Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (8 page)

Knile’s foot landed in a puddle that had formed in the broken concrete and a great arc of murky water splashed across the alleyway.  He stumbled and almost fell, then kept running.  He was breathing hard through the large black respirator that covered most of his face, sucking in as much as he could, but his lungs were still burning.  He felt as though he were trying to breathe through a straw with that contraption on his face.

Above, the roiling clouds that hung over Link were threatening to dump another load of toxic rain on the city.  A dead pigeon lay half-submerged in another puddle as Knile ran past, its mottled grey legs sticking up like dead twigs from its exposed underbelly.

Knile looked over his shoulder.  The three Enforcers were still coming, their boots thudding on the asphalt where Knile’s gleaming footprints left a very obvious trail for them to follow.  He might as well have been
leaving glowing neon signs to point the way.

Besides that, they weren’t giving up easily, these three.  Not as easily as most other Enforcers.  He’d really pissed them off this time.

Knile turned and ran through a marketplace, where the street vendors who had set up their carts gave him little more than passing glances.  Some did not even bother to look in his direction at all, preferring to fiddle with the makeshift canopies they were erecting to protect their goods from the weather.

Who could blame them for their indifference
?  Enforcers in pursuit of fleeing townsfolk was an everyday occurrence in these parts.

The men in black reached the marketplace as Knile exited the other end, and he turned into an adjacent clothing factory in an attempt throw them off for good.  The place had been closed down and subsequently ransacked months before
,
and Knile had become accustomed to its layout in the time since.  He shouldered through the doorway and then headed up the nearby stairwell, making it to the second floor before he heard the Enforcers follow after him through the entrance.

He slowed his pace, favouring stealth over speed, as the Enforcers muttered amongst themselves at the entryway as they tried to plan how to proceed.

Climbing nimbly along a crack in the wall, Knile pulled himself up into a crawlspace in the roof and squeezed through the gap above into darkness.  He knew that if he followed the cavity along far enough
,
he would eventually come out onto the roof of an adjoining building.  The Enforcers wouldn’t be following him through there, no matter how determined they were.

Crawling through muck and pigeon shit just wasn’t their thing.

Within the cavity there was almost complete darkness, but Knile did not want to give away his position by using a flashlight, so he slowed his pace accordingly and felt his way along the path.  He found a cross-section that led toward the outer edge of the building, and as he came to the end of it he stopped.

He’d heard a noise close by, the sound of movement.  Something was in here with him.

Knile nestled back into the corner with his back against the wall and waited for whatever it was to move again.  He supposed that it was most likely a rat or roosting pigeons, but in the back of his mind he also wondered if it could have been something more sinister, such as a snake.  He couldn’t think of anything else that would be moving around up here.

It wouldn’t have been one of the Enforcers.  No way.  They were probably still down in the entryway deciding whether to continue the chase.

He waited a few moments more, slowing his breathing and listening intently.  Suddenly a shaft of light crept in from above through a vertical
opening, glowing stripes that reached down into the cavity for a few moments like elongated fingers before sliding back out again.

Knile almost cried out, startled.

He thought he’d seen a dead child here in the cavity with him, half-covered in trash.

He fumbled for his flashlight, in his panic not caring about being seen, and swept it upward.

There was no body.  Instead there was a young, pale-skinned boy sitting nearby surrounded by rubbish.  The boy held up his hand and averted his eyes as the harsh beam of light fell upon him.

“Stop it!” he complaining in a rasping voice.

“Shh!” Knile hissed.  “There’s Enforcers out there.”

“It hurts my eyes!”

Knile lowered the flashlight again, and the boy turned back to face him.

“Better?” Knile said.  He removed his respirator in an attempt to appear less threatening.  He didn’t want the kid shrieking in terror and giving away their location to the Enforcers.

The boy nodded, then looked at Knile un
certainly.  He had messy raven-black hair that was clotted with filth, and there were a series of scratches down the side of his face.  His clothes were in an appalling state, and his fingernail
s were so grubby they
were almost black.  He was painfully thin, his arms like twigs poking from his shirt.

“Are you hiding here?” Knile said, softening his tone.

The boy shrugged.  “Kinda.”

Knile glanced at the rubbish surrounding the boy, and realised that it was more than a random assortment of trash – there was a water canister, some blankets and an array of shiny trinkets strewn amongst food scraps and crumpled plastic bags.

“Are you
living
here?” Knile said.

The boy nodded.  “Did you come to take my stuff?” he said uneasily.

“What?” Knile said.  “No.  There were Enforcers chasing me.”  The boy watched him warily.  “I’m just passing through, kid.  I don’t want your stuff.”

“People always try to take my stuff.”

Knile tried to weigh up the boy’s age.  He couldn’t have been more than about five or six, he decided.

“Where are your parents, kid?  Who’s looking after you?”

The boy simply shrugged.  “Don’t know.”

“Did you come here after the factory shut down?”

“I guess.”

“So where were you before that?”

“The black house.  Down the road.”

Knile tried to imagine which house the boy might be referring to, but nothing came to mind.  He realised that he was wasting time here, and considered continuing on his way, but he knew that the Enforcers might still be patrolling the perimeter of the building, waiting for him to emerge.  He decided that if he waited a while longer they would call off the chase when the trail went cold, and that he might as well wait it out here with the boy.

“Why aren’t you there now?” Knile said.  “At the black house?”

“Some men came.  In the night.  They were mean men.”

“Did they start hurting people?”

“I think so.  One of them, he had a knife.  Malcus always told me to run from people with a knife.”

“Who’s Malcus?”

“A man.”

“Your father?”

The kid shook his head.  He leaned over and rummaged through a jumbled pile of twisted plastic, pulling out part of what looked like a toy dinosaur.

“I’ll make you a creature if you don’t hurt me,” the boy offered suddenly.

Knile frowned and shook his head.  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

The fingers of light appeared from above again, snaking down the wall and falling across the two of them and mingling with the glow of the flashlight.

“What
is
that?” Knile said, looking about in confusion.

“A machine,” the boy said simply as the glow disappeared again.  “Up above.  It turns round and around.”  He made a circular motion with his hand.  “Sometimes it lets the light through and I can see.”

“What have you been eating?”

The boy ignored him and pulled something from one of the plastic bags at his feet.

“Wanna see my creatures?” he said, the dullness in his eyes suddenly imbued with a spark of life.

Knile glanced back to where he had come and, hearing no sign of the Enforcers, he shrugged.

“Sure.”

The boy produced a mangled piece of wood and plastic.  It appeared to be a green, muscle-bound torso of an action figure with a small, slanted off-cut of timber glued on as the head.

“This one is called Blockhead,” the boy said, placing it carefully on the floor.  He looked up expectantly at Knile.

“Uh, okay.”

The boy rummaged in the bag again and placed another Frankenstein creation next to the first, a three-legged horse figurine with the head of a man.

“This is his brother, Blockhead Two.”

Knile offered him a little smile.  “Brothers, huh?”

The boy nodded and continued on, displaying a third creation that had the body of a robot and a plastic carrot for a head.

“This one is–”

“Blockhead Three?” Knile said.

“No, this one is called Carrotty.”

“Of course.”  Knile gave a little chuckle.  “Where did you find these, kid?”

“I took the pieces from the grumpy man’s workshop.  He fixes toys.”

“Who’s the grumpy man?”

The kid pointed vaguely.  “The man down the road.  He doesn’t like me.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t like me taking his stuff.”

“Well, no wonder he’s grumpy at you.”

“And glue.”  The boy searched around himself, thrashing away at several bags, then held up a bottle with yellowish residue streaked on its sides.  He shook it eagerly.  “See?”

“Maybe you should stay away from the grumpy man if–”

“Do you want to make a creature?” the boy said.  He seemed to be coming out of his shell now that he had ascertained that Knile wasn’t there to hurt him.

“I really shouldn’t, I have to get going–”

“It doesn’t take long.  I can teach you.”

Knile sighed.  The boy was staring at him with such fervour that he couldn’t help but give in.

“Okay, let me have a look.”

The boy smiled, pushing the pile of broken toy parts toward him.  He got up on his knees and perched over the pieces in anticipation of seeing what his visitor would do.  Knile pushed forward, running his hands over the parts as he sought the appropriate pieces.

“Okay, how about this car?” he began, but the boy snatched it back from him and threw it back in the pile.

“No, not that one.”

“The rabbit?” he said, picking up another, but the boy took that back as well.

“Here, the dinosaur,” the boy said, holding up the body of a scaly green T-Rex.

“Good,” Knile said, taking it from him.  “And let’s add a–”

“A robot!” the boy said, offering him a squarish plastic head with big yellow eyes.

Knile flinched as the toy was eagerly thrust at his face.

“Sure.”

The boy located the glue again, then reached out and grabbed the toys back from Knile, in a rush to get things moving.

“Now we pull this off,” the boy said, uncapping the glue, “then smoosh this on here.”  He applied the glue liberally to the dinosaur’s neck in a swirling pattern.  “Then add the robot.”  He placed the head in the appropriate position, wiggling it back and forth until it balanced.  “There, you did it!” he exclaimed, holding up the finished product.

“Yeah, I’m a natural.”

The boy placed the new creature next to the others, positioning it carefully in line.

“You have to wait for the glue to stick,” he said.  “Don’t touch it.”

“I won’t.”

“What are you going to call him?”

“Uh…”

“He’s called Dinosaur Robot, isn’t he?” the boy said.

“Sounds good to me.”

The boy leaned down to cast a careful eye over the array of monstrosities, edging them carefully until they were aligned perfectly.  Once happy, he straightened again with an expectant look on his face.

“Do you want to make another one?”

Knile glanced back out toward the factory.

“Look, kid, I have to go.  I have to keep moving.”

The boy slumped back, visibly disappointed.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But you can’t take Dinosaur Robot with you.  He’s not stuck yet.”

Knile smiled sadly.  “That’s all right.  You can hang onto him.”

The boy settled back amongst the litter of his meagre belongings and began to scratch around aimlessly.  Knile watched him, considering what to do.  He didn’t really want to leave the kid here.  He’d evidently survived on his own for a short while, but in the long run his chances of making it were slim.  How many toxins was he ingesting in the air and in the food he was scraping together?  In the water?  He seemed plucky enough, but he was simply too young and inexperienced to survive in an environment such as this without help.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Knile said.

The boy looked up at him.  “Where?”

“I can take you back to the black house.  Maybe we can find Malcus and your friends again.”