Bloodlands (5 page)
Authors: Christine Cody
His words were weighed with something I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I didn’t want to, anyway, since Gabriel wouldn’t be round long enough for it to matter.
“I guess I’ve been . . . searching . . . for a while, even when I stayed in one place. Now I think I’ve found somewhere quiet—what people call the New Badlands since the original ones were wiped away by that freak earthquake that came before the West Coast attack. I suppose the name of this place had a noble ring to it for me.” Slowly, he slipped his flask into the bag, then kept one hand on it. “But more importantly, I heard there might be a chance for survival and keeping to myself out here.”
This wasn’t good. The community had taken in stragglers before, but it’d been closed off to any more newcomers for about a year now. Circumstances—our very existences—had . . . well, required it. It didn’t matter if Gabriel turned out to be the greatest man in history or not, he wouldn’t be invited to stay.
Then the bigger implications of what he was saying barreled into my brain: Just how much had he heard about the New Badlands? How many others out there knew that there were dwellers here, and when would they be coming, too?
My skin bristled with its hair standing on end. Gabriel. Dangerous.
I tried to let him know that this was no paradise. “Since word is that the government went bankrupt during all that economic sanction trouble with India, we heard that there haven’t been U.S. satellite sweeps here.” That was the most recent update from the last visitor we had, anyway, but I didn’t want to talk about her. “We heard rumors of mercenary investors from different parts of the globe bailing out our treasury, and we’ve been fearing that the sweeps will start up again.”
“Those rumors about the investors are true enough, though I don’t know if the government’s secured any satellite coverage.”
“What I’m saying is that this place probably won’t be any more private than others, come the future.”
“
You’ve
remained unscathed,” Gabriel said.
You’ve
remained unscathed,” Gabriel said.
I wouldn’t get into personal stuff with him. “Supposedly,” I said, still trying to scare him off, “Stamp heard about the so-called serenity, just like you. And the water, too.”
“Stamp?”
I nodded. “Johnson Stamp probably sent that goon you just chased away.”
It looked like Gabriel was turning the name over in his mind. Then he seemed to store it away and move on. “At any rate, I came out here to see if this was what I’ve been needing in life. I might be mistaken, though, based on the trouble that’s already greeted me.”
“You mean those injuries?” I motioned toward his healing face, injecting the right amount of suspicion into my voice.
Gabriel nodded, and when Chaplin tilted his head in sympathy, the man laughed, reaching out to pet the dog. Chaplin, of course, reveled in it.
Affection whore,
I thought, trying not to feel envious, because Chaplin had always been
my
friend.
I thought, trying not to feel envious, because Chaplin had always been
my
friend.
“How I got bloodied up is an involved tale.” Gabriel cleared his throat, as if losing the words. “I was only resting out of the sunlight when they found me, just before dark was about to slant down.”
Folks hardly went outside here without heat suits—which he didn’t seem to own—during the day anymore. The weather could be that hellish, but probably that was why he’d been resting out of the light and traveling by night.
“The next thing I knew,” he said, “I was yanked out of my cave and roughed up for straying onto someone’s claimed property.”
“Not with the scarlet in my eyes.”
The reference to red made me dig my nails into my palms. Blood, attacks. Bad guys everywhere, even in the places you least expected them to be.
“This stinks of Stamp’s guys,” I said. “Word has it they’ll mess with anyone they find on the surface round here. Their boss doesn’t seem to exercise much control over them.”
“So you don’t go out there often.” Gabriel was rubbing Chaplin’s neck, bringing the dog to the throes of ecstasy.
“Only a few of my neighbors do—unless we’re gathered somewhere else.”
I jerked my chin toward the east wall, where more visz screens showcased the sparse common area in a cavern not far from my home. Everyone had a tunnel leading there, although few had been using them to meet in the open.
Not until lately.
Propping himself up to see better, Gabriel stopped petting Chaplin for a moment. The dog scratched out a paw in entreaty, and our guest grinned, then resumed his work, much to the whore’s satisfaction.
Unable to watch much more, I went over to a screen that showed a middle-aged woman and a stocky, dark-haired man near the same age sitting at a rickety crate table. Zel Hopkins and Sammy Ramos, two fellow Badlanders who’d recently started to venture into the common area since Stamp’s arrival. Unlike with the outside visz lenses, Stamp hadn’t found this secluded gathering spot yet, so Sammy and Zel obviously felt secure in meeting there tonight.
I turned up the volume; doing so would automatically lower the feeds from the other viszes.
The sound of chatter emerged from the speaker. Earlier, when I’d been listening in, they’d talked about how one of Stamp’s guys—a spindly-legged youth whom Zel had nicknamed “Twiggy”—had been slaughtered last night. I’d turned down the sound, not wanting to hear more because it revved up something vengeful and bloodthirsty in me.
Bad guys getting their due. A reckoning. Justice.
I lowered the volume again. “This is the common area. Back when we all found each other and decided to settle in a tight community, Dad connected viszes to this spot where a few Badlanders used to gather. They stopped meeting for a while”—here, I took care to keep myself controlled and subtle, even if Chaplin lowered his head and averted his gaze from me—“but now people are meandering out again. They’re worried about Stamp moving into the area and letting his wild men run free.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is how I hear the news that goes round.”
Gabriel had stopped petting Chaplin, and the dog didn’t ask for more this time. “You really don’t go out of your home much?”
“Not if I don’t have to. They know I listen in on them, though.” Sometimes my neighbors even addressed me, asking me to join them, but that had to be just a civil habit left over from the days my dad used to socialize with the locals. “We respect each other’s privacy enough to keep a distance when it’s required.”
Saying it out loud, I realized how cold I seemed, but that was the state of things everywhere, not just here. Neighbors who lived close but never much communicated.
“How do you sustain yourself if you don’t go out?” Gabriel asked.
I stuck to safe answers. “I’m able to do my own water mining. I also use a hydroponics system to farm enough grub for me and Chaplin, and we supplement that by trading for more supplies with the others on a leave-it-by-my-door basis. There’s not much out there for vegetation anymore.” Quite a few old herbivores had died off because of that. “We make it just fine, though. And if there’s a threat?” I gestured toward my wall, where the archaic collection of guns, knives, projectiles, and chains hung in a dare for him to ask more intrusive questions.
Hardly getting the hint, he said, “Where’d you gather all that?”
“Salvaged from abandoned materials round these parts. As I said, we make it just fine.”
He grinned, like he respected my defensiveness. “So this Stamp . . . ?”
“Why, Mr. Gabriel,” I said, “what happened to your need for sleep?” He’d just been trying to avoid conversation, hadn’t he? Something had sure changed that.
“My unguent works its wonders.” He ruffled Chaplin’s fur, smiled at me again, then squeezed his eyes in pain, lifting a hand to the cuts near his mouth.
But his gesture struck me all wrong.
Now
it seemed like Gabriel was acting, like he was belatedly faking his hurt.
Now
it seemed like Gabriel was acting, like he was belatedly faking his hurt.
Yet . . . that smile of his. It heated my belly again, and that heat slipped right down to my center, tightening into an ache I felt most mornings when I woke up to realize there’d be no way to fully satisfy the brutal longings of the night.
A mixture of anger, confusion, fear stretched me, but I lowered my arms, pressed them against my stomach.
Better. Still, this stranger was making me awful uncomfortable.
“I don’t get it,” I finally said. “A bit ago, you were bleeding like there was no tomorrow. And now . . .”
He’d gone stiff, his eyes shuttered to emptiness.
“Now I’m wildly improved.”
“The gel healed you that fast? What’s in it?”
“Trade secret. But I might be persuaded to share because of your kindness. In fact, I feel compelled to offer more.”
At the innuendo, my body flared up and the ache between my legs intensified, sharpened.
Panic really flooded me this time, overtaking my self-control. And, damn it, did I ever need some, because control balanced the world, inside and out.
Gabriel must’ve realized that he’d crossed a line with me, because he raised his hands in a mild type of surrender. “Listen, I wasn’t getting fresh. I’m only thinking that maybe you’d like an extra hand around to chase off this Stamp and his guys for the time being. You do me a kindness, and I return it. That’s how things should work.”
I looked at my wall of weapons and then back at him. “I’ve already got good company.”
“I see that. And I had years of wildlife hunting with my dad before the Second Amendment was struck down. Hunting made me good at using most of what you’ve got.”
“All the same, Mr. Gabriel, no thank you.”
“Hey, I couldn’t sleep well if I left you in such straits. . . .”
“Your sleep isn’t my concern. Chaplin, c’mere.” I patted my thigh, hoping my dog wan’t so taken by the stranger that he’d refuse me.
But when Chaplin trotted over—just after one last glance at Gabriel—I hugged him. Hugged him hard.
My voice was muffled by fur. “You can convalesce here as you require. But after sufficient time, you and your miracle gel will have to walk.”
“Then I’ll just get my rest, miss.”
Jay-sus. It’d do no good for him to be “miss”-ing me all the time. “The name’s Mariah. You might as well call me that. But don’t think it’s an invitation to stay.”
“I understand, Mariah.” He sank down to his blankets and closed his eyes, his lips spread in a bruised grin.
Not trusting him an inch, I sat on the couch and faced our guest, my hand near my holster. Then, since I had nothing to occupy myself for the coming hours, I ended up just watching him: taking in his wounded features, his . . . lure. Yeah, that was what it was. I couldn’t
not
watch the stranger.
not
watch the stranger.
Little by little, I even allowed myself to open fully to him, to be saturated with him. All the while, my blood heated, simmering until every pop was agony.
It wasn’t until Chaplin nuzzled my hand that I got hold of myself. Then, in control once again, I continued my vigil, counting the moments until Gabriel would thankfully leave.
4
Mariah
J
ust after dawn broke on the visz bank, I gave up on guarding against Gabriel, who was still resting, and got to work farther belowground. I left Chaplin lying next to him, but I wondered if my dog was too taken by our guest to sentinel properly.
ust after dawn broke on the visz bank, I gave up on guarding against Gabriel, who was still resting, and got to work farther belowground. I left Chaplin lying next to him, but I wondered if my dog was too taken by our guest to sentinel properly.
Hoping he’d be as ferocious as Intel Dogs could be, I retreated to my living area, where I dressed in work garb and strapped on my helmet, which featured a lightweight solar-battery lamp that Dad had once contrived. I left Chaplin to do his thing while I went to work. I had no other choice, because there were too many things to see to, like mining water down below the dwelling, culling enough food for today’s meals, and molding more ammunition for my revolvers just in case Stamp saw fit to bother us even after Gabriel had chased away his man last night.
After one last look at Chaplin nestled all content and happy at Gabriel’s relaxed side, I headed for the north tunnel’s door, went through it, and switched on my headlamp as I turned round to ease the door shut.
The light showcased the wooden barrier I’d handmade out of a salvaged billboard from an old highway. On it, the faded sign of a crucifix stood at an angle, rays of light emanating from its glory. GO WITH THE ANGELS, it said, right above a church address that had long since been torn asunder, just like most religions before organizations of personality had replaced them: Web leaders, saviors of society, pop culture idols that substituted for spirituality.
All that remained of this church’s address was CALIF.
And then a tear, right down the side, cutting off the name of a state that pretty much no longer existed.
I turned my back on the sign, but that didn’t quite do the trick. Most days I could look at that crucifix and derive a sad bit of optimism from it, reminded that there were people who’d once believed in something they thought was pure. It made me g w there had to be more waiting for me in the future than things that’d been ripped and nearly shredded. But today, after Gabriel’s bloodied arrival, that crucifix only reminded me of screams, red, agonizing gashes, my mom and brother red-soaked and reaching blindly for life as Dad opened fire on the burglars, spraying bullets over his loved ones in the process, too.
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