Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy)

by Wendig, Chuck

  And then the Boxelder mayor chuckles and pushes past the boys toward the door. Boyland Jr. follows after but pauses to linger in front of Cael. He sets his jaw and offers his own looming presence. “McAvoy, don’t you even think of joining the Butchers. You do, and I’ll make you wish your daddy never pissed you out into your momma’s—”

  Pop shoulders hard into Junior from behind, shoving him forward toward the door. Cael’s father holds up both hands, feigning an accident. “Sorry. This hip makes me clumsier than a drunken moon-cat.” Junior just growls and follows after his father.

  Cael watches them mount up into the yacht outside. He sees Mole turning the sail, Felicity giving Gwennie a hard elbow on the way to the rudder wheel. So she’s not exactly one of the crew, Cael thinks, but he doesn’t let that thought linger. He can’t be feeling bad for her right now. He’s got his own problems. Not like she’s hurting, either, what with her standing there in a rugged new outfit, her face plastered with makeup.

  Gwennie gives Cael a look. A sadness lives there on her face. She doesn’t wave, doesn’t mouth any words. She just stands there and gives him a small, defeated shrug.

  She looks pretty, Cael thinks, and for a moment he wants to yell that out to her.

  But then the wind catches the sails, the hover-rails thrum to life, and the prop-fans whirr. The yacht is already pivoting and heading back down the drive, lifting up above the corn tassels.

  And then they’re gone.

  She’s gone.

  As soon as they’re out of sight, Cael storms over to a tin pail sitting by the front stoop and kicks it as hard as he can. It sails toward the edge of their property, hits the ground, and rolls into the corn with a rustle.

  “Shit!” he yells. “Sonofabitch!”

  He kicks a clod of dirt with some dry grass sticking out of it like a bad haircut.

  Rigo sits on the front steps, his face drooping. Lane paces like a worried barn cat.

  “Cael,” Pop says. “Calm down and we’ll talk this through.”

  “Godsdamn, Pop,” Cael says. “Seriously? Talk it through? Talk what through? That we just got bent over a barrel again, but this time by our own fellow Heartlanders instead of the damn Empyrean? No matter what we do, we can’t catch a break.”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “No, we won’t figure anything out. I’ll figure it out. You just keep doing what you do best, which is get punched in the face and smile like someone just fed you a bite of pie.”

  But Pop’s pencil-thin eyebrows kink up like two caterpillars inching down the branch of his brow. “I understand, Cael. Maybe you’re right.” Pop stands there for a second, breathing deep through his nose, looking up at the sky. “Well. I… I better get ready. Shift starts soon. I’m going to have to leave early tomorrow, too. Bessie will watch your mother if you’ve got… things to do.”

  “We’ve got things to do all right,” Cael says, his words like spit hitting hard earth. “So you go on. Do whatever.”

  And Pop does. He gives the boys a spiritless nod and heads off to the house.

  Cael tilts his head back, stares up at the wide expanse of sky, so blue it might as well be the sea. Wonders for a moment what his father sees up there: the limitless wonder of the sky or invisible chains connecting those drifting flotillas to the soul of every Heartlander living and dead.

  “That was harsh,” Rigo finally says.

  Lane moves over to a nearby barrel, starts rolling up a cigarette on the crooked wood. “Rigo’s right. Your pops is a pretty good dude. Rigo’s dad is a mean drunk. Mine is dead because he was dumber than a sack of donkey apples—and never mind the fact my mother is a traitor to everything I could possibly believe in. Yours taught us everything we know. He’s nice. Doesn’t whup on you. Smart, too. You can’t expect him to be the one man single-handedly sticking his thumb in the eye of Barnes and Agrasanto and everybody else in the Empyrean who thought to shit in our mouths from above.”

  Cael knows Lane’s right. But knowing something and feeling something are two different things, and Cael just can’t get past it. He’s mad at his father. He’s been mad at him for a long time, and the anger’s only getting stronger. He says, “You really don’t think one man could make a difference?”

  Lane shrugs. “Maybe. But you ask me, you need a group—like the Sleeping Dogs—to change things.” He licks the twisted ends of the ditchweed cig, pinches it between his lips as he lights a match, and takes a few puffs before coughing. “I’m just saying to lay off your pops is all.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” Cael says. “Because I got a plan.”

  Rigo’s eyes light up. “Ooh.”

  Lane just frowns and rotates his finger. “Let’s hear it.”

  Cael tells them the plan, and the others seem reluctant. But Cael doesn’t want to hear it. “We meet back here tomorrow morning.”

  “But tomorrow’s the Lottery,” Rigo says.

  Cael cocks an eyebrow. “Fuck the Lottery. We make our own fate.”

  “Ballsy,” Lane says. “But hell, I like ballsy. See you tomorrow, Captain.”

  That night, with the camel crickets chirping outside, the wind whispering through the corn, Cael slides open his window and crawls out onto the roof.

  In the sky, the moon is fat and round. Not yet full but almost. The pregnant moon, they call it. Pregnant with what, Cael never understood. Possibility. Tragedy. Little moon-babies.

  A shadow passes in front of the moon. One of the flotillas.

  Cael wonders what it must be like for Merelda up there.

  The sweet treats and the high society parties. He can’t even imagine how it feels being that high up in the sky. When flying that high, why look down? The Heartland will soon be nothing but a dream to her, Cael knows. He hopes she’ll keep sending care packages.

  He wonders when they’ll see her again. Could be never. Not unless they end up on the flotilla, and what are the chances of that? Part of him thinks, Maybe that’s what we need to do. Run away. Catch a ride up to the sky.

  But how much money would that take?

  How much of the hidden garden must they harvest?

  All of it depends on what secrets Martha’s Bend holds.

  Because that’s where they’re going in the morning.

  LANCING THE BLISTER

  THE DAY IS hot, and they’re scared. Excited, too. Because way off in the distance sits the sealed-away town of Martha’s Bend.

  And it’s taking them forever to get there.

  The sail’s repaired and the mast is straight, but the air is still, refusing to give them even a moment’s worth of wind to blow them toward their destination. So once again the boat floats wobbly on its single hover-rail as they use the oar-poles to push themselves forward.

  “By this rate we won’t get there until noon,” Lane growls through gritted teeth.

  “I’m hungry,” Rigo says.

  “Here.” Cael fishes through his satchel, finds some hardtack biscuits. He breaks off a couple of porous chunks and tosses one to Rigo, one to Lane. Then Cael bites into the remaining third, wincing. Feels and tastes as if he’s biting into a brick of salty clay.

  Rigo pushes forward on the oar-pole and then bites into his hardtack. “Thish shucks.”

  Lane rests his cheek against the oar-pole as he lifts, drops, and pushes. “If you believe Cael here, we’re about to walk into the Lord and Lady’s very own garden; ain’t that right, Captain?”

  “That’s what I believe, yeah.”

  “Soon as we cross the garden trail,” Lane says, “we’ll stop and pick up some lunch. Couple strawberries, a big fat tomato, a handful of snap peas.”

  “We’re not crossing the trail today,” Cael says.

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t make any sense to. We’re already hamstrung with Doris here. We’re going to come up to Martha’s Bend from the south. Other way’s the long way.”

  “The other way’s the we-get-to-eat-strawberries way.”<
br />
  Cael shrugs. “Sorry, guys. Garden trail leads to Martha’s Bend. I want to grab the head of the beast, not wrestle with its tail.”

  Rigo says suddenly, “Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe we should turn back around. Or just go harvest more of the garden. This is a bad idea. I can feel it in my gut. We don’t know what’s in Martha’s Bend. They must’ve closed it off for a reason. Could be Blight there. Or maybe some kind of real bad weed killer that’ll creep into your bones and turn them to pudding. What if it’s an Empyrean outpost? Or what if the Maize Witch is there!”

  “The Maize Witch isn’t a real thing,” Lane says. “What are you, four?”

  “I’m just saying, this is a bad idea. I want to turn back around.”

  Cael shakes his head, bites into the hardtack again. Crunch crunch crunch. He tastes blood from where it bites into the roof of his mouth. “We’re not turning around.”

  And then Lane points. “Damn right we’re not. Look.”

  There it is.

  Martha’s Bend.

  Plastic bubble, bright white in the sun.

  Behind the plastic, the fuzzy shadows of distant buildings.

  They’re still a ways away. But for the next hour, nobody says anything. They just push the boat forward, ten feet at a time, the corn whispering underneath.

  As they get closer, the corn starts to die off. It doesn’t go all dead, not at first. Instead, about a half mile out the corn begins to darken, the leaves mottled with rusty flecks and black patches. The stalks curl in on themselves. Before long they stop seeing ears of corn hanging. The corn here still grows, but each stalk is as dead as a coffin nail. The ground looks different, too: white and dry, as if covered with a rime of hoarfrost or a dusting of milled flour.

  Cael’s seen this before—a phenomenon common to all the dead towns.

  Then the wind shifts against them. And with the wind comes a faint smell, an acrid, chemical tang that smells like a high-test version of Queeny’s Quietdown. The smell crawls up inside Cael’s nose like a sick possum and dies there.

  All of this—the smell, the ground, the corn—is from what the Empyrean did to this town way back when. The real question is, Why? Why do that? What were they trying to kill? Just what the hell are Cael and his friends going to find here in town?

  Poison air? A deep crater? A pit to nowhere? A menace of hobos? A cult of Blighters? The Maize Witch? Cael’s mind starts running away with an unholy menu of terrifying possibilities.

  No turning back now.

  This is my shot, Cael thinks. Lord and Lady bless us and keep an eye over our endeavors, because it’s the only shot we’re gonna get.

  They come up from the south. Rigo anchors Doris with a cinder block, and they all hop out.

  Here they see the plastic blister up close—it’s the same plasto-sheen they pour over the roads, except thinner. Thin enough, at least, that when the wind kicks up, the bubble shifts and rustles. All along the perimeter, the Empyrean have put up signs—old signs, the edges eaten by bloody rust: NO TRESPASSING. TOXICITY AT FATAL LEVELS. INTERLOPERS WILL BE PUNISHED.

  Rigo swallows hard, points to them as if to say, See?

  But Cael ignores him. He just puts out his hand and says to Lane, “Knife.”

  Lane puts a saw-knife with a serrated blade in Cael’s palm.

  Time to cut an entrance.

  Cael stabs the knife into the plastic. It’s hard going—the plastic won’t puncture at first, so he has to push the flat of his hand against the hilt of the knife and stab forward again and again until finally it pokes through with a rupturing pop.

  Then Cael grits his teeth and starts sawing.

  In five minutes he’s gotten maybe three inches and his face is covered in a lather of sweat. The sun is like corn roots, sucking all the juice clean out of him the way it dries up the earth. Panting, he hands the knife to Lane, letting him take over. Lane gets another few inches. Then it’s Rigo’s turn, and he doesn’t get more than an inch before he collapses on his butt.

  They go like this for a while. Sawing, sweating, taking sips of water from the canteen before going back to more sawing and more sweating.

  Finally, they cut a vent. A ragged line from head height to the barren earth.

  It’s enough. One by one, they slip through.

  Rigo doesn’t feel so good. This whole situation makes him nervous. His palms are slick with sweat, and his stomach has gone as sour as a cup of vinegar. This is a bad idea, he thinks. Cael should have let well enough alone—eventually they were going to have to buckle down and get real jobs anyway. Can’t hold off fate forever. So why not just give in? Why go messing with the Empyrean’s things? The Empyrean doesn’t want them here.

  It’s a high-pressure situation.

  And Rigo doesn’t like pressure. Pressure makes him want to throw up.

  But he forgets all that as they step through the vent into the forbidden town of Martha’s Bend.

  Martha’s Bend was probably three times the size of Boxelder, Rigo thinks. Some of the buildings around them go up to two, even three, stories. And they don’t look as if they’d blow over in a stiff wind, either—a good number of them are made of brick, limestone, even marble, with roofs of slate and asbestos shingle. The bank building stands tall, looking to Rigo like some kind of temple built for the Lord and Lady, what with the pair of bulbous columns standing out front. Across the street sits a department store—an ace note emporium called Dewberry’s Variety. Even from the outside, Rigo can see through the shattered storefront windows that Dewberry’s Variety makes Boxelder’s provisional store look like a hobo’s lean-to.

  Hell, all of Martha’s Bend—even dead—makes Boxelder look like some kind of vagabond’s shantytown.

  For a moment Rigo wonders what it would have been like to live here. Go down to the candy store for some rock candy or maybe a cream soda. Hit Dewberry’s and buy a new hat. Fly a kite down Main Street.

  Wasn’t Martha’s Bend a horse town? Rigo knows he might be making that up, but that’s all right; he’s making all this up. He’s thinking how a nice town like this might have made things different. Maybe his father wouldn’t be drunk. Maybe his mother would care what happens to him. Suddenly Cael’s little pipe dream doesn’t feel so faraway. Maybe there’s something to it.

  But then it all hits him. He sees how the town is given over to a creepy, watery pallor from the way the sun shines down through the plastic above. This is a dead place. Whatever prosperity was here is gone. The people are gone. Taken away to Lord and Lady know where. Maybe the people of Martha’s Bend had the same dream Cael had. Maybe they pushed too hard, too far.

  Maybe the Empyrean pushed back.

  What’s worse, Rigo doesn’t see any sign of any garden. They’re only here at the one side of town but so far, no apple trees, no berry bushes, no fat lettuce mounds or plumes of spinach. It’s all concrete and dirt and brick—nary even a corn shoot pushing up through shattered earth.

  And that’s when Rigo’s dream dies on the vine—a cold chill sweeps up his spine, and his hands go clammy. Martha’s Bend isn’t here anymore, and it hasn’t been here for a long time.

  Cael comes up next to him, and Rigo says, “I think I might throw up.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “We’re doing something real bad here.” Rigo rubs his hands together. “I don’t see any garden, either. Cael, we should go.”

  Cael keeps his voice low. “Look, even if we don’t find the garden, we still have a whole town here to scavenge. The Butchers aren’t here. We are. This is opportunity. And I’m not willing to pass it by. Are you?”

  “I think so.”

  “You are not. Stop talking like that. Look at it this way: Does your father have the balls to take risks like this?” Rigo says nothing. “Well, does he?”

  “No.” He barely has the balls to get up off the chair to get himself a new drink, Rigo thinks.

  “Well, there you go. You do. You’re a better man than him by a H
eartland mile, Rodrigo. Now, quit your caviling and let’s go make ourselves rich, yeah?”

  Above their heads, the plastic bubble shifts and burbles as the wind pushes on it from the outside. Lane saunters over, twirling the saw-knife. “I hear we’re getting rich. What’s the plan, ladies?”

  “I figure we split up,” Cael says. “Cover more ground that way. Keep an eye out for anything—we’re looking for the source of the garden, yeah, but we can take anything that isn’t nailed down. You don’t need to grab it now, but make a list in your head or on your hand—we’ll need to start hauling stuff out of here before dark.” He takes a look up and down the street. “Lane, you head east. Rigo, go west. I’m going to cut through that alley over there. I assume there’s a street parallel I can scope out.”

  Lane heads in the direction Cael points him.

  As he walks, it occurs to him suddenly: he doesn’t really believe in Cael’s dream. He wants to. Really. It’s just that he’s not that naive. Lane knows the truth. The truth is, the game is rigged.

  Always has been. Always will be.

  The system… that’s where Cael’s dream falls down. The Empyrean has created a feedback loop wherein power stays in the hands of the powerful and everybody else falls into a pecking order ranging from a little bit screwed to a whole lot fucked.

  Lane knows that the Big Sky Scavengers are better than the Boxelder Butchers. That’s never been in contention. What’s also not been in contention—at least for Lane—is that it just doesn’t matter. Skill? Talent? Hell with ’em. Meaningless! Even if the three of them are lucky enough to find something, somehow Boyland Barnes Jr. and his cronies will come out on top. Because he’s the mayor’s son, and the mayor has a direct line to the top.

  The privileged are like cats: they always land on their feet, even when knocked out of a tree.

  Cael thinks a pile of money is going to buy their way to the top. Lane knows differently. The Empyrean will come along and invent some new tax. Or they’ll make ace notes worth less all of a sudden. Or they’ll just send a pack of soldiers to come in and wipe Boxelder clean, seal it up in a big plastic bubble. Hell, maybe that’s what happened to Martha’s Bend. Maybe they got too rich. Too uppity. Needed to be swept under the rug before they started to believe their delusions of grandeur.