by Terry Brooks
“Is it time?” one asked.
“What do we do?” asked another.
Helen reached for the closest and squeezed her arm reassuringly. “Gather them in their safety groups and put one older child or one adult with each group. Remind them they are not to speak or make any sounds at all once we leave this room.”
Those addressed broke away, spreading out across the room and summoning the children to their feet. But now a different woman came charging over, her face flushed and angry, her hands gesturing wildly. “No, no, no!” she cried out, coming right up against Helen and gripping the smaller woman by her shoulders. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t take these children out of here!”
She swung around on Angel. “This is your fault. You’ve caused nothing but trouble with your scare tactics and false prophecies! I’m sick of it! Who do you think you are? These aren’t your children! You can’t just come in here and take them away!”
She was furious, and now she was joined by several others, all of them looking as if they meant to attack her if she even moved toward the children.
Angel held her ground. “The gates are about to collapse under the weight of the attack. The enemy will be inside in minutes. When that happens, all chance of escape will be cut off. You will be sealed inside. Eventually, you will be found. You know what will happen then.”
“I know what you say will happen! Anyway, I don’t believe you! You’d do anything to get those children!”
“I would do anything to save them, yes.” Angel kept her voice even, her gaze level.
“Get out of here! Leave us alone! We’re safe right where we are! Our men will protect us from those creatures outside!”
Angel stepped right up to her and seized her by the arms. “Look in my eyes. Tell me what you see. Go on, look!”
Squirming to break free, but held fast by Angel’s strong grip, the woman did as she was told. It was impossible to say what she saw there, but Angel knew what the effect would be. It was a skill she had learned when she had become a Knight of the Word, although she was the only one she knew who could do it. She pictured the worst things she had ever been witness to; she conjured the most terrible images of the most heinous acts of the demons and the once-men. Something of that horror reflected in her eyes when she did so, and anyone looking caught a momentary glimpse of Hell.
“Oh, my God!” the woman breathed. She shrank down inside herself as if deflated; she would have fallen if Angel wasn’t holding her. Her hands covered her face and tears began running down her cheeks. “Don’t show me any more! Please, please don’t!”
She was shaking now, completely undone. The others who had supported her clustered about protectively, hands reaching for her, faces stricken. Angel gave the woman over to them and motioned them back. “Don’t interfere further in this. Either help with the children or stand aside.”
They stood aside, consoling the demoralized woman, huddling together and whispering furiously. Angel ignored them, sending Helen to those who had agreed to help in readying the children for departure. They were already standing in lines, hands joined, eyes darting this way and that as they waited for instructions. A few exchanged momentary glances with her, but no one tried to speak. She gave it a few more seconds, then moved over to reopen the section of wall that would take them to safety.
“Quietly, now,” she whispered.
They went back through the hidden door, climbed the stairs to the basement level, and went down the narrow corridor to the larger, more brightly lit one beyond. Angel, in the lead, glanced back repeatedly, making sure the children and their escorts were keeping up while at the same time listening for anything that seemed out of place. She believed they had not been discovered yet, but there was no point in taking chances.
At the mouth of the corridor, she brought the procession to a halt, letting those in the rear close up the gaps between themselves and those in the front. She took a moment to scan ahead, searching for movement. The corridor seemed empty. She stepped out into the light, beckoned to those who followed her, and moved back down toward the doors and stairs that led to the abandoned hotel and the streets beyond.
She was all the way to the last door, the one that opened onto the stairwell leading up to the hotel, when she sensed the presence of the demon. It was ahead of her, waiting at the top of the stairs. She could smell its stink and feel its heat, and her stomach reacted as it always did when she was in the presence of evil—with a sudden lurch and a queasiness that threatened to bring her to her knees. She stopped where she was, waiting for the feeling to pass, for her training to reassert itself.
Behind her, the line of children and women slowed to a ragged halt. Helen appeared at her elbow. “What is it?”
Angel didn’t answer. She stared at the door ahead, trying to think what she could do. The one thing she could not do was to tell Helen the truth: that they were trapped.
WHEN HER PARENTS die, Angel Perez becomes a true child of the streets. She has no family and no home. She has no one to look after her. She has no skills and no knowledge of how to forage for food and water or how to find shelter or how to survive for more than a day. She is eight years old.
But luck favors her. She manages to survive for five days by staying hidden and living on the little food and water her parents scavenged before the plague took them. She fights down her fear and spends her time trying to think what to do.
Then Johnny finds her.
His given name is Juan Gonzalez, and like her parents he has come over the border to make a better life. He seems old to her, even though he is only forty-five. His hair is wild and long, his face bearded and scarred, and his hands weathered and gnarled. But his voice is kind, and when he finds her hiding in the rubble of the home her parents made for her, he doesn’t try to approach her too quickly or play the sort of games that might frighten her. He simply starts talking to her, calling her little one and telling her she can’t stay where she is, that it is too dangerous, that all of LA is too dangerous for an eight-year-old girl. She must come with him, he says. He has a place not far from there and she can stay there with him. He is tired of living alone anyway, and he wants someone to talk to. She is under no obligation to stay. She can leave whenever she wants, and he will never hurt her or do anything that she doesn’t want him to.
She believes him. She can’t say why, but she does. So she goes with him and lives with him for six years. He teaches her to forage and to cook. He teaches her how to defend herself with just her hands and feet. He teaches her how to look out for the things that might threaten her—the scavengers and the mutants and the animals. He shows her places she can run to if anything ever happens to him. He even shows her how to use the short-barreled flechette that he keeps for emergencies he hopes will never arrive. He tells her that she is the daughter he will never have, the daughter he would have wanted if things had worked out differently.
Everybody knows him. Johnny is the man, the one everyone looks up to. The street people like him for the same reasons Angel does: he is respectful of and kind to them and does what he can to help them in their struggle to survive. He watches out for them in the same way he watches out for her, and their little barrio community is tight-knit and protective. Even if the compounds will not have them, with their fear of outsiders and plague, they will have one another.
But it isn’t enough to save them. The collapse of civilization has spawned all sorts of human flotsam and jetsam, and some of it eventually finds its way to their hideaway. The gang calls itself the Blade Runners and believes itself the beginning of a new order. Its members are their own law, and their allegiance is to one another and no one else. They go where they choose and take what they want. Where they come from or how they get to LA and Angel’s little community is a mystery that she later decides has more to do with perverse chance than anything else.
Johnny stands up to them when they threaten the others, bringing out the flechette, and they back down. But they hover
at the fringes of the community, angry and vengeful and determined to get what they want, even if what they want is barely worth the effort. People are crazy then, just as they are crazy now. They do insane, inexplicable things; they do them without reason or they do them for the worst of reasons. Angel knows when she sees these men that they are mad. She knows it the same way that she knows exactly how the madness will end.
One night, Johnny doesn’t come home. She knows right away that he is dead, that the Blades have found a way to catch him off guard and kill him. She knows, as well, that they will be coming next for her. She has seen how several of them look at her, and she knows what that means. She cries first because she is sad and afraid and because her life is forever changed with Johnny gone. She thinks about seeking help from some of the others. She thinks about fleeing into another part of the city.
Then she brings out the flechette, hides herself in the crumbling warehouse next to where she and Johnny made their home, and hunkers down to wait.
The wait is short. The Blades appear around midnight, slinking out of the shadows like dogs, creeping up on the now deserted home, ten strong, armed with knives and clubs. They probably think her asleep. They probably think she does not yet realize what they have done to Johnny and will catch her unawares. They are not very good at what they are attempting, making enough noise that their approach would have awakened her even if she had been sleeping. But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous or odious, and her mind is made up as to what she will do to them.
She waits until they have crowded inside, all but one who stays at the door as lookout. He leans against the frame and looks bored, glancing inside periodically as he waits for something to happen. She is upon him by then, rounding the corner of the house. The flechette fires ten rounds and cuts a twelve-foot-wide swath with each discharge. She uses the first round on the lookout, blowing him back through the doorway and into the others. She uses the next seven on the ones she catches inside, leaving them shattered and broken. She uses the last on the one who somehow manages to get out through a window, catching up with him two blocks away and taking his head off.
She is left shaking and furious and terrified all at once, and she knows in the aftermath of her retribution that nothing in her life will ever be the same.
HER THOUGHTS OF Johnny and of that night ten years ago when she destroyed the Blade Runners were there and gone in seconds. She wished she had a weapon like the flechette now, something that could open up a path with shards of metal that would rip apart even a demon. But she had only her staff and her skills to protect more than two hundred children and a handful of women, and she was afraid it wasn’t enough.
“Angel, what’s wrong?” Helen hissed again.
She looked at the other woman, then at the door in front of her, and made up her mind. She had little choice. They had to either go forward or turn around and go back; all the other entrances had long since collapsed or been sealed. Although the situation was different from the one she had faced after Johnny was killed, it felt the same. She knew what she had to do.
“Wait here,” she said to Helen. “This door will be open, but don’t go through it until you hear me call for you. Then bring everyone at once, as quickly as you can. Don’t stop for anything. Especially not for me. Get up the stairs and out of the building; run down the street and out of the city. Go up into the hills and hide. I will find you.” She paused. “If I don’t come within the next few hours, head north toward San Francisco. You might find those from the other compounds on your way and you can join forces.”
Helen started to speak, but Angel stopped her by taking hold of her arms and drawing her close. “Listen to me. There is something very bad at the top of the stairs. I don’t think it cares about you or the children. I think it is looking for me. It won’t let itself be distracted once it has me. Don’t give it a reason to change its mind. Do you understand me?”
The other woman nodded, then shook her head quickly. “I can’t just run away and leave you! I want to help. You’ve done so much for us. There must be something!”
She took a deep breath. “This isn’t something you can help me with, Helen. What waits up there is very powerful. It isn’t anything human; it is something else. Only I can deal with it.”
She released the other’s arms and stepped away. “Remember what I said. Do what I told you to do.”
Then she moved over to the heavy door, used the magic of her staff a second time to release its locks, pulled it wide open, and stepped through into the gloom of the narrow corridor beyond.
S HE SWITCHED ON the flashlight and began to climb.
She went slowly and soundlessly, placing her feet carefully.
She had been able to sense the presence of the demon, but that was a gift peculiar to her. It was entirely possible that the demon had not yet sensed her. Still, she had to be ready.
When she reached the door that opened onto the lobby of the old hotel, she stopped. Her five senses told her nothing of what waited beyond, but her sixth sense reaffirmed what she already knew. The demon was out there. It had discovered her plan to rescue the children, surmised that she had gone into the tunnels, and was awaiting her return.
Oddly enough, it appeared to be alone.
She took a long time to make sure she wasn’t mistaken about this, thinking that her instincts must be misleading her. But they weren’t; the demon was alone. This worried her more than she cared to think about. A demon hunting for a Knight of the Word would normally have brought dozens of once-men to help with the effort. This one was apparently confident enough to believe that it could handle the job by itself. Which, in turn, meant that it possessed either great strength or extraordinary skill.
Or, she added with a shiver, it was totally insane.
I’m not going to survive this.
It was a terrible thing to tell herself, but the words were out and swimming about inside her head before she could stop them. She fought them down and locked them away again, but their whisper lingered.
She took a deep steadying breath and closed her eyes, trying to read what lay beyond. She pictured the lobby, its walls and ceiling, the curved stairway, the debris, the broken-out windows and doors, the check-in desk against the back wall, all of it. She formed the picture and studied it and tried to see where the demon would be. It would choose a place where she wouldn’t see it right away, but where it could get to her quickly. It would try to kill her before she even knew it was there, thinking to catch her unawares. Where would it wait? She tried to imagine it, seeing it in her mind, searching it out.
Then, all at once, she knew.
It would be waiting on the stairs above the doorway where it could vault the railing and fall upon her as she came through. If it was quick enough, it could break her neck before she even knew what had happened.
She could see it now in her mind, could see it clearly, could see the demon, faceless and formless, crouched and ready.
Big.
But she would be bigger.
Strong.
But she would be stronger.
She tightened her grip on the staff and faced the door. She had left it unlocked. The demon would know that, would have tested it to discover if the locks were back in place. Had they been resealed, it could have relied on the sound of their release as a warning of her approach. Unsealed, they would give no warning. So it would be listening for the sounds of her approach or, failing that, the shadow of the door opening into the room.
She would have to be very quick.
She summoned the magic, let it build, and then blew the door right off its hinges. As she did so, she went through the opening at a slant, angling back against the wall as she broke clear of the doorway, eyes and staff lifted to the stairs above her. The shadow was already dropping toward her, every bit as smooth and supple as she had feared. But it was a fraction of a second too slow. Clawed fingers raked the air she had just passed through, just out of reach, clutching futilely. As the dem
on landed, the white fire of her staff exploded into it, throwing it across the room and into the lobby desk, smashing the desk into pieces.
She had gotten only a momentary glance at it, but enough to reveal that it was huge. “Helen!” she screamed. “Run!”
She moved quickly to place herself between the doorway and the demon, which was already struggling to free itself from the debris, arms and legs thrashing. She got another glimpse of it as it pulled itself clear—spiky blond hair, scaly patches on its face and neck, tree-trunk body. It was female, barely. She attacked, the staff’s fire striking it a second time, knocking it off its feet and sending it sprawling. But the fire seemed to have less effect on it this time, as if it had found a way to deal with the punishment.
Behind her, she heard the pounding of feet and the shrill of small voices raised in alarm. The children were escaping, racing for the freedom of the streets. She didn’t turn to look, her eyes on the demon. She advanced on it, looking to gain more impact from a third strike. But the demon was ready this time and came at her like a huge rodent, skittering across the floor with unbelievable speed, dodging her attempted strike, knocking her from her feet, and closing on her with an audible hiss. She felt as if a wall had collapsed on her, but she tightened her compact body into a knot and fought her way free. The demon tried to follow, but she jammed the staff into its throat and the white fire exploded out and thrust it away.
She was back on her feet quickly, the sound of screaming children washing over her, chaos everywhere. She forced herself to ignore the noise, to keep her eyes on the demon as it rolled into a corner before springing back to its feet. It hissed at her and laughed, taunting her. It was as if the fire of her staff was having no effect at all, as if all she was doing was buying time. Perhaps she was, she realized; perhaps that was the best she could do.
The demon came at her again, flinging pieces of debris, sweeping them up and hurling them so quickly she had to use the fire to protect herself. Then it was on top of her, hammering into her with all of its considerable weight, tearing at her with clawed fingers and ripping at the staff. She sidestepped the charge, ducking under the long arms, using the training Johnny had given her to keep her feet as she moved to one side. Even so, the long claws raked her right side, knocking her off balance and flat on her back. Fiery pain ripped down the length of her body as she tried to scramble to her feet. She was too slow; before she could rise, the demon was on top of her again.
