Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  They descended the ramp in pairs, among them a figure who appeared to be their leader, a grey haired man with a rugged face and cold staring eyes who returned the salutes with the same stern countenance with which he surveyed his surroundings. A long flowing robe hung from his shoulders, snapping behind him as the guards and crew watched him pass. On reaching the deck, he was taken on a brief tour of the operations, where various developments were pointed out to him by duty officers who appeared to go to great lengths to demonstrate the procedures and techniques involved, as if to furnish him with a full report on their progress.

  Suddenly the leader broke from what he was doing and turned his head. As if warned of something. As if something in his environment had spoken to him. He stood raking the area around the road with glances that seemed to dwell in Moth’s vicinity for terrifying lengths of time and with terrifying perspicacity and interest. As if feeling out his presence with his mind, a man superior to his kindred in many ways, alert at all moments to the scent of trouble and intruders. His squirming continued when, a few minutes later, the entire party of elite officers came marching out towards him, before stopping to congregate within yards of where he lay.

  He shrank down as low as he could manage, cowering as he observed them. They spent some time in heated discussion, turning to survey the outer landscape on occasion as they spoke together. Once or twice the leader glanced his way again, but if he in any way suspected he was being watched, he kept it hidden.

  A few officers then left the group to go exploring up the road, while others climbed the roadside border so as to observe the waterfall, the river’s pitchblack and echoing environs. When eventually their business was concluded, they met up with the leader and headed back towards the vehicle. The last Moth saw of him was as he received salutes upon mounting the ramp on his return. Within the hold, lights had been switched on as if to welcome him back inside, and it was in those rare and fleeting moments that he saw details of the great mass of containers and equipment the vehicle was carrying, among which was stacked a number of what looked like glass coffins filled with a pale blue liquid. Within them long figures lay suspended, wrapped head to foot in bandages. Before the lights were dimmed, he could have sworn that one of them was twitching.

  He was shifting position to sit more easily when he froze, startled by nearby voices. Shrinking back down, he saw that a couple of the officers had remained behind, one gesturing as he spoke, the other standing with his hands in his pockets. The pair paused in their conversation as they watched their fellow officers enter the pale cauldron of welding smoke, then quietly recommenced:

  ‘It’s a bad business, this,’ the first man said.

  The man with his hands in his pockets said, ‘It’s all a bad business.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘I think we’re back where we were a week ago. What about you? Still the optimist?’

  ‘I mean afterwards. What do you think?’

  ‘Not much, really. Depends what we’ve got to back it up. I have my doubts, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There’s eight Genetiks in there. Fresh out of the lab. Strong. Short life spans. Waymakers, according to Masser.’

  ‘Working for us, or the project?’

  ‘... Project?’

  ‘Skarabäus.’

  The first officer scoffed. ‘Any. All. Whatever the hell’s left.’

  ‘Mm. You mean fighters? Killers? Are they trained?’

  ‘No time for it. Problems transmitting through the tissue. Chemical impurities or something.’

  ‘Impurities, my arse.’

  ‘Yes, but it does happen. Impurities do affect transmission. Whether or not they were just incompetent, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Waymakers. What the fuck does he know? They’ll kill each other. Kill us, if we don’t watch it. He can mobilise them himself.’

  The first officer laughed humourlessly.

  ‘Still. If that’s all that remains, good luck to them. Better than those City scum.’

  ‘Agreed. Agreed.’

  They checked around themselves, studying the ridge, and spoke indistinctly for a while. Moth sat in a huddle, watching their tall gleaming boots rock on their heels and turn about. When he picked up their words again the first man was saying, ‘You know, when they first started digging here I told them it was a mistake.’

  ‘Because of needing a bridge?’

  ‘This thing? No. No, I meant the general area. Felt wrongly positioned. Unconnected, somehow. But I’m not sure, though. It’s got something to it. Must be the waterfall. Impressive. ’

  ‘Take it you were more of a Hagens man?’

  ‘Given what we were told, yes. You could run a hundred cities for a hundred years on that little find. Imagine Bruehl’s little erection when he stuck his drill in it.’

  The second officer chuckled coldly.

  ‘Then look what it turned into.’

  The second officer checked behind them. ‘Must have been sabotage. Who else could have ...’

  He lost their words again. They wandered off a short way, and then on strolling back, the second officer said, ‘Eight of them, you say?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘You know, if they’re to be the only things left, at least they’ll have an open run of it. I envy them that. More than their strength. Even their instinct. Whatever happens, they’ll be free. ’

  ‘Free,’ the first officer said wistfully. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m a fair man. I’ll give Bruehl credit where it’s due, but we weren’t ready. Never were. Took our eye off the ball.’

  ‘Steady, man, steady. There’s ears everywhere.’

  The second man snorted, and they walked off muttering.

  He lay hidden as they returned to the bridge deck, lay hidden for a good while, and the more he thought about what he’d heard, the more he believed it had not been the words of men on their way to bargain with their enemy, however compromised their position. No, this was the voice of war, a voice that would not be stopped by ordinary means. The voice of an enemy who would maraud aggressively ever closer to the City and loiter a while in some quiet backwater before stealing inside, there to drip poison in the collective ear while all lay sleeping. It was the voice of death, and he knew it. What he did not know was how to stand in its way.

  He looked to the sky and saw in its hammered depths the first awakenings of dawn. He knew the longer he waited, the less chance he’d have of doing anything — and the greater chance of being killed, either here or at home. Gripping his bag, he rose, hunched and tensing, ready to begin his assault.

  ~O~

  On reaching the ramp, he slid under it and waited, listening, scarcely able to believe what he’d done.

  He’d scuttled through the area least well lit, least well observed by the officers, who, since the leader’s visit, appeared to be driving operations far more aggressively than before, the crews now working in a disciplined and unrelenting pack. He peered around, straining to make sense of things in that blue-white stuttering of light and slashing shadow. The underside was a maze of panels and boxes built into the metal base. It was dripping in some areas and all of it clagged with dirt and muck, inimical to his invasion. Opening his bag, he took from it a cloth given to him by one of the tribeswomen and wiped his face clean of foul droplets. The cloth smelled of dried herbs and sooty pollution. He checked behind him, checked along the sides, then crawled on.

  He moved slowly and in furtive terror, stopping whenever boots went by, certain that at any moment he’d be dragged out by his ankles and subjected to the utmost blazing scrutiny. Each time he stopped he took a moment to tap, poke, scrape at the likeliest looking parts above him, but found nothing worth the risk of taking action: for all knew, the cutting of a single errant wire might send a team of engineers crawling after him, having done little but disconnect a light. He crawled towards the midsection, where the light was better. There, squinting, he noticed a plaque. Wiping the grease from it, he saw printe
d: ATTENTION: WATER ONLY. He cleaned the plaque adjacent to it. It read: ATTENTION: FUEL ONLY. His eyes cut about in wonder at his find and it was then that he saw the outline of two metal flaps, encrusted with mud. Then he heard boots scuff to a halt, and lay still. So still. The boots turned, hesitating, then turned back and continued on their way.

  Propping himself on an elbow, he drove his blade up inside the water inlet flap. He wrenched it about until something gave. Then bent the blade further; felt it snap. A little shard fell out and tinkled on the deck. ‘Damn it,’ he breathed, and he shifted round and tried again. This time he forced the flap open. He left it hanging down and reached inside to feel a large metal ring. Black rubber buttons like squid eyes stared down at him, one either side of the opening. He thought he’d have to turn the ring but what he touched felt hollow and threaded: no need to turn anything. He went to the fuel flap and opened this too and found it was made identically. As he wiped the muck from the flaps, he saw that each inlet had a button for sucking contents in, and another for pumping out.

  He paused, calculating timings and distances. The hazardous route home from there. Then, cursing bitterly, he began to punch the buttons. He thought his worst fear would be in failing to set the pumps going, but as the motors hummed above his head, all he could hope was that they’d fail to catch him alive.

  As he crawled across to the wheels on the southern side, he could hear liquids splashing, two streams gushing into one another as they bled upon the deck. The noise of the pumps sounded like the scream of an alarm bell to him, but when he put his stained face outside, no one had come running. He squeezed round the heavy looping treads and peered out further, looking towards the crew, an army working in billowing smoke and frosted light. Many were working on the tracks, using pulley lines to move the weighty slabs they were joining.

  He felt sick, was shaking. Second by second the prospect of being seen was shrinking the universe down to one terrifying moment of possibility. Suddenly, with a push to make himself do it, he walked outside. The world pounding by in its orbit, roaring like the falls. The light breaking coldly over the hard molecular day. His life an assemblage of nerves and meat thrown up for grabs.

  He walked off slowly, to all appearances as casually as might any other guard or worker in that crew. He was almost at the ramp, feeling his chest cage pounding, pounding, when he realised he’d forgotten his bag. Keep going, he begged himself, but it wasn’t to be. The moment he hesitated, thinking of the mini tank it held, thinking of the flask, he knew it was a mistake he’d pay for. As he turned, he met the eyes of an officer observing him just as a shimmering stream ran past her boots. He saw her glancing down, lifting a foot to let it flow. She was powerfully built, with stubbled hair showing beneath her cap, her enormous frame packed tightly into a stained black uniform. Moments later she looked up at him from behind a rising sheet of fumes. Her eyes hardening to quarried stone as she engaged with the implications of it all.

  ‘Ah, Masser … Masser ordered it,’ he croaked, then flapped a salute at her and turned away. Walking, only walking, he had to force himself to do it, even though every muscle was pleading with him to run, even though on passing the ramp he could see huge figures appearing at the top of it; even though two crewmen across the deck were looking out at the waterfall, watching a thumbprint of birds wheel across the grainy dawn.

  The cry when it went up almost stopped him. A cry that was hoarse and hurt, ghastly in its understanding. Before it could drag him back again he broke into a sprint, then at the entry posts he cut aside and was out on the road and heading north. Barks of guttural outrage arose at his back. Then gunfire. A ferocious raking of sparks zipped off the posts, and as a mechanical rattling broke out he realised that it was happening at last, the punishment, the pain, and that all he could do was run. A group of guards ran down the ramp in pursuit, their weapons flashing. Their bullets cracked off the railings, tearing lumps out of the rockface ahead of him, and he ran with his hands covering his head, zigzagging wildly. There were loose shards scattering in his path and the chewed-away rocks spitting out and breaking apart on the road. More troops came out to join them. Soon there were shots ringing out across each other and the debris blasting hot and thick all around. He ran yelping, taking a hit to his arm, and he raced up that broad pale road with nothing ahead but fallen rocks and the occasional jump of dirt as they took potshots at him.

  When he checked back again he thought they’d be chasing him, closing in, but found not one uniformed figure had gone forward of the bridge posts. Their fear not of himself, he thought, but of the living world. He ran and he looked back and he ran again, thinking he might puke at any moment. A few more rounds of sporadic fire zipped off the road and then he was out of range. He passed by the monstrous hole in the ridge where they’d burrowed through, finding in the morning gloom a scene he’d not been able to see at night, the view of an austere waste of rocks and water. He continued to the top of the road, then followed where it dipped away beneath the river.

  The entrance he came to appeared as a concrete jacket fringed with dry foliage. He took a last look back and then he was inside the tunnel, running in stumbling silhouette.

  Chapter 45 — Discovering Caves And Bridge

  ‘We kept going for another couple of days. We were lucky we’d taken on water when we did, or I doubt we’d all have made it.

  We came across the caves by accident. We took a wrong turn going east. Nobody had lived there for years. It was all overgrown, we could hardly see the lake until we cut back the bushes. We didn’t realise they were caves at first. They were just marks in a big crescent of rock. Inside they were filthy, but we worked together and cleaned them out. We thought it’d be a good place to spend the winter, and I suppose it was. The lake was the reason, really. It had fish, and the water was fresh from underground. And there were woods nearby. People had been making charcoal there.

  Once we’d moved in, there was a meeting. Most families wanted to settle in quickly, but they also wanted to know what to do about the Versteckts. Were we going to track down the vehicle, find where they’d gone to, that kind of thing. There were arguments, lots of arguments. We were getting split. I didn’t know what to do. I was sick as well, but didn’t want to show it. Not sure I knew how to, not without Annie’s help. All I knew was it was going to be hard to get the camp organised. We were still making decisions when we saw some locals going by … they seemed to be running from something. We stopped them and they told us the whole story. They said they’d come from west of the great river. Basically, the Versteckts …’

  ‘Ostgrenzers,’ the man corrected.

  ‘Ostgrenzers, yes. They’d overrun their village one night, come out of nowhere. They didn’t need to kill anyone to get their cooperation, the locals had no way of fighting back, no way of stopping them. But they did it anyway. They killed anyone who protested. The people we met had escaped in the dark, most of them people the Ostgrenzers didn’t want. Elders, kids. Pregnant women. Everything they told us we saw later for ourselves. They wanted prisoners to clear rubble away while they drilled through a tunnel. So their vehicle could get away, so it could move. When we were scouting there, later on, we saw they had around half the prisoners bringing the rubble out and the other half working on the river.’

  ‘What do you mean, working on the river?’

  ‘Well, because of the oil. The river was full of it. Thick and black. Heavy. They were dredging it in buckets, just downriver from the waterfall. They had the prisoners working in gangs. They were in chains the whole time, whether they were working or not. I thought it was because they were afraid the villagers would get away, but it wasn’t. It was so that if one fell in, the rest would have to drag them out, or they’d fall in too.’

  The man and the woman exchanged a look, the man muttering.

  ‘The oil they scooped out they put into a container. Like this one. About the same size. That’s all they did all day, the prisoners, just filled it up. When it wa
s night, they were walked back to the top. We found out later they were allowed to sleep in the tunnel overnight. At the time, we thought they were working overnight too, they looked so … used up.’

  ‘This was for fuel, I take it?’

  ‘That’s right. In a way it helped. It gave us an idea for the ambush. What they’d do was keep the vehicle on the bridge overnight, while they did little jobs, repairs and things. Then they’d change guard and it’d go quiet for a few hours. Then the vehicle would start up, always very early, and go out to the road. They’d go down to the embankment where the container was, and stop there. They’d connect the vehicle to the container and put the fuel into it through a long tube. Same every morning. One time when I was on watch I saw what they were doing. They made the container spit out the water, and as soon as it went black they turned it off. Like they had what they needed in there, nothing else. Like they’d made it pure again. Then they’d add something from a bottle and stir it in, then close the lid. That was when the lights on the side came on. It took them a long time to do everything, maybe an hour, and the officers would go walking along the riverbank. Their leader used to go with them, as part of the group. We knew they were vulnerable then.’

  The man nodded. ‘Very interesting. How long did you keep them under surveillance?’

  ‘Surveillance?’

  ‘How long did you watch them for?’

  ‘Five, six days. If they’d varied their routines, it would have been different, but they were the same every day, it never changed.’

  ‘So when did you decide to strike? I mean, how did you decide you were ready?’

  ‘Well, to start with we had to get agreement that we were going to do anything. There were arguments about that, too, and to be honest they still continue. The main reason we decided to fight was because we realised we could be next. It wasn’t just that the villagers asked us for help, it was because we could see in them what could happen to ourselves. When we’d made our decision, we asked all the people passing through to send word to the villages east of us, saying we wanted to put an attack group together. We’d heard there were a few settlements out that way and we hoped they’d think the same as us. That they’d want to do something. Anyway, nothing came back to begin with, so we sent out requests for bows and ammunition and did what we could to get started. We used whatever we could find around the camp, from the woods. We sent scouts out west on rotation, and put our plans together. Then they came, a big group of them. They said they were interested in joining us. We talked about our plans and I think that’s when we knew an attack was possible. It felt real. It felt like we had the right numbers. And we’d heard back from our scouts, saying they thought things were speeding up. That’s when I went back out there. To see what was happening. To see if the routine had changed. When I got there it looked to me that they were running out of prisoners. I also thought there was less oil in the river. It didn’t look as thick, somehow. So we decided to strike. We couldn’t wait any more.’