Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (8 page)

“You’re on time,” Peymer said, surprised.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Some of us didn’t think you’d show up at all. Thought you
might take it as a trick, or an effort to get you by yourself so we could beat
the tar out of you.”

“I did think that,” Merrick said.

“And you still came? Well, now… either you’re a glutton for
punishment, or you’re just dying to become one of us.”

Merrick shook his head. “Try again.”

“You was hungry and thought them zoomheads might make you
breakfast,” said Mellobar in his northern drawl.

Merrick ground his teeth as the others laughed. “Just tell me
where the place is so we can get this over with.”

“Head west down Hilliard. We’ll shadow you a block or two
behind. After about six blocks, you’ll see a Unimart on your right. Go around
back and knock on the stockroom door. Make it loud enough so we can hear. When
they answer, tell them you’re looking to buy some zoom. Go inside and take a
look around, but don’t act suspicious. Hopefully you’ll come across the
stockpile we’ve been looking for. Here, you’ll need this to pay for it.” Peymer
handed him a length of copper wire.

“These are gangers, right? I’m unarmed. What’s to stop them
from taking my hardware and kicking me back out on the street? Or worse?”

“You don’t know much about how the business works, do you?
They deal in repeat custom, not intimidation. Once you’re hooked, they’re happy
to keep you coming back for more. You keep bringing them the hardware, they
don’t have to find it themselves.”

Merrick knew plenty about how the business worked. He’d seen
his father tumble into a life of addiction when he was just a boy. He’d spent
plenty of time in the outer rooms of dens like the one he was about to enter,
waiting while Gerry Bouchard filled his lungs in the back. But that didn’t make
him feel any safer from these gangers’ suspicions. What they might do with him
if they thought he was up to something was anyone’s guess. “We ready to get
moving?” he asked, his heart already beginning to throb with fear.

“Not just yet,” said Peymer, pointing. “You forgot to take
your gloves off.”

“I’m not taking them off,” Merrick said.

Once they saw he didn’t have fingernails, they’d have
something else to harass him about. He could already hear them joking about how
fat boy had gotten so hungry he’d tried to eat his way through a concrete wall.

“Take them off. Those are shooting gloves. You’ll stick out
if you wear them.”

“I’ll stick out worse if I don’t. They’ll see my scar, and
they’ll know I used to be a comrade,” he said, thinking quickly.

Peymer frowned. “Fine. But if you compromise the mission
because of this, I’ll have your hide for it, scars and all.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Merrick fled the mess hall to the
sound of their jokes, now whispered as they felt the daylight coming on.

By the time Merrick was outside, the Gray Revenants had
fallen silent. It was still dark, the streets cast in silver starlight beneath
a film of pink morning clouds. He heard no sign of them as he began his trek
down the shattered streets, and when he looked over his shoulder there was no
one in sight. But somehow, he felt them. He’d walked these streets a dozen
times with a gun in his hands and a squad at his back. When you were a Scarred
man in the city south, you had to rely on things beyond sight and sound to stay
alive.

The Unimart stood along the Hilliard Street sidewalk behind a
single-row parking lot, its brick exterior broken only by the large windows
that had been shattered, boarded up, broken into, and sealed again with
whatever was on hand. A sinkhole had opened a great rift in the asphalt on the
near side of the street, so Merrick had to circle around the building to find
the back door.

Gangers paced the flat rooftop, brandishing fireman’s axes
and nail-spiked baseball bats. One yelled down at him as he rounded the corner.
“Hey, where you think you’re going?”

Merrick’s breath caught in his throat. He pointed toward the
back alley, holding up the length of copper wire Peymer had given him. The
ganger squinted down at him through the half-light. When he saw the wire, he
ushered Merrick onward with a wave of his bat.

The alley was infested with sandflies and ripe with the
perfume of old garbage. A man and woman were lying on the ground, bone-thin and
half-asleep beneath a quilted blanket full of holes, and Merrick had to step
over them to continue. Further on, a man sat against the chain-link fence
behind a stack of moldy pallets, his eyes glassy and vacant.

Merrick found the door and knocked hard, as Peymer had
instructed. He waited a long time, but no one came. He was about to knock again
when the door slid inward and the drawn yellow face of an elderly man appeared
in the narrow slit between.

“Whadda you want?” he slurred.

As Merrick studied the face before him, he realized the man
wasn’t nearly as old as he’d first thought—probably no more than five or ten
years his senior. His pink skin was covered in crusty red lesions, his hair a
mass of dark brown strewn with shining gray. A tangled beard clung to his
receding chin and the skin was stretched tight across his cheekbones.

“I’m here for some zoom—uh, dope. I want to get high,”
Merrick stammered, feeling as awkward as he must’ve sounded.

“What’s your trade?”

Merrick flashed his copper.

The man eyed it, chewing his upper lip with teeth like
rotting corn. He pulled the door open and stepped aside. Merrick entered a vast
room, as black as a cave in the pre-dawn stillness. He gave a start when the
door slammed shut behind him, but he hoped it was too dark for the man to have
noticed.

“This way,” the man muttered, moving past Merrick like a
shadow.

The man led him through a maze of pallets, high shelving
units, cardboard boxes, and plastic crates. Merrick could hardly see, though
the sharp, biting smell of zoom was thick in the air and all too familiar. Soon
the walls began to glow with an eerie red light, and they emerged into a nest
of couches where the flame from an antique brass oil lamp flickered beneath its
stained-glass shroud.

Figures lay sprawled across the couches and low cushions,
unmoving in the damp haze of the room, while tendrils of smoke twisted toward
the high ceiling. Merrick tried not to breathe.
I shouldn’t have come
,
he decided.
I should’ve let Peymer and his cronies do this on their own
.

“Wait here,” said the man. “Sit.” He stood there until
Merrick took a seat on an empty couch, then turned and vanished behind a stack
of crates.

Merrick was back on his feet in an instant. He wove his way
through the room after the man, poking his head around a stack of crates to see
what was beyond. A long hallway ran between the building’s brick wall and
another stretch of shelves. At the far end, two gangers stood guard at an open
doorway, where a cold blue light was shining through a curtain of clear plastic
flaps.

Merrick drew back as one of the gangers looked up, hoping he
hadn’t been spotted. Then, feeling his way along, he slid into the space behind
the shelves, heading away from the lantern’s glowing red light and squeezing
into darkness again. He made it halfway down before he hit a dead-end and could
go no further. Ducking down to peer through the shelves, he got a glimpse of
what was beyond the doorway.

A room, brightly lit in that strange blue overtone. Through
the clear plastic, the blurred shapes of half a dozen naked figures were
sifting through the contents of a rickety brown folding table. The flaps
darkened, and the elderly-looking man brushed them aside and turned down the
hallway.

Oh, shit
. Merrick darted back the way he’d come,
trying not to stumble, struggling to remember the location of every box and
beam he’d passed on his way there. His heart was pounding, but it wasn’t just
nerves anymore. As he slipped into the red-lit nest and flung himself onto one
of the couches, his head fluttered with an unexpected rush. The sensation that
came over him then was like the first wave in a moment of pleasure, a
gratifying surge like nothing he’d ever felt before.

The man rounded the stack of crates a split second later,
carrying something in one hand. He sat on the couch beside Merrick and lifted
the object. It was a small pouch; a rectangle of plastic shopping bag, folded
in half and stitched closed with fishing line. Inside the pouch, purple zoom
crystals bulged like massive grains of salt.

Merrick handed the man his copper wire and took the pouch,
slipping it into the pocket of his tattered jeans. When he made to stand, the
man barred an arm across his chest to keep him in his seat. Merrick felt weak
and dizzy and serene, somehow unable to overpower him or too content to try.
Something inside him melted, and he felt his trepidations breaking loose like a
river’s tide.

“Don’t you want to try first?” The lantern light turned the
man’s smile the color of blood.

“That’s alright,” Merrick said. “I’m going.”

“What’s your hurry? We’ll get you purped in no time.” The man
produced a small pipe and rapped it on the table to knock out the residue. With
a snap and a flick of his fingers, he urged Merrick to hand him the pouch
again.

Merrick scanned the nest, trying to remember which direction
he’d entered from, wondering if he could find his way back out. His head was
foggy, his thoughts sluggish, and the shadows that fell from the towering
shelves seemed to undulate like river weeds, straying from their familiar
shapes to drift on murky tides. Merrick felt another moment of elation,
followed by a flood of warmth in his cheeks, like a bath filling up and rising
in over his ears.

For a moment he forgot everything. Everything about where he
was, when it was, who he was. He looked down to find the man’s bony fingers wriggling
into his pocket like worms on the line, fishing out the pouch and spilling a
few of the fat grains of purple salt into his open palm. Merrick was floating,
wavering with the blur. The man reached out to pull the stained-glass shroud
off the lantern, but he burned his hand and cursed.

Merrick laughed. This was the funniest, most amusing thing
he’d seen in all his life, and his laugh came easy, rippling from his chest, a
stone in a pond.

The man used a potholder to set the shroud aside and began to
cook the pipe over the flame. The purple salt began to melt and flow into a
bubbling morass. The first wisp of smoke rose from the soup, and the man shook
it to loosen the rest.

Merrick’s eyes were closed when he felt the pipe’s warm
ceramic touch on his lips. He took it in his hands and pushed it away,
resisting the man’s firm grip. The smell of it was suffocating, but also
familiar. It made him think of his father, the man who had beaten him and
emasculated him—the man who had left him in alleys like the one he’d just come
through, afraid and alone.

One time, when his father had left him in the street and
entered a tall blue rowhouse with white shutters, a group of hooligans had
chased Merrick for blocks and blocks, until he’d hidden in an overturned garbage
can in a back alley. When he’d finally emerged hours later and gone back to
find his father, the man had been delirious with paranoia. Reeking of zoom,
he’d scolded Merrick for running away and given him one of the worst beatings
of his life.

“What are you up to?” the man sitting beside him on the couch
asked him now. “You didn’t come here to get purple. What are you about,
mister?”

“I have to go,” Merrick insisted. “I want to leave. Show me
the way out.”

“Not ‘til you tell me why you’re here.” He held the pipe to
Merrick’s lips again.

Merrick leaned away and squirmed down into the couch, trying
to escape but too disoriented to resist. “I don’t want to use it all up.”

“Bullshit. Any junkie come in here wants it quick as he can
get it.”

“I want to leave,” he repeated.

The man was furious now, dominated by his paranoia, just as
Merrick’s father had often been while using. “You’re spying on us. You tell me
who you are. Who sent you?”

“I’m not spying. I just came for some dope. I want to go.”
Merrick found his voice and his feet at the same time. He shoved the man aside,
forgetting about the zoom, and lurched to his feet. He was stumbling over boxes
and bodies with equal carelessness, hurrying into the dark with his hands
stretched out in front of him.

The supermarket’s backroom was large, however; maybe even
bigger than the sales floor in front. Merrick felt his way past the shelves and
pallets, moving toward some hope of daylight. The red light faded, and the
darkness enveloped him. Hard objects struck his shins, his knees, his arms.
Although his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the cloud of intoxication was
making the dim shapes of the obstacles ahead wobble and twitch like some
bizarre living maze.

He’d gone the wrong way. He was lost among the stacks. And the
mad, paranoid junkie was somewhere close behind him, shouting and screaming for
his confession. Calling for the gangers to come and take him.

CHAPTER 8

Esteemed

Wooden cups clinked on the refectory tables as Sister
Gallica brought the Order to silence. The noon meal had been a light affair in
advance of the feast to come later; mulled cider, fresh greens tossed in
vinegar, and warm thinbread, straight from Sister Deniau’s ovens. Everyone
turned their attention toward Gallica, who shushed the clinking cups and spoke
aloud.

“Tonight’s ceremonies warrant an announcement. First, we
congratulate the nine new initiates who will pledge themselves this evening to
become acolytes of the Most High Infernal Mouth.”

The room burst into applause. The initiates blushed and
smiled, though two of their number had not lived to finish their induction. The
first had been killed by the Cypriests while trying to escape the basilica. The
second had fallen ill and died of a sour stomach.

“We congratulate Sister Bastille on the day of her calling,”
said Gallica. “We are pleased that she has decided to join the ranks of the
Esteemed.”

More applause.

“Tonight will see the elevation ceremonies of Mother
Armistead, Mother Fortier, Father Boudreaux, and our very own Father Soleil.” Gallica
waited for the applause to die. “Tonight also marks a long-anticipated occasion
for Brother Liero, Sister Dominique, and I. In the wake of Brother Soleil’s
elevation to Father, we have chosen his successor. For those of you who have
never met Brother Froderic, he has held charge of the storehouses for many
years now. He has brought many souls into the fold, led many evangelistic
excursions into the outside world, and served the Mouth faithfully in his
dealings with the heathens. As a shining example of humility and virtue in all
he does, we can think of no one better to elect as the fourth member of the
Most High than our dear Brother Froderic.”

Applause.

“Unfortunately, Brother Froderic is away on mission even now.
Despite his absence, we have decided to call him to the Most High during
tonight’s ceremonies as a symbolic gesture of his new standing. We trust that
those of you among the Esteemed will exercise reverence during the ceremony,
behaving no differently than if he were himself present. Upon his return, we
will equip him sufficiently to take on his new role.”

This is all wrong
, Bastille thought, as the tables
erupted in applause once more.
Brother Froderic is dead. I saw him die. I
took the key off his neck and used it to re-enter the basilica. Gallica knows
it. Liero and Dominique must know it too. They’re lying to us all
. Bastille
supposed the lie itself didn’t matter all that much, except that it made her
wonder what they were up to.

“One final announcement of a more serious nature,” Gallica was
saying. “Some of you have been asking about the three acolytes who were rumored
to have disappeared sometime before the attack a few weeks ago. We wish to
assure you that these acolytes have been accounted for. Brother Mortial, Sister
Jeanette, and Sister Adeleine were, in fact, killed during the fighting.”

Sympathetic murmurs and mournful sighs rose across the room.

“In the confusion, it seems they became disoriented and ran
through the gates, where they were—” Gallica paused for effect, “—attacked and
beaten to death by the vicious gray-coated heathens who assaulted our fair
basilica. Their bodies were stolen away during the ensuing tumult, likely to be
desecrated by the undevoured heathens, and are thus lost to us. The Most High
have chosen to honor these three martyred acolytes with nameplates on the Wall
of the Lost.”

The applause this time was somber and brief. Bastille knew
this, too, was a lie. She had watched Brother Mortial and the others leave with
the Scarred Comrades long before the day of the attack.
Deceit upon deceit;
falsehood upon falsehood
, she thought.
Liars, all
. And now, she was
prepared to become one of them.

That night, in the great subterranean den beneath the
basilica’s north wing, where the Mothers labored among the tombs and the
Order’s most sacred ceremonies and rituals were held, Sister Bastille stood
before the assemblage to pledge her life to the Most High Infernal Mouth as a
member of the Esteemed. The initiates-turned-acolytes were arrayed across the
stage’s limestone steps in their brand-new purple robes. Bastille stood before
the altar, her own robes sullied with traces of the bloodstains she hadn’t been
able to remove.

Fires burned in braziers of hammered bronze, their shadows
dancing along the carved stone pillars lining the room. Smoke vented from
Brother Liero’s censer as he waved the bright golden canister around Sister
Bastille’s head, enveloping her in a sweet flowery perfume. Bastille had been
nervous earlier, but now that she was here, it all seemed so right. Despite
what she had discovered about the Order’s true purpose, becoming one of the
Esteemed was a great honor. She felt humbled to finally see the fruition of her
hard work and dedication.

When Brother Liero finished the commencement ritual, the
lower priests and acolytes were dismissed. The outer doors were closed and
barred. A panel opened in the wall behind the altar. Brother Liero led Bastille
through the opening while those of the Esteemed classes filtered through behind
them. Mothers Thayer and Vicault closed the panel, shutting everyone into the
cramped inner sacristy.

Ornate wooden cabinets ran along the chamber’s rear wall,
their high peaks jutting beneath vaulted ceilings that made the room feel
deceptively large. Spare robes hung from hooks on one side; cups and dishes
containing sacramental materials lay on the counter. Brother Liero lowered his
hood, prompting everyone else to do the same.

“Those beyond our walls believe that the end of the world has
come and gone,” said Brother Liero. “We alone know the truth behind such
fallacies. The end has many names, but we are the keepers of its true name.
Sister Bastille, you are here today to accept the knowledge of that name. You
have chosen to give yourself wholly to the Order as one of the Esteemed. In doing
so, you take up the mantle of ascendency and affirm your calling as Guardian of
the False World. Repeat after me.”

The high priest spoke the words, and Bastille repeated them.
“Upon pain of death, I do swear to protect the secrets of the Order with my whole
life, and with my unlife beyond. Nothing I say or do in the hallowed presence
of the Esteemed from this day forth shall I repeat in the presence of any
other. The secrets I protect are absolute. My life is forfeit in all things
concerning their protection. As Esteemed Priestess of the Most High Order, I
pledge to oppose the True World with every cord of my being, and to the fullest
extent of my ability. The Aionach is the only world—the False World—and my
actions are bound to its fate.”

Liero blinked away a drop of stinging sweat and cleared his
throat. “With this Arcadian Star, I hereby entrust to you, Sister Bastille, the
fate of the False World. Kneel.”

Bastille did as she was told, falling to one knee on the cold
stone floor.

“The name of the end is Arcadia. The key which opens
paradise; the world the Aionach was meant to be.” He slipped the pendant around
Bastille’s neck, and she felt the familiar weight of the three-pointed star
come to rest between her breasts. “I now proclaim you benefactor of the false
existence—past, present, and future. I grant you unrestricted privilege to the
mysteries therein. Rise, Esteemed Sister, and go forth as Protector of the
Aionach.”

There were tears in Sister Dominique’s eyes when Bastille
came to her feet.
So the witch-woman really does believe in this hogwash
,
Bastille thought.
I’ll waste no time in putting these unrestricted
privileges of mine to good use
.

Her portion of the ceremony finished, Bastille took her place
beside Liero as the Mothers and Fathers shuffled forward to be elevated. When
it was Soleil’s turn, the old man stepped to the front and stood like a ruin,
staring straight ahead with a sort of off-kilter slackness. He’d recovered well
from his Enhancements, and he made no sound or movement as Brother Liero doused
him with the sacraments and spoke the incantations.

Good riddance to you, you old degenerate
, Bastille
wanted to say.
Making you a Father is the best thing I’ve ever done. I hope
some heathen skins you alive and chokes on the NewHeart I put inside you. It’s
what you’d both deserve
.

When the ceremony was done, the Mothers opened the panel to
let everyone back out into the larger, cooler sanctuary. Sister Bastille felt
no different now that she was one of the Esteemed, in the same way a birthday seldom
makes one feel a year older in an instant. Still, part of her knew the answers
she’d been seeking were at her fingertips now, closer than they’d ever been.
I’ll
find out what it all means; I’ll learn the secrets of the past and uncover the
Aionach’s fate
, she resolved.
This paradise that was meant to be. Then,
and only then, will I decide whether it’s worth protecting
.

From the nine new acolytes, Sister Bastille selected two. The
first was the frail blonde woman who had eaten the mouse during the devouring
ritual. Her sacred name was Sister Severin. She was scrappy and uncultured, and
Bastille liked that. The woman might have a strong stomach, but she’d have
trouble grasping the anatomical and scientific concepts behind the
Enhancements.

The second acolyte she chose was the dreadlocked Farstrander,
whom the Order had named Brother Travers, and whom Bastille had pinned as keen
but plodding. She chose him for precisely that reason; if there was a hidden
spark of intelligence somewhere in that head of his, he seemed at first blush
to be far too dull to use it. She’d have little trouble teaching these two at a
snail’s pace, she predicted.

She did not start them off by giving live demonstrations, as
Soleil had done with her. They would learn slower, she decided, if she shoved a
stack of books in their faces and forced them to study. They would have no
choice but to respect her teaching methods, lackluster though they might be.
The first week of classes, however, proved her prediction sorely mistaken.

On the first day, Brother Travers was tardy. He strolled in
half an hour late as if no one were waiting on him, long knotted dreads swaying
about his shoulders. Bastille looked up from where she was washing and
polishing her instruments.

“You do realize you’re quite late,” she said.

“Yup,” he said, sliding onto the high stool next to Sister
Severin.

“And why is that, Brother Travers?”

He shrugged, drumming his fingers on the table. Sister
Severin’s eyes cut away from the pages of her book to stare at him. She frowned,
wholly distracted.

“Choose a book and start reading,” said Bastille.

“Huh?”

“You
do
know how to read… don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I suggest you begin doing so now.”

Brother Travers slapped his hand onto a heavy tome and
dragged it toward himself across the table with a look of utter disinterest.
Flicking the front cover open, he yawned, then gave a loud sigh that made
Sister Severin glare at him out of the corner of her eye. Travers pinched a
cluster of pages between his fingers and fanned them off his thumbnail, smiling
at the zippy fluttering sound they made. When Bastille glanced up again,
Travers was looking around the room through distant, half-closed eyes as if
searching for a way to amuse himself.

“Is there something you require, Brother Travers?”

“Nope.”

Bastille laid down the scalpel she’d been cleaning. “Why
don’t you read to us for a few minutes? Sister Severin, do you mind?”

“No, kind Sister,” the acolyte replied, marking her place.

Brother Travers flipped to the beginning of his book. When he
began to read aloud, his eyes darted across the page with an effortless boredom
that he conveyed through his toneless delivery and rushed enunciation.
“Advancements in the field of surgery have shifted in recent years from a focus
on medical knowledge to one of improved technique and methodology…”

Sister Bastille let him go on for several minutes before she
stopped him. “That’s enough, Brother Travers. You read as if you’ve done quite
a lot of it.”

“I grew up on Spearhead Point, working merchant vessels on the
Slickwash. The captain of a ship I was on for a while was a book enthusiast. He
taught me to read and let me borrow from his collection whenever I wanted. Lots
of time for reading aboard ships.”

“Fascinating. And you, Sister Severin? How did you learn to
read?”

“My mother taught me,” she said. “I didn’t want to learn at
first, but she made me. She told me it was good for me, that I’d find a use for
it someday. Now I’m here, and… seems she was right.”

Whenever Sister Severin opened her mouth, Bastille couldn’t
help but think of the sound her teeth had made when they crunched into the
flesh of that dead mouse.
This one will do what she must to fit in around
here. That should prove a useful insight to keep in mind
. “Indeed, your
mother was right. Plenty of reading yet to be done for you both. Please
continue to read to yourselves quietly.”

Silence resumed for a few moments.

“Sister Steel?”

“It’s Bastille, Brother Travers. Yes, what is it?”

“Is this all we’re going to be doing in here?”

“What you will be doing in here, kind Brother, is exactly
what I instruct you to do. Today, I have instructed you to read.”

“When are you going to teach us the rites?”

“When you have finished reading.”

“I’m finished.”

She looked up at him. “Read something else.”

“I’d really like to start in on some hands-on stuff. I’m good
with my hands. It’s how I learn best.”

It’s how most people learn best… which is why I’m not
letting you do it
. “All in due time, kind Brother. Each of us must earn our
stripes. It’s only your first day. Have a little patience.”