by Andrew Post
“Where did you ever find that thing?”
“My uncle the master tinkerer made it.” His eyes were set on Clyde, his smile of pride there one second and then rapidly fading the next, his heart stopping.
Clyde spun to look about the shop.
Flam grabbed him by his jacket sleeve and yanked them both to the floor.
“What? What is it?”
“Quiet.” Flam’s ears swiveled this way and that inside the coil of his horns. “I think the Patrol just discovered we broke their lift.”
Clyde did as he was told and listened as well. His ears weren’t as sharp as Flam’s, evidently, but over the heartbeats thrumming in his own narrow chest, he could hear it: an engine. A terrible rumbling. The clank and metallic shimmy of mechanized motion. Similar to Flam’s auto but a throatier, more aggressive sound. He could barely keep his voice on an even keel. “Is it them?”
“Couldn’t be anyone else.” Flam regarded the back door of the haberdashery. He nudged the gauzy curtains aside, the view beyond the pane a long alleyway cluttered with waste bins and swollen trash bags.
“What are we going to do?” Clyde turned toward the front windows. Beyond the blinds, shadows moved, giving him a fleeting yet still terrible reminder of the fate of Mr. Wilkshire. The idling engine of the machine purred; doors creaked open and slammed shut. Metallic footfalls on cement. A group of them, Clyde perceived. In a hurry. But thankfully they were moving away, not closer.
Flam slapped a hand over his own mouth and went saucer eyed. Not at one of the windows but at something else.
Clyde saw the same thing and gaped.
On one of the shelves, a glass mermaid figurine teetered. Surely it had been put on the shelf carefully by the shop’s proprietor, but during the earthquake Flam had unleashed indoors it must have been knocked askew to the point it was toeing—or finning—the edge. The translucent mermaid, smirking a dead-eyed sneer of pure mischief, seemed to playfully scrutinize them. Shall I fall? Would that make a loud noise and alert the men pursuing you? Oh my, that’d cause quite a lot of trouble, now, wouldn’t it?
“Don’t you dare do it, Fish Lady,” Flam hissed. He couldn’t move quickly without the figurine teetering even more. He could tiptoe to it and push it back from the edge.
Apparently, however, the dastardly thing deduced that now would be the right time to make its plunge to the floor, splintering into pieces. Loudly.
The shadows outside the window returned. They gathered by the windows closest to the front door, flanking it on either side. In silhouette, one figure raised a hand, as if to perform shadow puppets, all five fingers fanned.
Then only four fingers.
Three.
“They’re coming inside,” Flam hissed, taking a wad of Clyde’s shirt and pulling him toward the back door.
Two.
One.
Flam kicked a hoof backwards, breaking the back door.
The front door opened at the same moment, the squadron of guardsmen filing in. They were ghastly, all made inhuman by their head-to-toe armor, their faces masked behind dark glass. All four raised automatic rifles to their shoulders and fired in unison.
Clyde heard the bullets whiz past his head as he was yanked into the alleyway, the glass of the open back door shattering some more. Flam pitched Clyde aside and slammed what remained of the door closed. Into the broken panel, Flam jammed the barrel of his blunderbuss and fired blindly into the shop—a deafening boom.
There was immediate return fire, the rifles screaming in a shrill whine, the bullets spraying apart the remnants of the door. Flam dodged to the safety of the shop’s outer wall, dropped the blunderbuss open, and patiently slid in a new brass-jacketed round.
Clyde watched in horror, picking himself up from the trash-strewn floor of the alley.
“Cast down your arms, bandit,” one of the guardsmen shouted. “Thievery is not tolerated in Geyser. What happens to you, even you’d know, is justice.”
“Drop headfirst into the plummets, drone.” Flam snapped the blunderbuss closed again. Without another word, he fired through the door frame.
Clyde couldn’t cup his ears fast enough to block the brunt of the gun’s riotous discharge. A clink, nearly inaudible to his injured eardrums, was still loud enough for him to detect.
At the mouth of the alleyway, a small cylinder rolled into view.
Clyde got to his feet, his gaze fixated on it, and tugged Flam’s leather shoulder pad. The object matched his memory of the one that had fallen in the yard, when he and his master were having tea. Clyde’s throat constricted, and his voice came out as a squeak. “Flam . . .”
“Lower your weapon now,” the guard screamed from inside.
The cylinder spun in place, gaining momentum. Its metal hull shattered, and the space surrounding the grenade became a hanging ball of strange, greenish-gray light, the same as the other had produced. It mesmerized Clyde, though his stomach twisted and his mind lulled heavily in unfiltered gloom.
Flam had heard the noise and raised a hand toward the floating cloud of light to block his view.
He took Clyde by the arm and pulled him along the alleyway, until Clyde could no longer see the torpor-inducing orb. Out of its glare, Clyde felt better at once.
“Come on, Pasty. Up and at ’em.” Flam shoved Clyde ahead so he could reload.
“What was that?” Clyde managed, rubbing his forehead.
Flam gave him another push with his paw. “Just get going.”
Clyde charged ahead, his legs unsure beneath his slight frame. He got to the corner and rounded it to the street beyond, having to stop to let his mind settle. He felt as if at any moment he’d collapse.
Flam jogged to catch up, turning just as the guardsmen exited the shattered haberdashery doorway and brought their rifle stocks to their shoulders again.
Reaching the end of the alley, Flam stopped. He made no move to dodge their attack but smiled as he raised his weapon and cocked the hammer.
The guardsmen leaped to avoid the shot.
Flam fired, and the countless metal beads from the scattershot round ricocheted through the alleyway toward them—pinging off the brick, the cement floor, the trash containers.
When the guardsmen were sure the Mouflon wasn’t going to fire on them again, they got to their feet and looked around. The end of the alley was empty. They gave chase, but the two bandits were too far ahead. They turned and cut back through the shop to pile into their armored auto.
Flam led the way. More than once he had to catch his new companion so he wouldn’t tumble into the gutter. Clyde’s hasty steps were dizzied and off-kilter.
Flam gripped Clyde’s collar with one hand and the stock of his blunderbuss with the other. Every few steps, the Mouflon spun in place to check the road behind them. They were now on Third Circle Street, the third ring out from the town square. Many dead autos polluted the street, which was why Flam chose this particular road: the Patrol, in their massive vehicles, would be slowed by the wreckage.
Flam heard their engine choking and struggling, followed by a clash as they rammed their way in. But the farther Flam and Clyde went, the dimmer the sound became. Hopefully they’d soon realize they were blocked with no quick way around.
“What was that thing? My goodness . . . that light.” Clyde groaned, gripping his belly. Sweat beaded his chalky forehead and dripped from his brow. “It’s just like the one that—” He stopped, the memory of Mr. Wilkshire’s demise much too painful to talk about.
“Gray light,” Flam answered gravely.
“But what is it?”
“A poison for the mind, taken in through the eyes.” He gave Clyde a tug, since it seemed he was having difficulty listening and walking at the same time. “Makes you wish you were dead, that stuff. Got hit with it once myself. Didn’t feel right for a week.”
When Clyde seemed to be coming around, Flam released him. The pale man took a few more crooked steps, braced himself on a bike rack, and then paced al
ong the sidewalk regularly, if a little slowly.
Clyde looked up, the suns glaring in his eyes. All around were signs for shops advertising bread, pies, and the like. “Where are we going? Is this the way to the hospital you mentioned?”
“It’s up ahead. We’re in the market ward now. The medical district is on the west side of the city. We’ll pass through here and be back on track in a minute or two.” He broke his stare at the empty street behind them to look at Clyde. The bloke looked positively dour. “At least we have some more suns! All cannot be lost as long as we have them, eh?”
“I suppose,” Clyde managed.
Clyde still hadn’t seen the end of Geyser. They passed some larger shops, some of which stretched on for blocks. Every once in a while, when an alleyway or a break in trees allowed, he glimpsed the double horizon line: one where Geyser suddenly dropped off and the second where the planet itself looped around and down. It seemed there was no way to venture to the actual end of Geyser. The city was built close to the middle, and occasionally they went over a bridge that crossed a river flowing to the surrounding body of water that encircled the city. But even then, it was hard to see the horizons. The city was packed, every inch occupied, it seemed. Even the sidewalks were cluttered with newspaper machines, signs, and bales of trash.
“Where is he now?” Clyde asked.
“Who’s that?” Flam was walking backwards again.
“Your uncle, the engineer. Maybe he can help us.”
“That’d be a tall order. My uncle’s with Meech now.”
“Oh,” Clyde said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s fine; it was a while ago. He was sick. Went to work despite it. Had an accident. Died.” He turned around to walk on but stopped in his tracks.
Clyde was about to apologize again for having brought it up but froze as well. He followed Flam’s gaze. In the distance ahead, where Third Circle Street began to turn west, a parked auto—this one with six wheels, standing head and shoulders above even Flam—billowed exhaust. The engine’s rumble could be heard even from three blocks away. It wasn’t clean and new like the Patrol vehicle. This one was old, held together with welded patches of mismatched metal.
Flam urged Clyde out of sight. They ducked behind a row of newspaper dispensers. Flam kept his tree trunk of an arm pinned across Clyde to keep him hidden while he peeked his horned head around the machines. Flam’s other hand slid to his gun, a practiced motion if Clyde had ever seen one.
“What is it?”
“Hard to say. It’s not the Patrol; I know that much.”
“How do you know?”
“They don’t drive autos like that.”
“Then who are they?”
“I don’t even know if it’s a they. I haven’t seen anyone yet. Just an auto, idling there in the street. Must not give much of a damn about gas, just letting it sit there and run like that.”
“Perhaps they’re citizens coming out of hiding?”
Flam peered around the edge, watching and listening. Flam’s pointed ears twitched and swiveled in the space allotted by the curl of his horns, trying to pick up any sort of sound. When Clyde quietly exhaled due to the stink of the garbage canisters, the ear closest to him swung his way, then back toward the street.
“They’re probably bandits laying a trap for the Patrol. That’s what it looks like to me, at any rate. Leave an auto in the middle of the road, have the Patrol come up on it, explode it somehow, grab the guns and ammunition or supplies from the bodies. Worth sacrificing an auto for a few dozen bullets if you’re making that kind of livelihood.”
“Should we find a way around them?”
The suns were directly above, chasing each other across the sky.
“Afraid not. Morning’s nearly over. Since we pissed in the beehive, they’ll be coming this way once they find a way through. We should hunker down, hide out until they pass, let the Patrol clear the road, and we’ll keep moving along.”
“Where? Where should we hide?”
Flam noticed the grocery store behind them. The door was blocked with merchant carts, but it could easily be cleared with Clyde’s help. “Here’s better than anywhere, especially since we haven’t had breakfast yet.”
Chapter 9
Loyalty Purchased with Cheese
They shoved aside the abandoned merchant carts. Flam paused when he noticed one of them had been Ricky’s and his friend Aksel’s, but then he pushed Clyde in ahead and pulled the door closed behind them.
It smelled bad inside, stale. Although the produce had all rotted away some time ago, the whiff of decomposition remained. Above the mostly empty aisles, the lights flashed erratically. The front windows had been boarded up to dissuade looters, but some morning sunshine poured in, cutting through the thick, dead air in orange blades of light.
Clyde and Flam made their way to the back shelves, where the canned goods waited. Flam was looking forward to something made from bread or cracker, since he preferred a good carbohydrate boost first thing, but a vast majority of anything boxed—cereal, crisps, cookies, or otherwise—had been pilfered by rodents, most of the boxes themselves now reduced to flakes of cardboard carpeting the shop’s checkerboard floors.
Flam removed an opener from his collection of items hanging from his belt and went to work on a can of ardamires, then fished the tiny green florets out of the syrupy, salty broth. He seemed to enjoy them, taking them out one at a time and popping them in his mouth, savoring each one.
Flam noticed Clyde watching him. “Why don’t you go look for a suitable weapon? That is, unless you want to tarnish that dagger of Mr. Wilkshire’s with blood, if it comes to it.”
Clyde decided to look, even though the idea of hurting someone—God forbid, sticking someone with any dagger at all—made his heart hurt.
He went down a few aisles and found the employee entrance to offices and a break room. Through the door and straight across the room, completely unavoidable, was a large cat’s face illustrated on the wall with what appeared to be black spray paint applied with a stencil. Circular, with a top hat and tiny triangular ears, one eye winking and the tongue sticking out. It looked out of place here. Stenciled crookedly beneath it were the words The Odium.
He paused, staring at the mural, the first bit of hard evidence that the Odium really existed, that it was a true identity floating about in the world like a blood clot in a vein, biding its time to jam in somewhere. It scared him, that cat face, those words.
He sniffed the air in the break room. Through its reek of spoiled food and burnt coffee was something else. Sweat? Blood? It smelled awful, as he assumed the Odium creeps themselves did.
It felt better to look away from the painting. He continued, his hand having found the dagger handle at his side.
He opened a door with a placard labeled Manager. Within, he found a desk, a monthly planner, and a phone. He picked up the receiver, miming what he had seen Mr. Wilkshire do. He held the phone to his ear and heard a low droning. The screen on the phone’s base illuminated momentarily, displaying a list of the most recent calls made.
The power went out, and Clyde reluctantly set the receiver on the cradle.
As Flam had suggested, he searched the desk drawers for a weapon of sorts.
Flam ate three cans’ worth of ardamires. His blunderbuss ever ready, he traversed the back of the store, walking each aisle, looking for anything else worth taking. Food was tricky. If it wasn’t in a can, it could easily spoil during travel or get crushed in his satchel. He took a few cans of items he knew to be tasty and stowed them away.
He spotted a sign, written in human text, signaling the aisle where the cheese was kept. It made him recall his mother, who made a delightful meat pie with a fragrant cheese that smelled terrible but tasted great. He turned the corner and saw a flash of white from the middle of the aisle move underneath a rack. He thought nothing of it, since Geyser was like any city and had its fair share of insects, birds, and other vermin.
&
nbsp; He remembered working with his uncle in the sewer and the bugs that lived down there. Massive things, big enough for a human to ride on if the insect would allow a saddle. Pincers and scales, bulging eyes with a million lenses, that screech they made when alarmed. The sound still haunted the Mouflon’s nightmares on occasion. Blatta didn’t speak, didn’t bargain, only killed.
Flam shook the myths aside and sorted through the cheeses, some of which had softened and gone to waste in the inconsistent refrigeration system. He took up some he knew would never actually spoil, pungently fragrant and good. He pushed one block after another into his satchel.
There came a frantic scratching of nails on tile.
Flam whipped around, the blunderbuss at his shoulder. He aimed up the aisle, then down the other way.
No one.
Slowly, he lowered the gun and continued perusing the cheeses, one ear aimed back.
In the next aisle over, the tiny white frisk mouse found its friend. The two settled on a box of crackers, nibbled a corner, and worked the cardboard away until they could get at the prize within. When another mouse came up, the two paused to greet the newcomer. They all nodded to one another, then worked together. Another came. The three paused, nodded in salutation, and the four worked the cardboard with their tiny yellow teeth. The frisk mice weren’t entirely rodents, but they were close enough to be categorized that way. They were actually of the wolfish order, tiny rabbits with fleshy tails like a rat. The signal was sent among them, wordless, that something of value had been discovered, and more of the frisk mice came in a flood, the floor temporarily carpeted in a mass of white wherever the pack moved, tiny fingernails scratching on tile . . .
Clyde went into the next office and found another phone in the same useless condition. A few framed photographs sprinkled the assistant manager’s desk: smiling children and a beautiful blonde wife. Clyde set a picture down, hoping the family had made it out of Geyser all right. He went to a machine attached to the wall where a red light blinked when the power came on. He timed it, just as Flam had done with the elevator call button, and struck the button when the surge passed. The machine noisily ground a sheet of paper out the underside, printing in jerking pushes when the electricity allowed until the entire sheet was spat out. Clyde turned the page around in his hands and read.
