Whisperworld
Chapter 13
I put a few miles between me and Angel City before I stopped. At hobbling speed, it took me hours to get even that far and the dark shadows had tipped back toward the east. I paused to lean against a storm-battered stone and catch my breath. My left leg was burning agony and my skull still throbbed from being hit in the head. It wasn’t as bad as the knock that Kiyu had given me, though, so I figured that had been Woods. He had gone easy on me.
It struck me then just how often I’d thought of killing Woods, or at least kicking his ass. But creepy and spoiled though the kid was, I never wanted him dead… not really. But Woods chained me up to die. He stabbed me, and I refused to feel guilty for killing him or the other two Blackthumbs. I didn’t owe them bugsquat. I only wanted to live and I was not sorry for that. I wasn’t.
I had more to worry about than my conscience, anyway. There were two slashes down my left leg, and the worst of the pair was on the back where I couldn’t see very well. How bad was it? I dropped my pants and used some of my water to wash out the long cut. It was a dangerous waste of resources, but all the water in the world wouldn’t do me much good if I died of infection. I sliced my undershirt into strips that I bound tightly around my thigh. There wasn’t a whole lot more I could do.
My next survival hurdle was shelter. I took a long drink of water that finished off the canteen I had used to wash. I debated keeping the container and decided against it. Right now, it was just extra weight. A hindrance, not a help. I dug down into the sand and buried it in the lee of the stone so the wind wouldn’t uncover it for a while. No sense in making it easy for the Greenguard to track me.
I scanned my surroundings and found the largest pile of rocks. Something big would be my best bet at shelter. The sky remained clear and it was always warm, even at night, but the dry winds would dehydrate me faster out in the open. And I needed a place to hide.
The landscape didn’t look familiar. I searched for landmarks as I trudged toward the rocks, but I recognized nothing from the day Zach and I spent tracking Kiyu. Had I gone in the wrong direction or had the storm just erased anything remotely familiar? It was certainly possible. Most of the ancient buildings were long gone and it wasn’t as if I would have recognized one patch of sand over another. Maybe I could spot the hole where Zach fell through the fulgurite glass.
I tried not to think about the possibility that Zach and I would lose each other out here. I looked back east. Angel City was only a haze of heat shimmer on the horizon. Even the huge Tear of God was just a tiny black shadow that seemed to float above the ground. If I went much further out, I would lose track of that last landmark. And if a storm came — and I somehow survived it — I would lose my own tracks.
I limped on toward a jumble of rocks in what seemed to be the right direction, though it turned out to be the stump of a building. Broken slabs of concrete lay in heaps around the foundation and half a ceiling. There was always the danger that the whole thing would fall down on top of me, but lying exposed in the open wasn’t a much better option. I resolved to just sit my ass close to the collapsed wall so I could get the hell out of there if the place shifted suspiciously.
The crumbling building had created a sort of square-shaped cave. I had to crawl on my hands and knees between two fallen chunks of masonry into the dim brown space inside. The opening faced northwest and the bright smear of the sun was slinking wearily down over the horizon, illuminating a patch of dusty floor about as long as I was tall. I stopped and unslung the crossbow so I could lean against the wall. I sat crookedly, tipped up on one hip to avoid putting weight on my wounds. My belt was heavy and ungainly with the knife and two canteens, so I was unbuckling it to make myself more comfortable when I heard the hiss.
I should have been more careful. The deserts weren’t exactly teeming with life, but there were enough mutant bugs and reptiles — even some mammals — that not much in the way of shelter went unused. In the shadows beyond the failing sunlight, a jumble of coils slipped and slithered over each other. It was too dark to see how many there might be, but each loop of scaly body was as big around as my thigh. There had to be forty or fifty feet of snake back there. I wasn’t sure if that was one snake or a nest of them. But either way, it wasn’t good news for me.
I inched back through the sand. I could only feel for the exit; I wasn’t about to take my eyes off of the monstrous mass in front of me. The coils loosened and the snake — it seemed to be just one, though I saw several tails in the darkness — slithered toward me. A crooked, forked black tongue tasted the air… which probably tasted like dinner. I cursed and flicked my eyes back to where I had been sitting. My crossbow and belt were both lying on the floor, now only a few yards from the snake.
Without that water, I was dead. Snakebite was a marginally quicker death, at least, so I leaned into the hole and grabbed the end of my belt, dragging it across the dusty floor. The snake wove through the sand and broken concrete, pulling its tails beneath it once again. The scaled coils were only a yard from the crossbow now. I would have to manage without it. I backed away until I was outside the building. The snake’s tongue darted out once more. It was purple, I could see now, and forked into three points.
I rose slowly and slipped sideways until I was out of sight. I had to hope that the monster snake wasn’t that hungry or didn’t like how I smelled, otherwise I was going to find out just how fast that huge, twisted body could move. Fortunately, the snake didn’t feel like leaving its den and venturing out into the cooling night.
My crossbow was still in there. I contemplated waiting until the snake fell asleep and then creeping back inside. Maybe I could even kill the mutant. But it was one hell of a risk. If the snake wasn’t sleeping or if it woke up before I got to the crossbow, then I was in trouble. And a dying snake that size thrashing in a small space would be almost as dangerous as a live and angry one.
I crept away until I could barely make out the ruined building before I felt safe from its huge, scaly inhabitant. The night wasn’t cold, but my drying sweat gave me chills and it wasn’t long before I was shivering. There wasn’t much else in the way of shelter and the light was nearly gone. The pearly pale moonglow lay low on the horizon, turning the sandy ruins as white as the Pacific Desert. I limped to a much smaller stand of concrete boulders, searched them thoroughly — finding only some small brown spiders that scurried back into the cracks at my approach — and picked a spot in the lee to settle down.
I removed my belt, but buckled it closed again and looped it over one arm, just in case. I laid down on my right side and found myself really missing my Greenguard apartment. Even my mother’s little eighteenth-story home seemed like a palace right then.
When I woke up, the bright glow of the sun had crawled halfway over the horizon. The ground was still cool, but the air was already warming. I took a drink and shook the canteen. It was less than half full. One of those Blackthumbs hadn’t been very careful with their water, but I guessed I couldn’t blame them for not having my survival in mind.
I had a knife and a quiver with four bolts, but no crossbow to use them with. I could use the bolts as stabbing weapons, I supposed, and that might save some wear on the edge of my knife. I just hoped that I wouldn’t be out here long enough for it to be important. I had to find Zach. After that… I had no idea, really, but we could figure it out together.
A lizard had crawled out into the early morning sun to bask. It had a short tail, but its body was fat and made the scaly little beast waddle. It was as long as my hand and almost as wide. I didn’t have anything to cook it with, but a promising amount of meat sat there on the stone and I hadn’t eaten since… when? Thorn had us hauled into his office before breakfast and then chained to the execution stakes without a last meal. Maybe that should have been my final request.
The fat lizard didn’t move nearly fast enough and I stabbed it easily with one of my bolts. It squirmed for a moment, but died with satisfactory speed. I slit its belly open with my knife and began peeling back the scaly skin, then dropped the lizard and felt acid rising in the back of my throat.
It was full of shiny black lumps that oozed dark blood where my knife had grazed them. Tumors. There had to be a hundred of the cancerous nodes.
I kicked the lizard away, but after a minute of listening to my stomach growl, I picked it up out of the sand and gingerly poked around inside it more thoroughly. No, the little animal was literally bursting with cancer and probably dying before I hastened things along. Even its stumpy tail was riddled with black tumors.
I considered the blood. I knew it was used in some soups and puddings. We die pretty swiftly without blood, too, so there must have been something nutritious in it, but I wasn’t ready to take the chance. I dropped the lizard’s body between some rocks and then scrubbed my hands clean with sand.
I walked a crooked spiral out from my sleeping spot, hoping to find a trace of Zach or something else that I recognized. I didn’t manage either one, but my limping progress was slow and I didn’t cover much ground. With my bum leg, at least it was easy to walk in circles. I encountered a few insects and more lizards, but without bodies bloated by cancer, they slipped effortlessly away from my faltering attempts at hunting.
I drank more water than I should have, trying to keep my stomach full and quiet. From a conservation standpoint, it wasn’t my best idea, but between the blood I had lost yesterday and the lack of food, I was low on energy and not thinking very clearly.
By the following day, I was out of water entirely and still found no sign of Zach. I had long since lost the center of my spiral and any idea where I was anymore. Still in the desert — I figured out that much — but after God’s Wrath, that wasn’t saying a whole lot. Most of the world was desert. This was already further than I had ever been from Angel City.
With the aid of some helpful shadows, I could tell west from east, but there was no sign of Angel City. I thought that I spotted the remains of some buildings preserved by the Stormsphere’s protection, but the distant images remained stubbornly distant no matter how much I walked toward them. Maybe they were mirages or maybe I was even slower on my injured leg than I gave myself credit for, but I was getting nowhere fast.
My thoughts swirled around like dust devils. Where was Zach? Did he even get away from the Blackthumbs? They were carrying someone, weren’t they? I had assumed it was one of our pursuers or even Woods’ body.
But what if it had been Zach?
It was my fault he was out here. Me and my big fucking mouth. I was the one thick-headed enough to insist on chasing Kiyu into the wastes. If Zach was dead — either in the desert or back in iron chains outside Angel City — it was all my fault.
Wasn’t it? Or was this something bigger than just killing off pain-in-the-ass Julia Reed? The Gardeners didn’t need an excuse to do whatever they wanted. Thorn could have sent me off on some suicide mission years ago if that was all he wanted. So did the High Gardener truly think that the Whitefingers had corrupted us? Maybe, but it didn’t seem likely.
What the hell was happening in Angel City? Thorn refused to listen to the Whitefingers’ warning. Why? I struggled to recall exactly what Thorn had said in his office before I started calling him a liar and Woods tried to brain me. But all I could remember was my indignant rage and then pain and darkness.
Was there something behind all of this? Or was my addled brain just trying to absolve itself of guilt over Zach’s death? No, I told myself firmly. He wasn’t dead. I would find Zach and then… and then…
I slept a lot and it became hard to tell the difference between my own panicked, heat-scrambled thoughts and dreams. I saw Zach… And I saw Liam, too. The boy was chained to the stakes outside Angel City, trying to tell me something important, but he could only whisper. But no matter how close I leaned in, I could never hear the words.
I dreamed of Kiyu, as well. We were naked and lying in my bed. I pressed my body urgently against hers, but the dream-Kiyu didn’t seem to notice.
“I want to show you something pretty,” she said.
Kiyu opened up her little leather pouch and held it out to me. I recoiled at first — it was full of shiny black orbs, just like the lizard. But the things inside weren’t tumors. They were hard and clean and smooth, like a hundred Tears of God in miniature. Kiyu poured them out into my hands. I tried to catch them all, but they overfilled my palms and fell through my fingers. They made soft sounds as they fell.
“You stole them,” I accused.
“No,” Kiyu whispered into my ear. “I set them free.”
I woke up grasping for something that wasn’t there.
The next day, I managed to catch another lizard. I killed it with my bolt again, though I think I might have dropped the arrow and forgotten it there. The lizard had two tails and too many toes, but I was hungry and my mouth felt as dry and cracked as the earth around me. The tails fell off in my hand and I ate them raw. The scales were slightly crunchy, the meat sour and chewy. I choked it all down, though, then slit open the lizard’s belly. I closed my eyes and sucked without looking. The blood was salty and thick, but it was wet.
The headache that had been my only companion for the last two days abated a little, but if I improved conditions for my head, it was at the expense of my stomach. An hour after my first meal in days, I was on my hands and knees, vomiting up everything I had eaten. It only took two or three good convulsions to empty my stomach, but the heaving went on long afterward.
When it was over, I pushed sand on top of the puddle of red-tinted bile and pulpy lizard meat before the smell of it made me throw up all over again. I vaguely recalled that I was supposed to be hiding. I sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees. My left leg hurt where the hot sand seared my sliced flesh… but it all seemed far away, too distant to care much about.
I began considering the idea that I was really going to die. I rolled the thought around in my pounding head for a while and wasn’t sure if I liked the sound of it. Was dying a good idea or not? I wondered if I should ask the shadow stalking closer across the sand, but I doubted he had much of an opinion. Death is a very personal thing, you know.
I fell over and got to it.
