Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy)

by Wendig, Chuck

  But then he catches sight of a red pepper hanging plump and lusty—a pepper where none dangled yesterday. It really is aggressive. More aggressive than the corn.

  Cael plucks the pepper, hands it up.

  It’s Wanda who takes it.

  “Is this what I think it is?” she hollers over the storm.

  Cael says nothing. He eases forward, flagging them to nudge the boat alongside him. Rigo uses the spotlight to highlight the trail of vegetables. As they drift forward, the wind keening, the pollen stinging, Cael stoops again and again, fetching vegetable after vegetable. A tomato here. A pepper there. A scooped shirt full of pea pods. A bundle of some crinkly leafed green that smells crisp and clean when Cael gives it a twist and wrenches it up out of the earth. All the while the corn reaches for him—pulling a leaf along his skin, drawing a bead of blood—but none of that matters. It’s here. The garden. The garden means ace notes. The ace notes mean buying a proper future for him and his family and his crew. He thinks of the flash in Gwennie’s eyes when she told him she stole that chicha beer and suddenly wishes like hell he could see that same flash right now. Damnit, Cael.

  He kicks the stalks aside and keeps moving.

  It isn’t long before he comes upon a small trail of strawberries. Lush, each as big as a baby’s fist. He can’t help it—he kneels down, pokes through the strawberries until he finds one mostly shielded from the pleach of corn leaves. He dusts off the pollen and pops it in his mouth.

  He damn near faints. It’s that good.

  He hands everything else he grabs up to Wanda.

  They’ve gone a hundred yards when Lane yells down, “Cael, you need to see this.”

  “Not now!” Cael yells.

  “Yes. Now.”

  Muttering, Cael clambers back up into the boat.

  Lane is pointing off the bow.

  At first Cael doesn’t see it. But then the wind eases and the cloud of pollen parts—Cael sees something out there, glinting. Then it’s again swallowed by the drift. Cael scowls. “The hell am I looking at?”

  “Martha’s Bend.”

  Martha’s Bend was a town like Boxelder once upon a time. Before Cael and them were even born. Now it’s a dead town like so many others. For reasons that run the gamut of rumors—Blight! Hobos! Treachery by the Sleeping Dogs!—the Empyrean swooped in and quarantined it. All the people disappeared, and the Empyrean sealed up the town beneath a giant plasto-sheen bubble, the plastic fabric pinned not just to the ground but deep below it. (As though to prevent roots from growing is the thought that suddenly strikes Cael.)

  A town like Martha’s Bend is a scavenger’s bread and butter—that is, after about fifty years pass and the Empyrean “opens” it, lancing the plastic blister and letting scavengers in to pick the bones. Martha’s Bend has more time on its clock, though—the town’s been concealed for almost thirty years now. Which means it’s a long way from being opened back up to the likes of them.

  “How’d we miss that earlier?” Cael asks.

  Lane shrugs. “We were in the corn. Can’t see squat from down there.”

  The glimmer Cael sees is a shaft of moonlight reflected off the metallic sheen of the bubble. “The trail,” Cael says.

  “It leads to Martha’s Bend.”

  “Coincidence?”

  Cael grips the deck rail, looks out from the boat. It’s then he feels something in his hand. A slight vibration. A vibration that’s getting stronger.

  He grabs Lane’s hand, presses it against the railing.

  “You feel that?”

  “Listen,” Lane says. There, beneath the vibration, beneath the whisper of pollen and the rasp of cornstalk against cornstalk, is another, deeper sound. A rumble.

  Like from a machine. Like from a motorvator.

  Cael holds his hands over his eyes, trying to block the flying pollen. Sure enough, in the distance off to starboard, a pair of lights.

  Coming right for them.

  “Pull the boat back!” Cael says. “We’ve got a visitor.”

  OF BLIGHT AND BOUNTY

  THE RUMBLE GROWS louder. Headlights in the pollen grow brighter.

  Soon the shape begins to resolve: It’s a motorvator, all right. An old harvester by the look of it. The pollen whispers against the machine’s metal side as it trudges through the corn, the thresher bar silent, stalks crushed underneath instead of sucked up and processed. Cael thinks it looks like a trundling beast: mouth open, teeth forward, haunches high in the air.

  Lane keeps the pinnace off to the side as Rigo and Wanda stabilize the boat with the oar-poles. The harvester churns slowly forward, perpendicular to them. Before too long it’ll cross over the garden trail, crushing the plants beneath.

  “Spotlight,” Cael says.

  The spotlight flicks to life. Lane points it at the motorvator, letting the weak circle of light drift over the whole robot.

  Cael had figured this was another harvester gone off the grid—prime pickings or, if it belongs to someone from Boxelder, something for Poltroon to fix. But in the light Cael sees this old harvester is looking pretty cleaned up already. No grime stains. Fresh paint job, red as a barn door. It’s an older Thresher-Bot model, a 2400 series, but upgraded by hand.

  “Take us over there,” Cael says.

  Lane hops over to an oar-pole, and Cael picks up one himself. They push with the oar-poles so that Doris will intersect with the harvester’s path. As soon as they get close enough, Lane grabs a towrope and loops it around the Thresher-Bot’s antenna box.

  It begins to pull the pinnace along.

  Cael yells, “Steady the boat. I’m gonna go over.”

  Wanda clutches at him, but he shakes her free.

  “You sure?” Lane asks. “This isn’t why we’re out here.”

  Cael shrugs. “You want to turn down the ace notes?” The look on Lane’s face answers that question. “Me neither. Besides, this might belong to someone from town.” If so, the paperwork inside the cabin—which is generally unmanned, but still a place a field shepherd could sit if he wanted to ride along—should tell them.

  They use the oar-poles to nudge the pinnace closer. Cael’s about to take the leap across when Rigo mans the light and again shines the beam—

  Something moves inside the motorvator.

  A shadow passes by the window. And then it’s gone.

  Cael is so startled he almost tumbles over the side. Wanda grabs at his arm, stopping him from teetering over into the corn below. His eyes dart back to the motorvator. Nothing moves.

  “Maybe it’s a shuck rat,” Rigo says.

  Lane shakes his head. “Too big for a rat.”

  Cael’s seen some damn big shuck rats. Almost the size of Wanda’s mutt, Hazelnut. But Lane’s right: the shadow within the harvester’s cabin is too big.

  Maybe they’re just seeing things.

  Or maybe there’s someone in there.

  “Give me the beatdown stick,” Cael says, snapping his fingers at Rigo. The beatdown stick is an old baseball bat—from the days when the Empyrean still let them play that old game—studded with rusty nails, points sticking outward.

  “This isn’t Betsy,” Rigo says. “No Betsy, no beatdown stick.”

  “Damn,” Cael says. “Give me something, then. Wanda, what kind of weapons you have on board?”

  Her blank stare answers the question.

  “Seriously? No knives? No truncheons? Not even a damn mop handle?” He snatches up the oar-pole. To Rigo and Lane he says, “Stabilize the boat, will you?”

  Then he uses the oar-pole to tap on the glass. Thwack thwack thwack.

  “Hey!” Cael yells. “Someone in there? Show yourself!” He says to Lane: “You think there’s a hobo in there?”

  If there’s a hobo in here, I hope like hell he’s not one of the crazy, violent ones.

  Cael yells over the motorvator engine: “Come on out, you damn hobo! I’ll break that window!”

  Nothing. Just wind and pollen and the rumbling of th
e harvester.

  But then—

  The window rattles. Everyone jumps.

  Click! The glass frame unlatches. It slides open.

  A face emerges.

  Cael hears Wanda gasp.

  “Poltroon?” Cael asks. Sure enough, staring back at him is the lean, haggard face of Earl Poltroon. He’s got a few days’ worth of beard stubble on his face, as white as salt on his otherwise dark skin. He blinks away a gust of pollen, wipes his nose across his forearm.

  “You best get out of here, Cael McAvoy!” he yells. His voice has a ragged edge to it, like a jagged-toothed saw running through hardwood. “You don’t want any part of this.”

  Cael shares a What-the-hell? look with the others on the boat. Rigo mimes drinking from a bottle.

  “Part of what?” Cael calls back.

  “This! Me! All of it!” Poltroon snarls. “Go on. Get the hell gone.”

  “Poltroon, you look drunk as a skunk in a big blue funk. Why don’t you come up on out of there? Come on over to the boat. We’ll get you home so you can clean yourself up.” Plus, maybe he knows where the heck we are, Cael thinks. He waves Poltroon forward.

  Something moves behind Poltroon. Inside the cab.

  Something long, lean, whip-like. Almost like Poltroon’s got a tail.

  Cael’s blood goes cold. Could it be… ?

  “I don’t know how it happened,” Poltroon says. His eyes lose focus, and he stares off at nothing as a blinding curtain of pollen separates them—Cael holds his forearm over his face, and when the drifting wind is gone, he can once more see Poltroon staring off at nothing. “I’m a good man. Always did right by my wife even though we never much liked each other. Did good by my kids. Tried to teach them what I can about these machines. And now…”

  “Now what?” Lane asks. “What the hell are you talking about, old man?”

  “Get out! Go away! Let me be at peace.”

  Lane snatches the oar-pole from Cael. He thrusts its tip toward Poltroon. “Hey! Poltroon! Grab the oar and we’ll haul you over to the boat.”

  Another blinding sweep of pollen, and when they can see Poltroon again, he’s staring at the pole with a baleful gaze. “Get that damn thing out of my face!”

  Lane thrusts the oar-pole forward again, this time tapping Poltroon on the cheek.

  A shadow whips in the cabin behind Poltroon.

  Cael puts a hand on Lane’s shoulder. “Lane, I don’t know if that’s a good—”

  Poltroon cries out, bleating like a wounded animal—then his arm reaches out of the window and grabs hold of that oar-pole. But it’s not a human hand that grabs it. Even in the pollen drift Cael can see the glistening darkness, the tangle of thick fibers—vines—dead-ending in something resembling a hand but with way too many fingers.

  Those vine-fingers coil around the oar-pole.

  The Blight, Cael thinks, his mind reeling in horror.

  Cael’s never seen someone Blight-afflicted this close. He feels woozy. Sick. Scared. Excited, too, though only Lord and Lady can say why that would be.

  Poltroon comes climbing out the window, still holding tight to the oar-pole—Cael can see more of the arm now. It’s a human elbow poking out of Poltroon’s rolled-up shirtsleeve, but his forearm is thick and tuberous like a stalk of long-extinct sweetcane, the hand not a hand but a squid’s beard of tightening vines.

  “Take a good, long look!” Poltroon screams—not a scream of vengeance or anger but of fear and desperation. “Go on!”

  Then, with one swift motion, he jerks the oar-pole with tremendous strength.

  Lane lets go, but too late—he’s already off-balance, and he starts to topple over the edge of the boat to the corn below.

  But he doesn’t.

  Because Poltroon catches him. An impossible act, but there it is—Poltroon’s vine-arm unbraids and unfurls, extending outward with eerie speed. Before Cael even knows what’s happening, Poltroon’s got Lane up on the hull of the motorvator. Vines wrapped tight around Lane’s mouth, squirming tendrils forcing open his mouth and working their way inside.

  Poltroon’s going to kill Lane.

  Cael has no choice now—he leaps across the boat and onto the motorvator.

  “Earl, you’re going to have to let go of Lane. That’s my friend you have there. Let go of him, and we can figure this out.” It’s a lie; Poltroon has to know that it is. You get the Blight, you don’t get a chance at figuring it out. You get quarantined. If you fight the quarantine, you die. If you go with it, then a battalion of Empyrean scientists in masks arrive suddenly, box you up like a rare antiquity, and then—you’re gone. That’s it. Never heard from again.

  Lane struggles, his eyes bugging out.

  “I can hear it,” Poltroon blubbers. “The Blight. It talks to me. I can hear it inside my head. It hates us. Hates who we are. Like a child who hates its parents.” Tears stream down his cheeks.

  Lane’s hands fumble uselessly at Poltroon’s Blight-wracked arm.

  “Hell with all this,” Cael snarls, drawing the slingshot from his back pocket. Half a second later he’s got a ball bearing in the pouch. He draws the pouch back.

  He doesn’t aim for the man.

  He aims for the plant.

  Cael opens his hand. The steel flies.

  The ball bearing punches clean through the plant matter of Poltroon’s arm with a spray of fluid. The vines open, then stiffen—and with a whip of Poltroon’s Blighted arm, Lane’s body comes flying past Cael, hurtling back onto Doris and crashing into the boxes of all the pilfered fruits and vegetables. The boat rocks. The boxes tumble over the edge of the boat into the corn.

  Cael cries out for Lane—but inside he’s mourning the loss of their garden bounty, too.

  Wanda and Rigo hurry over to Lane as Poltroon stands, staring off at nothing, his chest rising and falling with great gulps of breath. Cael doesn’t take his eyes off him.

  Please, Lane, be okay.

  Poltroon’s gaze flicks toward Cael.

  Cael slowly slides another metal ball into the slingshot pocket.

  From the back of the pinnace, he hears Wanda yell, “He’s all right.”

  “It’s crying out,” Poltroon says. His lips are trembling. “I hear it screaming.”

  Cael doesn’t know what to do.

  Poltroon mutters two words, the sound lost to the grumbling engine. Then he says them again, louder this time, shouting them:

  “Kill me!”

  “I can’t,” Cael says, horrified. “You’re clear now. Step down. Come on, Poltroon. It doesn’t have to be like this. Please. Please.”

  “You hurt it. But it’s getting louder again. It’s healing. Look.” Earl holds up the arm. Little pea-shoot tendrils are braiding back together. “Do something. Kill me.”

  I can’t kill him.

  But he might make another move.

  At Lane. At me. At any of us.

  He’s in pain. He’s suffering.

  Cael pinches another bearing, draws it back. Gets a bead on Earl’s head.

  His hand shakes.

  I can’t kill a person.

  “You won’t do it,” Poltroon says. His vine-arm snakes toward the cabin, reaching in through the open window. “You tell my wife and kids that I love them and that my son Earl Jr. can take over the garage. Tell them that, McAvoy.”

  Suddenly, the thresher bar at the front comes to life—growling, grinding, stalks chewed up as the cobs are spit into the back bin. Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Cael realizes what Poltroon’s going to do. He screams out, but it’s too late.

  Poltroon pivots and takes a running leap toward the front of the harvester. His body hits the threshing teeth and is fast swallowed by the rotor bar. Cael can’t see any of it from this vantage point, but the sound, the sound will forever remain with him: the ringing metal echo as Poltroon hits, the whirring teeth chewing fast through a human body, the sound of bones—not ears or cobs of corn but godsdamn bones—spit into the back carrier with a clanging
clatter.

  For a moment the yellow pollen in the air turns red.

  And then it’s over.

  They sit huddled together on the pinnace, the pollen drift unrelenting. The rumbling of the motorvator is fading—the vibration on the boat now just a dull thrum.

  “You good?” Cael asks Lane again.

  He groans. Rubs his head. “I feel like I got stomped by a steer.”

  “But nothing’s broken.” Bone gets broken out here, no telling how well Doc will be able to mend it with what few supplies he gets from up above these days.

  Lane moves his arms around, lets them swing loose like the arms of a puppet, shrugs. “Guess I’m all clear, doc.”

  “We did the right thing,” Rigo says suddenly. “Didn’t we?”

  “We did,” Cael answers, but he’s not sure.

  They let the motorvator go. Nobody will want to scavenge it for fear of the Blight.

  Poltroon’s dead. A bloody mess.

  Dead with the Blight. A shame for his family.

  Best to let the harvester keep on its path away from town—away, away, until it dies somewhere in the middle of the Heartland for some scavenger crew in some other town to find.

  “We don’t tell anybody about this,” Cael says. He looks at Wanda when he says it. Something about her tells him she’s the weakest link. Not a real member of the crew. Untested. He looks her dead in the eyes, sees the tears there. “They’ll burn the boat if they think it was Blight-touched. They’ll burn it and quarantine us.”

  “Okay,” she says. Sniffling. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

  “Okay?” he asks once more, his voice cold and insistent.

  “I said okay.”

  “Good.” He looks to Rigo and Lane. “We need to get those vegetables. The ones that fell off the boat.”

  But Lane shakes his head.

  “No. Hell, no.” Lane winces. “I hurt. Rigo’s face looks like a pig bladder filled with phlegm. And her—” He just points to Wanda. “We’re done here, Cael. We’ll come back another day.”

  “But they could be gone another day.”