The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  “If they start searching door to door,” Reggie said softly.

  “I know,” Quey interrupted with hushed briskness.

  The men on the bikes watched the house for another minute, discussed something, pointed and gestured toward the building. Finally they began to roll forward again. In the upstairs bedroom, they all sighed with a bit of relief.

  Plans and Regrets

  Richter Crow stood before the massive windows that made up the western wall of his office. He looked through them and studied the perfectly manicured landscape beyond, a brilliant green of short grass that rolled along the hills all the way to the ocean a good two fenced-in acres in the distance. Trees loomed in small clusters here or there, some bearing fruit, others flowers. There was a pond where fish swam and a fountain that bubbled over with water. Standing in his office he imagined the sound of it trickling and it soothed him.

  He was a powerful man. He had a staff of hundreds directly below him. He was in charge of every major operation currently underway on Saffron. He had entire cities full of people that would bend to whatever whim he happened to desire. He had an entire planet at his beck and call. An entire dying planet… and then there was this business with the Angels of the Brood. Sticklan Stone assured him that everything was under control and what choice did he have but to believe it. The alternative was that his hold on the man wasn’t as tight as he believed it to be, and what then?

  Richter shook the thought. For the time being he’d leave the dirty business to Stone, after all, that’s why he went to all the trouble of getting the man in the first place. Besides, there were other things that needed tending.

  That morning Blue Moon had sent him an offer to purchase the planet on credit, become an independent contractor. He had two days to decide and even though they hadn’t said as much he knew after that they would write the planet off. It was a money pit that had been flagged for too long. When he thought about how long it had been since he’d asked for the red flag it boggled him. Over a decade… he’d had a family then…

  Another thought in need of shaking. There was no point lingering on what’s done. All a man can ever hope to do is move forward. That’s the difference between the successful ones and the ones who remain in mediocrity. The later never stop looking back at what might have been. Regret is for the weak, for those unwilling to succeed. He was not one of those.

  Richter lifted a glass from the mini-bar beside him and sipped a bit of the finest whiskey the world could offer. He sighed and couldn’t help a bit of reflection; it boosted his ego and proved he was right in his belief that karma doesn’t exist. Everyone he knew who was successful, including himself, had done terrible things. You don’t succeed in business or politics without sacrificing someone else along the way. He’d destroyed lives and killed people in the name of self-preservation and greed and he’d been rewarded for it time and time again. He paid slave wages, as any corporation does, and made substandard products and still he was rewarded with wealth and power.

  Another sip of whiskey gave his thoughts something to swim in and took the sting off what they were about, his own regrets that he’d never allow himself to voice. To do so would be a sign of weakness.

  As he filled his glass again he thought of the situation with the Brood and Sticklan Stone and he knew he was going to have to do something, say something. People were kept complacent for the time being by an overabundance of luxury and entertainment but that only went so far. All the shows and video games in the world didn’t do much to quell people when psychopaths were rolling through their towns killing and pillaging.

  On the desk behind him his sheet was lying flat on the dark and polished wood surface. It was projecting a hologram of the news story that had sent him spiraling into his present state of reflection. The Brood had been raiding some of the smaller registered settlements for some time but now it seemed they’d moved on to ones with official Blue Moon security posts. Worse yet they had been successful and that was only going to encourage them.

  Looking out at his backyard, the massive stretch of land where he’d played with his children when they were younger, a hint of a smile lifted his face for a moment. A memory of Viona in a brilliant blue dress, running after a butterfly sapped the expression. He saw her clearly, so tiny with long hair the color of sunlight. She’d run up to him and leapt into his arms. He carried her to the new swing set they’d just purchased and he pushed her, laughing. Both of them laughing.

  There was a force in her nature and it wasn’t to be trifled with lightly.

  Richter poured a heavy amount of whiskey into his glass and this time when he brought it to his lips he didn’t sip, he drank. Two long swallows and finally the knowledge that she took after him began to dull—well the sting of it at least—and the image of that smiling girl in the long blue flower dress with golden hair began to blur.

  Another two drinks took any nostalgia he was feeling and twisted it into rage. He hated this shithole of a planet. He couldn’t wait to kill it and everyone on it and fly away to a better life where he’d live out the rest of his days in luxury on a beach somewhere where you could actually go for a swim. The best part of his plan, the part that made him chuckle a bit as he swayed over to his desk and sat down, was that he’d be living on their money. The ones he left to die.

  He looked at the news report displayed in the air in front of his face and grimaced.

  But first, he had matters to tend to. His plan for Saffron was coming together and he had to accept Blue Moon’s offer to buy it before they changed their mind.

  No Good. Simply The Bad and Ugly

  The sun set early this far north and when nightfall came it was hard and fast, dousing the world in silent blackness. The pair of Broodlings on the motorcycles had taken more than an hour to work their way around the six kilometers of road circumnavigating the lake, stopping often to assess the cabins that were more or less intact, skipping the ones that were wreckage. They stopped for what seemed like an eternity outside the very walls Quey and his friends were held up in. Eventually they moved on.

  Now he sat with his back to the wall. Rachel and Dusty had gone off to another part of the house a while back, all the sitting and waiting was making them antsy. It had a similar effect on Rain and Leone, who had moved into the hallway. She was sitting with her back to one wall, Leone across from her, both with legs folded and sheet computers they borrowed from Dusty and Reggie in their laps. They were playing a game and Quey could hear the two of them laughing from time to time and softly talking smack when one or the other of them did well.

  He smiled and chuckled a little as he watched Rain and couldn’t help but smile. Even hushed she spoke with every part of her body, channeled the energy of her meaning through each movement and made them all a complete expression of what she was feeling. It was good to see her like this, the way she’d been when he’d first encountered her at the Dine Out. Since meeting up with them here in the small town of Vernire that version of her had been sparse, replaced by a worrisome copy, and completely vanished a few hours ago when they’d passed out the guns. Now it was back and brilliant.

  In the corner across the room Reggie shifted. The room was so dark the big man was nearly invisible in it. If Quey hadn’t known he was there he doubted he ever would have spotted him.

  Gunshots cracked somewhere in the distance.

  Rain tensed and her head snapped in his direction, eyes wide and panic-stricken. Quey sprung to his knees and gazed out the window, keeping his head low and near the corner of the glass. More cracks broke the deep silence and echoed across the lake.

  Footsteps raced up the steps behind him and Dusty asked in a loud whisper, “What is it?”

  Peering through the window Quey couldn’t see much. It was a cloudy night and there were no artificial lights to speak of. Near as he could tell the Broodlings were firing at something, and there was shouting.

  Reggie crawled up beside him and peered out as well.

  “Fuck m
e,” Dusty said from the stairs behind them and dashed into one of the other bedrooms with a better view of the road running past the front of the cabin. Quey looked through one of the windows in the adjacent wall and saw what had caught Dusty’s eye. It was a pack of figures running down the street, heading toward the main road. Their skin was pale and cracked and their hair looked brittle and thin.

  “Told you I saw someone,” Leone said from behind them.

  “Not the time,” Rain said back.

  Quey remembered then that they’d been arguing when they first arrived at the cabin. He’d let it go because he’d been focused on the Brood. ‘I still say it was.’ That’s what the boy had said. Now he put it together.

  Rain had told him it was nothing, or nobody.

  “Leone where’d you see someone?” Quey snapped.

  He was all too happy to tell someone about it. “In the house next door. I didn’t see them exactly but I saw something moving around in there.”

  Quey stood and went into the hall where the boy was still sitting across from Rain. He looked down at him and nodded. “That was good looking out, next time I need you to speak up though. Copy?”

  The boy nodded once.

  “Good. Now I’m afraid the time might be coming where you have to settle in that closet like we talked about. I need no hesitation about it. You even think you hear me or anyone say closet, you go.”

  His face sank and he looked to Rain, eyes glistening with fear. She nodded and he looked down at the sheet in his lap.

  “What’s going on out there?” Rain asked, looking up at him with a worry of her own.

  “Once Men,” he imparted solemnly.

  “Savages, this close to a town?” Rachel asked from the top of the stairs.

  “Oh we’re more than a few clicks from the town.”

  “Still,” Rain interrupted, “If they’re living out here surely they would have raided it by now.”

  “You misunderstand ‘em. A town’s too big for them. They aren’t bandits. They don’t raid,” he said turning his attention back to the Broodlings firing wildly into the night. He watched the flashes of gunfire through the windowpane and off in the distant dark. “They’re not interested in such things, loot and the like. They’re interested in meat and killing. The thrill of the chase. They prefer small groups they can overwhelm.”

  Beside him the bathroom door opened quickly and Arnie emerged. “Is that gunfire?” he asked hoping the answer would be anything but yes.

  “Looks like for right now they’re happy enough playing with the Brood,” Quey said. “I’m inclined to let ‘em.”

  Reggie moved to the doorway between the bedroom and the hallway and said. “Rest of that convoy shows and they’ll spread these savages to the wind. Ain’t but a few of ‘em that have a gun.”

  Quey nodded. “Either way it’s best if we make haste toward somewhere that’s not here as soon as we can manage.”

  “You still mean to get to that tower?” Reggie asked.

  “I do,” Quey replied, looking over at his big friend.

  “Then why not now?”

  Quey’s brow furrowed.

  “It’s not a terrible idea,” Dusty offered, trailing off.

  “Think about it,” Reggie began to explain, stepping forward. “You and I head out, we make our way there. The night’s thick and the Brood’s a bit on the distracted side about now. We could slip over, get what you need and be ready to rabbit soon as the coast hints it’s clear.”

  Quey leaned back against the wall and thoughtfully scratched his face for a long quiet moment. He could use a shave. “Couldn’t be you to go with me though,” he finally said. “Something goes down I want you between whatever comes through that door and whoever’s left inside, especially with the kid here.”

  Reggie nodded.

  “What happens if there’s a security system?” Rachel asked and Quey looked over at her. “Can you disarm it? What if the computer in that thing is password protected? Can you bypass it?”

  “You saying you want to tag along?” Quey asked.

  “I’m saying if Reggie isn’t going then you’re about to tell Dusty he is,” she went to him and put her arm around him. “I’m saying why don’t you sit this out and we’ll go.”

  Quey thought for another set of ticks, looking from the girl he’d almost vomited on the first night he’d met her to his oldest friend and nodded slowly. “You sure you’re up for it?”

  Rachel nodded, and Dusty smiled a little sly and shrugged. “I think I’m better off this way, seeing how she’s been popping those cans, I think she might be a better shot than you.”

  Quey gave him a look and he laughed. Not long after, Quey chuckled.

  Reggie, Quey, Rachel, and Dusty gathered in a circle in the living room on the first floor while Rain, Arnie, and Leone remained in the bedroom at the end of the hall on the second floor. Outside gunfire continued to crack the sky from time to time.

  The pair making the run had taken a brief moment to change into black and Rachel pinned her hair up tight.

  “Now look,” Quey said, “I’ve been going on the notion that on the other side of the lake there’s going to be an access bridge of sorts. It might be retractable or the sort that sinks to the bottom of the lake when it’s not in use but there’ll be a lever or a button or something.”

  “What if there’s no power?” Dusty asked and Quey knew that was likely.

  “Then you’ll have to see if you can find a boat.”

  “Just don’t start it up,” Reggie added and Dusty gave him a look that asked, ‘You think I’m a moron?’ The big man smiled at him, then looked at Rachel. “You remember how to reload? Check the chamber?”

  She nodded, her heart racing and Quey could tell there was a part of her that wanted to change her mind, but she wasn’t going to. She was still the same woman they’d met in Fen Quada, the nice girl Dusty had fallen for but there was something else inside her. It was the thing that let her fall for a guy like Dusty in the first place, and though it’d been dormant for a long while it was pushing its way to the surface quickly. She’d lived far away from things like this; even her involvement with her brother’s activities was limited to computers, but there was a part of her that liked it.

  Quey smiled as Rachel checked the rifle in her hand, clicked the safety off and said, “Ready.”

  “Alright then,” Reggie said.

  “Go out the back,” Quey said, “And keep low.”

  “Remember,” the big man told her, “You’re a good shot naturally but not experienced. Don’t shoot wild. You need to take a shot you hunker down and settle in. Breath and fire easy and true. Do that’n you’ll hit whatever it is.”

  She smiled at him and nodded.

  Reggie handed her a pistol and when he saw she was going to shake it off he insisted. “Everyone gets one… in case.”

  She swallowed hard and the part of her that was afraid tried to change her mind again. It infected her imagination with a thought of her in a small dark place surrounded by savages and broodlings with nothing but that pistol and every squeeze of the trigger was a miss. The rotting mouths of the Once Men around her just smiled and then they were on her. A tremor ran across her skin as she felt phantom hands grip her arms and slide over her skin, squeezing her breasts and probing her. That’s what they did to women when they got a hold on one, she’d heard. They didn’t kill them, they filled them with sperm until they had a baby in their belly and the microbe took hold and they were one of them.

  Rachel took the pistol and was surprised when she thought that she couldn’t miss if it was pressed against her skull.

  Dusty and Rachel vanished into the back of the house. A moment later Quey heard the subtle creek of the door and then the gentle click of it falling back into place.

  Reggie clapped him on the back and started up the stairs. A moment later Quey followed.

  It was cool outside and the air smelled of fresh water and even a hint of green from the t
rees and grass growing beyond the patch of waste. All that sitting around inside with dead air had sapped her but the instant the breeze hit her she felt alive again.

  “Stay against the wall,” Dusty whispered and she did. They inched along it and knelt when they came to the corner. He spent a long time peering out around that corner before he signaled and they hurried over to the structure where the truck was parked. They made it to the far side of that when footsteps found her ear, and then the deep barks of the Once Men’s language.

  “Ha ga. Ha ga.”

  She peered around the edge of the boat hanger they’d put the truck inside and saw a small pack of them rushing down the road, heading toward the Broodlings who’d parked their cars in a triangle and taken refuge inside the shape. The rest of the convoy was likely on its way but this area so spread out it was going to take time.

  “Come on,” Dusty said tapping her arm. She almost squeezed the trigger and put a round into the dirt, a shot that would have hit nothing but the attention of the Once Men and surely would have killed them both.

  Dusty was heading toward the lake where there was a dip before the water’s edge. He meant to stay low and follow it around to the other side. Rachel hesitated until he looked back at her from the moist dirt surrounding the water. Finally she took a long slow breath, tried to calm her heart racing so hard in her chest she could feel it, and ran after him.

  When she was at the lake’s edge she slumped down and breathed heavily. “I can’t,” she said.

  Dusty settled in beside her. Gunshots cracked in the distance. Once Men barked. Actual men, ones who would kill her if they knew she was out here, shouted to one another.

  “Just let me go back,” she said, trembling. “I’ll send Quey, he’s better at this.”

  “Hey,” he snapped at her as briskly as he could without raising his voice. When she stopped and looked at him, tears flooding her eyes, her mouth agape and gasping, he touched her cheek with his hand. “I don’t want Quey here with me.” He took her hand and if her finger had been on the trigger this time she would have fired. “Look at me.” She did. “You and me, remember. Whatever happens.”