“What are they?”
“I think those are Deathriders.”
“What? No, you’re making that up.”
“Why would I make that up?”
“You don’t know what they are. You’re just saying that.” The group of riders moved down the road in a slow, lazy formation. Some of the vehicles had two wheels and the others four. A truck followed. In all, Gabe counted ten people. “Hold on.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.” He dropped down the hatch, found his pack, and grabbed his father’s goggles. He climbed back up and resumed his spot. Putting on the goggles, he adjusted the multiple lenses.
“Huh.” Rann chewed on her bottom lip. “I like how you look with those things on. It’s manly.”
“Manly?” Gabe walked the roof, scanning the streets from behind the parapet. “I guess I’m a man. I’m fourteen, I think.”
“I’m sixteen.”
Gabe looked right at her. Her face was a blur through the magnified lenses. He adjusted them. “You look a lot older than that. I know women lie about their age. I’d say you’re thirty at least.”
“Shut up!” She playfully hit his shoulder. “I’m just mature for my age. I blossomed early.”
“If you say so, but I’ve been told this world is full of liars, and that doesn’t exclude women.” He moved to another spot in the corner of the roof that faced into the sun. The harsh glare made it tough to see through the goggles. His fingers toyed with the lenses. He spotted the group of riders stopped in the middle of the four-way intersection, talking amongst themselves.
“What do you see?” Rann asked.
The riders were a hard-looking lot, much like the dragon hunters. They carried steel weapons in the shapes of axes and long, sharp knives. The biggest was a man in a full beard, wearing a black vest with his arms covered in tattoos. Something was holstered behind his shoulders. The big man on the motor bike wiped off the lenses of his goggles with a rag.
A small man sharing a seat with the bearded man dismounted the motorcycle. His head was covered in a knit cap. His goggles were grimy. He took them off.
Gabe took in a sharp breath. Jack!
CHAPTER 11
Jack spit the grit from his mouth. His backside was sore from all of the riding, and he felt as though he was about to burn up in the daytime. It bothered him so much he barely noticed the huge, desolate city they rode into. Night was the only time he got to rest, and it didn’t come easily. Trooper snored like a bear, and no one had the nerve to tell the leader. He talked smoothly, but his rugged body language was scary.
“Can I get a drink?” Jack asked Trooper.
Trooper lit up a cigar. He puffed up the fire and blew smoke in the air. The bearish man said in his deep voice, “Don’t overdo it.” His calm voice became sharp. “Cookie! Get little Jack a cup of water. If anyone else needs a drink, have your lot. We have some searching to do. I smell the dragon.” He rubbed the dragon skull mounted between the chrome handles of his bike. “Very close.”
Jack headed to a dirt-coated truck, loaded down with supplies. The man called Cookie dug out a yellow plastic canister with a red lid. There was a spout on the bottom. Cookie was a husky man, fish-eyed with his head shaven, but he wore a cap with a bill on his head, black, with a gold “P” in the middle. If he wasn’t sweating, he wasn’t breathing. That’s what the other riders joked about all the time. He filled a small cup for Jack.
“Enjoy it.” Cookie’s voice was a little high, and he slobbered a little when he talked. “There won’t be more before nightfall. I told Trooper we needed to spy a river. But he insisted we travel onward. The man loves the hunt—the best there is.”
“I know.” Jack took a swig. He scrubbed his teeth with his finger and spit. “But I still haven’t seen him catch anything yet, aside from mouthful after mouthful of dust.”
“You have a smart mouth on you, little wretch. You could have stayed in Newton’s cornhole. It’s a better fit for you, I’d say: stuck in there with all the whiners. You should be grateful Trooper took you on. I’d have killed you for fun, if it was me.”
“Whatever you say, Cookie.” Jack revealed Angela’s gun, the Judge, that he had hidden under his shirt. The belt and holster were almost too big for his waist. He might be young, but the gun won him respect. “I could always kill you, you know. One shot. Bang.”
Cookie flinched. “You are a rotten, little shit. And I doubt you can use that thing.”
“Wanna find out?”
“Do you want to eat tonight? If you do, remember I might have poisoned your food.” Cookie snatched the empty cup away. “Now run along, you little shit.”
Jack sniggered a little as he walked away. In truth, Cookie was the only person he ever talked to. Trooper spoke to his men, treating him like an outsider, and not a day didn’t go by when he longed for Newton. At least there, he knew where he stood, but he was a nobody. He wanted to be someone, like a dragon hunter or even better, a Deathrider. But most of all, there was something else he wanted: to see Gabe suffer the way he did.
Hate Gabe.
Jack picked at the stitches on his neck. He had nasty scars all over that still ached and burned from time to time from when he was attacked in the arena. He blamed Gabe for it all. Gabe was the son of a dragon hunter, and he always had it easy. Jack’s father worked in the sewers. They had nothing. He was going to change that and, one day, cross over to the Dominion.
“Jack!” Trooper called.
The young man hastened to the leader.
“Time to save the juice. Everyone, on foot. Fan out in pairs, and look for new tracks in the dust. Little dragon tracks.” He made a small gap between his index finger and thumb. “’Bout yeah big. And don’t forget to check the skies. That little flamethrower can fly, you know. If you see something, whistle.”
A half step behind Trooper, Jack followed him down the straight stretch of broken road. Everything was covered in a coat of dirt, from the abandoned cars in the road to the two-foot-high dirt drifts that hugged the lower levels of the buildings. With the chronic wind in his face, he put his goggles back on. He felt honored that Trooper asked him to walk with him. It was a change.
“Did you ever imagine a place like this, Jack?” Trooper said.
“No.” He climbed over a wooden post that had fallen across the road. “I’m not one for imagination. I’m a good learner, though.”
“We’ll see. But when I walk these strange places, I can see everything that was. I’ve seen them all over. Haunting reminders of the past.” Trooper reached behind his back and grabbed his rifle. It had a black stock and silver barrel. “Before the war, cities like this were filled with hundreds of thousands of people. They walked the streets, drove in cars, rode trains and buses. People worked and lived high in the sky, able to see from one end of the city to another. In the wink of an eye, it was gone.”
“I thought it was a flash.”
“Yeah, there was a flash, I reckon, a flash followed by a really big boom. And all of this was wasted. Centuries of hard work dumped in the sewer. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“Humph. You know what you are, Jack? You’re pragmatic. Just smart enough to not look too far ahead or too far behind.” Trooper blew out a stream of smoke. “That can be useful. That’s why I let you come.”
Jack wasn’t completely certain what Trooper meant, but he went along with it. “I just want to catch that dragon.”
“Yeah, and kill your old friend, Gabe. I see vengeance in your eyes, but this isn’t about revenge. It’s about a purpose. The Dominion wants them alive. We deliver, we’ll be rewarded in ways that you’d never imagine. It will be worth it.”
“I don’t know that I want to kill Gabe. I just want to see him suffer for a really long time.”
“Don’t you think we’ve all suffered enough? We eat dust for living.”
“Yeah, but I want him to eat worse.”
&n
bsp; CHAPTER 12
Tugging on Gabe’s arm, Rann asked, “Who’s Jack?”
“An old friend who hates me.” Gabe felt worms crawling inside his stomach. If there was one thing that gave him comfort when he left Newton, it was the fact that he’d never see Jack again. The boy was a brash, unrelenting nuisance. “What in the world is he doing out here?”
“You had a friend who was a Deathrider?”
“Stop calling them that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like it.” He adjusted his focus, giving him an up-close look at Jack and the man he walked with. He hadn’t ever seen the man before, but he reminded him of Malak, and not in a good way. The bad way. “I don’t like this. My fingers are tingling.”
“Well, now mine are itching. They are looking for you? Are you lost?”
“No, the Dominion wants me—and Squawk.” He searched the skies. “Where is he? Anyway, I can only guess that they are coming after me. We really need to hide.”
“They are far away. I don’t think they’ll find us here. Can I see your goggles?”
“Yes, but don’t looked toward the sun. It will reflect.”
Rann put on the goggles. “Whoa! They are in my face, all of a sudden. The big one is Jack?”
“No, the one my age. I don’t know that other man.”
“He’s frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so big.”
“Me either.” Gabe watched Jack and the man walk right down the same street as the fire station. He took a peek over the rim of the building. He could see their tracks leading into the fire station. The wind hadn’t taken them away. “They’re going to find us.” He tugged on her arm. “We need to go!”
“No wait.” She grabbed his shirt. “They are turning up the street. Look!”
Jack and the man turned up two blocks away. “We still need to go. I won’t be safe here for long.”
“I say we stay, Jack. If we move, we increase the chance of them finding us. They don’t know we are here now, so they won’t look. Trust me. We lived in here for months. Potus caught us on the streets.”
“But the tracks.”
She looked down over the parapet. “The winds are taking them as we speak. In an hour, they will be gone.”
“Unless the wind dies.” The breeze tore through his hair. “Okay, we’ll wait, but keep an eye out.” He took back his goggles. “If we have to run, we need another way out of here, a better place to hide where the roads aren’t so dusty.”
She led him to the other side of the building. “We can lose them at the riverbed. The wind doesn’t cut through there so much. See, it’s at the edge of the city. We traveled it for miles when we stopped at this city to scavenge. I wish we would have kept going.”
Gabe noticed where the rows of buildings ended in empty land. Part of him wanted to leave now, but he agreed with Rann. In a few hours, they should be in the clear. He wanted to find Squawk. It wasn’t anything new that the dragon took off. He liked to hunt. Gabe just wished he could keep better track of him. It was one thing when Squawk was close but another thing when he was far away. He lost the connection.
“Just stay low. There’s no sense in letting them get an easy peek at us.” Gabe hunkered down behind the parapet wall. “You can go inside and rest if you want to.”
“No, I’d rather stay with you, Gabe. Besides, three eyes are better than one.” She flipped down her patch.
“I don’t see why you wear that thing. It’s silly if you don’t need it.”
“The right eye will lead you. The left eye will deceive you.” She mocked the odd mutterings of the Eyewatch. “I guess it’s a habit.”
“Do you have any other weird habits I should know about?”
She smiled. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Great.”
She lay down on her back, staring into the sky. “I love watching the clouds go by. Don’t you?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever paid attention nor care to.”
Her chest expanded when she breathed. “It relaxes me.” She didn’t speak for a long time. Only the wind whistling through the buildings was talking. Finally, she said, “Are you still looking for your dragon?”
“Yes, why?”
“I think I found him.”
High above, Squawk chased after a squall of small birds that darted into the cover of the buildings.
Gabe hollered in his mind. “Squawk! Stop that! They’ll see you!”
CHAPTER 13
“Follow the dust,” Trooper said to Jack. He was on one knee, running his fingers over the dirt. There was trail of a critter with small paws that traipsed through the streets.
Jack squatted down beside Trooper. “What is it?”
“Just a little critter—maybe a raccoon. Not what I’m looking for.”
“Did you think it was the dragon, Squawk?”
“Perhaps, but the dragon would leave a tail mark like a snake.” Trooper fingered a swooshing S pattern in the dirt. “Like that. It would dust over the paw prints. You need to know these things. It will help you survive, especially when you are hungry. Of course, you never know when they might be hunting you too.” Trooper moved on, taking his time, soaking in every last detail. He peered into the sky from time to time. In the buildings, small birds with bright-green feathers darted and settled from stoop to stoop.
Jack moseyed along, putting half of his heart behind it. He kept his head down from the sun, drifting into the shadows cast by buildings. With a rag, he dabbed the sweat from his face. I bet there are a lot of treasures in this place. With his rifle in hand, Trooper marched down between the rows of buildings, one block at a time. The pace was agonizing to Jack. He wanted to move quickly from spot to spot, but Trooper seemed determined to not miss anything. Finally, he broke the silence. “Have you really killed dragons before?”
Without looking at him, Trooper said, “You saw that skull on my motorcycle didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but you could have found that. It doesn’t mean you killed it. And I really don’t know that it’s a dragon, even though it sort of looks like one.”
“Boy, in this world, I’ve killed a lot of things, and dragons are one of them. But there are other monsters besides dragons out there. You don’t want to see them. But as long as you are with me, you will.”
“I’m ready.”
“Heh, you’re never ready, but if you survive, you’ll be more ready.” Trooper brushed off some dirt that coated the window of a car. “Come here.”
Jack walked over and looked inside the car window. There was a skeleton slumped over the wheel in the front seat. Its mouth hung open. Jack shrugged. “I’ve seen the dead before.”
“Look closer,” Trooper said.
Squinting, Jack almost touched his nose to the window. The dead body had a nice gold watch on its wrist. A snake struck out from the inside of the window, whacking the glass. “Ack!” Jack jumped backward and fell. A black snake with a head shaped like a shovel kept striking the window. Tap! Tap! Tap!
“The snake is the first thing you should have seen, but you didn’t,” Trooper said. “If you’d opened that door, that black asp would’ve killed you.”
Jack’s heart beat in his chest like a hammer. He panted. “How did you know?”
“I see the slithers. You need to learn to see them too.” Trooper pointed at a sliding snake trail where the sidewalk met the road.
Jack scooted back. “Lesson learned.”
“You have a problem, Jack. You think you are smarter than you are. But you’re young, a dumbass. If you don’t start paying attention, you’ll be dead soon enough, and instead of having one gun, I’ll have two.”
Getting up, Jack said, “Why don’t you just take it?”
“You have guts, Jack. Sometimes, that comes in handy. And you can crawl into small places my men can’t get in.”
Jack grimaced.
“Come on.” Trooper continued another block and came to a stop. Hiding behind a truck,
he and Jack watched a small group of men wandering the streets. One of them caught Jack’s eyes and made a sharp whistle, and within seconds, the group rushed over and surrounded them. There were six men in all, wearing grungy orange jumpers. They were missing their left eyes, giving them a ghastly appearance. All of them held lengths of metal pipe. “Are you the welcome committee?” Trooper lowered his rifle barrel on the nearest one. The goonish man’s eyes grew big. “Or are you a corpse?”
Jack’s stomach fluttered. The disturbing men made him uneasy all over.
“We are the Eyewatch,” said the man who had the rifle pointed at him. He was slight in build compared to Trooper. His lone eye was bright blue. “Who are you?”
“I’m Dominion. That’s all that you need to know. Now, you and the rest of you one-eyes need to back off.” Trooper advanced. The goon backed up. “Drop the pipe—all of you—or I’ll put out your other eye and all of your brains along with it.”
“Stand your ground, brethren. Do not fear. I will protect you,” another voice said. It was an old man with a patch over his left eye. He leaned on a metal cane that had four small rubber feet. “He doesn’t have enough bullets for us all, and I’m certain that this alleged member of the Dominion doesn’t want to waste them. If he did, it would be his doom.”
CHAPTER 14
Trooper turned the rifle on the old man. “Are you the leader?”
“I am Potus.”
Trooper huffed a laugh. “The President of the United States? Hah. There hasn’t been one for decades, and I’m certain there won’t ever be again.”
“You know your history,” Potus said, “but I’m of no relation to the acronym. It’s just a name is all, but I am the Under City prophet.”
“You’re going to be a dead prophet if you and your men don’t back off.” Trooper took aim at Potus’s head. “And I’m confident your creepy legions will scatter like rats after I turn the back of your head into a cave.”
“There is no need for threats, sir. And I’m certain that you would want to save your bullets for a worthier prize. Your own life perhaps.” Potus eyeballed the rifle. “That M-1 Garand you carry is a true treasure. Don’t waste it on the likes of me. We are merely scavengers in the Under City.”
Flight from the Dominion (The Gamma Earth Cycle Book 2) Page 4
