“Fuckin’ pull!” Jean demanded, mostly of herself. Craning his head up, Mack pulled with what little might his arms possessed. Flynn was too worn to be her first choice, but Jean was beginning to think he still had more to offer than her scrawny friend.
The hatch creaked.
Before it got far, Mack dropped the handle and rubbed his arms with their opposing hands, suddenly freezing. Jean hadn’t even finished lifting it open when he hustled inside, no longer able to withstand the cold he had endured for hours with seeming ease. Relief alone gave Jean the strength to wait and allow Flynn to carry Chari through before slipping in after them and letting the hatch fall shut.
The worst was locked behind them.
*
It was not that she felt frail or weak. Chari—who prided herself so much on being learned and well read—felt stupid. Too quickly, she had learned how harsh places beyond Cordom could be—and the real journey still lay ahead.
Even after escaping the winds, all Chari could do was crouch and shiver while the others checked the supply station they had come upon. Gritting her teeth, she tried hard to stop her body from shaking. Her mind came back again and again to her last day on TseTsu, getting drunk on ceremonial wine she had filched from the cathedral. She scorned herself most for not having the foresight or sense to purchase more practical shoes.
Mack came up to her with the first mercy found on these frozen wastes: emergency blankets. He wrapped her first, then himself, and they shivered together, pressing close for warmth. As feeling began to return to her limbs and the chattering of her teeth eased, she hoped to never know such a chill again. It was beyond her to fathom how the people in the city below endured it, if still they lived. None had come with greetings or offers of hospitality, and the only food Flynn and Jean found was breaded squares wrapped in silvery material. They crumbled like soot in her mouth, and hardly tasted any better.
Even though her body was wrapped up, her exposed feet still felt like ice. But eventually she was at least feeling well enough that the cold became secondary to the need to relieve herself, and she excused herself to use the facilities. The toilet seat felt like a blade of ice against her legs, and she hurried out as soon as she was done.
After rewrapping the blanket tightly around her body, Chari moved to peer over the railing. Having never seen the world from such a dizzying height before, she feared she might slip. Yet the uncanniness of it wouldn’t allow her to look away. Despite the expansive ceiling over them, a malevolent breeze still slipped below from time to time.
“Do we stay here for the night?” she asked the others. “Or do we chance down, and locate an inn?”
Jean smirked. “An inn?”
“You find that in humor?”
“Hey, whatever you say, Dungeon Master,” Jean mocked. “You want me to take up a sword and slay a fuckin’ dragon next?”
Chari was dismayed. “But dragons are extinct on TseTsu.”
“Charsy’s not wrong.” Mack glanced up at the guarded sky. “The day’s not getting any less day-ier.”
“I’m kinda bushed,” Jean grumbled. “What’re the chances we’re gonna find a seedy motel down there? Not like we can afford the good shit.”
“We have no money,” Flynn reminded her shortly. “… We can’t afford anything.”
“Assuming they even use money,” Mack pointed out. “Hotel clerk might ask us for forty clams a head and might literally want forty clams! And a head!”
With little food left, they would need something more than speculation if they wanted to make it another day. The snow, which seeped through and dripped from above, ensured that at least they were in no danger of going thirsty.
Chari walked to the stairs and looked down, attempting to shed the blanket. The distance between their platform and the city below seemed equal to that of the earth and the stars themselves. No sooner had she loosed her covering than she found herself shivering again, but in holding it and weighing the ungainly fabric in her hand, an idea came upon her.
*
When it came time to go, Chari had everything in place. The worst part had been shedding her clothes, even for a few minutes, to bind the shredded strips of the emergency blanket to her. The fabric was not so tensile as she was used to, but what it lacked in flexibility was made up for in warmth.
“You sure those things will hold?” Jean asked, eyeing the red beads keeping Chari’s makeshift robes together.
“Without a doubt,” Chari replied. “I’ve bound both wrists and ankles to the bedpost—” Realizing she’d shared too much, she quickly said, “Disregard that.”
“Yeah, but I’m interested now!”
Chari ignored her and Jean didn’t press the issue. Though more warmly clothed, she would still need to find better footwear. Picking up her rifle, she rejoined her companions at the stairs. They had shouldered their own blankets for the hike down. Able to move more freely, Chari happened to lead the way. Her feet grew cold quickly, the chill from the metal stairs rising like needles through her useless sandals. What surrounded her, however, provided a strangeness too pronounced to care long for her own discomfort. It had been hard to imagine enough metal to armor all the men and women in Cordom, yet more than enough spiraled below in a thousand stairs.
“Hey, an elevator shaft!” Mack shouted as they descended. Chari looked where he pointed, seeing a vertical alcove with a cord of steel running down it. “Maybe we should hike back up and—?”
“There’s no electricity here,” Flynn interrupted. “I checked. The emergency lights aren’t working. I don’t think they’ve seen power up here for a while now.”
“Power?” Chari was unclear on the meaning. She had much to learn and asked eager questions while they had the time.
The builders of this great climb had likely meant the path for emergencies only. It made a measure of sense, as the ascent would be far worse than the opposite. What supplies had been left in the way stations they passed diminished sharply as they drew near the bottom. Most likely the path had been looted long ago, though no one was so desperate as to climb all the way to the top.
Although it had begun to seem like an endless day, the sky did darken as they progressed, and they felt this more readily the farther they descended, as the light receded ever more rapidly. Each step was taken carefully, but day had not gone entirely when they reached the highest point of the city, which in time they would learn to be named Bolni.
The buildings were taller than anything Chari had ever seen, large and rigid and rounded along the edges. A hint of familiarity shined through the alien landscape—the many rooftops were host to small farms that reached as near as was viable to the light of Oma’s sun. As they drew nearer still, there was no longer any doubt that the crops were dead. The matter of whether life waited for them in Bolni seemed settled. What remained on the rooftops were scattered fields of dirt and decay, though it was uncertain whether the harvest was claimed when people abandoned the city or if it fell to neglect with their deaths.
Chari had been absent for at least two sermons now. Daylight waxed longer away from TseTsu, and she could only estimate how long they had spent in Airia’s sanctuary. In reality, it had probably been longer already than she could know. She thought back to her home, likely violated and looted. A strange guilt barbed around her heart, as though she were still obligated to a very important arrangement.
Descending among buildings thirty stories high, of grayish brick and mortar, proved too distracting for any lasting guilt over leaving, no matter how derelict she had been in her duties. She had never seen a person’s home grow so high, and such manmade structures easily impressed. Chimney stacks jutted out of every side of the buildings, and all the windows were frosted over. Chari wished she could leap over and scrape it away. She was eager to peer inside and know how the people of this world lived; to learn what religious and recreational paraphernalia they adorned their homes with—to see and know a civilized people other than her own.
&nb
sp; When the last steps were in sight, no one ran; they were much too tired. In fact, Flynn and Jean both sat down just short of the bottom, needing to rest their legs.
“Just be glad we weren’t hiking up!” Mack pointed out as he hobbled after Chari.
They could see the streets of Bolni from where they were, and what greeted them was a menagerie: There were no people around, but there were plenty of vermin and the wild things that feasted upon them. There was a bone in the street that might have been human—whatever Oma’s version of human was—but it was black as coal, and little else existed to set it apart.
Breaking from the group to better survey the area, Chari found that the city had no greater protection from the cold, save the plates above. Flakes rained freely just beyond the city limits, forming small mounds where the wind and gaps above permitted. She filled her flask from one, packing the snow in as tightly as she could. While she was sealing the flask, something bounded into the far side of the mound: a rodent—its body long, almost serpentine. It had four pairs of legs and only a nub where she expected a tail. Its eyes were black and beady and it blinked at her twice before ducking its head over the snow and licking at it with a reddish tongue.
Chari knelt down, entranced by the novelty of what she saw. As the little creature lapped at the snow, neither it nor she noticed the carnivore stalking it, until it moved in and scooped the rodent into its mouth, gulping it down almost like a noodle. Chari startled and stumbled to her feet as the beast smacked its long snout, baring black fangs.
The predator had a stubby tail and was built for four limbs but hobbled on three, having lost a hind leg some time ago. Its thick fur coat ruffled as it shook off the snow. It looked up at Chari, approaching her cautiously. Intrigued, she reached out an open hand, wondering if she could befriend it. She had known a few hunters who had happened through Cordom who’d kept similar creatures (though not too similar), and she had been told once or twice that this was how it was done. She was pleased as it came close—it opened its jaws and almost appeared to be smiling. Chari had already forgotten what an efficient killer it was.
Blood sprayed out across the snow.
The creature fell to its side, its body twitching as the life bled from it. Its throat had been ripped open. The blood had splattered across Chari’s hand, and she turned white at the sudden brutality of what had transpired. Flynn stood over the creature, his cloak shed and his body still stiff and red from the long trek across the arctic landscape above. He was breathing heavily.
“I forgot, for a moment,” he told her haltingly, between breaths, “that you had no bullets.”
“Of … of course.” She nodded. “I was just baiting it and I … I forgot.” The tremble in her voice fooled neither of them. She knew in that moment there was a real chance she could have found a new friend in this snowy wasteland. There was a better chance she would have lost a hand, and it would have been far beyond her ability to set such an injury right.
*
The streets all around seemed to confirm it: There were no people on Oma. More certain, at least, was that there were none in Bolni, though their lot had improved, nonetheless, since arriving. At least here, beneath the surface and away from the lashing winds and the pelting snow, they could better persist, albeit lacking for comfort. It was still freezing, but more pressing was the matter of reconciling with their environment, and they needed someplace to recuperate for that. Though other things roamed the city streets, the four were largely left alone. The dead beast over Flynn’s shoulder may have helped, and while its kind would sometimes snarl as the four passed, they were a scattered pack, none daring to attack four so close together.
Contrary to the world above—which felt truly like a net when glanced at from below—there was life to be found here. All had been hardened by the elements: Moss and mold sprouted from the cracks and vines climbed the forgotten buildings. The only other plants around were lithe and small, quick to adapt. Nothing so large as a tree dared live here, nor were there any planters or other apparent place for them. It was possible that Oma had never known of one.
Small creatures fed on whatever grew along the buildings, and the only growths that flowered were those that sprouted higher than their teeth could reach. Predators hunted alone in order to avoid fighting over prey, feasting on the myriad vermin.
Voracious birds roosted in chimneys plugged with dead vines, and at least one was foolish enough to swoop in on the four before being knocked out of the sky promptly by a swing of Jean’s mace. The thing flattened against a wall and slid down, leaving a red smear. After smashing its head properly, Jean hoisted it up by the legs and declared, “Chicken’s on the menu!”
In what little time was spent investigating the city, they confirmed it empty. Entrances had been left unlocked, if not ajar, and though the buildings were insulated, the cold had long since crept in. From the volume of personal effects abandoned within, there was little doubt that anyone who’d left had taken only what they could carry.
Chari found an abandoned book, and flipped through it. “I think I saw writing like this in Airia’s sanctuary.”
“Sooo … can ya read it?” Mack asked.
“Not a word.” She gave pause at this, then asked, “Back on TseTsu then; I take it you could no better understand my people’s writing?”
“Not a word,” Flynn echoed. Amused, he asked, “Makes one wonder then, how we can understand one another.”
Troubled by that same conclusion, Chari closed the book she’d been skimming.
The doors, both exterior and interior, were of unusual construct—relying on centralized handles, which had to be pulled against and twisted to open. So rooted were the mechanisms that not all the apartments could be easily breached, and they had to settle for scavenging those that had been left ajar. Flynn found a new shirt, long-sleeved and of thicker material than the cheap cotton one Thunau had shredded. Mack, meanwhile, swapped his shorts for pants and his undershirt for longer sleeves as well, but retained his tattered aloha shirt, arguing, “Obviously no one here has ever seen the Hawaiian Islands.”
You likely haven’t either, Flynn thought.
Belligerently, Jean kept the clothes she’d been wearing since Earth, though at least stripped them off long enough to see them washed and dried, borrowing something in the interim. Chari found a spool of durable fabric and began shearing strips of it for warmer days when they escaped this deadly icescape. Privately, Flynn was relieved that Oma’s people were not so physically different from the rest of them. If they had six arms or no torsos or something else as bizarre, finding viable accoutrements would have been difficult.
Once they’d settled into one of the abandoned structures, there was still the matter of fire. Without any trees, a considerable amount of Omati architecture relied on stone and processed weeds, shredded and pressed. Most of the furniture was unburnable, and the only certain material they had were the books.
“You’re certain we have to?” Chari asked while Flynn and Mack built a pile in the fireplace. “It just … it seems a bit of a shame. We won’t even know what stories these contain.”
An apologetic shrug was all Flynn could muster in reply.
The fire picked up quick enough, struck by TseTsuan flint and steel. Owing to the materials, it was a greener flame, but it burned just as brightly and they finally found real warmth for the first time since arriving.
*
Though they were exhausted, Flynn beckoned Chari to come with, realizing that as day waned slowly on Oma, night too might last long and fierce. Together, they gathered blankets and more books to burn from the surrounding homes. In examining the cold stone walls, Flynn found hollow vents running beneath the lowest levels, below even the basements. In the absence of furnaces or other heating units, Flynn suspected some heat source more massive must have once existed beneath Bolni. Likely it still did, though no longer active.
While investigating, Flynn found a pair of boots for Chari, just her size. They we
re lined with fur, and she traded them readily for her sandals, which she abandoned dismissively in a stairwell—unlike her priestess garb, she had no desire to retain something so clearly ill equipped for travel.
Oma’s people used something akin to metal chopsticks to eat their food, and Flynn and Chari had soon looted their kitchen drawers. A few were saved for the night’s meal, as Mack had already taken to finding what spices he could plunder that might complement the flavor of, as he called it, “unidentified-wolf-and-bird-thingies.” The rest were spared for Chari’s rifle.
Empty brew bottles, glasses, vases, and whatever else they could find were gathered in boxes and crates and carried down to ground level. At first, Flynn wanted to have Jean and Chari trade places for this chore, but his student insisted she learn through bitter work. Straining and sweating, Chari said nothing of her discomfort.
They set targets across the street. Three-wheeled cars were moved out of the way, rolled aside once Flynn found their brake lines. The targets were placed far enough apart that Chari could not hit another by mistake, and slowly she learned to shoot. She would graduate, in time, to kneeling, and then to standing, but she had to learn to aim first, and had not even a cultural introduction.
Only one creature was stupid enough to happen into their space, thinking the two as easy meat. Flynn called her attention to the encroaching carnivore and—though startled—she aimed and shot the thing dead. Nothing lacked the sense to bother them again.
Exhaustion had already taken its toll, and the snow-soup Mack brewed did little to alleviate it. In time, three retired, while Jean volunteered to stay awake and stoke the flames of their living room fire. Despite a lengthy rest, it was still dark when Flynn awoke, trading places with an exhausted Jean who admitted dozing briefly at her post more than once.
Sitting alone in the deep dark and prodding the glowing embers with a poker, he planned to explore the city the next day. Flynn needed to probe around and get a sense of Bolni’s breadth, for he hadn’t yet sensed a way out.
Outcasts of the Worlds Page 23
