“Try your knives,” Mira suggested.
“Think I’ll need them?” I snapped the two blades out, feeling the balance. I’d always liked knives, but these were something special. It was the weight. Heftier at the points, and sharp as an ex-wife’s tongue. The handles were black wood, bound in strips of leather and secured with hammered metal caps. The blades were stainless, their edges bright. I tried out a few cuts with them, splitting the air in a way I’d never done before. The velocity of each blade made the air whistle, and I was careful to keep my swings under control. Inwardly, I hoped I would need them. They were created to cut, and my new muscles were built to use. I suspected this new life was going to demand a lot of both from me.
“I know you will. The question is when,” Mira replied. Without speaking, we approached the oasis, and I felt the uncertainty and dread of the past days falling away. I had never seen this place, but I still knew it. I understood danger, and the desert had been a hard lesson for me in my earlier life.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t at home in the dunes. In a way, I was. I knew that everything from the land to the people could kill me, and everything was a negotiation. I felt the new motion of my knee, long wounded, and the smooth pull of a body that was better than anything I’d ever known. Mira and Bel lived in a world of disorder, but I didn’t have to. As we approached the water, I made my decision.
I would be my own order. I would begin with the ground under my feet. “Are there usually people here?” I asked. There was activity, but nothing like I would expect at a clean water source. The silence was heavy; the shores abandoned. As the ripples died in the water, there was no motion at all.
“I don’t know,” Bel said, her voice cautious. She felt it too, whatever had me geeked and pulling my eyes in a constant sweep across the gritty shore. Mira grunted, hands twitching near her knives.
The sand erupted near Bel, pitching skyward in a spray of chaff and clattering noise as something came out for dinner. I saw scales and teeth and coal-black eyes, but the creature was moving so fast I couldn’t get a fix on exactly what it was, only that it was a predator, low and fast.
Bel was silent as she whirled, her reaction faster than anyone I’d served with. She struck down with her blade, severing the three talons that reached for her at the end of a long, grasping hand. Rewarded with a roar of pain, Bel kept turning through her cut, stabbing upward into the side of the howling beast. Mira’s own blade took the thing in a thick shoulder, the muscle parting like silk as she slashed vertically to reveal white tissue and bulging, yellow fat.
The golden crocodile ran with dry sand, clotting into red mud as the two wounds became three, then four. The sisters continued to work down the twenty-foot length of the beast, until the fifth cut made it quiver, freeze, then go slack in death.
My left knife drove through the cavernous skull into the sand below, grinding in a shock up my arm. A membrane flickered over the monster’s eyes before it died, and for good measure, I drew my right knife with slow deliberation, sliding it sideways into the drum-like ear on the side of its golden head. Although I wasn’t breathing hard, I wasn’t unscathed, either.
“Jack,” Mira said, her eyes wide with concern. “Your leg.”
I looked down. “What about—oh. You have a point.”
My leg was in the mouth of the beast, three teeth were punching through my skin and into the muscle. Hissing, I drew the jaw away with my right hand, watching for any signs of life—I’d take the entire head off if I had to. My leg came alive with hot pain as the nerves did their job, sending a message to my brain. You were bit, dumbass.
Blood dripped from my leg onto the sand, but I was more interested in the croc. It was bigger than anything from my time, the color of spun gold, polished from a life in the desert. It looked more mechanical than alive, but I knew it was real because the blood seeping from its cuts was the same color as mine, only was just a lot more of it to go around.
“Nice strike,” Bel said with a grin. My blade was covered in a thin coat of blood and broken scales all the way to the hilt. I didn’t remember moving, but a quick look at the sand told me I’d gone ten steps in three seconds. Not bad for a broken-down Marine.
“What do we do with it?” I asked. In the Empty, I figured everything had a purpose—even this bag of meat with fangs. I’d never eaten croc, but why not if it wasn’t poisonous? The hide alone could make a sail, and I idly considered how to go about skinning the big bastard before it could rot.
“Same thing it tried to do to Bel,” Mira said. She drew a smaller knife, spun it in her hands and made a long slash along the bulging shoulder. “Enough meat here to feed a village, but we’ll just take the best parts.”
“Probably tastes like chicken,” I said, watching her cut away at a steak the size of a manhole cover. My stomach rumbled. The smell of blood should have repulsed me, but I all could think about was barbecue. I guess my nap didn’t civilize me completely. “What are those horns?” I pointed to a small pair of knobs over each eye. They looked decorative, but if they had been bigger, the creature could use them to slash at enemies like a reaper.
“Female. They get broody in the early wet season, and it’s even less safe to be around them. They don’t play well with others then,” Mira said, grimly cutting away another scarlet strip of lean meat.
“They’re never good with anyone, especially when they have young. Too late in the year for that,” Bel said. She was working on removing the talons from each foot. The hooked ivory was five inches long and black as a night sky, ending in a serrated curve. They resembled teeth in every way except their position.
“Do they live in the dry, or close to the water?” I asked. I’d never seen a desert crocodile, but then, this wasn’t my world. Yet.
“Close to the water during breeding, but further out for the rest of the year. They burrow to the cooler sand. They don’t feed often,” Bel said, grinning as she popped the last claw free. “These are good for trade. Or killing.” The sand gave way under her right foot, making her slip and spill several of the gory prizes into the sand. “Sand’s not stable here. She’s been digging—”
The male croc blasted upward, clamping his huge jaws on Bel’s thigh with a wet crunch. She twisted, bringing her knife down with wicked speed, opening a long gash across the croc’s eyes even as she screamed in raw agony. Her leg collapsed at a right angle as the weight of the beast took her down, flailing in the sand like a rag doll.
I jumped, knives out and flashing before her scream could end. Mira was alongside me, a howl of rage erupting from her as Bel reached out to us with a hand going limp. Her leg parted at the thigh, and the croc shook its head like a dog with a rat. Blood flew through the air in a red mist as I reached the croc, my leap ending on the wide back in between its powerful front legs. It was ten feet longer than the female, thicker and more muscled, and it had horns that whispered as they cut through the air. One of the brow horns smashed into Mira, hurling her upward in a sodden heap. I knew she was knocked back by the blow, and my mind raced through the possibilities of saving Bel from blood loss.
If I could kill the croc.
My first blade went home in the golden throat, sliding out through the ear like a gunshot as the taut membrane snapped. Silky fluid shot over my arm, hot and reeking of carrion. I’d cut into the mouth, a huge space filled with teeth and parts of earlier prey.
The croc tried to turn, but I straddled the head between those wicked horns, stabbing down with muscles that screamed for vengeance. Mira got back in the fight, leaning on both blades as she punched down into the spine, but her cuts were off center, and the monster kept moving, thrashing with a fury that churned sand and blood into a jellied war zone.
“Mira, get off! Get your sister!” I bellowed, my throat tight as I strained to force my second knife into the monster’s mouth. I was going up through the mouth to the brain, or I was going to lose an arm trying. She couldn’t hear me over the demonic hissing, but when she saw me wav
ing her off, the message got through. Mira lunged for her sister and dragged her away in a frenzied roll, tearing at her leathers to make a tourniquet before they even stopped moving.
I refocused on the monster underneath me, putting the knives together for another try at boring into the giant skull.
I didn’t see the tail come around, but it hit me like a falling tree. Stars flooded my sight as I rolled down the pebbled back of the monster, coming to a stop when I dug a knife into the soft tissue near its hip. The cut set off another round of hysterics, throwing me toward the sand where the air left my chest in a thunderous whoosh.
“Fucking lizards,” I wheezed. My vision was utter shit, but I could see the croc filling my line of sight. I brought both knives forward in a stab that pierced the leg, then snapped the blades in opposite directions like shears. My blood hummed with newfound power, every one of my muscles burning with purpose. When the blades hit bone, I didn’t take no for an answer because I had plenty of fuel in the tank. I cranked hard on the knives, and the croc screamed.
The leg came free except for a silver tendon, as shards of bone gave way to the power of my enhanced body. “Fuck. You.” My hiss was unheard by the croc, who was suddenly more concerned with getting away from what should have been an easy kill. “Not so fast,” I growled, standing with some effort. I wobbled, then caught myself in time before the croc could flee.
Mira worked on Bel with zeal, tying her leg even as blood continued to spurt from each pump of her sister’s mighty heart. Rage cooked off in me again, a pure kind of hate I hadn’t felt in years, and I let it wash over me to drive my legs like pistons in the collapsing sand.
“Time to pay, fucker.” The croc limped on three legs, losing more blood than I’d ever seen in one place, but still not enough for me. I positioned my blades near the heart, then drove them forward without mercy.
I’d been strong before the sleep, but this sensation was something entirely new, and my arms jabbed forward without resistance. The heavy blades punched through the hide with a snapping sound, one grating against a rib before sliding past to plunge all the way through the beating heart. Crimson shot out in a wild spray, and I had to duck, but the loops of blood went overhead to land on the sand and roll like glass beads, collecting in a depression where the croc’s feet had churned a rut. The monster shivered once and fell still, the hide flickering with dying messages from a brain that didn’t know it was dead yet.
“Jack,” Mira said. Her voice was low and urgent. There were tears in her eyes, but the set of her jaw was firm. Even from a short distance, I could see Bel was fading, if not already dead.
I slid to their side, dropping my blades in the sand and looking Bel over. The leg was gone, tied off well but still a massive injury to survive in these conditions. She was dying before my eyes, and it was blood loss, shock, and fear taking over, her green eyes focusing on something in the distance.
Bel’s lips moved in silent protest, then I heard her whisper, “Not like this.”
But it was like that. She died in Mira’s arms, and the world I’d known for a short time took its first victim as Bel’s head lolled to one side, blood pooling on her white teeth. Mira coughed a noise so filled with pain, I reached out to hold her shoulder, if only to keep her from falling into the sand, following her sister to wherever Bel had gone.
“You have to stay,” I said. I’d seen this before, and there was nothing to be done for the dead. That’s the lie we tell ourselves. That they care how hard we grieve—they don’t. Only the people left behind care about what happens next, and in Mira’s case, that was me. A man from another time who saw a world as full of danger as anything that ever existed, and who had a lot to learn about how to survive. I spat in the sand, pissed at the stupidity of it all. Bel had been quiet, funny, tough. She worked hard and with a purpose, was beautiful and oddly kind in moments of silence. Seeing her there on the ground made me grind my teeth together in the kind of anger that got people killed. I had to fight back a curtain of red that descended over my eyes, clearing the rage away with long breaths that eventually let me regain some kind of control over anger that I knew would come in handy in this brutal new reality I called home.
We sat there until the locals came out, hesitant but then bold once they saw the dead crocs. One man came close, his ragged face hopeful as he licked his lips while switching his gaze from me, to Mira, to Bel, and then back to the crocs.
“Cut them up and take them to your people,” I told him. There was no sense in further waste. He bowed low, backing away and waving to unseen people who emerged from hiding places to descend on the beasts. In minutes, a horde of quiet, robed figures easily broke down the giant creatures, carrying away limbs, a whole tail, and other parts with practiced ease. They would eat well, even if they hadn’t earned the kill. I held no grudge, despite Bel’s sticky blood being warm on my palms.
“Do you bury the dead to honor them?” I asked Mira.
“Yes.” One word, heavy with torn emotion.
“How?”
“Deep,” She answered, never taking her eyes from Bel’s face. It was slack and still, and growing pale in that curious way humans do when the soul is gone.
“I’ll dig. I know the spot.” I stood, retrieving my blades and a shovel, walking a short distanced to a giant split rock that had a river of sand running through the middle. I tore at the ground, opening a hole that grew deeper than my head, as each angry stroke of the shovel cut into the pale ground not seen by the sun in a long time. The day was fading now, light angled to throw hard shadows over me and the grave. Mira hadn’t moved, but I saw her drink from the skin, wiping her mouth with a bloody hand. She would survive, even if she didn’t feel like it.
“Want me to take her?” I asked, holding my hands out wide, palms up.
“I want her face up, to the stars. She always loved the night sky.”
“Then she will see the stars forever,” I said, lifting the small woman’s body with my arms. I held her like glass, strolling to let Mira keep pace as she stumbled on grieving legs.
I lowered Bel into the ground, and the shadows covered her first, then the dirt. We put flat rocks over her at intervals, pressing her into the ground to sleep away the rest of time, her bones back where they started.
“She was always scared of dragons when we were little girls,” Mira said. The first stars were rising, Venus brightest among them. Some things were the same, but very few.
Dragons were real in this world, and they took lives. Bel had been right to fear them all along. “What else is here, Mira?”
She looked at the dark shapes still working on the diminished crocs. Their robes fluttered in the last breeze of the day as they made the monsters disappear. “The Empty has enough ways to kill you that I could never learn them all. Serpents, beasts, flying predators. Insects the size of wolves, storms, lightning, and heat.” She let her eyes drift over the grave, shaking her head in disgust. “Teeth. Claws. Everything has so much more than we do. It’s only a matter of time, but we had no choice. We had to be out here, in this shithole of a place because the city and post are run by criminals who turn women into slaves for their own profit.”
“I thought you chose this life?” I asked. The beginnings of a new anger rose within me, heating my skin despite the setting sun.
“It was no choice at all. We came out here to avoid Wetterick and his fighters, along with their endless violence. If he hadn’t gotten us, it would have been the Lady and her house. I won’t live as a slave but dying free is just as painful.” She fought a sob, leaning into me in a small motion. “Worse.”
“Who is the Lady?” I asked, as I put an arm around her, and some of the hardness melted away, leaving a pliable woman who needed someone to hold her just then.
“Lady Silk. She’s the lesser of two evils if you believe her. She takes women from all over and turns them into whores. Well-fed whores with fine dress, but still objects of pleasure. They’re loaned to caravans for pleasure, ser
ving stinking men who cross the distance between the post and city in an endless loop, drunk on money and wine.”
“She tried to recruit you and Bel?”
“More like steal. We were too fast, too dangerous. We ran hard and straight into the Empty six years ago, building our life out there by scavenging. When we came back to resupply, we were too wild for the Lady and her customers. They like docile women, and when they don’t obey, they beat the spirit out of them.” She laughed, a bitter sound I knew well from talking to people who lived under warlords. Their stories were different, but the shame and anger were always the same. “Never the face, though. They always protect the face to keep them pretty, both boys and girls.”
I could feel my blood cooking as she went on, ripples of anger making my hands twitch with emotion that took me by surprise. I’d never been good around assholes who took advantage of the weak, and I was starting to see a pattern. I’d woken up in the future, but it shared a lot of the worst qualities with the distant past.
“How do Wetterick and Silk run the post? Do they split control?” I asked. We were going to the post, and I needed to know the power structure. I had some ideas about how it might shift.
“Wetterick is the muscle. He’s a soft asshole, but he has fighters who do his dirty work for him. The Lady owns something a lot more important, and no matter what, he can’t get rid of her or take control. He’s been trying for years, but he can’t, so they have a kind of agreement if you can call it that,” she said. Her words were pure disgust.
“What does she own? Is it booze? Drugs? What fuels the post?” I asked. I had a lot to learn in a brief time if we were going there.
“Something a lot more valuable than wine or smoke. Secrets.” A bitter smile twisted her perfect lips. She was even beautiful in the middle of terrible grief and anger.
Future Reborn Page 5
