Armageddon's Children Part 8

Hawk had lost two of his own family in the five years he had been living in the underground. The Croaks had gotten one, a little girl he'd named Mouse.

The older boy, Heron, had died in a fall. He could still see their faces, hear their voices, and remember what they had been like. He could still feel the heat of his rage at having failed them.

It took him a long time to reach the outbuilding, working his way s1owly and carefully through the ruins to keep out of sight of the compound guards, which sometimes required that he change directions away from the place he was trying to reach. Cheney stayed lose to him, aware of his caution. But Cheney knew enough about staying alive to avoid being seen in any case. Hawk was always amazed at how anything so big could move so quietly and invisibly. When Cheney didn't want to be seen or heard, you didn't see or hear him. Even now, he would come up on Hawk unexpectedly, appearing from the shadows as if born of mist and darkness. If the boy hadn't been so used to it, he would have jumped out of his skin.

When he reached the shelter leading to the rail system, he slipped down the darkened stairwell to the underground door and rapped three times, twice hard and once soft, then stepped back and waited. Almost immediately the locking device on the other side of the door released, the door opened, and Tessa burst through.

"Hawk!" She breathed his name like a prayer answered and threw her arms around him. "I almost gave up! Where were you?" She began kissing him on his face and mouth. "I was so sure that this time you weren't coming!"

She was always like this, desperate to be with him, convinced he wouldn't appear. She loved him so much that it frightened him, yet it made him feel empowered, too. She gave him a different kind of strength with her love, a strength born of knowing that you could change another person's life just by being who you were. That he felt the same about her reinforced his certainty that by being together anything was possible. He had known it almost from the moment he had first seen her. He had felt it deep inside in a way he had never felt anything else.

He kissed her back now, as eager for her as she was for him.

When she broke away finally, she was laughing. "You'd think we'd never done this. You'd think we'd been waiting to do it all our lives."

She was small and dark, her skin a light chocolate in color, her hair raven black and close-cropped in a silky helmet that glistened even in the darkness. Her eyes were large and wide with surprise, as if everything she was seeing was new and incredibly exciting. She exuded energy and life in a way that no one else could. She made him smile, but it was more than the way he felt about her. She had an enthusiasm that was infectious; she could make you feel good about life even in the bleakest of times and places.

"Look at you," she whispered. "All ragged and dirty and mussed up, like Owl hasn't made you take a bath in a month! Such a boy!" She grinned, and then whispered, "You look wonderful."

He didn't, of course, especially compared with her in her soft leather boots and coat and bright, clean blouse. Compound kids always had better clothes. His jeans and sweatshirt were worn and his sneakers falling apart. But she would never tell him that. She would only tell him what would make him feel good about himself. That was the way she was. She made him ache inside and want to tell her all the good things he had ever thought about her all at once, even the things that he didn't think he could ever tell.

"How is everyone?" She steered him over to the concrete bench set against the far wall and sat him down.

"Good. All safe and sound. Owl sends her love. She misses you. Almost as much as me."

Tessa bit her lip. "I wish she could come back. I wish things weren't so difficult."

He nodded. "You could make things easier. You could come live with us. We don't have a compound, but we don't have a compound's stupid rules, either." He seized her hands. "Do it, Tessa! Come tonight! Become a Ghost! You belong out here with me, not inside those walls!"

She gave him a quick, uneasy grin. "You know the answer, Hawk. Why do you keep asking?"

"Because I don't think your parents should dictate what you do with your life."

"They don't dictate what I do with my life. The choice to stay with them is mine." Her lips compressed in a tight line of frustration. "I can't leave until... My father would survive it, but my mother ... well, you know. She isn't the same since the fall. If she could walk again . . ."

She was stumbling all over herself, trying to get the words out. Her mother had suffered a fall more than a year ago, a hard tumble off stairs onto concrete. She hadn't walked since. It was an event that had changed everything for Tessa, who could barely bring herself to talk about it.

Hawk dropped his gaze. "If she could walk again," he repeated.

Tessa shook her head. "It's more than that. She's crippled on the inside, too. She's broken emotionally. Daddy and I are all she has. It would kill her if she lost either one of us." She reached up and touched his cheek. "You know all this. Why are we talking about it? Why don't you change your mind, instead? Why don't you come live with me? If you did, they might let Owl and the others come inside, too."

His hiss of frustration betrayed his impatience. "You know they won't let anyone come in from the streets. Especially kids."

She gripped his hands. "They would if you married me. They would have to.

It's compound law."

She held him spellbound for a moment with the force of her grip and the intensity of her gaze, but then he shook his head. "Maybe they would allow me in, but not the others. A family sticks together. Besides, marriage is a convention that belongs in the past. It doesn't mean anything anymore."

"It means something to me." She refused to look away. "It means everything." She bent forward and kissed his lips. "What are we supposed to do, Hawk? Are we supposed to keep meeting like this for the rest of our lives? Is this what you want? One hour a week in a concrete windbreak?"

He shook his head slowly, eyes closed, feeling the press of her lips on his. It wasn't even close to what he really wanted, but what you wanted wasn't always what you got. Hardly ever, in fact. They'd had this discussion before-had it almost every time they met. She had begun talking about marriage only recently, however. It was a mark of how desperate she was to find a way to bring them together that she was willing to suggest it openly when she knew how he felt.

"Marriage won't change anything, Tessa. I am already as married to you as I'll ever be. Having an adult stand in front of us and say we're married won't make us any more so. Anyway, I can't live inside a compound. You know that. I have to live on the streets where I can breathe. Someday you'll want that, too. You'll want it enough to come live with me, parents or not."

She nodded more as if to placate than to agree, a sad smile escaping her tightly compressed lips. "Someday."

He wanted to tell her that someday would never come. They had waited on it too long already. Until lately, their hopes and dreams had been enough. Time had slowed and all things had seemed possible. But now he was growing anxious. Tessa seemed no closer to him, no nearer than before. He saw their chances beginning to slip away and the weight of an uncertain world bearing down.

He exhaled in frustration. "Let's talk about something else. I need your help. Tiger's little sister, Persia, has red spot. She needs pleneten. I promised Tiger I would see if I could get her some."

She looked down to where their hands were joined, and then up again. "I get to see you again tomorrow night if I can find some. I guess that's reason enough to try."

"Tessa . . ."

"No, don't say anything else, Hawk. Words only get in the way. Just put your arms around me for a while. Just be with me."

They held each other wordlessly, neither of them speaking, the darkness around deepening with the closing in of night. Hawk listened to the blanketing silence, picking out the faint sounds of small creatures scurrying in the debris and of voices drifting out from behind the walls of the compound. He could feel Tessa's heart beating; he could hear her soft breathing. Now and then she would shift against him, seeking a different closeness. Now and again she would kiss him, and he would kiss her back. He thought of how much he wanted her with him, wanted her to come away and live in the underground. He didn't care about her parents. She belonged with him. They were meant to be together. He tried to communicate this to her simply by thinking it. He tried to make her feel it through the sheer intensity of his determination.

And for the little while that Tessa had asked him for, everything else faded away. Time stretched and slowed and finally stopped entirely.

But then she whispered, "I have to go."

She released him abruptly, as if deciding all at once that they had transgressed. The absence of her warmth left him instantly chilled.

He stood up with her, trying not to show the disappointment he was feeling.

"It hasn't been that long," he protested.

"Longer than you think." She hugged herself, watching his face. "But never long enough, is it?"

"Tomorrow night?"

She nodded. "Tomorrow night."

"Do the best you can for Persia. I know it's asking a lot."

"To help a little girl?" She shook her head. "Not so much."

He hesitated. "Listen, there's one more thing. There might be something new on the streets. The Weatherman found a nest of dead Croaks down by the waterfront, by the cranes. He doesn't know what did it. You haven't heard anything about this, have you?"

She shook her head, her short black hair rippling. "No, nothing. The compound sends foragers out almost every day. No one has reported anything unusual."

"They might not tell you. They don't always tell kids everything."

"Daddy does."

Hawk nodded, not all that convinced that her confidence in her father was well placed. Adults protected their children in strange ways. He took her hands in his own and held them. "Just be careful if you have to go out. Better yet, why don't you stay inside for a while until I know something more."

She smiled, quick and ironic. "Until you can go out and take a look around? Maybe you should worry a little more about yourself. I shouldn't have to do all the worrying for you."

They stood close together in the darkness, not speaking, looking at each other with an intensity that was electric. Hawk was the first to break the silence. "I don't want to let you go."

For a long moment, she didn't reply. Then she tightened her fingers about his and said, "One day, you won't have to."

She said it quietly and without force, but with a calm insistence that suggested it was inevitable. "I know I belong with you. I know that. I will find a way. But you have to be patient. You have to trust me."

"I do trust you. I love you." He bent forward to kiss her so that he wouldn't say anything more, so that he would leave it at that.

She kissed him back. "You better go," she whispered, pressing the words against his lips.

Then she slipped through the doorway leading back into the underground and was gone. He waited until he heard the snick of the heavy lock, and then waited some more because he ached so much he could not make himself move. He waited a long time.

HAWK WALKED BACK through the city with Cheney at his side, the sky roofed by heavy banks of clouds that left everything shrouded in gloom. The buildings cl.u.s.tered silent and empty about him, hollow monoliths, mute witnesses to the ruin they had survived. There were no lights anywhere. Once, this entire city would have been lit, with every window bright and welcoming. Panther had told him so; he had seen it near the end in San Francisco. Owl had read the Ghosts stories in which kids walked streets made bright with lights from lamps. She had read them stories of how the moon shone in a silver orb out of a sky thick with stars glimmering in a thousand pinp.r.i.c.ks against the black.

None of them had ever seen it, but they believed it had been like that.

Hawk believed it would be like that again.

He worked his way through the piles of debris, around derelict cars and cracked pieces of concrete and steel, and past doorways too dark to see into and too dangerous to pa.s.s close by. The city was one huge trap, its jaws waiting to close on the unwary. It was a place of predators and prey. Their shadows moved all around him, some in the alleyways, some in the interiors of the buildings.

They were always there, the remnants of the old world, the refuse left over from the destruction and the madness. He felt a certain sympathy for the creatures that prowled the night, hunting and being hunted. They hadn't wanted this any more than he had. They, too, were victims of humankind's reckless behavior and poor judgment.

He thought of Tessa and tried to figure out what else he could do to persuade her to come to live with him. But her attachment to her parents was so strong that he couldn't see any way around it. He resented it, but he understood it, too. He knew that her feelings for them must be as strong as his own were for her. But things could not continue like this. Sooner or later, something would happen to change them. He knew it instinctively. What worried him was that when it did, Tessa would be standing in the way.

He would talk to her about it again tomorrow night. He would talk to her about it every night until she changed her mind.

When he reached the underground, he paused to take a careful look around, making sure that nothing was tracking him. Satisfied, he went into the building that led down to their home. He went quickly now, Cheney at his side, feeling suddenly tired and ready to sleep. The heavy door was barred and locked, and he gave the requisite series of taps to alert Owl of his presence.

But it was not Owl who opened the door. It was Candle. She stood just inside as he entered, small and waif-like in her nightdress, red hair tousled.

Hawk waited for Cheney as he padded over to his accustomed sleeping spot, and then closed and locked the door behind them. When he glanced back at Candle, he saw for the first time how big and scared her eyes were.

He knelt in front of her right away. "What is it?"

"A dream," she whispered. "Owl went to bed, and I stayed up to wait for you and I had a dream. I saw something. It was big and scary."

"What was it, Candle?" he asked. He put his hands on her thin shoulders and found that she was shaking. He drew her close to him at once, hugging her.

"Tell me."

He could no longer see her face, pressed close to him as she was, but he could feel the shake of her head against his shoulder. "I couldn't be sure. But it's coming here, and if it finds us, it will hurt us." She paused, her breath catching in her throat. "It will kill us."

A vision, Hawk thought without saying so to the little girl. And Candle's visions were never wrong. He ran his hand along her silky hair, then down her thin back. She was still shaking.

"We have to leave right away," she whispered. "Right now."

"Shhhh," he soothed, tightening his arms to steady her. "That's enough for tonight, little one." Right now, she had said. At once he thought of Tessa.

Chapter EIGHT.

ALTHOUGH LOGAN TOM hadn't expected to be able to track down the slave camp-hadn't even been certain, in fact, that it was there-he stumbled on it almost without trying. Daylight was failing and darkness closing all about the countryside as he drove west out of Iowa into whatever lay beyond-he couldn't remember and didn't care to stop long enough to check maps that no longer had relevance-when he saw the glow of the watch fires burning on the horizon like a second setting of the sun. Crimson against the pale shading of twilight, the glow drew his attention instantly, signaling its presence in a way that all but invited him in for a closer look. He had seen this glow before-in other times, at other camps-and he realized quickly enough what it was and drove toward it.

Darkness had fallen completely by the time he arrived at a dirt road that led in from the main highway, driving the S-l 50 with the lights off and the big engine idled down to a low hum. As he approached, the watchtowers and the barricades took shape and the slave pens became recognizable. The glow emanated from a combination of lights powered by solar generators and pillars of flame rising out of fire pits. The latter gave the landscape a h.e.l.lish and surreal look, as if devil imps with pitchforks might be prowling the countryside. The camp was huge, stretching two miles across and at least as deep. It had been a stockyards once, he guessed, that had been turned by the once-men and their mentors to a different use. The odor of cows and manure and hay was strong, although he knew that the smell could be deceiving and its source something else entirely.

By the time he cut the engine, still well back from the watch-towers and their lights, he could hear the mewling of the prisoners. He sat motionless in the AV, ashamed and enraged by the sounds, unable to stop himself from listening. He could make out shadowy forms moving back and forth behind the fences in the hazy glow of the lights, a listless, shuffling ma.s.s. Humans become slaves, become the living dead, made to work and to breed by the once-men and their demon masters. It was the fate decreed for all who weren't killed outright during the hunts. It was the punishment visited on humans for their foolishness and inaction when the collapse of civilization began, and it was horrifying beyond imagining.

But, then, he didn't have to imagine it. He had seen it so often that it was burned into his memory. It haunted him in his dreams and in his waking. It would not let him be.

He wondered for the first time what he was doing here. He had come looking for the camp in the way he had looked for such camps for years, a Knight-errant in search of injustice. He had done so without thinking about it because this was what he was given to do, all he knew to do to try to set things right. He would attack the camps and free those enslaved. He would kill the once-men and their demon masters. He would disrupt the breeding operations and destroy the slave pens. He would do whatever he could to right just a little of what had been turned so terribly wrong.

But his purpose in coming to this particular camp was unclear to him. He had been given a task already, one monumental importance. He was to find the gypsy morph and identify it, then serve as its protector as it led a small band of humans to a place where humanity would rebuild itself in the wake of an approaching cataclysm that would finish what the demons had begun. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that task; Two Bears had made it clear that the future of humanity was riding on whether or not he was able to carry it out Such responsibility did not allow for deviations or personal indulgences. He could not afford to risk himself in an attack that was in essence, both. However terrible it was to do so, he must pa.s.s by this camp and continue on.

Yet how could he? How could he abandon these people and still call himself a Knight of the Word?

He tried focusing on the reward Two Bears had promised him. If he did as he'd been asked, the demon responsible for the murder of his family would be delivered up to him-that old man in his gray slouch hat and long cloak, that monster with his knowing smile and his eyes as cold as death. It was a bold promise, but he believed the Word would not have made it if it could not be kept. He wanted that demon more than he wanted anything. He had searched for it for years, thinking that sooner or later in the course of his struggle he would find it. It seemed impossible to him. Even Michael, who had a knack for predicting how things would work out, had believed that eventually they would find that old man again; that they could not avoid doing so.

But he had never seen the demon again, not once, not even the barest glimpse.

Still, he knew it was out there. He knew it the way he knew that the promise would be honored. He knew it the way he knew that the finding of that demon was the end purpose of his life.

He sat staring into the distance, wrestling with his conscience, then started up the engine on the AV once more, turned it around, and drove away from the camp and its smells and its sounds. He drove until he could no longer see its fiery brightness, until the horizon behind him was just a hazy glow. By then he was back near the main highway, alone on the flats in the darkness. He parked in the shelter of a copse of withered trees, set the perimeter alarm system on the AV, ate because he knew he should, and settled down to sleep.

HE STANDS WITH the others in the shadows that fill the gullies that crisscross the terrain at the rear of the camp. It is nearing midnight, and the world is a black hole beneath a heavily overcast sky. A light rain is falling, something of a minor miracle in this farmland become desert. No wind blows to stir the silt; no breeze cools the stifling heat. Save for the moans and cries of the imprisoned, no sounds disturb the deep night silence.

He looks down at his weapon, a blunt, short-barreled flechette called a Scattershot. Michael has given it to him to carry, trusting him to use it wisely and safely. He is familiar with weapons, having been trained to use them since Michael took him from the compound on the night his parents and siblings died.

The Scattershot fires a single charge that sweeps clean an area of up to twenty feet; it is a weapon meant to create a broad killing ground. He has been told that it will help against the things that will come at him, but that his best protection lies in keeping close to his companions.

"Do not stray, boy," Michael has warned. "This is a dangerous business. If I did not think you needed to learn from it, I would not have brought you at all. Don't make me regret my decision."

He does not wish to disappoint Michael, whom he loves and respects and to whom he owes his life. He has dedicated himself to making certain that Michael never regrets having rescued him that first night. He grips his weapon tightly, waiting for the signal to advance. They have come to attack and destroy this camp, to free the humans imprisoned within, to disrupt the work and breeding programs set in place by the once-men who wield the power of life and death over those brought here from the compounds.

It is his first time on such an expedition. He is twelve years old.

"Stand ready," Michael whispers to those he leads, and the word is pa.s.sed up and down the line.

When they attack, they come out of the gullies and shadows like wolves, howling and crouched low against the open ground, racing to gain the fences before the guards have a chance to stop them. Logan stays close beside Michael, shadowing him as he charges through the smoky haze of the fires, weapon leveled, safety off. He howls with the others, then cringes as automatic weapons fire sweeps through the darkness in a deadly rain. Most of the bullets miss, but a few find their targets, and men go down in crumpled heaps. In the towers and at the gates, once-men surge forward to repel the attack.