Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (3 page)

“Patrick,” Cavalo breathed.

Hank nodded. “It’s been a little over two years now. Only the three of us knew.”

“You son of a bitch,” Cavalo said. “What did he want? In return?”

Neither answered, nor would they look at him.

“
What did he want
?”

“Supplies,” Hank said. “Information. Caravan routes. How often they came through. Grangeville. How many. How often we traded. The surrounding area. The mountains. Rivers. Dams. Never told them about the prison. They never asked.”

“That’s it?”

“And people.”

Cavalo closed his eyes. “To recruit?”

“No.”

Cavalo felt sick. “How many so far?”

“Five,” Hank said. “The first was from Grangeville. The second was from a caravan. The third was found wandering the woods. I never even knew her name. The fourth was a man from the south who had raped a woman and left her for dead.”

“And the fifth?”

“He couldn’t do it anymore,” Alma said. Her voice was flat, like SIRS when caught in the grip of his insanity. “He said this isn’t who we are. He told us we had to stop. That it was time to rise up and fight back.”

“Warren,” Cavalo said.

Alma nodded. “He went out one day. Said he’d be right back. That he was just going to talk some sense into them. The Dead Rabbits. I begged him not to. I begged him to stay. You know what he said?”

“What?” Cavalo croaked out.

“It’s not what Cavalo would do. Cavalo wouldn’t stand for this. Cavalo wouldn’t let this happen.” She wiped her eyes. “Always Cavalo with him. Cavalo, Cavalo, Cavalo. You would have thought you walked on water rather than crawled in the dirt.”

Without thinking, Cavalo rushed them both, forgetting the chains that bound him to the wall. All he could think about was his hands around their necks. To squeeze until blood vessels burst in their eyes and they saw all the world in the same red sheen that had fallen over him.

The chains snapped his arms back. “You fucking bastards,” he snarled at them. Bad Dog was at his side, teeth snapping, eyes narrowed. “You
fed
them!”

“And you murdered three men to save one of them,” Hank said. “What does that make you?”

“Fuck you, Hank.”

Bad guys?
Bad Dog barked excitedly.
They bad guys now?

“Hold,” Cavalo snapped at him. “Don’t move until I say.”

Alma and Hank took a step back. Cavalo pulled on his chains toward them. His arms stretched back. He bared his teeth. The bees crowed at his savagery. “Let me go,” he said. The chains scraped against the metal hooks.

“We can’t do that, Cavalo,” Hank said sadly. “Not yet. Not until we get some answers.”

“Or what? You going to feed me to them too?”

Alma winced but ignored his words. “Why did they want him?” she asked. “The UFSA. They knew who he was, didn’t they?”

“What happens if you can’t find someone to feed to them?” Cavalo asked. “What happens then? How do you choose?”

“Does it matter?” Hank asked.

“Yes.”

Hank glanced at Alma. She shook her head, and he sighed. Cavalo thought that’d be the end of it, but then Hank spoke. “Lottery,” he said in a soft voice, as if speaking the word any louder would make it real.

“Lottery,” Cavalo repeated.

“They wouldn’t know what for. Whoever was chosen.”

“And if it was Deke? Or Aubrey? Or either of you?”

“We’d do what we had to,” Alma said.

“And me? Would I have been in that lottery?”

“Everyone,” Hank said.

Cavalo laughed. He couldn’t stop it if he tried. It poured out of him in great heaving gasps, sounding rusty and foreign in his ears.

What happened?
Bad Dog asked, cocking his head.

“Monsters,” Cavalo said as he struggled to catch his breath. “They’re monsters.”

Bad Dog growled at Alma and Hank.

“It was the only way,” Hank said.

“Fuck your logic, Hank.”

“You’re not better than us, Cavalo,” Alma snapped.

He leveled his gaze at her. “And I never pretended to be. I know what I am.”

To this, Hank and Alma said nothing.

It was time to end this. “You have nineteen days,” Cavalo said, still chuckling. It was a dry sound, like bones rubbing together.

“Until what?” Hank asked.

“Until Patrick comes to Cottonwood to take back what’s his,” Cavalo said with a grin. He wondered if his lips crawled with bees. “They have held this town over my head. The Dead Rabbits. The UFSA. All of them. They threatened you unless I gave them what they want. I killed the UFSA for you. I came here to warn you about what was to come. But now I’m inclined to let them raze this place to the ground. This is not my doing. This is not my war.”

The blood drained from both their faces at his words. “And how long do you think it’ll be before they show up at your door?” Hank asked him, wiping the sweat from his brow. “All of them?”

“I’ll be long gone,” Cavalo said. “You’ll be nothing but the wind at my back.”

“Running again,” Alma said. “How like you.”

“Surviving,” Cavalo retorted. “Surely that’s something you understand.”

“What does he want?” Hank asked.

“Who?”

“Patrick.”

“The boy,” Alma said. “Lucas. You said he had marks. For what?”

“It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. You’ll never see him again.”

“What can he do? What is he?”

Cavalo shrugged.

“Nineteen days,” she said. “You’ll still be here when they come.”

Cavalo smiled at her. He thought his face might break.

“We can go to him,” Alma said to Hank. “To Patrick. Tell him this was all a mistake. We had nothing to do with Lucas.”

“It’s not that simple,” Hank said, looking at Cavalo. “Is it?”

“No.”

“Water,” Hank said. “You asked me about water. And electricity.”

Cavalo pulled on the chains. They rattled behind him. If only Hank or Alma would take a step closer, he could wrap the chain around their throats. But they probably knew better. He was sure they could see it on his face.

“What is he?” Hank asked.

“Salvation,” Cavalo said, “but you’re already as damned as I am.”

“Did they know? The UFSA?”

“They didn’t know what they had. What he was.”

“Marks on his skin. That’s what you said. Tattoos.”

Cavalo said nothing.

“Is it….” Hank shook his head. “It can’t be.”

“What?” Alma asked.

He ignored her. Hank only had eyes for Cavalo. “Patrick. He did it, didn’t he?”

Tell them nothing
, the bees said.
They are monsters. They lied to you. They don’t deserve your help. They’re no better than
she
was when she took Jamie out of the town and let him die. They’re no better than the ones who left Warren’s head on a dusty road near the edge of the sane world.

They’re no better than me
, Cavalo thought and closed his eyes. In his mind the hive screamed at him as they swarmed around him, as if stuck inside a snow globe.

“DEFCON 1,” he muttered. “I’m at DEFCON 1.”

“What?” Alma asked.

Who is Charlie?
Bad Dog asked.
And what did he lose?

The man thought of coyotes, snarling and fat with tumors, as he opened his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what he did. But it’s not complete. SIRS said it’s only halfway done. It’s not in his programming to know the rest. He’s scanned all that he could and he understands what it means, but he can’t finish it.” He didn’t know why he told them, given what he now knew. Maybe it was because there was nothing left.

“My God,” Hank whispered. “How is it possible?”

“I don’t know,” Cavalo said. “But it is. And you know who will have the rest.”

“Lucas doesn’t know for sure?”

“So he says.” Cavalo wasn’t sure if he could believe the Dead Rabbit.

“But… how… where can we…?”

“Dworshak,” Cavalo said. “Does it still stand?”

“The dam?” Alma asked. “What does that have to….”

“It should,” Hank said. Cavalo could see the fire blooming in his eyes. He wondered if, after all was said and done, they could ever go back to the way things had been. If they would even have the chance. “Haven’t been there in a few years since no one knew how to do anything with it. Fifty miles is a long way to travel this close to the Deadlands. Unless the Dead Rabbits have taken it over, but I don’t think they have gotten that far north yet.” He stopped. Shook his head. “That’s what they’ve been looking for, isn’t it? That’s why they’ve been moving. To find a working dam. He never asked about it, so we never had reason to tell him.”

“I don’t understand,” Alma said weakly, though Cavalo could see the knowing glimmer flashing in her eyes.

Cavalo took a breath and let it out slowly. “Lucas is… a map. Or at least half of one. There are schematics tattooed into his skin. Equations and lines. For machines. Water purification. Hydroelectricity. Power. He is what the UFSA was looking for. Why they want Patrick. The Forefathers, whoever they are. They didn’t know Patrick had divided it up. They thought he was nothing more than a pet. A psycho fucking bulldog. A means to an end. But he’s more than that. They didn’t know what they had. They never stopped to look. Lucas is the key, and I guarantee you Patrick is the lock. Whoever opens that door… will have the power to control everything. You have made a deal with the devil, and in nineteen days, he is coming to your doorstep to collect.”

of bees and men

THEY LEFT
him chained to the wall, Bad Dog fretting at his feet.

He pulled on the chains. They clanged against the hooks on the wall. There was no give in them. He wondered how many of those the town had fed to the Dead Rabbits had been kept in here, arms bound to the walls.

His throat hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken so much. They promised him water but never came back. He expected as much. It was okay. He’d survived worse. He knew there was a guard out in the front office but did not call out to him. It would not have done any good. Besides, he was sick of people. He’d seen too much of them lately. Of this town with all its secrets. He wanted to be alone while he had time left to do so. Once the sun rose, he’d either be killed by the town or fed to the Dead Rabbits. Of that he was certain.

As the sky grew darker, the snow stopped and the clouds parted here and there, leaving patches of stars and sky he could see through the small window behind him. He even saw the moon, the sliver that it was, when he craned his neck uncomfortably. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the moon. Men had gone there once, he knew. In their ships that spat fire. Much like the space in which the moon drifted, it was something Cavalo couldn’t quite fathom. He wondered what the moon looked like up close. And how quiet the space around it would be. All dust and stars.

Bad Dog curled around his feet protectively, huffing quietly in his sleep as his legs jerked. Cavalo wondered what he chased in his dreams. He wished he could follow his friend there. It would be better than staying trapped here in the real world where people he would have trusted, people he thought far better than himself, had shown they were exactly the same as he. It should have provided him comfort to know that others made hard decisions like he did. Those decisions that no one else would choose to make. But it was Alma. And Hank. And Warren. They weren’t supposed to be like him. They were supposed to be different.

And why are you letting it affect you so?
the bees whispered from their hive.
They are nothing to you. They are
no one
. You are alone as you’ve always been. As you will always be. That’s what you’ve wanted. And that’s what you’ll get. They are already dead. Why did you even come here? What did you hope to achieve?

He closed his eyes against the bees. He could feel them pricking about in his head. He couldn’t tell them (or even himself) about that strange, soaring hope that burst through him when SIRS had started to explain the marks on Lucas’s skin. He couldn’t tell them of words foreign to him like
hope
and
future
that danced across his mind. Even as the blood had dripped down the Dead Rabbit’s neck where he’d almost cut his throat, Cavalo had been filled with a terrible wonder. And even with the scrape of the knife, he’d bent his head and scraped a kiss against the Dead Rabbit’s lips. He didn’t know why he did it. Maybe he meant it as a good-bye. Maybe he meant it to say he was sorry for what he was about to do.

Or maybe he was fucking tired and fucking lonely and maybe he couldn’t get the fucking psycho out of his head. He was always there, mixed in with the bees. Cavalo hated him. He hated everything about him. And even as
hope
and
future
had risen in his mind, so did
change
and
destruction
, and wasn’t there a moment where he’d almost grabbed the knife and finished what he’d started? Wasn’t there a moment when he thought that it’d be easier if Lucas was dead, his head separated from his body, Cavalo’s hands drenched in his blood?

There
was
such a moment, and it was a battle that Cavalo had almost lost.

Why he stopped himself was a curious thing. Cavalo thought it had to do with the Dead Rabbit always being in his head. Cavalo wished, not for the first time, that he’d killed Lucas the day they’d met. All of this could have been avoided. He might have gone the rest of his life never knowing what Hank was capable of. Alma. Warren. The town. This place.

He wondered what the morning would bring.

“If you can get away, you run,” he told Bad Dog.

Bad Dog opened his eyes and looked up at him.
They bad guys now?

“I don’t know.”

We bad guys?

“I don’t know.”

Can’t leave you
, Bad Dog said.

“You have to.”

Can’t.

“Why?”

Home. You’re my home.

“Stupid dog.” There was no heat to the words.

Stupid MasterBossLord. Stupid man who thinks Bad Dog will leave him. I will never leave you. Where you go, I go. And if they come, they will see my teeth and run because I am Bad Dog.