They tumbled out and slammed the door behind them, sealing off the sound of the alarm and leaving the twenty fake guards who'd become her saviors behind. Too bad—she'd gotten used to them.
"Where to?"
"There." Andy pointed towards the street.
Rebecca took the lead and zigged through traffic, barely avoiding cars, a bus and psychotic gravBoarder. She sped across the sidewalk and into another alley. This one was right out of the ghetto, narrow, smelling of urine, and layered with debris. Worse, it was a dead end. They ran to the end, then turned, and found protection behind a large green trashcan.
"If they follow us here, we're stuck," Rebecca said.
"You're right. Lemme see if I can get this to work. Got zapped." He removed his Pod and opened a control panel on the side. As he began to work furiously, he reminded her to keep a look out. Three minutes later and it was working.
Just then, a flat disc appeared, hovering over the alley. About forty feet off the ground and the size of a trashcan lid, it moved slower than walking speed, like a UFO from a 1950s movie. The disc swung from side to side towards their position as if it were looking for something.
And it was.
"Surveillance board." Andy shook his head and cursed under his breath. "They've got us."
"What? Are we giving up?"
"We have one last chance. Do me a favor—see if you can keep it busy."
Keep it busy? Rebecca looked around at the detritus on the alley floor. There were tins of half eaten food, pieces of paper, and lengths of composite metals strewn everywhere. She'd never been good at baseball, but she was one hell of a shot when angry. She remembered Billy Picket, who'd caught Rebecca and her high school friends skinny-dipping in the neighbor's pool. The cherry red lump he sported on the back of his head for a week was a victory for all girl-kind.
With major league optimism, Rebecca plucked a piece of rock from the alley floor. She took aim, reared back and threw the rock straight and true. It would have hit had the board not moved gently out of the way. She grabbed another rock and hurled. This one missed as well. Now she felt challenged. The damned thing wouldn't keep still.
She picked up a piece of metal and an oblong rock, perfectly shaped to her hand. She feinted a throw. The board didn't fall for it. So she hurled, then followed up immediately with the piece of metal. The board juked and jived, both the metal and the stone down the alley. How the hell could it–-
At the entrance to the alley was her explanation. Two police cars had pulled to a stop, unnoticed by her and Andy until now. Four men stood behind the cars. Two were regular cops, dressed in light gray jumpsuits with black utility vests and headsets. The third held a circular hoverBoard against his thigh, probably awaiting the command to come in after them. The fourth was dressed in all black and wore twin PODs over his eyes.
Rebecca looked from the hovering board to the man and back.
She had a hypothesis.
Grasping a rock she feinted at the board, then hurled it the length of the alley with Billy Picket accuracy. One of the policemen jerked the POD-wearer out of the way at the last second, the rock bouncing harmlessly off the police car. That the hovering board sagged and seemed to momentarily lose control wasn't lost on her. The man with the PODs was obviously some sort of pilot for the unmanned hover board.
They didn't like the rock, though. One of the regular cops, began speaking rapidly into his headset.
"Uh, Andy?"
The other dropped his hoverBoard and hopped on. Already six feet off the ground, he seemed ready to charge down the alley at any second. An awful realization stuck her. The police had waited because they didn't know what kind of weapons she and Andy had. By her throwing the rock, they now knew that she and Andy had no weapons, because who in their right mind would throw a rock when they had a pistol or a blaster, or whatever weapons they had these days? Throwing the rock had backfired.
"Andy. I think we're in trouble."
"Hold on!" he shushed.
She glowered at him, promising herself that she'd make him pay for that. She left him to subvocalize with his POD while she scoured the alley floor for things to throw. By the time she had a good-sized pile, the policeman on the hoverBoard began to enter the alley.
She glanced at the rock in her hand weighing her options. What did she have to lose? If they caught her she was going back to prison, or worse, going back to prison without some major organs. Prison was the perfect place to put people if they didn't want them to complain. Screw it. She reared back and let the rock go with all of her might. It struck the edge of the hoverBoard.
Then she heard an ear-shattering pop, like an immense vacuum sucking the air from her body. As her hands went to her head, she watched the hoverBoard crash to the ground and the police rider sprawl. The lights on the police car ceased flickering. The regular policemen tossed their smoking headsets to the ground. The one wearing PODs collapsed, smoke curling from his mouth.
Andy joined her at her defensive position. He tossed his POD to the ground. "Useless," he muttered.
Her eyes widened as she took in the scene of electronic devastation. "Did I do that?"
Andy grinned and shook his head. "No. They did." Off to the side, a sewer grate had been pushed aside and a man slid partially clear, only his upper body visible. All she could do was make out his eyes. His face, arms, torso and hands were covered by strips of mismatched pieces of sewn together cloth. Only the strip of his eyes had been left uncovered. He beckoned to them.
"We've been rescued." Andy raised his hand and began to trot in the man's direction.
Rebecca hurried to keep up. "Who is that?"
"A Day Eater."
Chapter 12
They climbed down the ladder to an abandoned sewer, then skittered through a drain to an even lower place. They had to be thirty feet below ground level, if not more. The moment Rebecca thought she felt the angle of the floor change, it went away. They were following a tunnel large enough that if she extended her arms, she couldn't touch the walls or the ceiling. The floor was a mixture of hard packed sand aggregate, broken pieces of glass, polymers and cement. Graffiti marked their passage, glowing in the black lights carried by the Day Eaters.
There were six of them. Four walked in front, a pair walked in back. They were eerily silent. The one time she'd tried to engage them in conversation by thanking them, they ignored her. All looked like the first. Mismatched snatches of material sewn together with no apparent rhyme or reason. Like Bedouin of the sewers, they were covered from head to toe.
The black light barely gave off enough illumination, so Rebecca picked her way carefully. She'd noticed diamond-shaped marks and annotations on the walls at each intersection. By the neon hues, she guessed that they were only visible by black light. Probably navigation signs.
Finally Andy broke the silence. "They used an EMP burst. It fried all unshielded electronics within a block radius."
A block? What about her grandmother at the D-pens?
Reading her worry, he added, "The D-pens facility is shielded to withstand a lot more than a localized EMP charge. Don't worry. She's probably sailing the high seas, oblivious to what's going on around her."
Rebecca trudged beside him, feeling the soreness of her legs. An ache had found a home in her upper back. She'd done more running, jumping, throwing and crawling over the last twenty-four hours than she'd done in twenty years. She'd thought she'd been keeping herself in shape in prison. The devil's advocate side of her reminded her that she probably was in shape. She'd just never anticipated being one of America's Most Wanted.
"So who are they?" She tried to keep her voice low, but one of the men in front turned around, his eyes flashing a warning to be silent. She huddled closer to Andy. She felt more like a captive than a rescuee. "What'd you call them?" she whispered.
"Day Eaters."
"What does that mean?"
"They eschew the day," he whispered. "Theirs is the night. They hug the darkness and th
e shadows. The days eat away without them. Only when it's gone do they come out."
She shuddered. Their saviors sounded like vampires or ghouls.
"Why do they do this?"
Another of the Day Eaters leading the way turned. He hissed and drew his hand across his throat in a sign that could not be misconstrued. She let the question hang. For now she'd remain silent. Perhaps she'd find the answer later, even if it meant approaching a day eater directly.
After marching what seemed like hours beneath the city, they came to an immense slab of concrete along the right-hand wall. Water dripped across its surface, its source unknown. She touched the concrete and felt a deep cold, as if a frigid abyss were held at bay. She tasted the water. Salty.
The ceiling was composed of rebar and snapped concrete. It looked like what she'd expect to see after an earthquake but here, underground, Rebecca imagined the debris had once been on the surface, but had been covered over. Bulldozing it under had probably been an easier option than removing each and every piece of debris. Tsunami, or earthquake, each step was like a journey through the devastation.
Then it hit her. She examined the concrete wall and how it extended through the floor and the ceiling and continued on as far as the eye could see. She remembered seeing the great Tsunami wall when she was on Sunset. This must be it. Had they come that far? Was this the lower portion of that immense wall that protected Los Angeles from the ravages of the ocean? It had to be.
In less than half an hour, they came to what could only be their destination. The Day Eater City spread out beneath them. She stood upon a promontory and stared down at an underground city that could easily house ten thousand souls. The ceiling was a great arched dome reinforced by girders the size of ocean freighters. Concrete and substrate bonded the spider-webbed ceiling. The walls had been built with the same construction. Whatever this place was, whoever built this place had built it with the end of the world in mind.
The city floor was composed of a hundred thousand ten by ten foot CONEXs —steel shipping containers used by the military since the Korean War—that were open on one side. Stacked upwards of seven high, the CONEXs created avenues, cul-de-sacs and meandering paths that Rebecca could see from her high vantage point. Here and there she could make out a market. Over there children were playing a form of soccer, rushing in bunches to and fro, the dust from their effort hovering over them like a lingering tornado. But in more instances she saw people confined to their small spaces, climbing up and down their CONEX towers with the aid of ropes and ladders. Then she noticed something strange. In fact, as she looked around, she was surprised she hadn't noticed it before. All the people of this underground city, every last one of them, were swaddled in cloth just as her guides were.
A Day Eater approached her, blond eyebrows arched over blue eyes. "Follow me. We go to council."
Twenty minutes later they found themselves within the city proper in a circular area surrounded by twenty-one evenly spaced open CONEXs. Pillows and blankets swathed the interiors of metal cubicles like the tents of Arab sheiks. Incense burned, carrying with it a sweet tonic for the senses. Within each one sat a Day Eater; some reclined, some sat in Lotus positions staring towards an imaginary horizon, some exercised, the small space not limiting their martial skills—and from each one Rebecca got the feeling that she was being examined as if she were the experiment of a mad scientist who'd just found a hidden mystery of the universe.
She felt a chill. Cold radiated from the tsunami wall. She looked up into the dome. From the city floor, she could barely make out the girders and beams that made up the lattice because the smoke from the cooking fires and incense gathered in clouds against the earthen sky.
She and Andy were directed to sit upon knee-high backless chairs. Then they were turned so that they sat back to back.
"Do not move," said one of the Day Eaters. "You must not move, whatever happens." He passed in front of her, made the sign of a cut across the neck, then was gone.
"Listen to him, Bec."
"What's going to happen?" She wanted to turn and look. She was getting a bad feeling about this.
"Whatever you do, don't scream or flinch. They'll take it personally."
"Andy, what the hell is going on?"
"Can't tell you, Bec. They made me promise. They want to see who you really are."
"What—"
She stopped mid-sentence when one of the figures in the surrounding CONEXs rose and strode toward her. His movements were like liquid, faster than a man could walk, but with no bounce in his step. He came within three feet of her and squatted, his arms draped across the tops of his knees as he examined her.
Bushy gray eyebrows rested above dark brown eyes. Crow's feet danced at the corners. After a few of him looking her unashamedly up and down, he spoke. "What do they call us?"
"Day Eaters," she stammered.
"Why are we called that?"
"Because you like the shadow." Remembering more of what Andy had told her, she added, "Yours is the night."
"But why?"
"I—I don't know."
He stood and returned to his CONEX, purple and green fabrics swirling in his wake.
Another descended from his CONEX and approached her. He squatted as the first had one and asked the same questions, his voice calm but direct, his eyes soft yet demanding. Not knowing whether they were right or not, she responded with the same answers she'd given before.
And then another came.
And another.
Until all twenty-one members of the council had queried her. Then nothing. What had just happened? The only thing holding her fear in check was an air of expectancy.
Some of the council members visited their neighbors and conferred. Others acted disinterested. Still others glared at her from the confines of her CONEXs. She couldn't see them all without getting up, but she imagined the ones behind her were doing the same.
She had to ask Andy.
Rebecca was about to whisper something to him when she heard a soft rumble coming from behind her. What the hell? She listened and heard it again. Snoring. Andy had fallen asleep! During what could possibly be a life and death situation, he'd managed to relax enough to find dreamland. She felt her anger rise.
A figure strode purposefully towards her. She could tell it was a woman by the kohl darkening the eyes and the curve of the hips. She wore greens and yellows with purple swathes. Glitter was sewn into the fabric covering her head. A small man followed her with a chair similar to the one on which Rebecca sat. He placed it on the ground a few feet in front of the woman, then retreated. The woman paused a moment as if waiting for an invitation.
Rebecca nodded.
The woman sat. She stared at Rebecca for several minutes, her eyes searching. Finally she smiled, the tell-tale wrinkles at the corners of her eyes banding together. "I am Maria. Welcome to our home."
She didn't extend a hand, but the greeting rang true.
"Thank you. I am Rebecca." She felt foolish, but she didn't know what else to say.
"We know, but we had to be sure. Thank you for being patient."
They knew her? Impossible.
"There is but one test remaining."
God, but Rebecca hated tests. Why couldn't the universe just take her at face value? "Listen, I don't understand any of this."
"We know. And I apologize on behalf of my people. But this is our way. We do not trust anyone. We normally would not trust you. But then, you are Rebecca. You are Velvet Dogma."
There it was again. She'd heard Panchet mention this, and then the gravBoarder. Velvet Dogma. She searched her memory, but the words didn't hold any meaning for her. "I don't understand. I don't know what those words mean." Sadness swept over Rebecca. "I've been in prison for twenty years. I don't even know the world."
"We know of your sacrifice. Now you shall know of ours."
Sacrifice?
"We are called the Day Eaters," the woman began, her voice shifting into an oratory, pr
ojecting without effort to the council members and beyond. "We do not like the light. We do not like the day. We are the creatures of the night." Her voice grew even louder. "We protest the world. We do not like what we see. For too many, their bodies are not their own. Companies own them in bits and pieces."
"Bits and pieces," repeated children's voices in unison from somewhere beyond the circle of CONEXs.
"When they die they are harvested. If they live they are farmed. People aren't meant to be crops."
"People not crops," said the children.
"So we changed ourselves. We wear the mark of Miriam."
"Oh, Miriam!" The children wailed.
"They cannot harvest us. Who would want to? They fear us. Do you blame them?" The woman leapt to her feet and whirled around, the fabric catching the vortex currents her spin created. She held out her arms as if to embrace the world. "We cannot change it, so we are not a part of it. They do what they do, and we don't do it."
"We don't do it!" shouted the children.
"Nothing created by man do we wear. Nothing invented by whim do we care."
"Don't wear! Don't care!"
"So we become one with our kind, exchanging blood and breed. We are dead together, but nothing do we need."
"Nothing, no nothing," they whispered.
"Together we live. Together we change. Together we break and die."
Maria froze in mid-spin, her arms disjointed like those of a scarecrow, her head canted all the way to a shoulder.
"Break and die!" screamed the children over and over, until finally they ran away laughing, their impish delight evident in the way they finished their game of recitation.
Rebecca sat stunned by the performance. She wasn't sure what it meant, but the beauty, anger and resolution were unmistakable. She especially liked the children as they chimed in, as they'd probably done in lessons a thousand times before. Whatever these people were into, they believed it totally.
Maria held her puppet stance for a moment longer, then returned to normal. She sat once again before Rebecca. With her kohl-shaded eyes she watched for a reaction as she unwrapped the fabric from her head. When the last piece had been removed, she offered an embarrassed smile. Beautiful in a matronly way, she shrugged slightly. "Thank you for allowing us to perform the telling. It is something we do. The children join in." She laughed. "It is a game to them until they find out that ours is not the way of everyone."
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