Borderlands: The Fallen (8 page)

“Naw—well, I ’spec I saw a streak but it could’ve been burning debris.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Off to the west at least a hunnerd klicks or so.”

“Hmm. You don’t have a radio I could use, at all, do you?”

“Don’t have any such thing. Have something like that, people use it to find you. Steal from you. And worse!”

They were quiet for a while as Berl took a spitted skag flank out of the fire and bit into it while the meat sizzled and popped.

Berl chewed ruminatively, his mouth open, his small reddened eyes never straying long from Zac. He swallowed a big mouthful of meat, drank from a plastic jug, then lifted his head, whistled questioningly to Bizzy, who was crouched at the entrance to the old outpost. Bizzy made a reassuring clicking noise back. “Bizzy says we’re all clear. I was afraid some shit-heel of a bandit spotted us, followed us back. They’d love to cut our throats in our sleep. Anyhow, Bizzy’ll keep watch.”

“You know me well enough yet to tell me how you tamed that Drifter thing?” Zac asked.

“Oh …” The old man touched the strange, alien-tech metal collar around his neck. “Not yet. Tell you someday maybe. If’n I decide I trust you. Which ain’t likely.”

He controlled the beast through that alien collar somehow, Zac guessed …

“You want some more skag meat, boy?” Berl asked.

“No. No that was enough, thanks.”

“Skags’re as much lizard as anything else. Tamed me a skag pup once. But it got hungry and bit off one of my
fingers.” He held the maimed hand up for Zac to see—the index finger was just a stump. “So I shot him.”

He patted the shotgun by his side. Behind him, within reach, was the rocket launcher.

Seeing Zac look at the guns, Berl scowled. “Wonder how’m I gonna sleep with you around …”

Zac shrugged. “I don’t snore much.”

“Not what I meant. You might slip over here and choke me dead, so’s you can take what’s mine. I don’t know you. Took a big chance takin’ you in.”

Zac tossed a stick onto the fire. “Berl, I’m a family man. I’m an engineer. I’m not a bandit. You saw what I came down in. I’m an offworlder.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Most of these sons of bitches was offworlders once. Some of the worst I met are offworlders. That bastard Crannigan—he’s an offworlder. He’d feed a baby to a skag if it made him a nickel.”

“Who’s Crannigan?”

“Skunk mercenary got a job from the Atlas bunch to locate a … well,
somethin’
out here. He ain’t found it yet. He’ll murder to get there too, mark my words.” He grinned, showing gapped teeth. “But he’ll find more than he bargained for. Oh yes. Something’ll be laughin’ at him as it chews him up an’ spits him out …”

Lying on her back in the sealed lifeboat, Marla decided that they’d camped for the night. The bandits were sitting around campfires, laughing, talking, cursing one another, drinking, arguing, giggling, jeering—just out of her line of sight. She could see the enormous rapacious moon of
this hungry world hanging over them, as if it were waiting for a meal. Flamelight fluttered to the right; to the left was darkness broken by patches of moonlight.

It was difficult to see much more from here, with the lifeboat’s hatch shut. It was like a coffin with a transparent lid. The lifeboat was giving her air, somehow; it had given her water from a tube, and another device allowed her to eliminate urine. She’d found a compartment close to her right hand, with several packets of food mash. She’d found a mayday beacon too, in the same compartment—but it appeared to be dead.

Still, she ought to be able to get out of this space tomb. There was a computer that would let her out if she asked it to. But she didn’t want to leave with these thugs surrounding her. The only thing that had kept them from raping her, maybe killing her, was that they couldn’t get in.

Sooner or later, though, they’d sell the lifeboat, and her with it, to someone who’d force it open somehow. And that would be the beginning of the end …

She turned on her side, lifted up on her arms, pressed an ear to the cool transparent hatch, listening. The gruff voices came through now. Some of the men seemed to be singing:

Oh I’ve got a very good friend, a very good friend he’ll be

He’s my best friend now for I’ve run out of meat

He’s got strong legs, does he, and fine strong arms too:

Got fine good meat upon him, go real fine in a stew!

For I’ve run right out of food and he’s

Looking good, awfully good, mighty good … to …

eeeeeeeat!

Much hooting and hilarity at that. “Sing another one!”

But an argument sprang up instead of a song.

“I told ya, you gamble, you lose, you pay, Snotty! Now cut off that fucking testicle or pay me the fucking money!”

“That wasn’t no way a fair one! You rolled the bones, you cheated on it!”

“You gonna pay up or not?”

“I ain’t paying no skagbuggerin’ cheater!”

“What’d you call me?!”

There was the
boom
of a gun then, and a scream; the chatter of an automatic weapon returning fire. Another scream. Quiet. Then a burst of laughter.

“Lookit that—they done killed each other! Ha!”

“Well, who gets their stuff? Let’s roll the bones for it!”

She shuddered and lay back down. Amazing they could even speak, these men, form something like sentences. They were animals in human form.

She waited, making up her mind.
Tonight.

She thought about Zac, and Cal. She pictured them finding one another somehow. She imagined Zac taking care of Cal, getting their son to the nearest settlement. Then he’d organize a search party—a heavily armed search party—to bring her to safety.

But she couldn’t wait for that. It would take too long, if it happened at all. And it wasn’t all that likely. Zac wasn’t a terribly efficient guy.

She counted off seconds, minutes, to keep her mind busy. She ate a little of the salty, barely palatable puree in the food tubes; she drank a little water.

She’d need her strength …

Sometime close to dawn, the men quieted down. Marla pressed her ear to the hatch, heard someone snoring. They were asleep. Maybe there was a bandit standing sentry but chances were the guard would be looking outward from the bandit camp, watching for wild beasts or enemies.

Time to take the risk.

She took the uni and a few other items from her bag, stuffed them in her pockets with the remaining food tubes and a little plastic packet of water. She had no idea what the weather was like—probably cold at night, as in most desert places. She had only her tight traveler’s coveralls but they were designed to be insulated for anything but extreme temperatures.

She whispered, “Computer! Can you hear me? Please respond softly.”

“I hear,”
came the soft, artificial voice.

“Computer—are you in touch with the Study Station? With anyone who can assist?”

“I am unable to establish contact. Mayday signaler is in the right-hand compartment. However it is likely nonoperational since it has not been recharged for three years. My own operational charge is nearly used up
.”

“Okay, computer—open the hatch. If you can open it slowly, do so.”

“Opening hatch.”

The hatch of the lifeboat hummed slowly open. Cool night air, freighted with campfire smoke, drifted in to her. She took a deep breath, then got to her knees on the compartment cushion, looked furtively around.

She saw two campfires, one on either side of the low, flatbed truck a few strides away. Men were sprawled beside
the guttering fires. She saw only one sentry, his back to her, about ten meters away, leaning on a large, pipe-like weapon.

She stretched a little, then climbed as slowly as she could out of the lifeboat compartment, feeling the truck bed with her feet.

She got her feet under her, crouched beside the lifeboat, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The moon seemed to glare down at her. She had the odd idea that it was watching her; that it might call out a warning to the bandits.

She took a long slow breath and then climbed off the truck, onto the sandy ground—and paused, wondering if she could get into its cab, start it up, drive it off into the darkness. Escape that way. But the sentry would fire that big weapon at the truck—probably some kind of rocket launcher—and he’d blow her up before she got far. Anyway, she had no idea if she could get the vehicle started. No, she had to go afoot, and quickly.

She crouched, hunched over, making her way to the deeper shadow away from the fires. She could smell the bandits—rank, rotten. She saw the shapes of cactus-like plants silhouetted against the gray background of the desert. She heard a sound, beyond the snoring of the men—breakers. An ocean. Beach somewhere nearby. It was like places back on the homeworld, where sometimes the desert reached the sea.

She hesitated. Right in her way was a big man sprawled on his back, sleeping in his helmet and goggles, mouth wide open. The stench of him almost made her gag. She held her breath and stepped over him with one foot, very carefully, wincing when her feet made a crunching sound in the sand. She was straddling him now.

She stepped over him with her other foot, teetering. Then she caught her balance, biting her lip with the tension. The man she’d almost fallen on stopped snoring and muttered to himself in his sleep. “Whuh bassud took muh … took muh fuggin’ …”

Marla waited. After an interminable time he resumed snoring.

She stepped over another man, who was curled up like a fetus—and then she was in the inky shadow beyond the firelight.

She headed toward the beach, thinking to follow it to some habitation along the sea.

In another three minutes she stumbled over a rock, fell headfirst … and slid down a sandy slope on her stomach. She came to a stop on the edge of a beach. She could see the moonlit wavecrests silver against blue-black, glimmering beyond the dark swath of sand.

She got to her feet and looked around—which way now? The bandits were roughly behind and to her right, so she went left.

She got a hundred meters down the beach—then stopped when a light struck her full in the face, dazzling her eyes. She stood there, frozen, terrified, not sure which way to run.

The light beamed from a flashlight held in a man’s hand. The light angled down, so she was able to make him out.

The man holding the flashlight was brawny, with long black hair flowing over his broad shoulders and a lantern jaw. He wore loose pantaloons, and an open vest over his bare chest. He was just getting out of a longboat pulled up
in the surf. Beside him stood two other dark, rugged men. All three of them were heavily armed.

One of the men, bearded and scarred, pointed at her and said, “Vance—look! It’s the woman! It must be! Grunj ain’t gonna be happy! The idjits have lost her!”

“So they have,” said Vance. “But
we’ve
found her!”

C
al Finn had a choice. Hide in one of the dark crevices that might end up being dens for skags—or move toward that twinkling red light he saw in the distance.

After what Mom had read in the uni about the bandits, he figured the light might well belong to one of those bloodthirsty gangs.

Some of the bandits are cannibals,
she’d said.

But suppose the light was someone looking for him—maybe his mom, lighting a fire to attract his attention?

Even if it was a bandit—it was late, and dark, and he was hungry. If they were asleep, just one or two bandits, they might not wake were he to slip into their camp and steal some food canisters, say, even a weapon …

The gnawing feeling in his belly made the decision. He had to take a look.

Cal crept from one pool of darkness to the next, guided
by moonlight. He froze in place more than once when he heard the rustling of something moving out on the plain, expecting that unidentified
something
to leap out at him, tear his limbs from his body. He kept envisioning the skag’s three-jawed toothy maw trumpeting in rage.

But half an hour later, he’d made his way to the base of a hill of boulders, about thirty meters high. Firelight flickered red and yellow near the top. He couldn’t see anyone up there.

A narrow path wound between boulders, and up the steep, sandy incline. It was mostly in shadow, picked out by moonlight here and there. Anything could be waiting on that path.

Cal plucked up his courage and pressed on, climbing the hill, hands stretched out in front of him to feel his way as quietly as he could.

Soon he could hear a campfire crackling; could see sparks wending their way up to extinguish in the night sky. He got down on his hands and knees and crept close to a boulder on all fours, feeling strangely like one of the desert’s wild animals.

Creeping closer to the firelight, Cal peeked around the edge of the boulder and saw the camp just a step or two away. On the other side of a campfire, a big, dark-skinned man lay on his back, his head propped up on a folded coat, goggles pushed back on his forehead, a rifle of some kind in his hands. He was snoring softly, mouth slightly open. Cal couldn’t see the rest of his face because of the shadows in the way. A random tumble of old bones lay to one side, including a skull. Not good. Maybe this guy
was
a cannibal.