

  “I don’t blame you,” Aubrey went on. “In your shoes, I’d wonder about Peers as well.”

  “The Den … ” Cameron began.

  “He’s telling the truth about the Den. It’s stuffed with Astral technology and was clearly an alien base. We found it as he said, but it was mostly dead. Filthy. None of the equipment seemed to work. Sand had drifted in. But Peers went to school for a curious combination of majors. One was as you’d suspect, which gives him his archaeological bent. But don’t let his desert robe and knotty dreadlocks fool you. He’s also an en
gineer. When I first met him, he looked like an accountant. And if Peers Basara can’t clean a machine and make it run, it can’t be fixed by anyone.”

  Cameron looked toward Peers, by the fire, chatting amiably with Meyer. Or at least Cameron thought it was Meyer; from here, what he thought was a beard might merely be shadow.

  “But you wonder how we can so boldly turn toward Ember Flats. The explanation of our fuel supply doesn’t sit right. You’ve noticed that the roads are clear as if they’ve been paved just for us.” The thin man nodded toward the shelter’s front, just beyond the fire. The entire bus had fit neatly inside. “And most of all, you’re wondering about that. How we found shelter so easily, so readily.”

  “Okay. I’ve wondered.”

  “He’s obsessed. Peers, I mean. Did he tell you we’ve been to Ember Flats before?”

  “No.”

  “Years ago. Before the Ark was there. By the timeline as I understand it, before Heaven’s Veil was destroyed. We knew the Templars had hidden something the Astrals needed, thanks to communication bursts your group sent our friends before the Veil went dark. It was simple — and honestly rather obvious — to conclude it must have been the archive.”

  “Why was that obvious?” Cameron remembered Benjamin’s glee when he seemed to realize the same thing, regarding the whole thing as a big historical joke. But it had taken Charlie’s analysis of Benjamin’s work and Clara’s plunging of Cameron’s forgotten past to assemble two and two on the American end.

  “Once we realized the point was judgment rather than simply blowing us all up, it was simple. The Ark of the Covenant is perhaps the most famous object in history. And like any famous historical story, it’s been distorted and symbolized over time. Some ancient aliens scholars believe it was a weapon, just as we first thought the Astrals had lost a weapon. Some believed it was radioactive, that it was a machine, that carrying it could bring domination or destruction. But more famously, what is the Ark known as?”

  “The resting place of the Ten Commandments.”

  Aubrey nodded. “Perhaps a prior set of judgments. At least history’s interpretation of the story. We considered Biblical Mount Sinai, but by then the Astrals had triangulated on the emotional outcry that arose with the annihilation of Heaven’s Veil, and we knew we’d never find it first.”

  “If the Ark wasn’t in Ember Flats, yet … ”

  “We still thought of it as Giza back then. Can you think of any reason why a couple of ambitious British scholars like yours truly and my mate there might want to reach Giza, as part of what used to — before the great changes — feel like a revolutionary cause?”

  “You were searching for something.”

  “That’s right. In the original pyramids, before they were made of blue glass. In those old monoliths, clichéd as they are. We were able to bribe our way in, sniffing out a trail Peers had uncovered. It was just the three of us.”

  “Three?”

  “Me. Peers. And Peers’s son, James.”

  Cameron looked up, surprised.

  “We were captured by the Ember Flats guard. We were supposed to be taken to the viceroy, a woman named Mara Jabari. We never made it that far; I imagine she was too busy handling insurrections elsewhere. So the guard handled us on their own, with the viceroy’s blessing. They wanted to know who’d sent us and what we were after. When Peers wouldn’t talk, they decided to show us they were serious. So they killed James. Just shot him in the head. He was only nineteen.”

  Cameron looked at Peers, still by the fire but now beside Clara. They were just talking, but something hurt Cameron’s chest. It wasn’t about the story being told. It was more personal — another father-son bond broken, or reflected pain on the day they’d found the Ark then run with no intent to ever return.

  “He’ll die to reach Ember Flats again, Cameron. He does not care. He wants to look Mara Jabari in the eye then slit her throat. That is Peers’s secret, and I thought you should know it before we go farther. It’s in our mission to help you reach the Ark, if indeed that’s the right choice, which I’m also not sure of. But know that Peers has vengeance on his mind. Know that he’s been scouting satellite imagery, making lists of necessary supplies, even heading out to set up bivouac stations like this one. Mapping routes. Handing out bribes. All just to get us into the city, by any means necessary.”

  Cameron considered. If anything, Aubrey’s story made the case for following him even stronger. If Peers wanted to slit the Ember Flats viceroy’s throat, he’d have done all he could to make sure he got close enough to pull his knife. Close enough to reach the Ark, as long as there were no conflicts.

  “And Hell’s Corridor?” Cameron said.

  “The painted cannibals cannot be bribed. The peril there is all too real. And once we enter the city, it will likely be just as bad. To Peers, all of this is acceptable risk.”

  “And you?”

  “I have stood by Peers this long. James was like a son to me as well. But perhaps even more, I believe in the archive. I believe that if it can be opened — if it should be opened — that this will at least end. Your man Charlie will tell you: Once the archive is unlocked, we believe the information collecting will stop, and the process of judgment will begin, like a jury retiring to reach its verdict. They may judge you as well, as the key bearer. We cannot know how long the process will take or what criteria they will use. You know as well as I do what their device must have recorded over the past epoch: humanity’s best and worst, hopefully not in equal measure. But whether we are found guilty or innocent, it will be over. And that is why I am here. The life of a nomadic archaeologist and ancient aliens theorist may sound like it’s all grand galas and parties with dancing girls, but I assure you, the reality is far less impressive. And I’m tired, Cameron. Taking you to the Ark feels a bit like playing Russian roulette. But by now I’m ready to pull the trigger even though I can’t know whether it will be air or a bullet in the chamber when the hammer falls.”

  Cameron lifted the thermos at his side. He’d poured some of the distilled liquid from Peers’s bottles back at the Den into the dented metal tumbler and a bit more into the cap. He handed the cap to Aubrey and raised his cup for a toast.

  “Amen to that, at least,” Cameron said.

  Cups clinked.

  They drank.

  CHAPTER 13

  Lila felt the wrap tight around her torso. She hefted the carbine’s weight in her arms. Jeanine, who’d fired one before, had tried to talk Lila out of the weapon when Peers had opened the bus’s equipment locker to distribute guns like deadly presents. Jeanine said its kick would “knock her tits off.” But seeing as Lila — like Piper — had wrapped herself tightly enough to obscure her appearance, she figured her warning was moot.

  “Just don’t try to shoot through the slats,” Jeanine warned. “You’ll never hold it still enough and will end up cutting our ride in half.”

  Lila thought that was a bit of an overstatement. She could pull a trigger, especially after squeezing so many (on admittedly smaller weapons) in the past. But she’d still heed Jeanine’s advice and only shoot with her upper half fully through one of the pop-up hatches, content to call the issue a draw.

  Jeanine walked away, checking the others’ weapons, leaning out to survey the bus’s shell for obvious weaknesses, generally taking command away from Peers, who to his credit seemed willing to give it. Cameron had hinted that Peers had planned this operation in advance — but emphasized that a run down Hell’s Corridor couldn’t be planned. If Peers were as smart as Aubrey claimed, he’d take Jeanine’s advice and keep his mouth shut.

  Lila watched Jeanine, stuffing down a mounting sense of concern that had bloomed into terror. Jeanine looked completely at ease, even cavalier. She hadn’t wrapped her torso to hide her femininity from the horde ahead. She hadn’t hidden her ponytail or smeared any grease on her face. She looked, Lila thought, like she’d probably make a rather delicious target. But Jeanine had been wearing a grenade insi
de her vest for months, nestled between her breasts in a modified bra pouch. “Let someone try to cop a feel on me,” she’d say. “Just let them try.” And that didn’t include the second tiny grenade she had just in case. The little black cylinder with its short, dangling cord. “I keep that one in a seam on my pack, no one would ever look there,” she’d often said, and always like a dare.

  Peers had brought satellite images of the Corridor, but they showed nothing they didn’t already know. Jeanine spread them on the bus’s central table as their target approached, calling for a stop and a general meeting.

  “The Cairo ruins still seem in need of restoration, making the area practically impassable at speed, and certainly not by an armored bus,” she said, pointing at the papers in front of her for all to see. “The Nile is patrolled by what seem to be human-manned boats. I have to assume they’re under the dominion of the Ember Flats central government.”

  She eyed Kindred. Lila turned her head to see the former viceroy nod.

  “We already knew that the Abbas Bridge is the only Nile bridge still standing in the combined metro areas — Giza to Cairo — and miles to the north and south. Abbas itself is a highly trafficked, highly regulated checkpoint. That all means that Ember Flats is unapproachable from the east. So we can only make this long detour, here—” She traced a line on the map with her finger. “Around to the south, away from the Nile delta, through unincorporated, unregulated outlands. Make sense?”

  Heads nodded.

  “The desert to the south and west is pocked with tiny outlaw governorships — yes, like my former employer’s, only with a lot less order and civility — that are rumored to be little more than competing clans who’ve undergone a rapid selection process, like evolution in a hurry.”

  “What’s that mean?” Lila’s eyes ticked toward her daughter, who was paying more attention than Lila wanted her to. But it’s not like Clara could be protected from the truth, and never really had been.

  “It means that only the most brutal survive,” Jeanine said. “The clans are, as far as we can tell, entirely men. Unless you count their slaves. Which, by the way, is the reason they’re all here — all these warring clans, hanging out in the desert beyond Ember Flats.” Jeanine looked at Clara but didn’t flinch. She spoke to Lila and Piper in her most no-bullshit of voices, as if meaning to shoot straight for their own good. “They live off of spoils tossed from the city. Best we can tell, banishment is Ember Flats’s primary method of punishment . They steal the women, and eat the men.”