A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (16 page)

Squid lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He sank into the concave shape left by years of larger bodies sleeping on the lumpy mattress.

“Scants,” called a voice from the hallway, “form up in the yard!”

It was strange that they would be called to assemble after dinner. It was usually only the Cadets who trained that late. For a moment Squid was jolted by nervousness. He sat upright on his bed. Then he remembered he wasn’t a Scant anymore. He wasn’t even in the barracks. He was in a small room at the end of the corridor, a previously unoccupied room in which he and Max now bunked, at least for last night and tonight. They were going to be sent away from the Academy tomorrow.

“Max,” Squid ventured. The pair hadn’t spoken much since the fight two nights ago.

Max turned his head to look at Squid.

“Where are you going to go when they kick us out?”

Max’s mouth moved sideways across his face and his eyes dropped to his chest. “I don’t know.”

They were both silent for a moment before Max spoke again. “Will your uncle take you back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you need to at least try, otherwise you’ll be left homeless.”

“I just want to go to school,” Squid said. “I don’t think I could go back to the farm now.”

Max managed a half-smile. “I wish I felt the same,” he said. “I’d give anything to have my old life back.”

Both boys were quiet. This time it was Squid who broke the silence. “Last night, when I ran away, I was just trying to get help.”

Max didn’t say anything.

“I’m not very brave,” Squid said, “and I can’t fight like you, but I would never leave you alone.”

“I know,” Max said.

It was then Squid realized that Max was crying. He wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Over the last month Squid had spent more time with Max than anybody, ever. He supposed that Max was the one person he knew best in the whole world, apart from Uncle and Aunt, and now, while Max lay there in tears, he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t really understand what Max was crying about. Max was his friend, he was as sure of that as he could be, but he realized now that for all the times they had spoken he’d never really learned anything about him.

“Max,” Squid said, “what’s your last name?”

Max sniffed and looked at him, wiping away tears with the backs of his hands.

“What?”

“Your last name, do you have one?”

Then, to confuse Squid even more, Max smiled and began to laugh. He laughed even as he finished wiping away the tears.

“You are so weird, Squid.”

“Well,” Squid said, “everyone has a last name, don’t they? And I don’t even know yours.”

“No, I suppose you don’t, but what a strange time to ask.”

Squid didn’t say anything. Max seemed to have cheered up, and he wasn’t sure how that had happened but he was the only other person here so he guessed he’d had something to do with it. Max turned to face Squid. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his interlocked fingers. He looked at him for quite a while before speaking.

“I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” Max said, lifting his head off his hand and taking a deep breath. “My last name is Hermannsburg.”

“Max Hermannsburg,” Squid said, testing the way it sounded.

“No,” Max said, looking as though he was going to continue, but he stopped. “You don’t know the name Hermannsburg?”

“No,” said Squid.

“It’s quite a famous name in the Territory.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s lucky for you,” Squid said. “Why is it famous?”

“Well, because the Hermannsburgs have been important people, high-ranking Diggers and in the government.”

“I don’t think my name is known outside of Dust. Maybe not even inside of Dust.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Max said. “But listen, Squid, there’s more important things you should know about me. I’m not who you think I am.”

Whatever Max was going to say was interrupted by excited shouts and quick footsteps in the corridor outside their door.

“What’s happening?” Squid said as he got to his feet.

“Squid, you really should know—”

But Squid had already stood and opened the door. Most of the Scants were walking past, speaking in hurried voices.

“What’s going on?” Squid asked a passing group, his question directed to no one in particular.

One of the group, a boy named Franco from Scant C, looked at him and answered hastily, “Everyone is forming up in the yard. They’re saying the Diggers are going to war against the ghouls.”

“There’s been a fence breach,” Max said as the Scants hurried past. “I’m not surprised the Diggers are marching, but why would they need the Scants?”

“They would only need the Scants,” Squid said, verbalizing his thoughts, “if they intended on supporting a very large army.”

Max looked at Squid. “Come on,” he said, “we should find out what’s going on.”

“We aren’t supposed to leave this room. We’re being discharged, remember.”

“So what else can they do if they catch us?”

Squid, despite his reservations, could find no flaw in Max’s argument. As they hurried down the corridor, maintaining enough distance behind the last of the other boys so as not to be seen, Squid looked at Max.

“What were you going to tell me?” he asked.

“What?”

“The important thing.”

Max looked at Squid with an unreadable expression. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Once they were outside they had no problem keeping a low profile. With all the chaos in the yard an elephant could have walked around unnoticed. Squid thought that everyone in the entire Rock must have been there. It was nearing dark and the mirrors high up in the ceiling gave off little light. Even with the gas lamps burning brightly around the periphery of the yard, the density of the people meant that Squid and Max could easily hide among the crowd. The air was filled with noise, the buzzing sound that came from a hundred different concurrent conversations.

As Squid and Max worked their way nearer to the front of the crowd they saw The Bear standing on a hastily erected platform. Squid could see from where he was that the support beam on the right bowed outward, and seemed to slope suggestively in that direction. The platform threatened to collapse under its own weight, and if it did that support beam would be the reason.

“Atten—tion!” The voice of The Bear bounded around the yard, and every individual from the lowliest Scant through to fully fledged Diggers snapped their feet together and planted their hands stiffly by their sides. The cacophony of sound in the yard came to an abrupt halt, leaving only an eerily noticeable silence.

“At ease,” The Bear said, and the yard relaxed. Raking his eyes over the gathering, The Bear began, “It is no secret that we’ve experienced a major breach in the fence. In fact, many of you have been involved in preparation for the building of a fall-back fence. We received word from the Administrator this morning that our orders have changed. We will be marching to battle, all of us, the entire force of the Diggers. Deployed units will rendezvous en route and we will move out to crush the ghouls.”

At this, waves of noise spread through the crowd, talk that was excited, concerned and everything in between.

“The entire force of the Diggers,” Max whispered. “That’s ridiculous. What about reserves? Father would never have—” His voice trailed off as he realized Squid was looking at him. “What?” he said.

“You just said something about your father.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Shhhh.” A Digger who was standing nearby stared at them. “Shut your mouths, Scants.”

“Diggers,” The Bear continued from atop the platform, “you will move to your quarters and ready yourselves and your equipment for a battle march. Apprentices and Workmen, you are to move off and begin necessary preparations for departure tomorrow. If you are allocated to Headquarters, the Medical Service or the Catering and Waste Disposal Corps, you are to gather in the Great Hall. If you are a trainee, remain where you are for further directions from your instructors. Move now.”

All around them the sea of people began to shift in a hundred different directions. Squid and Max looked at each other.

“We’d better go,” Max said. “We’ll be noticed if we just stand around.”

Squid nodded and the two of them hurried out of the yard, managing to stay hidden among the criss-crossing crowd. It wasn’t until they were moving through the dark, back-water corridors of the Rock that they spoke again.

“At least we know where we’re going to go now,” Max said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Max was smiling. “The Territory is in danger, so we go to war with the Diggers, whether they want us or not.”

The following morning the army was ready to depart. It had only been in the last week or so that Squid had found himself getting used to the utter busyness of the Rock, but with the preparations to roll out the entire force the activity had cranked up another notch. Until now Squid hadn’t quite grasped just how many people managed to fit inside the Rock, and he wondered why the great fortress didn’t bulge at the sides and suddenly burst, showering the grounds with falling people.

Squid yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. They had slept little last night, due in part to a nervous excitement and in part to Max’s insistence that they prepare to stow away in an unobtrusive section of the army. They had snuck into the uniform store in the early hours of the morning and stolen two Junior Workmen uniforms—the brown and white of the Waste Disposal Corps. Max had proposed the idea, which seemed like a reasonable one. No one in Waste Disposal cared to be there and would take little notice of two extra workers. Plus, it would keep them away from anyone who would recognize them. They wore the uniforms now as they hid behind a pile of wooden crates in the main yard.

“Shouldn’t we go to the waste disposal area?” Squid asked, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the green building. “It’s starting to look busy.”

“In a minute,” Max said. “I want to see what they’re doing.”

It had been Max’s idea that they sneak out here and see what the other Scants were doing. Squid had begun to protest, but Max had a way of making any ridiculous idea seem feasible. Squid, dressed in his stolen uniform and about to sneak into an army that was apparently headed to the largest battle the Central Territory had faced in centuries, knew all too well how persuasive Max could be. The Scants they had been through their training with now wore full Apprentice uniforms. Taking the full force of Diggers seemed to necessitate that the Scants be promoted overnight.

“None of them are ready for battle,” Max said. “I can’t believe they’ve made them all full Apprentices after only two weeks of training.”

“There he is.”

At first Squid was going to ask who he was talking about, but it didn’t take him long to see. Darius Canum was standing talking to some other Apprentices who Squid didn’t recognize. They were all dressed in the green uniforms of First Apprentices, each in direct service to a Digger.

“I can’t believe it,” Max said. “Darius is a First Apprentice.”

Squid’s stomach rose into his chest and his insides churned over. Darius was a First Apprentice. Darius, who deserved more than anyone to be discharged from the Diggers and sent back to turn dirt, was a First Apprentice. Max continued to stare at Darius through the gap in the crates. Squid looked at his friend. Max seemed transfixed and Squid knew why. Max felt the same way he did about Darius Canum.

“Max,” Squid said, trying to break him out of his trance, “let’s get to the waste disposal area.”

Max seemed hesitant to look away from Darius, but eventually he did. As they hurried back across the yard, moving around the edges in an attempt to remain unnoticed, they heard a screeching and a popping roar. The tall arched doors in the front of the engineers’ building were opening, something Squid had never seen before. From inside the pulsating sound echoed louder. All eyes turned toward the building as three, four, five huge vehicles drove out, spluttering and coughing as if they were sick. They were bio-trucks, but they were enormous. They were painted a shiny green and shook slightly as they emerged through the gateway. From his vantage point at the edge of the yard Squid could just make out the drivers through the glass windows at the front of the vehicles, working at unseen controls. Tall stacks spat a choking smoke into the air as the vehicles crept forward. They were magnificent.

Each of the engines was towing a six-wheeled metal trailer. Secured to the top of each large flat tray was what appeared to be a giant mechanical rifle, its long barrel pointing up at an angle. They were weapons, Squid realized, and if they worked in the same way as mechanical rifles, then they must be capable of firing over huge distances.

“Come on,” Max said. “If they’re rolling out the artillery the army will be leaving soon.”

They snuck into the building where the Waste Disposal Corps was headquartered with as little fuss as they could. Squid followed Max’s lead of looking as nonchalant as possible. It seemed like a reasonable idea; if they looked like they had a job to do it was unlikely anyone would stop them.

“Hey!”

Squid knew, as soon as he heard it, that the voice was directed at them.

“You two!”

Squid and Max both turned to look in the direction of the voice. It was, thankfully, not a Digger but one of the Waste Disposal Workmen dressed in baggy brown coveralls. The three white chevrons sewn to his shoulder indicated he was a sergeant, or whatever the equivalent was in the Waste Disposal Corps.

“What are you doing?” the sergeant asked, staring at them as though he could see straight through their deception.

“Nothing—” Squid said but stopped as he realized Max had concurrently said, “Working.”

The sergeant’s single eyebrow furrowed like a crawling worm.

“They always send us the lazy, no-good, useless ones, don’t they?” he said. “Like we aren’t important, is that what they think?”

Max didn’t answer, so neither did Squid. He was getting better at picking out the questions he wasn’t supposed to answer.

“Right,” the sergeant said, pointing into the building, “you get on around to the back of that wagon and start loading the empties.”

Squid looked in the direction he indicated, to where a group of Junior Workmen were lifting large barrels onto a wagon. It only required two of the Junior Workmen to lift each one, so Squid gathered these were the empties the sergeant had mentioned. Barrels, Squid realized, for collecting waste—what kind of waste he didn’t really want to know.

“Well?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Max said. “Sorry, Sergeant.”

“Sergeant? That’s senior sanitation officer—SSO,” the Workman said.

“Yes, SSO,” Max said. “Sorry, SSO. We’ll head there now.”

“Ancestors damn these useless greenhorns,” the SSO muttered as he walked away, and then called back to them, “Hurry up! We’re way behind schedule!”

Squid and Max wordlessly helped load the barrels onto the wagon, attempting to draw as little attention to themselves as they could. When they were done they followed the other Workmen onto the back and sat in the wagon as the horses were hitched. They waited there for some time before they rolled out, leaving the waste disposal building and joining the moving swarm.

The walls of the Rock seemed to relax, sagging inward with a sigh, as close to seven thousand people, four thousand horses, a thousand wagons and five bio-trucks streamed, as though some great overflow valve had been opened, out of the gate and into the red dust. Half the force of the Diggers rode ahead of the column and half behind, dressed in their uniforms and upon their solidly built mounts. Those between them, the Apprentices and Workmen, sat in the backs or on the wheel arches of wagons, or they walked. Behind all this, some way back, the ever-present drone of engines reminded them of the presence of the bio-trucks pulling their giant cannons.

As the army began the march towards the largest horde of ghouls the Territory had seen in two hundred years, more than one of the seven thousand minds shared the uncomfortable thought that they resembled a long funeral procession. Some dreamed of doing their duty; others dreamed of the glory they would win for themselves, while others were just glad to be away from whatever was worse for them at home than thousands of snarling, half-decomposed humanoid monsters. But none of those who marched dreamed of what was waiting for them, because if they had, then surely they would have turned around.