Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (47 page)

At the center of it all, she plucked the pity sack from the ground to find it empty save for a cup of flesh-toned slime with no appreciable fragrance or flavor. The sky held no answers; even the stars hated this place. Only the receding sun had the strength to peer through the indigo gloam. That, at least, told her which way Querq was. “Generally east” was good enough for her to try.

The narrow rungs of the metal ladder were unpleasant to bare soles, and colder still than the air. The vagrants had gone off in search of charity, the Bumwallow had fallen silent save for the scurrying bits of trash frolicking in the gusts and a distant gurgle from the corroded grating.

With her back to the fading day, she walked. The phantoms of this place followed her, inhabiting the howling gale and appearing in darting movements in the shadows at the edges beyond her sight. Being alone had never been something Althea liked; being alone in this place was worse. The lack of rain put one thing in her favor, and as the streets went by, she dodged the curious stares of the vagrants and the hoodlums; the people who lived in the bowels of this dreadful city had thoughts and feelings quite similar to the raiders.

A great light rode in from the side on the wings of a blaring horn, and she crossed her arms over her face and screamed. Blinded, she could not see what shot past her with the screech of a demon’s wail. The light vanished. Blinking, she faced toward angry yells, but the trembling visage she presented drew the vitriol out of the charging man’s voice. Her eyes adjusted, finding a car sideways on the strange metal road, door open, and its driver looming over her.

“The goddamned light was green, stupid kid.” A man, clad in dark shimmery fabric with a strange grey strip of cloth hanging from his neck, stared at her with incredulity. “Are you fucking blind or something?” He ran his hands through his short, black hair. “Fuck. If I hit you that woulda jacked my insurance rate.”

Lowering her hands, she bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Damn street kids. Don’t you know what a traffic light is?” The man stopped inches away from her.

“I don’t. Please don’t hit me.” She took a step back, afraid of the emotion billowing off him.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. I ain’t gonna whack a little girl. You serious you don’t know what a damn light is?”

“I’m from the Badlands.” She ventured eye contact.

His hard face softened. “Look, kid. See that.” He pointed at a red circle. “They put them by roads where people are supposed to walk. If you see red, you wait for green. If you see green, you can cross. You walk out on a red light you’re gonna get creamed.”

“Creamed is bad?”

“Guess it’s true what they say about blondes, eh?” He laughed. “Yeah, creamed is bad. You were almost a hood ornament.”

She knew he mocked her, and did not like it. His mental imagery of the meaning of “hood ornament” proved gruesome enough to distract her from indignation. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Thank you for telling me the lights.”

“Strange kid. Hey, ain’t it a bit late for you to be out alone?”

She shrugged.

“Where you goin?”

“Querq.”

“Yeah, we all got ‘em.”

“What? No, the city, Querq.”

“City? There’s only two cities, one east and one west. Oh, shit, you mean out there in aborigine land.” He laughed. “Good luck with that, kid.”

She watched in silence as he went back to his car, pulled the door closed with a dull
thunk
and drove off, leaving a cloud of fog. The orb had returned to being red, so she waited. No cars came, but she did not take a step until it turned green. Fanciful music drew her gaze to the clouds, at a strange box as big as a car sailing through the air.

Two great panels of light shimmered below it, angled to face the ground on either side. Moving images spread across them: a field of black glinting with stars, at the center of which gleamed a long, white machine. The view zoomed in on whatever it was, revealing an uncountable number of light dots covering it. Shaped a bit like a loaf of bread, it tapered from a narrow end to a fat end where plumes of white energy streaked off into the black.

The music cut out and a man’s voice echoed off the canyon-like walls of nearby buildings. “The senate confirms earlier reports that the CSS Angel, the largest military starship produced by the UCF to date, is slated for active duty within months. One hundred patriotic citizens are eligible to win tickets to attend the launch event and accompany the vessel on its maiden tour around the moon.”

After a few seconds of black, the panels changed to show a man’s upper body. His green shirt was dotted with little bits of metal in various shapes. Althea got the feeling other people considered him important. Words appeared, scrolling below him.

“The admiralty is pleased with the progress the build crews are making. As you know, orbital construction is still a developing industry. However, we are proud to see this great symbol of freedom and patriotism take to the far skies of space. The level of support a ship of this type is capable of bringing to colony worlds is an order of magnitude above what we have today.”

Boring.

The fancy lights and pretty coat with all the shiny bits on it were not getting her home any faster. Two blocks went by in quiet. Again stopped by one of those red orbs, she curled and uncurled her toes over the curb, waiting for it to change.

“Hello.” A strange little voice, not quite male, came from her right.

“Hi.” She spoke before looking, and turned around twice, having seen no one.

“Do you need a ride?”

She jumped; the voice again came from where no person stood. From a box atop a post by the corner, a drawing of a small man waved at her. Light came from the top, with pictures of little cars around the smiling figure in blue.

“Who are you?” She walked over to the pedestal.

A rectangle with noodles for arms and legs, and a circle for a head saluted her. “I am a PubTran taxi terminal. I can dispatch a PubTran taxi if you are in need of transportation.”

“Transportatoes?” She stared at the glowing panel at face level.

A pre-programmed laugh felt insincere. “Do you need a ride? Do you need to go somewhere far away?”

She jumped and clapped. “Yes! Please.”

Bouncing, she waited. Minutes later, a tiny car skidded to a halt by the pedestal. Silver on the roof and doors, its powder blue fenders looked quite battered. A door that took up almost the entire side swung up into the air to reveal two facing bench seats. She stooped under it and climbed into a warm space that smelled of old shoes. The seat was much harder than the ones in Anita’s car, but still softer than a steel box. She sat, gawking at the front end, and lack of anyone driving it.

“Please state your destination.” The same voice came from a small flashing panel on the wall to her left, opposite the door.

“Querq, please.”

Several seconds of silence later, the voice returned. “Destination not found. Please provide additional detail.”

“It’s far to the east in the Badlands. An old city named Querq.” She spelled it out.

After a long pause, the voice spoke in a lifeless cadence that attempted to sound pleasant. Whenever it recited numbers, the tone dipped out of the rhythm of the sentence. “Closest match: Albuquerque, New Mexico. Population: . Distance: estimating . Estimated Trip fee: credits. Warning. Badlands considered dangerous. PubTran Corporation is not responsible for injury or death resulting from this trip. Loss of PubTran equipment due to this route will result in a fee of credits to your account.”

“Um. Okay.” She bounced in her seat, ready to cry from happiness.

“Please wave your NetMini past the terminal for account identification or insert credit stick with balance sufficient.”

She stared at the panel for a moment, shrugged, and waved her hand past it.

“Read failure. Please try again.”

Wave.

“Read Failure. We are sorry. We are unable to process your NetMini. Please reboot your device and try again. If you are a PubTran employee, please provide verbal override code.”

“Please, I want to go home,” she whined at it.

“Please, I want to go home.” Her voice echoed back at her from the wall. “Is not a recognized override code. Voice analysis indicates occupant is a juvenile. Please locate your parents.” The voice dipped an octave low at the end.

“I’m trying to. Father is in Querq. Please take me home.” She banged on the emotionless thing.

“We are sorry. PubTran Corporation cannot accept liability for stray children. Please exit the vehicle.”

Althea sighed, feeling sick to her stomach. It was not fair. This thing made her think it would take her home.

“Please exit the vehicle.”

She crawled into the cold night. The door sank closed and the driverless thing zoomed off. Plodding along, she walked for an hour, seeing no change to the endless city. No matter how many streets went by, she felt no closer to home than before. As her feet grew numb, her mind shifted, and she thought about Beard. He knew how to get there; in fact, he even offered to take her home. The next time she saw Flatline, she would ask him to find Beard and bring her to him.

At least having a plan, she decided against aimless wandering and went back the way she came. The little crate Whisk gave her had some nice mildew-laced blankets she could keep warm with, far better than being out in the wind. Another block down, the sound of a man shouting drifted from an alley. His words teetered at the edge of his voice before thundering down with intense gravitas; she could picture the spittle flying. Curious, she went towards the ruckus, approaching the flickering shadows cast by fire blazing from a trio of metal cylinders as tall as she was. A dingy mural dominated the wall opposite the stage: a dove drawn in reflective white paint with spread wings and a flower in its beak. Trash brushed across her legs as she waded through it, one hand tracing the wall as she went.

A crowd of vagrants ringed a pile of various large objects upon which a corpulent man in multicolored rags of gradient filth gesticulated and waved. The carpet of old green and black coats followed him like a cape, swirling about the ground as he walked back and forth across his stage. He held a metal rod five feet long; two curled bits of white glass screwed into sockets at one end and a length of wire ran from the other into his pocket.

Around his neck on heavy industrial chain, a great metal cross hung swaying and gleaming as he shambled around. An explosion of white-brown, belt-length hair surrounded a face red to the point she half expected it to pop at any second. With every tiny movement he made, a grunt escaped his lips as if the act came with great exertion.

An array of shimmering holographic panels painted the abandoned building behind him in otherworldly light. They came from silver strips dangled by wires at odd angles, tied to a network of metal rods rising from the back of his platform like crone-fingers into the air. Some showed war and death, others static, two near the top had the faces of old men ranting, and a few had a peculiar brown-haired man in a robe holding up a hand with a hole through it.

She drifted through the crowd, approaching the stage of junk from which he preached. His boots roamed back and forth at her eye level as he ranted about the “end-times” and the “sins of man.” His impassioned wail kept time with the shifting images of fiery explosions, red desert, war machines, and wounded children that flashed behind him. He screamed about something called god as well as evil, and the sins of Mars. A man put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at a face hidden behind long strands of dark silver hair. She sensed no ill will; he was being friendly and welcoming her to the group. She returned his smile, and looked back at the tech-evangelist.

“How long will this continue without the voice of the
people
being heard? Death surrounds us all. In the streets here on Earth, in the skies on Mars, the greed of the money-changers goes unchecked by the blood of the innocent.” He leaned back and the corkscrews of glass at the end of his stick lit up. “The technology devours our souls. Where will
you
stand when cometh the Day of Judgment?”

She hid her eyes when the pointing finger swept past her.

Grunting, he shambled to the edge of the rostrum in front of her.

“Such sin.” He extended his arm. “We live in a society where the
innocent
are cast into the streets and forgotten. Look at this child and see what evil dwells within the hearts of man.”

The crowd’s gaze focused on her. She studied her toes, hoping no one noticed the blue light.

Air puffed from under the stage as he tromped away. “Only if you embrace the Lord can you find redemption. He shall guide us beyond the stain of this existence to the light.”

Pointing at random people in the crowd, he asked if they had been saved. Some shouted yes. Others stared at him.

“Are you saved, my son?” The fat man pointed at an emaciated bum in dark clothes with his finger three knuckles deep in his right nostril.

The man looked up startled, and farted. The finger remained where it was.

Althea’s giggle drew every eye in the crowd. She had a hand over her grin, embarrassed at her reaction. Some of the street people gasped, others peered with curiosity. The fat man gawked when he saw the glow.

“On your knees,” he roared. “The harbinger of the end walks among you!”

A few of them fell in place.

Althea shrank in on herself, clasping her elbow to her chest. “What?”

The preacher waddled down from his perch, grunting with each step, and laid his old lamp at her feet. Her shadow grew immense upon the wall behind the crowd as he knelt before her. When he looked up, such fear was upon his face Althea peeked into his mind. Through his eyes, she saw herself, standing in line with the mural; the luminous painted dove wings spread out from her little figure as if part of her.

“Please, O angel of wrath, tell us we are to be spared.” He bowed close enough for his hair to tickle her toes.