She turned. “That’s dishonest.”
“Oh, we ain’t gonna keep t’all. It’s fer everyone.” He waved his arm at the wallow.
“All right.” She sighed. “But what about my eyes? Those people are looking for me.”
“You iz genius.” Billy leaned back and howled at the sky.
He ran off and dove headfirst into his pile of junk. A minute later, he returned and stuck a pair of too-large sunglasses on her head and handed her a white curtain rod.
“There. I’ll tell ‘em youz blind. Keep ‘em closed and tap that stick on the ground like yer usin’ it to find your way along. Blind, starvin’ little street kid.” His eyes watered with emotion as he grabbed his own shirt into fists. “Oh, Charles, we’re gonna eat!”
For a few hours, they went from restaurant to restaurant. More often than not, they would get a little food, which went into a sack that Charlie, waiting outside, carried. She did not do much but stand there looking sad, not difficult―she was sad. Althea found the wait for Whisk to come back with news of Beard painful, but at least she could do something to help these men before she left.
They returned heroes. Given first pick of the loot, she took the most familiar thing, a burrito, and some cheeseburgers for the big guy. She stalled on the first bite, bewildered at who would put scrambled eggs inside a burrito. After the initial shock wore off, she ate it anyway. Fresh food was a lot better than what she had been eating.
The oaf followed her close around the wallow while she made her way among its occupants. Althea went from container to container, healing little hurts and chasing away a sick or two. One of the bums commented he acted like a big German shepherd walking on two legs. From then on, Althea decided to call him Shepherd. He did not seem to mind.
A woman’s voice screamed in the distance, followed by the angry bellow of a man. The next scream carried pain through the air. Althea ran to the ladder and went up to the street, toward the sound of the shouting. She did not notice the frustrated moan from Shepherd, too big for the shrouded ladder.
From the corner of an alley, she peered at a man in a suit made of light that changed in a gradual sway from green to blue and through orange to red then back to green. Glowing neon pink teeth sneered from a dark-skinned face set off by a glimmering purple visor. He slapped at a pale young woman with powder-blue hair. Two black discs adhered to her breasts only big enough to cover the dark spots. Her skirt was barely at the point where it was too wide to be called a belt, and her iridescent pink high heels were, in Althea’s mind, something the woman had been forced to wear so she could not run away from her owner.
He swatted something out of her hand, a small fluttery thing that meandered to the ground and vanished amid the trash. The woman snatched at it desperately on its way down, begging him to let her have it, but he dragged her off by the arm. A trickle of blood ran from her nose.
Althea followed; intent on freeing the woman from slavery. If she could stall a monster like the man in white in his tracks, she could deal with this glowing fool. Something stuck to the bottom of her foot, and she hopped to a halt, lifting and twisting her foot over so she could see what was there. A rubbery square of skin-colored material, an inch on all sides with rounded corners and a raised bit in the center, clung to her sole.
She wiped at it, but it did not move. The woman was more important than an annoying thing stuck to her foot. When she took another step, she stared down at the bizarre tingle that scintillated up through her leg. The light changed. The painted words and faces on the walls moved. Giant yellow spheres with smiling mouths sang at her, things she remembered from her early childhood, songs meant to put little children to bed.
The alley in both directions twisted into a haze as shadows grew and colors changed. The sky turned yellow; she blinked and it went green. The buildings swayed like giant blades of grass. Painted rainbows slid along the walls and flowers burst from the vacant black squares of broken windows.
The tiniest voice she had ever heard came from her right. “We’re coming to save you.”
A miniscule woman with an orb of white hair and dragonfly wings flew up to her face. She was six inches tall and poked her in the nose with a tiny electrical spark.
The pixie giggled and waved. “Don’t worry, little moggie, we’re coming.” She zoomed away, leaving a trail of white glowing dust.
“Hey, how ya doin?” A gruff man’s voice came from below. The source, a fat grey tabby cat, yawned at her and trundled off.
She grinned. Reaching to pet it, she gawked as her hand fell to the street with a splat, on the end of the noodle that used to be her arm. Her fingers flowed off like rivulets of flesh from the point of impact. The hilarity of it caught her off guard, and she laughed.
The metal road surface came up to her chest. She swam in it, paddling at the cool, silvery liquid that carried away all her sadness as the little painted stick men from the walls told her she would be with her family again soon. An army of white cartoon doves came over the walls, surrounding her with a bright bird-song and a flash of flapping wings.
Something hit her leg. She looked up to see the blue-haired girl fall over and vanish with a splash into the silver. Laughter came without thought, and she cooed and giggled at the woman swimming around in circles.
“Where is it? Where is it?” The woman raced about, scratching at the ground.
The man with the glowing pink teeth came stomping after her, but stalled at the sight of Althea. As he bent forward, his face detached and drooped to his belt; the dead bird on the side of his hat flapped its one remaining wing and squawked. She grabbed a big toe in each hand and pulled, rocking back and laughing at him. When they stretched out, she stopped laughing and stared at her feet as if they were the deepest mystery of the universe. One by one, she pulled the rest of her toes out until they were all the same length.
“Yo, I think this little skank here pinched your Zoomer.”
Althea had her foot up to her face, sniffing at the wavering noodles.
“You little whore,” said the woman, poised to tackle her.
“Whoa.” The man put a hand up to the side of his head. “You feel that?”
“Yeah… It’s… It’s…” The woman, now a female canid with sky-blue fur, fell on top of her and licked the side of her head. The tongue slid over her scalp twice more before the creature fell onto her back; her now-juvenile voice cooed into giggles. “She tastes like Zooooom.”
With a grin, Althea leaned forward and pet the dog-woman on the belly, making her laugh.
“Yo. I ain’t never touched this fuckin’ shit; why am I high?” The man stumbled to the side, his flapping arms sprouted bright purple feathers.
Althea grinned at the man as he failed to fly, wondering where the blue dog woman went and why she was petting a fish.
“You’re not a bird.” She pointed, yelling with the accusatory tone of a triumphant seven-year-old.
“No, Ah ain’t. And who the hell you is?” He took a fistful of her shirt and held her up to eye level. “You got a lot o’ nerve freelancin’ in my yard.”
Althea stared down at the noodles waving out from under her skirt. They were legs once. The sight made her laugh again.
“Neebo, she’s just a little kid.” The blue-haired fish did a backflip out of the glimmering silver, and fell back out of sight. “She ain’t workin.”
The pink teeth parted; she imagined flying through them and into a swirl of bright colors.
Neebo’s face stretched wider and taller. “I know some dudes that would pay for this.”
“That’s sick,” said the fish.
Althea tilted her head at the flashing lights in front of her and bit her lip while trying to make sense of the fluttering mass of face. With a sudden burst of inspiration, she jammed her finger into one of the whistling openings. He let go of her and howled. The fall went by in slow motion, her jelly legs did nothing to support her, and she splashed into the metal water. She rolled onto her chest
and tried to swim towards the blue-haired fish, which floated upside down making bubble-pop sounds with its mouth.
“She just tried to pick mah damn nose.” Neebo sneezed and snorted. “Damn she’s fucked up. Gotta be a first trip.”
The water lost its fluidity; stinging seeped into her hands from slapping the hard ground. Amid the chorus of singing graffiti, one sharp nibble of hurt crawled up her arm and into her brain. She knew something was wrong, but not what. An army of battered rag dolls crawled out from under an old dumpster and swarmed over her, giggling, chattering, and tickling her. Althea squealed with laughter and rolled onto her back, staring up at giant bees dancing in the blue-violet smog far above. The wagon man had smoked something once and the cage had kept her basking in it. He had given her a doll he’d found that looked exactly like the forty crawling over her. She remembered how weird it made her feel.
At that moment, she knew she had been poisoned.
Her hands flew to her eyes and she tuned out the silly things that played and sang, ignored the fish, and peered inward at her life essence. Wispy strands of something orange drifted within her like kelp snagged on a branch. Anchored to the sole of her foot, they reached up her leg toward her brain. Althea wanted it out, and it was gone. Her head throbbed, her eyeballs ached, and every muscle she was aware of felt like mush.
After a minute or three of lying motionless in pain, she sat up and pulled her foot into her lap. Althea splayed her toes apart and picked at the little square until it peeled away, revealing a tiny pad covered with hexagonal threads of metal embedded within the raised part, soaked with a foul-scented liquid.
She tossed it aside and used a piece of trash cloth to wipe the wet spot away. The woman lay on the ground nearby, blowing spit bubbles like the fish had been. Althea dragged herself closer. The older girl’s right eye was blackened, blood dribbled from her nose, and a number of bruises decorated her forearms. The absence of the hallucinatory high shared upon the wings of Althea’s telempathy caused the woman to groan. Althea held her hand and concentrated, mending a lot of small hurts.
“Come on, kid, your fine ass works for me now.” Pink Teeth grabbed her shoulder. “Get you cleaned up, some food, place to live, you’ll be doin’ good for yourself.”
Althea glanced up at him from where she knelt. “No.”
“Damn, girl, you’re some kind of pretty. Bet you won’t even need much work done.”
Neebo reached for her. Althea cringed and raised her arms to protect her face. Rather than hit her, he grabbed her wrist.
“No. Go away.” She sensed his emotion and his thoughts about the nature of what he wanted her to do for him. Her blasé tone became angry. “Now.”
Her eyes flared bright for as long as it took her to speak the word. Neebo blinked, bewildered, and shook his head. “Yo, Haggis, Little E, need yo’ asses pronto…”
“Yo.” yelled a deep voice from a nearby alley. “On the―what the fuck is thaaaa.”
A loud squish preceded the sound of splattering. Someone’s internal bits bounced into view.
“Shit!” screamed a high-pitched male voice.
Two gunshots rang out; flashes of azure lit the alley, projecting nanosecond shadows of a massive claw-handed silhouette looming over a smaller man. A horrible scream of terror changed to one of agony before it cut to silence.
“No!” screamed Althea, struggling to run towards the death she felt in the air.
Pink Teeth held onto her arm, staring dumbstruck at the maw of the alley. She whined and pulled, but could not get away.
Shepherd emerged from where Pink Teeth expected his friends to be, claws out and dripping blood. All of his attention locked onto the hand on Althea’s arm, sparing none for the bullet hole in his left pectoral. A mangled bellow of rage exploded from his throat as he held his arms to the sides. The pimp turned two shades paler.
“You don’t have to hurt him.” Althea glanced from Shepherd to the bad man. “He’s going away. Right?”
Neebo sprinted out from under his one-winged hat, which spun to the ground. Shepherd snarled as the man took off down an alley, his footfalls echoing to silence.
The giant relaxed, and retracted his blades. He trotted over to Althea and emitted a grunt of concern. Althea gave him a sad look and darted around the corner. One man, or what was left of him, leaned against a dead car. From about where his stomach was upwards, he ceased to be. A cone of bloody mess painted the wall behind him; thicker chunks still slid down towards the alley. A couple of yards away, a severed arm clutched a large pistol. Another body, somewhat smaller than the other, lay twitching on the ground. His abdomen had ruptured, and much of what belonged inside him dangled out onto the road.
“Why!” wailed Althea, wasting a second to gaze up at Shepherd with a wounded stare that made him moan and slouch.
She rushed to the still-living man’s side and grabbed handfuls of his guts, stuffing everything back into him with a haphazard scramble. At the point when adding anything more forced something to squeeze back out, she concentrated on her power. After she shut off his pain, she forced his body to make its blood-shape larger, and then nudged the rest of the blobs back to where they belonged. In the periphery of her awareness, Shepherd moaned and whined, kicking at the ground and pacing.
When she had finished, she wiped her bloody hands off the man’s purple dress shirt and folded her arms at Shepherd. “They hadn’t done anything yet. You can’t just kill everyone you think is bad.”
The massive man cowered like a scolded Rottweiler, and hung his head. She looked into his thoughts, he had expected these men to hurt her. The mere thought of it had enraged him.
“Thank you for helping me.” She hugged his leg.
He perked up.
“Killing people hurts me too.” He whined. “Even if they’re bad.”
When the remaining thug sat up, he growled, sending the man limping off as fast as he could move.
“You’re shot,” she whispered, standing on tiptoe to reach the wound.
Shepherd shrugged.
At Althea’s urging, Shepherd carried the woman to her little room. Something remained wrong with her, a hurt nestled deep in her brain that would take time to fix. Within the warm confines of her room, she tended to her guest. She knelt at her side, feeding her water and bits of food scavenged earlier by Whisk and his friends. It reminded her of how she had taken care of Rachel. She sagged, fighting the urge to cry. That felt like a lifetime ago. She missed her friend, and still felt bad over running away, but knowing Rachel had made it to the city and was safe helped ease her guilt.
The older girl batted at Althea’s hand. “Go away, kid.”
“Shh. Be still. You’re hurt. You need to drink this.” She tipped an old synthbeer can full of water into the woman’s mouth.
“Blech, what is this?” She choked it down, making faces at it.
“Water.”
“Ugh. From what planet?” The woman blinked, rubbed her nose, and forced herself to sit up. When she made eye contact, she froze. “Whoa, you some kinda lace-head brat?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that, but I don’t know what it means.” She crawled into the girl’s lap and pushed her against the wall with a hand on each shoulder. “Please sit and let me help you.”
One of the black domes popped off her chest. Althea tried to put it back where it came from. The woman blushed and swiped it from her grip.
“Lace, it’s nasty shit. When you’re on it, you feel like a god. Makes your eyes glow green… Gets into your soul. People’d kill their own mothers to score, but that shit’s a death sentence. Yuji was on that crap. It killed him after two years.” She squeezed the small dome and it beeped, adhering back onto her breast. “Only way you can help me is if you got a Zoomer around here to make up for the one you stole.”
“I’m sorry. I stepped on it as accident. I didn’t want to.” She showed off the red mark. “It’s bad. You shouldn’t touch them.”
“I…” The
woman recoiled from the foot hovering close to her face and shuddered, breaking out in a sweat. “I need it. I need it bad.”
She placed a hand on either side of the woman’s head and concentrated. The darkness within the brain-shape shifted, twisting with flaring black threads that pulsated through her spine.
Althea gathered a surge of power and closed her eyes.
“No… You don’t.”
ndromeda. That was how people on the street knew the blue-haired woman. Violet was the name given to her by a mother that abandoned her four years ago when she was Althea’s age. Delirium and fatigue made for a short conversation before they fell asleep in a pile. Violet’s shivering had jostled Althea awake in the middle of the night, so she covered her with all the bedding and made do with cold metal. Althea’s eyes popped open; a thick mass of dense, cold air crawled over her. Her sleep-deprived brain, further stymied by the temperature, seized. The eerie chill faded by the time she had the presence of mind to sit up. She wrapped her arms around herself, teeth chattering.
In the black and white space, as dark as could be, Andromeda smiled at her. Althea blinked and wiped her eyes. When next she looked, the older teen’s head was against the wall, eyes shut with sleep. She pushed the side wall open with her foot, letting in the night air, which was warmer than the inside of their cargo box. All the residents of the Bumwallow slept in their cubbies. Nothing moved.
After a powerful yawn, Althea curled on her side, still letting her guest keep all the blankets.
“You must be freezing.” Violet’s raised voice woke her.
Althea pushed herself up to sit, squinting through her fading dreams at a face ringed with a sphere of blue hair. She remembered the fish and rubbed her head to set her thoughts right.
“You were shivering. The cage doesn’t bother me.” She patted the bare metal.
Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) Page 36
