Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (4 page)

The old cushions spat a torrent of particles as she fell onto them. There was little to do now but wait for the Seekers to return. Althea leaned back against the warm metal wall, closing her eyes and counting the beads of sweat trickling down her back, stomach, and legs. Dread that the Seekers would not return at all teased at the edge of her mind, but for now, she kept it at bay.

A tickle quite unlike a sweat droplet crept across the instep of her left foot. She sat up and blinked at a two-inch long beetle which had crawled up to perch upon her. Althea lifted her leg, staring at the confused motions of the bug as it went from side to side, searching for solid ground.

“Are you trapped in here, too?”

When she lowered her foot, it scurried off and vanished under the bench on the other side. After sitting straight with her hands in her lap for an uncountable number of minutes, she shifted through a series of positions, searching in vain for one that offered any degree of comfort. Once sitting became intolerable, she got up and paced about. The faint motion of air provided an almost unnoticeable improvement over the stagnant stillness. Her steps squished and slipped upon the floor, even the soles of her feet were sweating. Raiders sometimes put disobedient slaves in a sun box.

This was cruel of them. To leave me in such a place.

The beetle emerged near the ramp, wandering an erratic circle.

She squatted and reached out to pluck the tiny explorer from the floor. “Do you think Nalu wanted to punish me for leaving the village?”

Had it any opinion on the matter, the beetle kept mum as it crawled over her hand and through her fingers. She released it and stood, unsure if she felt guilty for defying them or worried that the dogs had not been the substance of the foreboding feeling which had kept her awake.

Her worry built for him. Several minutes of nervous pacing only made her fear grow. With a scream, Althea launched herself against the metal and shoved futilely at the rear hatch, succeeding only in creating dustless streaks across the floor as her feet slipped backward. Perspiration ran in her eyes, and she wiped her face on the chest-cloth to regain the ability to see.

A spike of worry intensified without warning or explanation. She scowled at the immovable ramp, too furious to cry and too sad to scream. A quick look about yielded nothing of use and reduced her to pounding both fists on the ramp and screaming for help.

Out of breath, Althea stared at the wet fist-shaped marks she’d left. Attacking the rear door was useless. She trudged to the hatch leading to the forward compartment, pouting at the skeleton and the worthless buttons and switches. To the right of the dead man, a second seat cushion was folded up against the wall. She pushed it down into place and sat, staring at her dirt-streaked arms. Time passed in silence interrupted by the flicking of her finger at the rotting canvas beneath her. She pulled her legs up, heels on the edge of the seat cushion, and hugged her knees to her chest. For a minute or six, she stared in silence at the skeleton.

“If they get hurt, I’ll starve in here.” She looked past her dangling toes to the floor, studying the spots of sweat appearing in the dust. “I’d rather get shot like you, in the head. I bet it did not hurt much. At least I won’t be alone when I die.”

His cobweb-packed skull met her weak smile with an impassive stare.

The heat made her woozy. “I shouldn’t try to escape. If they think I’m running away, they won’t trust me again.”

Shapes crept around the dead man as she examined her surroundings; the castoff light from her eyes stretched tiny buttons into large shadows. One droplet of sweat fell from the tip of her nose, landing on her thigh.

A wisp of doubt traced ephemeral fingers across her shoulders, causing her to look up. “I have a bad feeling. What if Den is still going to get hurt?”

Nalu’s words echoed in her mind, and she wondered if she would be able to kill a person to save his life if she had to. The thought rode in on a wave of nausea. The salty flavor of sweat intruded on her thoughts; she felt light-headed enough to expect the driver to answer her.

“She’s in there.” A man’s voice, muted by inches of armor plating, interrupted the sound of her labored breathing.

Althea gasped, staring at the dead man. “You can’t talk. You’re dead.”

A millipede as big around as her thumb emerged from its nose, crawling over the jaw and into the folds of his old camouflage uniform. Movement outside snapped her out of her fog. She drew an anxious breath and lowered her feet to the floor. Hands clenched the cushion on either side of her and she held herself completely still. Unfamiliar voices murmured. Someone knew she was inside this thing; the sounds of tapping at the rear hatch proved they tried to get to her. She peered around the partition separating the driver compartment from the back, momentarily pleased by the thought of being kidnapped again, as it would get her out of this intolerable oven.

She hurried to the door and compliantly stared at the ground, waiting to be taken as she tried not to faint. Thoughts of Den came with a gentle caress on her cheek. She smiled at him and he vanished. The touch of his fingers became a trickle of sweat dripping onto the hand she raised to him.

This was a new complication. If another tribe took her, she may never see him again; the thought of it replaced obedient surrender with nauseous thoughts of resistance. Her gaze darted around the small chamber, looking for a place to hide. Finding nothing, she crept over to the former driver.

The material crumbled through her fingers as she put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you can’t answer me, but what should I do?”

Her touch caused the skull to tilt backwards and roll to the side, wedging between the seat back and the corner. The urge to cry welled within her as the thought of losing Den became more and more real with each bang at the ramp door. Althea looked away from the skull, and faced towards the increasingly loud noises. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a lever in the roof, right in line with where the skull’s empty sockets pointed. It looked like a small hatch to the roof.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Grateful for the low ceiling, she grasped the lever and pulled. Centuries of disuse had left it immobile, and turned her effort into a pull up. For a few seconds, she dangled, trying to use her weight to move it. She wanted to scream in frustration, but contained herself and dropped back to her feet. A creak from the back changed some of the grey to bright olive green.

She squinted at the lever as her fright gave way to determination. They figured out how to work the ramp and would be on her soon. Althea concentrated on her magic. The sense of her own body filled her mind as her vision filled with the strand-shapes of the muscles in her arms. Focus sent more of her blood-presence into them, urging them beyond their capacity for a brief moment. With a grunt, she heaved, and the bar broke through the crud and slipped around. Planting one foot on the back of the driver’s chair and another against the wall, she shoved upwards.

Decaying rubber flakes crumbled around her as daylight broke through the disintegrating seal. The air washed over her with a wintry embrace as her sweat-covered body slithered through the gap onto the roof. Her drenched shirt smeared a trail of wet across the sand-strewn surface. Flat on her stomach against the hot metal, she eased the hatch closed and lay still as a throbbing ache worked its way out of her arms. She had hurt herself inside making her limbs that strong, but it took only a moment to repair torn muscles. Seconds after the pain had gone, the ramp crashed to the ground, lofting a billowing cloud of dust.

“Oi, c’mon out, you. We know yer in der,” shouted a man, while banging on the old vehicle.

“Yar. You ours now.” A different voice followed it.

Althea waited for them to walk into the green beast, and leapt to the ground. She had no idea which way Den had gone, but the Lost Place offered a better option than those men did. After a quick glance back at the boxy relic, she sprinted into the city.

Free from the sweltering chamber, she darted down decrepit streets, embraced by the beautiful cool air. Althea cornered at random in hopes of eluding her would-be abductors. After several alleys, her stride slowed through a jog to a brisk walk. She wanted to call out to Den, but her voice would let everything in the area find her. Tall buildings surrounded her with various degrees of decrepitude, some spilling their contents into the street while others appeared ready to collapse at a whisper.

Her gait faded further to a slow rotating creep as she looked up at the structures. Within the wasp-hollows, tables, chairs, and other signs of man gleamed in the daylight. Amazed at how people could have made something so large, she lowered her gaze to the wall at her left, and touched it. She traced her fingers over the rough stone and wondered about the powerful mystics who must have been here to make the rock so flat and perfect. Energy within the material called out to her. The building was warm against her skin as she pressed herself to it, resting her cheek upon the surface between her hands. Eyes closed, she opened her thoughts to the spiritual imprint. Her vision swirled through flashes of history etched into the concrete by pain, desperation, and terror.

Althea gasped and jumped away, shivering, staring with an accusatory glare at the wall. The images of many people dying in this place changed the presence of the city around her. The wonder and awe at the towering structures drowned in pitiful sorrow from feeling the final emotional moments of thousands of lives. She fell into a squat, wrapping her arms around herself as she cried, unable to stop the overwhelming tide of loss.

A mournful call from a distant bird brought her attention back to the reality of being lost, hunted, and alone. She flung her hair out of her face with a twist of her head and looked around at the destroyed city. The surge of raw emotion had subsided, her feelings were once more her own. This had to be the reason she felt uneasy; something in this massive tomb hungered for more blood.

She bounded to her feet and yelled. “Den!”

Her voice echoed, weakening into the distance and chasing a group of birds out of their roosts amidst the steel girders above. A man’s voice grunted in pain to her left. Concerned, she jogged towards it, rounding a corner. The sight of two men clad in patchwork armor made of panels of leather and scrap metal halted her. Tanned skin gleamed in the relentless sun, smeared with dirt and marked with many old healed wounds. What scared her most were the rifles across their backs. The one on the left doubled over, but she sensed greed―not pain.

He was faking.

“Thar you is.” The standing one grinned at her.

She took a step back, toes gripping the pavement. No one else was here, no one to threaten if she disobeyed. Before they could say another word, she sprinted off.

“Hey. You ain’t s’posed ta do runnins!”

“Yar,” yelled the shorter one. “Wez knowz da Prophet’s stories.”

They chased after her, but she bought a few seconds by ducking through a gap in a wooden fence they had to break through. She hurried along a strip of smooth black stone between rows of blasted buildings and dozens of old cars, left where they crashed. A pause to pick a direction was brief; the sound of them smashing through the fence kept her moving. The men were too close. If she tried to hide here, they would surely see where she went. Half a block down, she spotted a narrow metal opening along the edge of where a strip of white stone bordered the dark path.

She rushed over and crouched, peering into a pit below the ground. The two came out of the alley and charged; their sudden appearance drew a frightened gasp and destroyed her qualms. She slid through the storm drain feet first, letting go of the rim just as a man’s hand slapped into it.

“Gar dammit!”

Althea fell to a painless landing in semisoft mud. Scrambling to regain her footing, she looked up at the two faces in the slot.

“I am sorry, but I cannot go with you. Den needs me.”

The sense of security afforded by a gap too small for men to fit through evaporated as a circular section of ceiling above her opened, showering her with dust and exposing the sky. The metallic ringing of the manhole cover tossed to the side faded below a roar as one of the men jumped in.

Althea leapt through the opening of a white stone pipe and sprinted. The sound of her feet upon the dry surface echoed through the growls of the raider behind her. He could not stand at full height in the tube, allowing her to outpace him. After a dozen steps, her flashing legs faded from flesh to light grey. She came to a stop where the tunnel ended at a T-shaped crossing. To the left, it went straight as far as she could see, but to the right, it bent down after a short distance. Althea ducked right and reached the end in six strides, where a vertical shaft led down to a lower level. There, she crouched, listening to the raiders stumble along in the dark. They were not giving up, even though they could not see at all.

She scrambled onto a metal ladder caked with soft muck, and descended through a square-walled passage lined with a staggering amount of debris. Pipes, old furniture, boxes, and other machinery she had never seen before scattered about amidst liberal amounts of spray-painted words.