Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill) (25 page)

The houses were not palatial, so much as McMansions. With their abandonment, decay and collapse had set in with little respite. Most of the windows were already shattered—this could have been from general looting or, finding nothing, the looters could have taken their frustration out on the glass. Doors were swinging loose on hinges; mold was already well on its way to having a hold on carpeting and walls. Inside the first house, there were signs that small wildlife had nested in parts of the kitchen. In the second, Titus was startled by a flock of what seemed to be sparrows, but the coloring was off. By the third house, he had managed to scrounge up a few canned goods—refried beans, fruit, and some green veggies.

It wasn’t much, and he feared the others were coming up empty as well. By the fourth house, he didn’t have much hope of finding more food—but they’d come across a trove of clothing in this one. So much he sent his team back to the transport with this. If nothing else, this made the trip worth the time and aggravation—while the team cleared out the clothing, and there was an attic filled with it, Titus moved on to the last house on the street before they moved on around the corner. He wanted to keep going until they were up against twilight. Once that kicked in, even he didn’t want to be anywhere near the Hill. He’d seen the results—more accurately the aftermath—of those that had pushed their luck.

The last house was unsettling in that it had all of its windows intact and the front door and garage were locked. This gave Titus hope that there was something left inside and worry that someone might still be living in the house. Pym, however, didn’t feel the latter possible because this place had too long now been rumored to have been a favorite haunt of those coming off the hill and those brave enough to forage this no-man’s-land of shattered homes and abandoned businesses.

Giving up finding an easy, straightforward way in, he ended up opening the front door with a pry bar. Slipping this back into the large rucksack with the canned goods, Pym pulled the automatic and entered. The house was semi-lit—pulling back the curtains in the front room, he could see that, excepting for some dust and a small amount of mold from the ever-present humidity, the first floor was immaculate. In the pantry, there were a few cans of food squirreled away at the back of a bottom shelf—all of it Spam. At least it was something approximating meat. Putting these into the sack, he looked about for any hidden doors. These were common in the city’s better homes. The general answer he was given as to why was an equally general fear of the masses.

The city and the country in general were no strangers to riots and coups. As a result, those of means had taken to creating well-hidden boltholes for hiding both their families and their valuables. Food had become a valuable. About to give up, he accidentally came across a spring lock on the bottom of the back shelf opposite from where he found the Spam. When pressed, there was the light snick of a lock and a door of shelves folded in on a hidden closet. With no light and no window, this was pitch black. Snapping on his penlight, there was a muffled cry followed by a whimper.

With the sound, the automatic was out and the safety flipped off. “Come out.”

No answer.

“Either come out or I will fire.”

There was a shuffle from around a corner he’d not seen and two figures came into view. Both were dressed in what could have been called rags, but even this would have been generous. The smell, as they approached, was thick and heavy with the odor of unwashed bodies and something else, which had a hint of barbecue. Once around the corner, the two spotted the man and clung to one another. These were two of the saddest figures he’d ever seen in the city.

Once his eyes adjusted, Titus turned off the light and motioned the two forward with the weapon. Slowly they edged out. As they did so, Pym backed out into the kitchen. Partly this was to keep a safe distance; though they looked harmless, it didn’t mean they were; and partly this was because the stench in the closed space was overpowering. Standing beside the fridge, he got a first good look at the raggedy pair. Beneath what appeared to be rotting rags, the couple were women. Both were emaciated—little more than walking, or crawling, skeletons. “What,” in the kindest voice he could offer, “are you doing here?” It was a foolish question, but it was all he could think to ask.

“Food.” This appeared to be the elder; when she looked up, however, the woman could not have been more than fifteen or so years older than the younger.

The pair appeared so similar, the younger had to have been the daughter. “Your child?” Pym asked.

“Yes,” pushing the younger, protectively, behind her. At that moment, there was a sound from the front door and a team member called his name.

“Get back in the closet and don’t make a sound.”

 Not needing to be told again, the pair disappeared.

Once he’d sent the others on around the corner, he returned to the pantry and unlocked the door. “Come out—they’re gone.” Standing, neither could have been more than five foot four, they shakily came into the kitchen. As they did so, he moved them around to the back of the table and checked out the closet. It was filled to bursting with non-perishables. Pym smiled, shook his head, and rejoined the women. “Where are you from?”

The elder pointed south.

“The Hill?”

She nodded, and the acknowledgement was filled with fear. To be caught off the Hill for any of them was a death sentence, but it had not stopped any of them from foraging or occasionally washing out of the Hill in a great mass. They’d always been beaten back by the government, but Titus was not certain that would be the case for much longer.

Pym should have killed them, but the pathetic sight they made created in the man a sense of pathos he’d not experienced since before he’d signed on the freighter, and that he could still feel gave him hope for the future. “Okay,” he spoke after a moment, “get back in there and don’t make a sound.”

“You’re not...” the younger began, but her mother shushed her.

“No, I’m not. What are your names?”

“I am Putri; this is my daughter Dian.” After a brief moment, Putri continued in a thick south island accent. “Why aren’t you going to kill us?”

“Who’s to say I’m not?”

“You’re not, but why?”

“Just get in there. When you hear us go, I recommend you take everything in there to wherever you live. Whatever you cannot carry, you should bury out back after dark.”

Not needing to be told twice the mother dragged her daughter back into the pantry. The girl struggled a bit and stared, hard, back over her shoulder at Pym. They were both beautiful, even after the starvation they’d suffered—along with anything else they had experienced on the Hill—but he didn’t have the time or, to be honest, the interest. When the lock snicked again, he closed the outer pantry door and rejoined his team. Why he hadn’t killed them and taken the food was unclear. He could have guessed at sympathy—even empathy—but Titus was not certain. Increasingly, Pym found himself acting from uncertain first principles, and this bothered him but had not prevented the existential Ballets Russes.

“At least we found some clothing and canned goods,” Synon observed as they checked the back of the transport.

“Lander found some gas, as well,” a Fay observed as he raised two gas cans and kicked a third.

“May even have paid to make this trip,” Pym observed.

“Bloody dangerous,” Lander said coming around with another armful of clothing.

“Good for morale—best head west before the Hill wakes up.” Pym’s observation turned everyone’s eyes to the sky and where the sun had been westering for some time. This brought the Fay’s attention back into focus, and jockeying for political position was again put to rest—but it would return as soon as they got far enough away from the Hill to again breathe.

They drove for almost an hour in silence. The ride was taking longer because Bannly insisted upon giving the Hill and the Dead Districts encircling this a wide berth. Once they’d cleared these outer, and increasingly anxious, neighborhoods, Pym broke the silence with a number of questions he had after meeting Dian and Putri. “Is everyone up there dangerous?”

“Where?” Synon asked.

“The Hill.”

“Did you see anything?” Bannly asked—suspicion and anxiety wavering in the voice.

“Met a mother and daughter.”

“You didn’t kill them?” Synon’s tone told him she already knew the answer.

“If you’d have seen them, you’d have had a hard time doing it too.”

“Maybe,” Bannly answered, voice low, “but you should have done it, nonetheless.”

“They were sent to the Hill for a reason,” Synon followed up.

“They were more than half-starved, dressed in rotting rags.”

“Alone they can look pathetic and be harmless,” Bannly observed.

“But,” Synon picked up, “they never are alone. You put a group of them together and you have something else entirely.”

“What would that be?” Pym’s voice sarcastic and hard.

“A horde,” Bannly answered.

Titus twisted around to look at the old man. They were alone, so he felt a little easier about speaking. “If they are representative of the Hill...”

“Obviously they aren’t,” Synon answered.

“You didn’t see them, so how could you know?” Bannly answered for her.

“Because you are alive.”

“That’s melodrama.”

“You’ve not had any direct experience of the Hill and what it is capable of—hope you never have to find out.”

“This,” frustration creeping into Pym’s tone, “is why the districts around the Hill are abandoned.”

“What,” Synon asked, “do you mean?”

“Unreasoning fear.”

“Those districts are empty, when not taken by the Sweats, because they’d been preyed upon by the horde.”

“Hordes don’t prey—they are locust.” Twisting about to stare out the window, Pym didn’t speak for several blocks. He could sense both of them watching him. Eventually Synon spoke.

“Don’t let anyone know you let them go—or saw them.”

“Why?” his voice harder than he’d intended to make it.

“People fear the Hill. You may see this as unreasonable, but if anyone finds out you did not kill them, that would be the end of you with the Fay.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“She is,” Bannly leaned forward placing a hand on Titus’s shoulder, “you simply don’t know what they are capable of.”

“I’ve only ever heard stories, and those don’t seem all that believable.”

“No one believes them until they see—then it is normally too late,” Synon answered.

“You’ve seen?” Pym asked—he was interested now.

“We both have, and we’ve heard similar stories from many we’ve known and have been lucky enough to survive.”

“What would happened to me if others learned of this?”

“The generous estimate, because you are foreign and have done so much for the Fay, is that you’d be turned out,” Synon answered.

“Just for letting a mother and daughter go with some food?” He wasn’t going to tell them about the closet of canned food.

“You gave them food?” Bannly shouted so loud from the back seat that Synon lost control of the car and they swerved into the other lane. Pulling back, the woman growled.

“Keep it down. Shit!” spitting the last word.

“Sorry.” The voice quiet, but angry. “If Lander, or anyone else, learned of any of this, you won’t just be finished—you could end up dead.”

“He’s right,” Synon again.

“We need to make contact with Dragon Bone Hill.”

“Are you fucking insane?” This time it was Synon doing the yelling, but Bannly joined in on the scorched cat chorus. When the old man pushed too far up between the seats for Pym’s comfort, he received a soft push back with an elbow. He wanted to jab him hard with it, but these two were his staunchest supporters, and Titus needed both of them—desperately.

“I’m not crazy. You two have seen how it is going in the city.” There was a silence as the two waited for him to make his point. When he got like this, he noticed others tended to listen because he was either to make a lot of sense or demonstrate he was effectively mad. Pym supposed they’d assume the latter. “The city is falling apart, and that fall is picking up speed—wouldn’t you agree?”

Both, with reluctance, did.

“Sooner or later, Salazar is going to fold up shop and disappear or form a coalition with the Cartel and the Wall—if the last is even possible.”

Why was he even bothering with this if he was leaving soon? Titus, if nothing else, liked to cover the angles. What if the guards did try to kill them and he survived but was still on the inside of the city? What if the guards reneged on the deal and he was stuck here? What if Glenna and her friends turned on him and he managed to survive? In two of those instances, he would most likely be dead—but what if he wasn’t? If by some miracle he saw the other side of any of the betrayals, he needed a fallback position. This might be it. “What do we do if that happens?”

“Why should we do anything?” Bannly from the back seat—voice low with anger.

“If our enemies begin to join together, how long before they turn on us—especially after we’ve taken the markets to the South?” There was an unhealthy and dangerous silence. “We need to find friends.”