by West, Kyle
I checked my watch. It was 16:42. There were no ports in the cabins, and the lights had been shut off forty-two minutes ago. They would be turned on again in twelve hours.
I thought about the dream I’d had. I needed to share it with Ashton and Anna, but unfortunately, I had no way of doing that. Even when we were escorted to the lavatory, we were led out at different times, so there could be no sharing of information.
It all depended on whether or not they knew about Orion. Julian had a hunch, but what would happen if they contacted Skyhome, only to learn that there were no signals from a spaceship? Skyhome, I realized, was completely stranded without spaceships. Only Augustus had access to it, and surely he knew about it. The space city was so large that he couldn’t fail to notice that impossibly bright star, roving across the night sky. The question was, when would he visit it? And what would he do about it? If Makara and the others contacted Skyhome, would Augustus eventually figure out they were still alive?
I was roused from my thoughts when I heard a light tapping emanating from the bulwark, just to the left of my bunk. The tapping was extremely light, yet intentional. Loud enough for me to hear, soft enough that it wouldn’t catch the Praetorians’ attention.
I didn’t know who was in the cabin next to mine. I reached for the metal bulwark. It felt cold against my fingers. I gave a few light taps, so tiny that I could barely hear them.
The tapping from the other side stopped...
...and began a couple feet to the left of where I’d heard it last.
Someone – either Ashton or Anna – was definitely trying to get my attention. I rose from my bunk, following the direction of the sound. I knelt by the head of my bunk, placing my ear against the wall.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I responded with my own three taps. Again, the tapping ceased, beginning again from the corner of the compartment, as far as possible from the door. There was little risk of getting caught; dinner wouldn’t be served until 18:00, so we had a little over an hour.
Two more taps came from the corner. I waited for more.
After a long pause, a few more taps came: three, all from different places in the wall. Someone was directly on the other side.
“Hello?” I said, softly.
Of course, there was no response. There was no way the other person could hear me, and I didn’t want to speak any louder.
The three taps came again, from the same locations – one directly in front of my face, followed by two more at the level of my waist.
“Aston? Anna?”
There was no way either of them could hear me. Not unless I spoke louder. Whoever this was, they were trying to communicate something without speaking. I focused on the taps, realizing the key was there.
The same three taps resounded, at the same locations. There was a pattern here if I could just figure it out...
They were making a triangle, for some reason. What did that mean?
I realized then they weren’t making a triangle. They were making the letter “A.”
Ashton, or Anna. That didn’t really help me.
I made my own “A,” at the same three spots I had heard them come from. I quickly followed this with an “L,” which consisted of a tap in front of my face, one near my chest, and one to the right of that.
There was a short pause before I heard a single tap, a series of taps in an S shape, followed by another tap, lower and on the opposite side of the first one. This person had made an “S”.
“Ashton,” I said.
Of course, the brilliant scientist would be the one to devise this method of communication. In case the point wasn’t clear, he began spelling out the rest of his name with a capital H-T-O-N. I spelled mine start to finish as well, so that he would know for sure who I was.
Over the next minute or two, he spelled out a message to me:
Anna on other side.
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about the other side of the ship, or on the compartment opposite of Ashton. I assumed the latter. I didn’t want to waste time asking for confirmation. So, I just wrote: O.K.
This was a surprisingly efficient way of communicating, so much so that it was a wonder we hadn’t thought of it earlier. Morse code would have been easier, but none of us knew that. Maybe Ashton had been trying to do this for a while, but the taps had just been too soft for me to notice.
I paused, thinking of what I might ask next.
Where are we going?
The response was quick.
L.A.
I wanted to ask how Ashton knew, but then again, I didn’t want to waste any time. I decided to take his word for it. I wanted to ask Ashton why we had been in the air for three days, but instead I tried to think of a message that wasn’t too long. Another message came through the wall.
Anna okay.
I had assumed that already – it probably would have been the first thing Ashton would have told me if she wasn’t.
Does she know?
I hoped Ashton knew what I meant: whether Anna knew about our destination.
Yes.
Remembering my dream, I knew I needed to communicate it to Ashton.
Had dream. Others are okay.
I paused, giving Ashton the chance to respond.
What else?
Julian knows about ship.
Ashton responded quickly.
Good.
That wasn’t the complete truth; Julian had a hunch about the ship, but it was too late to take the message back without confusion. They would contact Skyhome, but Skyhome probably wouldn’t be able to track Orion and confirm Julian’s suspicion – unless Augustus revealed himself from there. I couldn’t explain all that to Ashton through the wall, though.
I was trying to think of something else to ask when the door slammed open. I turned toward the light, never looking more suspicious in my life. Maxillo himself stood in the doorway, Chief Praetorian of Nova Roma. He glowered as his eyes narrowed.
“What are you doing? You are talking?”
“No,” I said, walking to the center of the cabin and facing him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maxillo said. “We will land soon. You can explain yourself to the Emperor then.”
Outside in the corridor, more doors opened. We were all being taken out to prepare for our landing. For the first time in three days, I would see my friends.
Maxillo nodded his head toward the corridor, indicating that I should exit the cabin. Beyond Maxillo, Ashton walked by, a Praetorian right behind him. The scientist looked in at me, his white hair and beard a wild mess. He gave me a sly wink. As he walked past the door, I went toward the doorway. By the time I reached it, Anna walked by, escorted by her own Praetorian. She cast me a quick glance before she was hidden by the bulwark.
I stepped into the hallway. Maxillo gave me a light push, forcing me toward the wardroom.
We were all made to sit at the table. Maxillo left us with three stone-faced Praetorians and headed for the bridge.
“Stay quiet,” he said. “We will be in the city soon.”
As instructed, none of us spoke. A moment later, the ship changed trajectory, angling downward. I held on to the edge of the table to steady myself.
A few minutes later, we sunk vertically toward the ground. The ship gave a sudden lift before it settled onto the surface outside.
At long last, we had arrived in Los Angeles.
***
The blast door opened, revealing the sky burning fiery red from the setting sun. Buildings had crumbled onto one another, though most still stood. The decayed skyline, distant, was lost in reddish haze – not from the pollution of the Old World, but from the dust of the new.
We stood on the roof of a large, long building. Orion had perched on a helipad, its three struts barely fitting on the landing site. A cold, dry wind blew. Though cold, the breeze was warmer than I was used to. I had read something about oceans keeping coastal regions warmer than inland areas. Maybe that was why it was warmer.
I didn’t k
now why I was thinking such things when the situation was so dire. I stared at the decayed cityscape, the twisting towers, the crisscrossing streets clogged with the rusted shells of cars and trucks, low-lying buildings stained with thirty years of dust and debris.
A hand pushed me down the boarding ramp toward the tarmac. Ashton and Anna were right behind. No one spoke.
The Praetorians made us stand at the bottom of the ramp, facing out. As more feet clomped down, I looked at the fallen city. The crimson sky cast bloodlike light on the buildings. To the east, mountains marched north to south, making a natural wall. Far to the north, even more mountains crisscrossed east to west. I even saw buildings in the eastern, lifeless hills, despite how far they were. Trees stood, but most were long dead. Maybe all. In the thirty years since Ragnarok, Los Angeles had been reclaimed by the desert.
A line of rubble rose within the inner city, cutting that section off from its outskirts. This was the wall that Raine built; Makara had told me about it. There were hundreds of buildings – maybe thousands. It was hard to imagine millions of people going in and out of them, hard to imagine that chaotic stream, each person making his or her own choices, millions of them every second. If it were that chaotic, surely everyone would have gotten stuck down there. Maybe they did. I guessed that was why they made traffic lights, highways, lanes on the road. Maybe they had ways to control the chaos, but even all the control in the world couldn’t stop certain things.
Like death from the sky.
There were thousands of buildings, for sure. Some were tall, like the ones in Vegas, but there were more of them here. Blocks of these towers stood to the north, in the center of the city. I thought Vegas had been big, but it didn’t compare to this fallen monstrosity. The buildings, small and large, stretched as far as the eye could see – north, south, and east as far as the mountains. It had been its own form of Blight, maybe. How much larger would Los Angeles be today if Ragnarok hadn’t fallen? Would our cities have consumed the world?
Los Angeles had been one of the biggest, busiest, and richest cities in the world. And, funnily enough, it still was. More people lived here than any other place in the Wasteland. I imagined those early days after Ragnarok, the panicked survivors. There must have been millions, then. Gangs would have formed shortly after, warring for supplies.
I was glad not to have lived here during the Chaos Years. I thought of Char and Marcus. They had lived during those times, but I hadn’t asked about them.
The dim, setting sun was the source of all life. When its light had been obscured by the dust kicked up by Ragnarok, the world entered a darkness from which it hadn’t emerged. Los Angeles’s population had tumbled from the millions to mere thousands. Many had probably fled into the eastern hills, hoping to find salvation there. But they only found a world of death. Only the Bunkers had been safe, for a time, but even they couldn’t escape.
Los Angeles was the hub of the Wasteland. It was where most of the people lived, where fates were determined for the rest of us. Whoever controlled Los Angeles controlled the Wasteland, because whoever controlled Los Angeles ruled the majority of the Wasteland’s people. Most of those people were slaves, and only a few were the gang members who ruled them. The Lost Angels were no more, and it seemed doubtful that they would last much longer.
This massive city would crumble mostly to dust in the coming decades. The towers would fall from the passage of time and the shaking of the earth. When they finally did fall, it was possible no human eye would see them collapse.
Assuming we survived this, we had to rebuild sometime. We couldn’t just leech off the remains of a world fading further and further into time. If we did, we’d be reduced to savages and cavemen centuries from now. Perhaps we already were at that point. One day we would forget what those towers were, thinking they were constructed by gods...
“It’s time to go.”
Maxillo had spoken behind me. Below, on a long, curving drive that disappeared beneath the building, several all-terrain vehicles drove up.
LAX, I realized. We had landed on top of the airport terminal.
The vehicles were all black and had skulls painted on their doors, crisscrossed by scythes. Their engines whined high like a plague of insects. Lean, long-haired men toting rifles poked out from windows.
The Reapers were here.
Next to me, Ashton’s breath caught. But he wasn’t looking ahead at the Reapers. He was looking behind the terminal.
I turned, gazing past the Praetorians, past Augustus, toward the runways of LAX – where I saw thousands upon thousands of Augustus’s legionaries camped. Hundreds of canvas tents had been pitched in perfect lines, and countless fires glowed red in the evening. A tall fence surrounded the army in a perfect square. It was impossible to guess how many were in there.
Augustus stepped forward, face grim. He nodded at Maxillo.
“This way.”
Maxillo headed left, where a stairwell surfaced on the roof. The Reapers’ vehicles pulled to a stop in front of the terminal, idling. Was Carin Black among them?
I guessed I would find out in a few minutes.
Chapter 3
We descended the stairwell. Maxillo led the way with a flashlight, illuminating dusty corners and grimy walls. Violent paintings coated the faded, sickly yellow of walls: fires, guns, blood, stick figures, and falling buildings. And scythes. It was art for a new age.
We rounded the stairs three times before exiting into the airport lobby. I had never been inside anything so large besides Bunker One. The ceiling stretched high above, lost to darkness. The architecture was curved and jarring; it was hard to believe what we had once been capable of building. Soot stained the once glossy white floor, the sites of previous fires. Red light filtered thinly through the entrance, doing little to illuminate the cavernous space.
I briefly thought of breaking free and running. It might be easy to lose myself in the dark labyrinth of terminals and tunnels. Ashton and Anna could run with me.
That could never happen, though. We were far outnumbered, and would be shot long before we could escape. We had to face whatever was coming.
We reached the sliding glass doors that had been busted open long ago. Broken glass littered the floor, crunching under our boots. Jagged edges still clung to the doorframes, sharp as the day of their breaking.
We stepped past the doors and into the faint crimson light, where the train of six black Recons idled on the drive. Four Reapers stood in front of the lead vehicle, facing us. Two held rifles in both hands, while another had his strapped to his back.
A squat man, shaved bald, stepped forward from the group. His face was all hard lines, his body chiseled angles. A long, black beard grew from his chin and stopped at his chest.
His beady eyes glanced over the three of us before settling on Augustus. He pointed at us with his chin.
“This is them?”
Maxillo stepped forward. “You dare address the Emperor directly, barbarian?”
Several other Praetorians flanked Maxillo, hands on their holsters. Behind him, his lackeys stiffened.
The Reaper smiled. “Warlord Black told me to bring the prisoners to the Citadel. He didn’t tell me who I was supposed to deal with.”
“He will discuss this with Black,” Maxillo said. “Not you, worm.”
“I have my orders to bring them to the Citadel,” the man said, with his yellow smile. “The Warlord wants to question them personally.”
“We are meeting between here and my camp, on the runways,” Augustus said. “As previously agreed.”
The Reapers standing behind the stocky man glowered. The other Reapers, still in their Recons, stared at Maxillo with malice. The Praetorians and the Reapers were evenly matched in numbers. If it came to blows, I had no idea what would happen, or who would win.
One of the other Reapers addressed Maxillo. “Be careful who you insult, guard boy. Onyx is Carin Black’s own son.”
Maxillo’s face reddened while August
us held up a hand.
“Peace, Maxillo,” the Emperor said. “If Carin wishes to question the prisoners, I will allow it at the meeting – which is still set to take place outside my camp in about an hour’s time.” Augustus looked at Onyx. “You can let your father know. I see no reason for this audience to continue.”
Onyx’s face reddened – it was obvious he had expected his father’s words to carry more weight.
Before turning to go, Onyx’s dark eyes settled on Anna. My hand reached for my holster, only to find it empty.
“I know you,” Onyx said. “You are Char’s famous samurai bodyguard.”
“What of it?”
“You killed several of our assassins months back.”
“Glad to see my work hasn’t gone unnoticed,” Anna said.
“Several of those men were my friends.”
Anna laughed. “Friends? I can see how you’d think that. I see that you don’t just look like a toad; you have the intelligence of one, too.”
The toad’s face reddened, but before he could give his own retort, Augustus raised his hand.
“Enough. We leave now.”
As one, the Praetorians filed up, forming a box around us. Still, Anna and Onyx stared one another down.
All the while on the spaceship, I had imagined that Emperor Augustus and Carin Black would be good buddies. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Tensions were high between the two supposed allies.
Augustus turned to one of his Praetorians, a blond man who might have been second-in-command, after Maxillo. The Emperor said something to him in Spanish.
The man nodded before gathering a few men and leading them back into the terminal. I supposed they were going to stand guard over the spaceship. I noticed then that Jonas wasn’t with us. He must have stayed on board, in case he needed to make a quick getaway.
As the Reapers pulled away in a whirl of dust and an angry blaring of engines, Augustus nodded to Maxillo. “Lead on.”
The Praetorians marched in unison alongside the building. We moved along with them, locked in their protective box. As the last of the Reapers left the airport drive and zoomed into the city streets, the sky dimmed into dusk.
