“Nothing. I’m letting you go.”
“What? You can’t do that.”
“Sure I can. You’re free. Go.”
“Go where? I’ll starve in the woods. And are you forgetting tomorrow night’s the full moon? I’ll be dead before sunrise.”
Dillon slumped in his seat. He was right. Setting him loose was a death sentence.
“Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.” He got rolling again. “I can be a real dummy sometimes.”
“You’ve got a good heart… for a lycan, that is.”
Dillon almost laughed. For a lycan… a left-handed compliment if ever there was one.
The guard at the gate recognized the truck and waved him through. Dillon stopped before the kitchen door where a necro lounged, taking a break.
“Got a new worker for you,” Dillon said.
“Nobody told me about no worker.”
“Well, they told me to drop him off at the kitchen.”
The necro looked annoyed. “Give him here and I’ll find out what’s up.” He shook his head. “Just what we need. A human underfoot.”
As the necro pulled the bent old man inside, Dillon parked the truck and went looking for Telly – reminding himself to call him “Teddy” if he found him. He’d built a reputation for fixing things, so Dillon crossed the courtyard toward the garage. There he found a dwarf in a leather apron hammering a bar of glowing metal he’d just pulled from a forge.
“Here now, pup, who in blazes would you be?” the dwarf said as soon he spotted Dillon. “And what’re you doing here?”
The questions took Dillon aback. “I’m from Armagost Farm.”
“Yeah? Heard about that place.”
“I, um, just made a delivery and thought I’d look around. Might want to join up when I’m old enough.”
“You could do lots worse for yerself, lemme tell ya. UWO is a good cause.”
“UWO?”
“Uberall World Order. Uniting Nocturnia under one ruler.”
“Don’t we have the United Nocturnia for that?”
“The UN? Nothing more than a hot-air factory. I could harness that place to heat my forge here.”
He laughed at his own joke and Dillon forced a smile.
“Say, we had one of you Uberalls show up at the farm recently. Name was Teddy. You know him?”
“Sure. I tell you I love that lad. Can fix anything. Went off to get some lube just now. Should be back any minute.”
“Okay,” said Dillon. “I’ll keep looking around then.”
He wanted to catch Telly before he reached the garage, so he wandered about the courtyard. Sure enough. A couple of minutes later a tall, lanky figure with unruly hair stepped out of a door and headed for the garage. He seemed preoccupied, staring at the ground. He didn’t look up until he was almost on top of Dillon.
“Tel – Teddy?”
He stopped and stared at Dillon with no sign of recognition for a few seconds, then his eyes widened.
“Dillon!” he said in a low voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I just came to let you know that Emma and Ryan are okay. They–”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “I saw them on the TV.”
“What?”
“The sheeple protest. The flying camera caught them.”
“Oh, that’s not good.”
“Ya think? I mean, I was overjoyed to see them and know they were alive, but what were they doing out in public like that?”
“You sister’s all wrapped up in the sheeple. Won’t stop talking about them.”
“Emma…” He shook his head. “When she gets a bee in her bonnet, watch out.”
Dillon frowned. “What’s a bonnet?”
Telly had to keep reminding himself that although the languages here were similar due to seepage, each side of the veil had its own linguistic peculiarities.
“A kind of hat.” He glanced around. “Look, I’ve got to meet with them – both of them.”
“You’ve found a way to send them back?”
Dillon tried to look happy about that, but he wasn’t. He’d grown attached to Emma. Yeah, she could be difficult, but he liked being with her, and when he wasn’t, he spent most of his time thinking about her and missing her. If she went home to Humania, he’d never see her again.
“No, not yet. I need to… tell them something.”
“What? I’m going to be seeing them later today. If you want me to relay a message–”
Telly gave his head a violent shake. “No-no. This has to come from me. Personally.”
Something in his expression…
“Bad news?”
He ducked an answer by saying, “I can’t get away till tomorrow. Can you bring them to meet me near the woods on the north end of town – say, midafternoon?”
“I can try. Depends on if I can get use of the truck. If we’re not there, wait as long as you can.”
“Okay. Same for you. I’ll definitely be there, but I’m not in control of my time. Wait for me. I’ll show. I promise.”
“Oi! Teddy!” Dillon turned to see the dwarf gesturing from the garage door. “Need yer help!”
“Coming!” Telly called, then said, “Gotta go. See you tomorrow.”
Dillon watched him hurry off, then headed back to his truck. As he neared it he saw an Uberall truck back out near him and noticed Joe sitting in its flatbed. The necro from the kitchen was driving.
“Where’re you taking him?” Dillon asked.
“They said they can use him in the Midnight Delight factory, if you know what I mean,” he said with a wink, then drove off.
The Midnight Delight factory, Dillon thought with a sinking feeling. He knew what that meant: drained of his blood by the sangreflors, then carted off to the carvery.
Sometimes he hated his world.
He had to put Joe out of his mind as he climbed into the truck cab. He was more concerned about Emma. What was so important that Telly had to risk being seen with two runaway humans to tell her?
It couldn’t be good.
25
Standing at the dining hall window, Ergel watched Dillon drive off.
He hadn’t told Master Simon that his brat Dillon had been prefabriticating about the human slaves getting kilt in the Silent Ones’ attack on Balmore. Ergel wanted to locate them two his own self. If any credit was gonna be awardified, it would be awardified to Ergel.
And Ergel would find them. He was good at finding things.
He’d noticed that the brat had been conversating to that fixator, Teddy… the Uberall what was so happy right after the redheaded slave girl and her rotten little brother appearded on the TV. What was they conversating about? Them two slaves, maybe?
Dillon was connectified to the slaves and now he seemed connectified to the Uberall fixator, Teddy. Teddy was older. What sort of connectifications did those two have? What in common?
The human slaves, maybe?
Ergel was gonna have to keep an eye on Teddy the fixator. Yes, he was. A very close eye.
26
“I can’t believe it!” Emma said, staring at the zeppelin bike. “How did you manage this?”
“I ‘borrowed’ it without anyone knowing,” Dillon said, looking terribly proud of himself as he straddled its front seat.
“Where I come from, I ‘borrowed it without anyone knowing’ is called stealing.”
“Not when it’s your father’s, and not when you plan to return it.”
“Simon’s! Won’t he miss it?”
He shook his head. “Falzon’s back from his trip and called a meeting of everyone connected to the Uberalls. My father took the car. He’ll be away all afternoon.”
Emma continued to stare at the contraption. She’d seen it from a distance once – when Master Simon had used it to spirit Ryan off to the farm infirmary after Ergel had whipped him – but never close up. It looked like a regular two-seat, two-wheel bike, but suspended from an elongated football-shaped balloon – all black. Some gizmo with tubes running to
and from the balloon sat between his knees. A propeller jutted from the back and cabled ran from the handle bars to vertical and horizontal vanes on the balloon itself.
“Is it safe?”
“Pretty much. Unless something makes a sudden huge rip in the balloon, and how’s that going to happen?”
“What about a small rip?”
He shrugged. We just lose altitude until we land on the ground. And even then, we can still use it like a regular bike.”
“It’s not going to explode like the Hindenburg, is it?”
“What’s the Hindenburg?”
“A hydrogen-filled airship that exploded long before either of us was born.”
Dillon made a face. “Hydrogen? Who’d be crazy enough to risk that? This balloon’s filled with helium. Hop on and let’s go.”
Emma eased herself onto the seat behind him with no problem. But where to put her hands… that was a problem.
“Hang on,” he said.
Where? The only thing she could grab was Dillon.
Oh, well. She put her arms around him, clasped her hands in front of his chest, and hugged his back.
Okay… kind of nice. All right, more than kind of. She could get to like this.
But not too much. She had to remember he was a lycan.
He turned a handle on the gizmo between his knees and she heard a hiss.
“What’s that?” she said as the bike started to rise.
“Compressor. Sucks helium out of the balloon when I want to land, and pumps it back in when I want altitude.” When they were about twenty feet off the ground, he said, “Pedal.”
And pedal they did. She had to strain at first, but as the propeller behind her began to turn and they started to move, it became easier. Dillon turned the handlebars to angle the vanes on the balloon. They veered north and floated away under the midday sun.
As they climbed higher, the countryside spread out below her: fields and trees in varying shades of green, and towns and streams and farms… just like Kansas. She felt a bubble in her throat. Just like home.
Before too long a low, broad building appeared on a hilltop.
“There’s the farm,” Dillon said, pointing.
“That was fast.”
“That’s because the roads winds all over the place. We flew a straight path. The good thing about this bike is we can land in the trees at the rear of the barn. Saves us the trouble of climbing the fence.”
As they drew closer, she saw sheeple wandering the acres of land around the building.
“Did they get loose?”
“No. Those are free-range sheeple. It’s all fenced in, so they can’t wander far.”
Dillon started fiddling with the knobs on the compressor and soon the bike began to sink. He guided them between the trees and they landed with a gentle bump. Emma unwrapped her arms from around Dillon and slid off the bike.
An uneasy feeling stole over her. She looked around, trying to see what had set it off. Was it that low-pitched hum?
“Where’s that noise coming from?” she said.
Dillon looked up from tying the bike to a tree trunk. “What noise?”
“That hum. Is it some kind of machinery?”
He frowned as he cocked his head this way and that. “I don’t hear a thing.”
Emma shook her own head, but it didn’t stop.
Oh, well…she was here about the sheeple. She could figure out the sound later.
“Come on,” Dillon said, starting toward the building. “They used to leave the back door unlocked.”
“You really worked here?”
“Just one summer. Couldn’t stand it. Turned me into a no-carn.”
“Aren’t there workers inside?”
“I timed it for lunch break. They all eat down the hill, as far as possible from the barn.”
When they reached the door, he turned to her. “You sure you want to do this?”
Did she? The hum was louder and the uneasiness had grown. But she’d come this far. She wasn’t about to turn back now.
“Yes. Sure.”
“Okay. Let me warn you about the smell. It’s pretty bad.”
“Like how bad?”
“Imagine a backed-up toilet…now add week-old sweat.”
“Ewww!”
“Yeah. You get used to it after a while, but when you first walk in… try to breathe through your mouth.”
“Got it.”
The humming never stopped, but as he eased open the door, she heard another sound… like voices, but they weren’t saying anything.
“That’s the sheeple,” said, anticipating her question. “They kind of bleat when they’re penned up. It’s constant. Almost worse than the smell. Almost.”
Dillon stepped inside and Emma followed – but stopped when she the smell assaulted he nostrils. She was glad he’d warned her, but no warning could come close to the reality of the stench. Gagging, she pinched her nose, forcing herself to breathe through her mouth.
“Ewww! I can taste it!”
She stepped further into the barn and paused. The interior was huge. Off to her right, hundreds upon hundreds of sheeple of both sexes, naked, hairless, dirty, were crowded into large pens, all making that pitiful bleating sound.
To her left were pens full of female sheeple in various stages of pregnancy. Some were nursing babies.
“Oh, no! I thought they were cloned!”
“The originals were, but then they’re bred just like any other cattle.”
Directly across from her, near the rolled-up truck ramp door on the far side of the barn, stood a fully enclosed structure – a building within the building, a barn within a barn.
“What’s that?” she said, moving toward it.
Dillon followed, looking uncomfortable. “Forgot about that. Look, you’ve seen the place. Maybe we should go now.”
She stopped before the closed door. “What’s in there, Dillon?”
Now he looked even more uncomfortable. “Sheal.”
“Sheal? What’s – oh, no. You don’t mean like veal, do you?”
He nodded, looking sick.
The humming in her head was growing louder.
“Tell me, Dillon.” She really did not – not – want to know, but she had to find out. “Tell me.”
Dillon closed his eyes and spoke like a machinegun, as if he wanted to spew the words and get them out as quickly as possible.
“They take kids as toddlers and put them in little cages so they can’t stand or move around and keep them in the dark and feed them a liquid diet with almost no iron for five years, then ship them off to the carvery.”
Emma felt the building wobble around her. “Why the dark?”
He opened his eyes. “They’re quieter in the dark.”
“And why low iron?”
“So their flesh is pale. The meat isn’t real sheal if it’s red.” His expression was tortured. “Any wonder why I became a no-carn?”
The humming was even louder. It was making her feel very weird – especially since Dillon couldn’t hear it. But the other sound – the sheeple bleating – had faded out. She looked around and saw that the sheeple had stopped milling about in their pens. They had begun to crowd against the barriers, staring at her.
“What’s happening?” Emma said.
Dillon was turning in a slow circle. “I don’t know. I don’t remember it ever being quiet when I worked her. They never stop their noise – I mean, except when they’re sleeping.”
“Wh-why are they staring at me?”
“No idea. I’ve never seen anything like it. But I’m not liking it. Let’s get out of here.”
Emma didn’t have to hear that twice. The big truck bay door was the closest. Clean air and sunlight beckoned. She ran for it.
“Not that way!” Dillon cried.
But she couldn’t stop…had to get out of here, away from the hum, the stares…
“Meet me around back!” she heard him call as she burst into the light. �
�I’ll get the bike ready!”
She stopped on the ramp. Where was she? The front of the building. The bike was around the rear. To her right she saw workers of various shapes and sizes and races walking up the hill from their lunch break. Had to move.
She made a quick left around the corner, putting the barn between her and the approaching workers. As she ran along the building’s long flank, she noticed the free-range sheeple were on the move and weren’t as spread out as before. They were approaching from all directions and appeared to be converging on the barn.
No, wait…Emma knew what they were doing – they were converging on her.
And just like inside the barn, all the free-range sheeple had their eyes fixed on her.
Emma felt her heart kick in her chest and she quickened her pace. This was creepy and scary. Why were they staring at her?
They were getting closer. And the humming was really loud now.
Just around the rear corner of the barn, maybe fifty feet ahead, she’d find the copse of trees where Dillon would have the bike ready and off they’d go into the wild blue yonder where she prayed this incessant hum would stop.
But as she rounded the corner she skidded to a halt, tripping and almost falling as she came face to face with a crowd of sheeple – a large crowd, blocking her path to the trees.
Silent, staring at her with their blank eyes, they began shuffling toward her, reaching for her. Terror gripped her. They reminded her of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. She turned to run found herself facing more sheeple, boxing her in, encircling her, reaching for her.
And the hum…the hum was no longer a hum. It had risen in pitch and volume until it sounded like a prolonged scream. Emma closed her eyes and slammed her hands over her ears but the sound was in her head, growing louder and louder… paralyzing her. So loud she couldn’t think.
And then Emma was screaming as the sheeple began to touch her. Not hurting her, simply… touching. But she couldn’t stand it. She screamed again.
Suddenly she heard Dillon’s voice: “Get away from her! Get away!”
She opened her eyes and saw him pushing and shoving his way through the bunched sheeple. She pushed toward him, they locked hands and he pulled her free of the crowd. She realized she could have pushed her way through by herself, but the awful noise had paralyzed her.
Family Secrets Page 13
