The 17 (28 page)

Zack’s watch beeped again.

“24.”

“Another one bites the dust, huh?” Harness joked. “Too soon?”

Zack slammed his face into his hands. “This is so crazy, even for the Ankhs.”

“Dude. I’ve seen people beaten to death here with their own severed limbs. I’m beyond thinking anything is crazy. The Ankhs as you call them think they are Egyptians or some crap like that, but Egyptians desired harmony in everything in their lives. They built their pyramids and obelisks and temples to exacting balance and symmetry. But these Ankhs are just pretenders. There is nothing harmonious about them or the places they throw our sorry asses into.”

Zack lifted his head out of his hands and peered at Harness. “They’re dying.”

“Sooner the better if you ask me.”

“Come with me to the others. I need you to get me there.”

Harness shook his head vehemently. “Ohhhhhh, no. No, no, no. I’m supposed to be killing you guys, remember?”

“Caroline is there.”

Harness’ playful, cocky smile faded into a frown. He stood, walked to Zack and towered over him. He was even more intimidating covered in scars and mangled bones. “You better not be lying to me.”

“I’m not.”

Harness backed off, a look of shock on his face. “How is she? Is she one of … you?”

“Yes. And she’s part of the group I need to find. Does that change your mind?”

Harness nodded. “It sure does, noob.”

†††

Harness mouthed a countdown silently and then, when his calculations were made, he barked “Let’s go.”

They erupted out the door into the bright sunshine. The water was eerily still, not so much as a wave crashing, not so much as even a ripple.

Zack looked out over the glassy surface of the ocean and said goodbye again to Mizuki.

He hated to think of her out there. He forced such thoughts out of his mind and followed Harness.

They walked rapidly, hoping to reach their destination before the gimbals unlocked again. Everything was so calm and fixed.

“It’s like everything is on pause,” Harness said. “Isn’t it cool?”

Zack found none of this “cool.”

The urban sprawl was in clear view on the horizon now. The black smoke was frozen in a column. It didn’t billow. It didn’t drift. Like everything else it was frozen in time in this vacuum.

They were in the doldrums, like the void around the equator where there was no wind, where time seemed to stand still. Zack felt uneasy.

Harness picked up the pace. “We’re running out of time.”

Zack struggled to keep up.

Finally, they entered the outer edge of the city as fog rolled in and seemed to stop where the buildings began, as if an invisible barrier was there to keep it out. Harness let out a, “Hell, yeah,” and strutted around. Zack felt the wind kick up again, blowing his dirty, grimy hair back.

Harness hooted. “Told you I’d get us here. Now let’s go find Caroline.”

They marched down the streets, the buildings in various states of disrepair. They looked like buildings they would find on Earth. The concrete facades were spray painted and crumbling, the streets were dirty and littered with papers and plastic bottles and cans. Windows in store fronts were broken and as they walked their feet crunched shards of glass.

They walked to the center of the city and the smoke billowed and rolled up from burning tires set in a dry water fountain in the square.

Zack heard Caroline yell, “Harness,” as she limped through a door from a large building to their right.

She fell into Harness’ arms and he embraced her tightly, his eyes wet with joy.

Caroline noticed Zack and smiled. Zack forced one onto his lips, but Caroline could always read him well and frowned as she broke her nuzzle with Harness.

“Where’s Mizuki?” Caroline said her name, which made Zack’s heart break more. Hearing her name fall from another’s lips made her all too real and what had happened to her all too palpable.

Zack began to cry. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. He sobbed, jerking with each deep mournful bawl as Caroline hugged him.

He could feel her tears on the nape of his neck. “I’m so sorry, Zack. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“We should get inside,” Harness said. “There are a lot of us roaming around and less and less of you. Your plan kinda of hinges on there being a lot of you, right?”

Caroline backed away from Zack, giving him one more empathic glance. “You’re right. This place is teaming with, well, people like you, Harness. No offense.”

The inside of the building was well fortified, with large desks set up for two sentries near the entrance. A set of double doors were shut past the small vestibule and led into a larger room with two more barricades set up for sentry positions. Mattresses were lined up in a row along the far wall.

Zack scanned the many faces staring back at him in the room; they all had adoring smiles. As he walked through the crowd, some wearing gray with orange accents and others wearing gray with teal accents, he felt slaps on his back and hands groping to shake his. It was as if he was a rock star going backstage after a concert.

It puzzled him.

Caroline led them to a back room that was as small as a closet, and closed the door behind her.

Harness slapped him hard on the back. “Look who’s Mr. Popular. That’s a first, eh Zack?”

“Harness, behave,” Caroline scolded. “You are the eighteenth of us here. That means all we have to do is protect ourselves, hunker down and wait.”

Zack looked down at his watch.
What of the other eight?

“So, we just let the others, what? Get slaughtered like Mizuki got slaughtered?”

Caroline shook her head mournfully. “No, Zack. No. If they can somehow find us through the gimbals, we’ll take them in, too. But it’s too dangerous to go out looking for them. It sucks, but we can’t risk losing anyone else. The people out there are trying very hard to kill us. When they do, it’s almost like they won the lottery or something.”

Harness muttered, “Yup, pretty much.”

“What does that mean, Harness?” Caroline asked.

Zack began to answer, but Harness interrupted. “Nothing. People are bastards, you know. Got anything to eat? Zack here is starving. And I could eat.”

Caroline looked at Harness suspiciously and he blew her a kiss to disarm her.

“We found a bunch of food from a lot of different worlds,” Caroline said as she began to hobble away. “C’mon. I think there are some Hot Pockets.”

Zack tried to tell Caroline again, but Harness stopped him and whispered through a scowl. “Don’t you dare tell her. She’ll tell the others. She’s like that, a goody-two-shoes like you, and we’ll have a riot on our hands. They’ll try to kick me out, or worse, kill me. We don’t want that, do we? Remember, I got your sorry ass here. You’d never have gotten here without me.”

It wasn’t his words that convinced Zack. It was the way Caroline gazed back at him as they walked. There was a glint in her eye that he rarely saw back home. He also saw the same spark in Harness’ eyes—well, the one good one he had at the moment. He truly cared deeply for her.

Who am I to get in the way of that?

Caroline trusted him, which wasn’t easy for Caroline to do. She wasn’t fooled easily by people. Probably because with her mangled leg, she had lots of time to sit and study people. She was always wise to the duplicity of others. She thought it a curse at times. She told Zack often that she would rather be a fool than be a cynic.

As Harness walked he flexed his mangled hands and winced.
They must ache terribly.
Zack could see the pain on his face. The only thing that seemed to ease it was the smiling glances thrown back to him by Caroline.

†††

The only thing worse to Zack now than a warm Hot Pocket was a cold one.

But that’s what he found himself nibbling on—cold and soggy.

Harness gobbled his down. He wasn’t a picky eater, Zack supposed.

The others ate an assortment of other foods, as varied as their faces. Zack wondered if this city was a conglomeration of all of their worlds and this building a microcosm of the universe.

That worried him.
It was as if the Ankhs had wanted them all here.

Zack cut a glance at Caroline. “Have you looked around here much?”

Caroline, in mid-chew of her Hot Pocket, simply shook her head before speaking. “We haven’t had a chance to really explore. We’ve been busy fortifying it.”

Zack stole looks from some of the others, who peeked around corners to catch a sight of him, or stared curiously at him while they were eating. When Zack’s eyes stopped on theirs, they would look timidly away.

It was very unnerving and Zack had to ask. “Why is everyone looking at me like that?”

Caroline grinned as she peered at the others, and then back at Zack. “They believe you are going to get them home. They believe you are our savior.”

The last thing I am is a savior.

Zack sighed. “Why do they think that?”

“Mizuki told them. I told them. We knew you would make it here. You have the power to stop them.”

Zack gritted his teeth to fight back his anger. He wanted to erupt, to yell and scream at everyone who stared that he could not save them and that no one could, that eventually this would all end, likely in their deaths. He didn’t say that, though. Instead he swallowed hard. “I didn’t even have the power to save Mizuki. Or Waldan. Or Jenai. Or anyone. I’ve killed nobody. I’ve saved nobody. I didn’t even know how to get here. Harness saved my life and led me here. He can protect these people. Not me. I’m just a loser. And don’t say Mizuki’s name. It makes her too real if you say her name.”

Zack gently rubbed the moon on the back of his hand.

Caroline took a long pause. He hated when she did that. She did that often when he would drone on about how sorry he felt for himself. “That’s the thing, Zack. The beauty of your plan is you don’t have to kill or save anyone. We just have to survive.”

“How long do we stay here? I’m not even sure if I want to survive anymore.”

She paused again, even longer this time. “Don’t say that, Zack. We have to survive for as long as it takes. Trench warfare, remember? Attrition. Attrition is our friend and the Ankh’s biggest enemy. Plus, it’s the best way to avenge Mizuki. She would want us—you—to fight.”

It was a pleasant thought to live with.

†††

The watch that was strapped to his wrist had already beeped twice since he had been there.

“22.”

Zack thought it odd that it didn’t bother him as much anymore. He was generally numbed by it all now. It was a malaise. He had felt it before. Clinical depression they called it and they treated it by shuffling him into a room to talk about how he felt, an hour and two-hundred dollars at a pop.

Finally, he learned to fake happiness.

He couldn’t fake it now. There was no light left in him.

No Spark.

He wondered if that would even matter to the Ankhs at this point. The Spark was little more than a fake smile that hid their clinical depression and palpable desperation.

They were good at faking it, too.

Zack sat alone on a mattress that was pushed into a corner. His knees were pressed up to his chest and he stared out at the others, who stared back at him.

He felt that urge to scream at them again. But he didn’t.

He hadn’t even the passion to do that.

The exotic-looking girl, jet black with white hair, who he now had come to know was Tyaz, walked toward him shyly.

She grinned and sat on the mattress next to him. “Sorry we are staring.”

Zack shrugged. “I don’t understand why.”

“Because you are different.”

“I’ve always been different. Nobody stared at me like you.”

Tyaz threw her head back and laughed and then spoke in a silky voice that was so soothing. “You should have heard the way Mizuki spoke about you. She said you were the bravest person she had ever known.”

Zack scoffed. “I’m not brave. Not at all.”

Her eyes were the color of limestone, and set against her charcoal face, glowed like headlights coming toward him on a dark country road. They were mesmerizing and every bit as comforting to Zack as the gentle tone of her voice. “Bravery doesn’t mean being the strongest on the battlefield or the most fearless. It means staying true to oneself, even if it is the most difficult and worst thing one can do. She told us of how no matter what was thrown at you in this mad zoo, you never bowed, never yielded. That’s why she loved you as she said, ‘To her moons and back.’”

Zack’s lips quivered and his eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them away.

“Thank you,” he said.

He meant it.

“We need someone brave like you, now more than ever. This plan requires your kind of bravery. The others are not as strong as you.” Tyaz lowered her head, almost ashamed. “I know I’m not.”

He looked around at them, all staring with wanting, desperate eyes.

How could he refuse?

†††

During the night the watches attached to each of their wrists had played the high-pitched beeps three more times.

“19.”

Zack prayed for the one still outside, knowing there was nothing he or anyone else could do for him or her unless they found their way here.

The fire still burned in the square as a beacon. While it attracted many of the eighteen who dwelled here now, waiting out a storm that they had no idea would ever pass, it also drew those who were out to harm them.

One such person tried recklessly to infiltrate their makeshift fortress and was quickly thwarted. Zack watched ruefully as the boy charged through the door with a long knife in hand, swinging it wildly. The boy hadn’t even the chance to pick out a target before he had two blades driven into his flesh by those who manned the first sentry.

At least he died quickly.

They had decided to burn the corpses among the tires in the fountain. Less of a stench that way. They had no idea how long they would have to stay holed up in this place.

Zack had lost track of how many days had passed. They had ample food and water, but there seemed to be no end to the wait.