Running Red (14 page)

Scarecrow Jimmy saunters toward a lower platform. It too has a cage. There is a dividing fence running through the center. Inside are the two men in biking gear. Matt and I are put in on one side. The older biker sits in the corner away from us. The younger biker turns around and leans against the fence.

“What is this?” he asks.

“Welcome to the race,” Matt says.

“What race?” the younger guy asks. “Where do we run?”

Matt squints and points at the taller platform. “See those runners up there? In a little while, Denny—he’s the guy who controls the house—is going to signal the bald guy there. His name is Stretch. Stretch is going to open that cage, and Jimmy over there is going to open our cage. Then, for five minutes, we have to keep away from the runners.”

“Welcome, my friends,” the older biker says, “to the Coliseum.” He hangs his head, shakes it, and laughs. The younger guy looks at us and shakes his head like he’s telling us to ignore him.

“Who are you guys?” I ask.

“I’m Brent. He’s Striker.”

“And you were just out biking?”

I think I must have struck a nerve because Brent stops talking. He stares at me.

“Just tell them, Henderson.”

Brent looks over his shoulder at Striker. “That another one of your bright ideas?”

“That’s no way to speak to your superior,” Striker says.

Brent faces the man in the corner. “You don’t get it yet, do you? None of the protocol bullshit matters any more. Not out here in the wilds. Look at where we are, Captain. We’re right smack in the middle of a nightmare. These freaks aren’t living by your rules. Nobody is living by your rules.”

Matt nudges me. He lifts his chin at the two men. “So they really are the Guard.”

“We’re not the Guard, punk,” Brent says. “We’re an elite team sent out by D.C. to see what’s left of humanity.”

“Elite?” Matt says. He doesn’t need to say any more. His tone has said it all.

“Yeah,” Brent says. “Elite. Which is more than I can say for you, Digits.” Brent holds up his fingers and wiggles them at Matt.

“I can still do this, asshole,” Matt says. He gives him the finger. I guess some things won’t change in the new world. Alpha males will continue to spar like their Neanderthal counterparts.

“Where did Gumm catch you two?” I ask.

Striker uses the fence to pull himself up. “We rode in,” Striker says. “Our mission was to make contact, infiltrate.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Why don’t you tell us?” Brent says. “You’re not from around here.”

“How do you know?” Matt says.

“Don’t you know who your friend is, Digits? She’s the girl with the sling.”

Somehow these two strangers know of me. He and Striker must have seen me camping or hiking along the road. Or someone else did. Maybe they’ve been out collecting information on people. It would explain why the younger man stared at me on the lawn this morning. I can’t think who I might have encountered that would have been collecting data on the wilderness dwellers.

And then I remember her. It’s just a flash, but I remember the whole incident.

I helped this woman get away from a pack of runners. I was farther down state, where a massive road repair project had been underway. Yuki and I needed to use this massive bridge to cross a really wide and deep river. It was a really windy day. I was afraid the wind would blow me over the side. I hate heights, so I stuck to the lane closest to the median. It was four lanes wide on either side and I was hugging the middle. The hike took forever.

We finally hit the crest of the bridge and we were coming down into the construction zone when Yuki started growling. It was just what I needed—to be trapped on some ridiculously towering bridge where the wind and gravity were teaming up to get me. I could see the runners circling around one of those plastic port-a-johns. The runners were flailing at the plastic sides of the movable toilet. The three of them moved around the unit, occasionally grabbing at it. Then they did that thing runners do sometimes: They waited, their heads bent forward, like they were in that kind of suspended animation, just waiting to strike.

The closer we got, the more I could hear screaming. There was a rather sleek looking bicycle lying on the side of the road. Whoever was inside must have biked it across the bridge we just walked and come down into the three runners.

I sent Yuki after them and she knocked one down by leaping on it. She dragged it away by the ankle as it clawed at the pavement. I walked over and separated its head from its body with a shovel left at the work site. The ooze that came out was a dark red and smelled like death.

I dropped the closest one to me with a pellet from my wrist rocket to the back of his head. Most of his hair had fallen out by then. There were dark splotches where the pimples had erupted. When the pellet struck him, some of the pus splattered onto the concrete embankments once used to close off lanes. His flesh puckered inward and he fell to the ground. I buried the tip of the spade into the back of his neck and scooped the head over the barriers.

The last runner was too preoccupied to notice I was there. I buried the blade of the hand axe in the back of its head and took it to the ground. With a foot on the runner’s back, I wriggled the handle until it at last came out. I finished my civic duty.

“It’s okay to come out now,” I said.

The plastic door opened and the woman came out. She wore a pair of those knee length biking pants with a matching black top. Both had a neon green stripe running on the sides, very much like the biking clothes worn by Brent and Striker. She had a camera in her grasp. Not one of those little square ones you could slip into your pocket, but the kind a photographer would have used at a football game.

“Kind of a crazy photo op,” I said.

She looked at the plastic outhouse. “Oh, that? No. I was afraid the runners might get it if I left it out here.”

It’s so rare to run into people that, when I do, I want to talk their ears off. “What were you taking pictures of?”

She had told me she was going to record how the world had survived an apocalyptic event. She had posed me standing over the three headless runners, the axe in one hand and the slingshot in the other. Yuki had sat patiently at my side.

She had ridden off on her bike. I never thought anything of it. At the time, we were just two wanderers going in different directions.

“How do you know me?” I ask Brent.

He doesn’t get a chance to tell me. Gumm’s bugle boy blares his trumpet. The chanting and rowdy crowds grow silent.

Denny steps out of the small press box atop the bleachers on the longer, northern side of the stadium. In his hand he holds a battery-operated megaphone.

“Good afternoon, my friends,” he says. “Welcome to the Velodrome!”

Great jets of fire erupt above the bleachers. I can hear the rush of gas. Now I know why Denny hates to waste propane on things like showers. He’s all about the pageantry. Petunia has been fattened to feed Denny’s ego.

Denny continues. “Let us enjoy the day’s activities in the spirit of camaraderie. This is our world now, not theirs. We have seen the results with them in charge. Look before you if you doubt. Do you honestly believe that those lost souls in the pen are part of a natural evolutionary process?”

There is a chorus of “no’s!”

Denny continues his rant. “Of course not. I know we all heard the announcements on those idiot boxes we use to glue our eyes to. They told us runners were victims of an infectious fungus, but I ask you—where did that fungus originate? In nature?”

Again, the “no’s” are deafening.

“This guy is a whack job,” Brent says. We make eye contact. “Listen, you’re in our database. We know you’ve been wandering, systematically destroying runners.”

“Systematically?” I think. I shake my head. “No. I’ve defended myself, rescued others.”

“Cut the crap, young lady,” Brent says. “You’ve been hunting them. You and that pooch of yours.”

“It’s not like that,” I say.

“Shut up and listen to me,” Brent says.

Matt looks over his shoulder at me. “Hey. What’s he telling you?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say. I turn my back to Brent. His voice is lower, but it is as clear as the blue sky above me.

“Listen. By now our base has pinpointed our location. They are going to be sending in the ground forces to try and rescue us.”

“How could your base know?”

“GPS tracker chips implanted in our skin.” Brent holds up his arm. There is a tattoo of a star within a circle. He points at the heart of the star.

“You have tracking chips in your skin?”

Matt has become interested in the conversation. He sees the tattoo, and I see the realization in his eyes before he’s had a chance to realize it himself. Matt turns to the fence and starts yelling up at Sledge. Sledge, for his part, glares down at us. He flips Matt his middle finger. Matt keeps yelling to get Denny’s attention. Scarecrow Jimmy takes a baseball bat and swings it face level into the fence. Matt wails and falls backwards. His mouth is bloody.

“You have to listen to me,” Matt says. He spits out blood. I kneel down next to him.

“Matt, what are you doing?” I ask.

“Are you kidding me, Robbie? If Denny knows these guys are leading an army here, and I tell him, he’ll let me go.”

I stand up and wave my arms over my head. I yell to Denny, but with the cheers and chants from the race fans and Denny’s babbling, no one is interested in anything we have to say. Scarecrow Jimmy reminds me of this as he bangs the baseball bat over and over on the post of the cage. The bat cracks in half, leaving a splintered mess sticking up out of the handle.

“Guess our rabbits are jumpy,” Denny says. His voice echoes over our heads. Laughter fills the arena.

The next thing I know, the bugler plays a fanfare. Scarecrow Jimmy opens our cage and pulls me out. Striker steps forward from their side. Scarecrow Jimmy steps inside the pen on Matt’s side and locks the door. Brent lets loose a string of curse words I didn’t know could work that well together. Scarecrow Jimmy smashes the baseball bat into the fence. Brent doesn’t even flinch.

The fans are at five when I realize they are counting us down.

“How soon before your friends get here?” I ask Striker.

“Not soon enough,” he says. He’s in the process of telling me how far we are from the old Guard base when the chanters reach one and Sledge opens the cage door. Four runners stagger out. They hesitate around the smaller cage Scarecrow Jimmy cowers inside of.

Striker and I look up the ramp. The first of the four runners is coming down.

Twelve

I don’t have the luxury of worrying about the bruise on the back of my leg. I will have to fight through the pain. Striker, for a member of an elite squad of warriors, seems to be nursing his ankle. He spins me around and points me towards a six-sided cylinder that has puncture holes in the side. The holes are way too small to crawl through, but I see Striker hook a foot in one of the lowers ones and reach over his head. He immediately pulls his hand away and I see the palm is bleeding.

The house crowd cheers. Gumm’s people boo.

“Edges are razor sharp,” Striker says. “They’ve been splayed. There are burrs.”

Going up it is useless. We can buy some time hiding behind it. Striker once again pushes me forward and we stand with our backs against it.

“You don’t have to keep pushing me,” I say.

He looks over his shoulder at me, a bit surprised. “Sorry,” he says. “Instincts. I was trained to serve and to protect and to rescue civilians.”

The first runner appears around the side of the column. My instinct is to run, but Striker has essentially put our backs to the wall behind the column. Flames erupt out of the cylinder and they drive us against the west bend of the infield. Over the roar of the flames I can make out the cheers.

Above us the track slopes up. There are no wooden studs to grab and pull ourselves up onto the bend in the track. There is a large, rectangular segment that has been removed about ten feet above us. The edges are scorched.

Striker swings his bad foot around into the ankle of the runner. The runner goes down on its back. The black mandibles open and close and click as its hands claw at the air. Striker lifts the heel of his boot and smashes it down onto the runner’s face. Not a good move. The mandibles lock around his foot. The hands clawing the air grab his leg. Striker stomps a couple more times until there is nothing but a puddle where the face used to be. The fingers keep grabbing.

A great shower of flames erupts from the top of the column.

There is another cheer. I don’t have to look behind us to know that a second, maybe a third runner has caught on that we’re free meat.

Striker is still struggling with the runner that has latched onto his foot. Blood is beginning to run freely from his foot and flow over the face of the runner. There is nothing I can use on the runner, so I go over to it and start kicking it in the head. It’s like kicking an overripe melon. I can feel the skull inside break away, but the mandibles won’t release him.

“Get out of here,” Striker says.

“Where the hell am I going to go?”

I kick several more times. The runner looks backwards at me. I think I see pain in its face, but I know that’s impossible. All the same, the runner releases its hands from Striker’s leg and starts clawing at me. The mandibles open. Now free, Striker hobbles backwards on one leg.