Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (48 page)

She crept back a step. “I’m Althea. I’m not a angel of wrath. I don’t even know what that means. Please get up, you’re embarrassing me.”

He lifted his face from the ground, gaping at her. “You are… I can feel the purity in you.” He knee-walked after her and traced a thumb over her cheek. “Your innocence glimmers in this place like a white candle in the darkness of an infinite abyss. If not wrath, then mercy?”

“Umm. I got kidnapped. I’m trying to go home. Do you know Beard?”

“The Angel seeks the one known as Beard.” The fat man grunted to his feet, rattling the lamp-turned-staff at his flock as he spun with a cascade of cloth shreds. Shadows danced and swayed. “Knowest any of ye a Beard?”

A few of them laughed.

“Bring you the end times?” He turned at her with scary eyes, bushy eyebrow twitching.

“No. Are you sick? Why do you talk strange?” His thoughts sounded like a ramble about half as bad as Flatline’s baked brain. He thought her some kind of winged thing from a place called Heaven, come to destroy the world and take a select few back there with her. “I help people. I don’t kill them.”

He shambled up a short stairwell to the dais, grunting again. “She is a messenger. He hath provided us another chance to redeem ourselves.” The preacher scurried to the other end of the platform. “Bear life unto others. Tend to the sick. Be ready for the end times.”

Althea backed through the murmuring crowd and slinked off into the dim quiet of the next block. Every alley looked the same. Picking one on a feeling, she climbed through more trash and found the street. One left turn had taken her to the strange gathering, so another left should point her back to Whisk and the others. Several steps later, she looked up at the towering structures and the glowing streaks between them. The little flying machines with their light-pictures were not so thick here; this place gave her the feeling nobody cared about it anymore.

A shadow ballet upon a windowless wall caught her eye, its accompaniment a series of muffled screams and fleshy thuds. Two of the silhouettes held the arms of a third, as a fourth struck him from behind and the dusk-form melded with the ground; blood spattered the black phantoms on the wall.

Althea crept to the alley’s edge, but stopped before looking. The police said no one in this place knew her as the Prophet. Her reputation would not protect her here. She bit her lip with anxiety, wanting to help the man, but afraid of what his attackers might do to her.

Wet plastisteel embraced her as she leaned against the building and listened.

A whispery voice, blurred by alcohol wailed, “Please, no.”

A sinister chuckle, the ring of a blade in the air, a tremendous scream, a splatter.

She peeked around the edge as a hand raised a gleaming blade for the fatal stroke. A wave of telempathic fear flew from her outstretched arms, hitting three men with such a profound effect they sprinted away screaming, without looking back. Crinkling plastic and echoing footsteps chased them into the distance. Althea hurried to a shuddering body lying face down in the alley. Life gurgled out of his mouth and a cavernous hole yawned out of his back. She skidded to a halt, almost falling as her toes found tepid, slippery blood. Several pieces of inner-bits littered the area, and she collected them as fast as she could move.

Like a three-dimensional puzzle, she stuck each one inside the man where she thought it looked proper. Some big pieces were missing, but the heart remained intact. His air bags were gone.

Elbow-deep in the man’s chest, Althea established a link to his life-shapes. The pain stopped, the formless blobs were terribly askew. She manipulated shifting outlines of color as her hands molded his flesh like clay. New organs formed as her psionic energy empowered his body to regrow. The salvaged fragments moved into their proper place as street grit emerged through the closing tissue. She worked her fingers out through the mending flesh until her palms rested flat against new skin.

The man took a great moaning breath, as if the touch of air hurt his new lungs. He shuddered, curling into a ball, whimpering. Althea held his hand, keeping the pain at bay.

Just as well, she was too tired to stand anyway.

ware of little more than her hand upon warm flesh and the chill of slick metal under her knees, Althea’s mind drifted through a fog of indistinct time. She wanted to crumple to the ground and pass out where she was, but the darkened alley filtering in through her half-closed eyes looked anything but comforting. Vigilance kept sleep away.

A hand touched her back. “Am I dead?”

Althea shook her head, almost falling over from the momentum. “No.”

“You… You’re an angel.” The man she had saved trembled as if he gazed upon a creature not of this world.

“I’m Althea.” Her whisper held only a hint of a voice. “Did I miss a hurt?”

He patted himself along his chest and gut. “There is no pain. I…” With a sudden look of guilt, he rummaged through his bloodstained clothing.

Her hand on his arm stalled his search. “You don’t have to give me pay-things. Do you know a man named Beard?”

“No.”

His stomach growled. Hers answered.

“Can you take me to Querq?” Her weary glance met his, and then fell after his look of confusion.

The man picked at his shirt. “I don’t know where that is.”

“You should eat something.”

He tugged at her hand until she managed to stand. “You shouldn’t be in this part of town alone; it’s dangerous here.”

“I’ll be okay.” She glanced at the trail of blood leaving the alley.

“No girl your age ought to be calm in a place like this.” He looked up to the smog, and gave her a smile with a wink. “I know you’re not just some kid; you heard my prayer.” He bowed. “Thank you!”

The mass of gory rags ran off, and she touched her belly as if to acknowledge the hunger. A series of sanguine smears and footprints led from this place, deeper into the alley. Nibblers, she thought, but how did the cannibal tribe get past the wall of fire, and why did they leave so much meat behind? Nothing in this place made any sense.

Stark black against the grey, the bloody trail led her through the perfect dark. Bodies, pressed against the walls, drew sharp breaths as they noticed two spots of glowing azure floating along in the middle of the night. Althea glanced at them, her eyes cast weak patches of light on the walls. Some hid their faces, others stared in awe, and a handful tried to follow until they tripped over things they could not see.

At the end of the third alley, the street undulated with a soft pink glow. She edged up to the wall and peeked around. Two blocks away, a life-sized naked woman made out of light undulated above a black-painted door. Her slave-dance bathed the entire area with unnatural iridescence. Althea looked down; in the light, the black smear became crimson.

The trail of streaks and drips went to a stairway sunken into the metal earth, past large pipes and the smell of rust. She paused at the top and crouched, gripping the edge of the first stair on either side of her feet. Voices echoed, sinister sounding men celebrating something they called a ‘score.’

Curiosity pulled her forward, and she crept down a few steps, holding on to thin vertical pipes that felt like the bars of a one-walled cage. A thin ray of light shimmered in the dust an inch above one of the stairs. Althea was not sure what to make of it, but got the sense that normal people could not see it. Strange things were best left undisturbed, so she gathered her skirt and stepped over it. Deep through the patchwork of girders, wires, and yet more pipes, she looked into the bowels of this underground place. A small area of color dwelled within the sea of greyscale lines. Men crowded around a figure in white who held bloody air-bags to the light and examined them. Grinning, he lowered them into a glass cylinder of peach-colored liquid barely large enough for them. More inner bits filled shelves behind them, in jars of various sizes.

When the man in white moved away to place the stolen air-bags on a shelf, a sinister-looking thing that could not make up its mind if it was a chair or a bed came into view. A mess of buckles and straps hung from it, filling her with the thought anyone on it would not want to be there. A finger of ice tickled her heart at the sight.

These men stole pieces of people, and from the anticipatory greed shrouding them, she knew they thought of them as pay-things. She glowered, stunned anyone could do something so wicked. How was this place, this fortress of metal cut off from the Earth, any better than the Badlands? Her knuckles whitened and she growled under her breath. What could drive men to do something so evil just for pay-things?

Some men just gotta die.
Rachel’s voice floated through her mind, followed by a wave of guilt. Witnessing this made the words sound closer to truth, but the thought still made her sick.

“Oi, Doc. Whazzat blue light o’er there?” A man in a black vest covered with knives and decorative chains pointed at her. Fuscia spiked hair wobbled with his sudden motion. “You install some new whoosy-fuckit at the stairs?”

“Sounds like one o’ them little rat-dogs snarlin’.” Another chuckled. “Prob-lee just its eyes catchin’ the light.”

“Be certain.” The man in white spoke in a voice like a scalpel scraping over steel.

A sharp wave of his hand sent the other three men moving toward her.

Althea scrambled up the stairs, careful to avoid the strange line of glowing dust. This evil demanded action, but what could she possibly do to them? She could order them to stop, but that would only last a few minutes. The sound of her running upon the smooth metal echoed through the endless canyon of plastisteel and glass, alarming in its volume. She slowed to a nervous, silent jog, keeping her weight on her toes, fighting the building urge to look over her shoulder.

After a series of random turns and no sign of pursuit, she stopped and sat on an overturned trashcan to rest. Heavy breaths drew in a whiff of food, and her stomach cried out in protest. Her nose led her to a curtain of light leaking into an alley from the street beyond. Edging up to the oasis of color, she pressed herself into the wall and peered around it. Along the ground floor of a building across the road, large windows offered a view of a room full of tables where a number of people sat and ate. Most hunched over their plates, ignoring everyone around them; many looked tired.

Seeing no cars or people moving on the road, she darted up to a set of plain metal doors with tall oval windows. They lacked a handle; when she reached out to push on them, they slid open with a sharp hiss. Althea jumped away, clasping her hands to her chest at the shock. They glided closed without a noise. Two breaths later, she took a step towards them and they opened again. She was ready for it this time, but still flinched. Afraid of being crushed, she leapt through and whirled about to stare at the opening as she backed away. They remained apart until she went further in.

The aromas of edible things cavorted in the air, many of which she did not recognize beyond smelling like some kind of food. To her left, a counter with those padded nail-things like Tumbleweed’s bar stretched off, but the two men seated on them had food instead of orange happy juice. Booth seats ran along the wall opposite the counter. On the right side of the building, a room of freestanding tables held the bulk of the people.