Whisperworld
Chapter 9
The blood was quickly getting hard to follow through the sandy rubble. Zach hadn’t hit anything vital with his last shot, otherwise we would have a dead — or at least unconscious — Whitefinger on the ground back in the Whisperward instead of one capable of sprinting like a frilled lizard across the desert.
The darkening red spots were growing fewer and further between. That didn’t slow us down much, though. If the dust was good for one thing, it was leaving tracks. As long as the wind didn’t pick up, there was no way the Whitefinger girl could escape us.
We were out past the execution stakes now, well beyond the protection of the Stormsphere. We crested a hill and I looked back at the perfect circle around Angel City, where the destruction of the storms was suddenly blunted. Sand and wind had etched the broken and tumbled buildings. But ten feet further away, they had been scrubbed down to their foundations. Was that line closer than before? I wasn’t sure.
Occasionally, the ruins of old Angel City rose up from the sand. A stretch of overpass supported by a few vast concrete pillars cast a multi-legged shadow across the ground like some vast tarantula. Girders thrust up from cement centuries gone to dust, reminding me of the bones of a picked-over carcass. Before the Wrath, Angel City had stretched for miles and miles in every direction, but all that remained of the ancient city were a few dusty buildings and broken roads that the sandstorms hadn’t gotten around to obliterating yet.
Blackthumbs were the only ones who regularly ventured outside the Whisperward, and even then it was rarely further than the execution stakes. Anyone who ran into the desert was generally considered just as dead as those chained up for the storms. I hoped that wouldn’t include me and Zach, but I wasn’t about to let another storm steal my answers. Still, hunting them down meant ranging out into wild, dangerous new territory.
There was a good reason smart people didn’t range out beyond the city walls, even beside the storms. Basements and even entire buildings lurked beneath a thin crust of sand, weakened and buried by centuries of storms, waiting for the unwary traveler. Above, the crumbling remains of bridges were so storm-battered and ancient that any breeze might be the one that finally sent them crashing down to earth.
And then there were the mutants. Back in the Whisperward, scale and bug farmers culled the most deformed offspring from their herds, keeping the biggest, fattest and purest bloodlines. But out here, nature didn’t seem to have quite the same selective sensibilities. Extra or fewer limbs, twisted skeletons, patches of oddly colored skin and tumors were just some of the weird deformities to be found in the wastes.
Only a dozen yards past the execution stakes, I saw a sunning alligator lizard so big that I could have ridden it back into Angel City. Insects couldn’t get very big because they breathed through their skins and tended to strangle when those skins got too thick, but they had numbers to make up for it. Spiders and scorpions had rudimentary lungs, though, and could grow frighteningly large outside the Whisperwards. Most were slow and ponderous, but some had enough extra legs that they could outrun a human.
And then, of course, there were the Whitefingers. In the Whisperwards, we rooted out mutation to keep humanity pure. Nature didn’t seem to care, so long as a creature could survive the deserts and storms. But the people who lived out here in the wastes not only didn’t kill their mutants, but bred the most dangerous deformity of all: the psychic power of the dreameaters.
Zach left the tracking to me while he watched out for all the ugly things that could kill us. I stopped frequently to wipe the dust off my goggles. I didn’t want to miss a single footprint. The Whitefinger girl wasn’t as stupid as I would have liked and moved over stony ground where she could. But without the sweepers that kept Angel City relatively clean, a film of grit covered everything and even as light as she was, our suspect left plenty of clear tracks.
Zach could have nearly touched his fingers around the Whitefinger’s waist, but for all her tiny size and short legs, she was making damned good time through the ruins. Her footprints were still evenly spaced, unfaltering and sure. Even wounded and after two hours of running, she wasn’t slowing down much or stumbling. She must have been a tough little thing.
But you don’t become a Greenguard by being weak or fragile. Zach and I were in good condition, too, and we weren’t slowing down either. In fact, we were picking up speed. The wind rose and the fine layer of dust that was so receptive to tracks was swiftly churning into the air now. I guessed that we had half an hour before there wasn’t anything left to follow.
“Are we close?” Zach asked. “We’re running out of time.”
The sky was turning green around the edges like old snake meat — there was a storm on the move. It could rear up over the horizon and be on us before we made it halfway back to the Whisperward. If we were fucked anyway, then I wanted to find the Whitefinger first and make her talk. I’m a stubborn bitch that way.
“We’re rosy,” I insisted. “We’re getting closer.”
I heard the sand crunch under my boots, but I was moving too fast, bent nearly double over the dwindling tracks. I had to find the girl before the wind whipped away any trace of her passage. Something in my brain registered the danger, but not loud enough.
Our Whitefinger murderer was five feet tall on her tiptoes and maybe a hundred pounds. I was seven inches taller and my weight is none of your business. But Zach topped six feet and was over two hundred pounds of solid muscle. The Whitefinger had passed over the thin layer of fused sand easily. It cracked under my weight and then shattered as Zach hurried after his stupid, impatient partner.
There was a loud crunching sound and I turned back just as the earth gave way beneath him. I watched Zach’s eyes go wide behind his goggles. He threw his arms out and grabbed desperately for solid ground, but he was falling. Zach vanished up to his shoulders down the hole and scrabbled in the sand for purchase, but the dirt was cracking and falling in all around him.
I drew my knife, threw myself to the ground and slammed my blade into the sand as hard as I could. I had to hope that it was solid beneath me, or I had just killed us both. The knife went in deep, but held steady. I reached for Zach’s hand and gingerly inched my fingers under his, trying to get a grip without dislodging the one he had.
“Hold on, Zee!” I grunted.
“Let go of me, Julia,” he said in a strained voice. “Get the fuck off this sand.”
“Bugshit. I’m not going anywhere.”
Bits of fused sand broke free from the edge of the hole and rattled down into the darkness. I stared after them, down at the yellow-gray glass sloping away beneath Zach.
It was a fulgurite. That’s what happens when lightning hits sand — it strikes through the ground, forking like the tongue of a mutant rattler and fuses the ground into jagged glass. Most of the time, they’re only a few inches or feet long. Over time, the wind blows away the sand and leaves razor-edged bits of glass sticking up from the ground. Of course, the wind breaks them down, too, and the fragments of glass get swept up into the storm, just to make everything worse.
But the biggest storms punched yard-wide holes into the earth and dug fulgurite tubes that stretch twenty feet or more, spreading underground like the roots of an orchard tree.
“I… can’t get a foothold,” Zach said.
His boots thumped uselessly against the glass sides of the hole. I got my hand into Zach’s and his strong fingers curled painfully around mine.
“Fuck, you’re heavy!” I groaned.
“I told you to go, Julia!”
“Shut it and climb, dumb-ass!”
Zach pulled on my arm. The big bastard hardly budged and I slid a few inches closer to the hole. I desperately wanted to shift my grip on my knife, but didn’t dare let go, even for a second. I leaned back away from the fulgurite with all my weight and wished for the first time that I was a hell of a lot fatter.
We were both groaning like tortoises in mating season. Every inch Zach managed to pull himself up seemed to stretch my arm an inch out of its socket. I kept an aching death-grip on my knife that I really hoped wouldn’t become an actual death grip. But at last, we wrestled enough of Zach’s bulk out of the hole that he could heave himself the rest of the way onto solid land.
“Careful,” I said. “We might still be on top of the fulgurite.”
Zach nodded and slid a few feet away from me so there wasn’t so much of our weight concentrated in one spot. Sweat streamed down Zach’s skin and his eyes were still wide enough that I could see white all around the dark irises. We crawled on our bellies for a few dozen yards. Who knew how many fulgurites might be below us? I was really going to have to nerve myself up just to stand after this. For now, I settled for rolling over and slowly sitting. I found a low chunk of stone that was reasonably flat on its leeward side and leaned back against it. Carefully, Zach joined me.
I unscrewed the cap of my canteen and took a long swallow. I swished the water around my mouth, savoring the relative coolness, then offered the canteen to Zach. He shook his head and grabbed his own. I was glad that he hadn’t lost it down the fulgurite shaft. He still had his crossbow, too, though the quiver on his hip looked a few bolts light. When Zach turned to put his canteen back on his belt, I saw wet red.
“Shit, Zee. Hold still,” I said.
I made my partner lace his fingers behind his head so I could take a closer look. The edge of the broken glass beneath the sand had sliced across Zach’s ribs, just under his right arm. The cut was shaped like a horrible too-wide smile, but it wasn’t terribly deep, only bloody.
I tore the hem off my undershirt and folded it up, then slipped it through the gash in Zach’s carbon-microfiber fatigues to press it against the cut. It took a lot to slice through our uniforms, but I guess lightning-blasted glass was enough to do the job.
“Put your arm down and keep it tight to your body,” I instructed.
Too tired to speak, Zach nodded and did what I asked without argument. He winced a little as the adrenalin faded and the pain set in. I settled back against the rock and looked around. We had crawled some distance away from where Zach fell through the sand. Maybe I could go back to where I last saw the Whitefinger’s tracks, but there would be nothing to find now. The wind was churning and already erasing the signs of our awkward crawl. The light footprints of a girl less than half Zach’s size were surely long gone.
The sky overhead had turned a nastier green, too, and the horizon was bruised black. Even from this distance, I could see the pale flashes of lightning as the storm built up energy. Probably making new fulgurites out there, damn it. I knew we had to get back to the safety of the Whisperward, but I didn’t want to admit it. Zach saw it on my face, though, even through the bandana and goggles.
“We have to go back, Julia,” he said.
I remained stubbornly silent, glaring out at the storm.
“We did our duty,” Zach said. “She didn’t get into the Stormsphere and the Whisperward is safe. That’s all that matters.”
“What about Byron?” I asked. “What about Liam?”
“There’s no shelter out here, Julia. She’s wounded now and there’s a storm coming. She’ll be dead soon.”
“That girl’s a Whitefinger,” I argued. “They all live outside the ‘Wards.”
But Zach was wounded with a storm on the way, too. Even if the Whitefingers somehow managed to weather the deadly storms of the wastelands, we didn’t know their secret. I couldn’t bring myself to agree with Zach aloud, but I did stand — carefully — and turned east, toward the Whisperward. My partner rose, giving the ground an even more distrustful look than I had, and we started picking our way gingerly back home.
At first, fear of another sand-covered fulgurite pit or mutant scorpion burrow slowed us down, but the sky was turning rapidly from green-gray to black and we began moving faster. Wind hissed in our ears and I found myself missing the unsettling rasp of the Whispers very, very much.
It wasn’t long before we were running. The leading edge of the sandstorm tore at our bandanas and the skin beneath. Everything around us turned into a murky brown-black haze and I could no longer see where we were going. My whole world was reduced to swirling sand and stinging skin. The Whisperward had long since vanished and I had no idea if we were even moving in the right direction anymore. But we kept the wind to our backs and staggered on, hands clasped tightly together to keep from losing one another in the storm.
I desperately wanted to apologize to Zach for all of it, for dragging him out here and getting us both killed, but I had to keep my free hand on my bandana to hold it down over my mouth. I just had to hope that heaven or hell, we would end up in the same place so I could make my apologies there. Not a chance… After years of questions and disobedience to the Gardeners, there was no way I was going up with Zach.
“Zee–” I began, but then I squinted through my goggles and skidded to a halt.
Zach tugged at my hand as he stumbled forward a few more steps and I yanked him back until he saw them, too. Five dark figures spread out in front of us, heavy cloaks whipping in the sharp wind. Their layered clothes were dusted with salt and their white hands clutched long metal spears. One of the cloaked shapes was small and slender.
When things went stormy, they really went stormy. Crossbows would be useless in the wind and blowing sand, so I jerked my knife from its sheath and saw the dim shape of my partner doing the same. I angled myself to face the Whitefingers edge-on, putting my back to Zach’s so they couldn’t surround either of us.
The wastelanders moved forward, leaning into the wind. Their slow-motion advance didn’t take away the advantage of their longer weapons, though. I might have been able to land a shot with my crossbow at this range, but by the time I got it off my back, I’d be bristling with spears like a barrel cactus.
I ducked the first spear jab and leapt away from another. Zach had to fling himself aside to avoid the darting spears, too, and I no longer felt his back against mine. It didn’t take much to separate us and I wished I had the breath to swear. I managed to grab the haft of the next spear and slashed back. I was rewarded with a pained grunt and a retreating Whitefinger holding a hand over his wrist. This wasn’t going to last long, though. They outnumbered us and had more than twice our reach.
The storm flashed yellow-green and less than a second later, thunder boomed. The heart of the storm was almost on us.
I’m sorry, Zach, I thought. I really fucked this up, didn’t I?
“Rods!” someone shouted into the howling wind.
The Whitefingers jabbed their spears point-first into the sand and leapt away. What the hell? Were they surrendering? But they were winning. Why the hell would they give up now?
Then the short Whitefinger girl appeared in front of me. She stretched one gloved hand out toward Zach, who was standing in a ready combat crouch a few yards away. His eyes went wide and my partner slammed to the ground as though shoved by something even bigger than he was.
“Zee!” I shouted.
I started toward him and the girl tackled me. She wasn’t big, but she caught me off guard and we went down to the earth in a tangle of cloth and flailing limbs. I squirmed and fought to get my arm clear enough to stick my knife into her, but a flash of light blinded me and the afterimage of jagged lightning blazed against the back of my eyelids. Sparks rained down around us and one of the spears glowed white-hot. Struck by the lightning, I realized.
I think Zach shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roar of thunder. The Whitefinger girl was still on top of me and her hipbone dug painfully into my stomach, but she didn’t weigh much. Her body was small and soft against my chest. Her face was covered again, except for her slanted bronze eyes. I think I saw the Whitefinger girl’s mouth move beneath the cloth, but I was still deafened by the thunder and couldn’t hear anything despite our closeness.
Then something smashed into the side of my head. There was another blaze of light — red this time — and then nothing.
