Falling Sky (22 page)

Those early days are imprinted so strongly on my brain. I can remember everything about them. The sound of my father's voice, and Claudia's answering back in the midst of Feral howls. The smell of the ground, of the Ferals, that scent of Claudia's that she still has—metal and oil and sweet vanilla. The taste of Claudia's grog. The feeling of hands and bruises and cuts from our adventures and patching each other up. And . . . other sensations.

We hooked up with her back when my dad was still around. Did a job together. She didn't have the
Valkyrie
at the time. And we all made a good team. She was older, yes, but nicely in between me and my dad and served, in a way, as a bridge between us.

I sometimes wonder if Dad was hoping for something to happen with her. There certainly was as much of a difference in age between them as there was between her and me. But I guess Claudia had other ideas.

I think about that night often.

We had gotten word of a stash. Some ritzy mountain home we were going to check out. Those were always potentially good scores. Back in the Clean, the rich were the ones who could barricade themselves away from everyone else. They were likely to have better salvage. They were likely to have stockaded goods.

So we took the
Cherub
in. Of course we were worried about Ferals. No matter how defensible a place looked, you always had to expect the Ferals had found it. And even if they hadn't, what if the Bug had?

Once we lowered the ship in and next to a stand of trees, we descended the ladder. Dad never liked to take the
Cherub
down to where Ferals might be able to reach her. It's something I carried on after he died.

Dad had his revolver out. I had a worn .45 that I had scrounged up somewhere. It wasn't a great weapon, but I remember being so proud of it. Because it was mine and I took care of it as well as I could.

Claudia had her bow. I remember being skeptical of it at first. I was young, impressed by guns and ammo. Not that I'm not now. But a bow seemed, well, it seemed ridiculous.

Yet the first time I saw her use it, I was a believer. I watched her pull back the string and loose arrow after arrow in fluid, graceful movement. And I watched Feral after Feral fall before her. What made it even better was that it was easy for her to collect ammo. She wouldn't collect the shafts from used arrows—they were covered in Feral blood and, therefore, the Bug—but she could cut and carve new shafts from trees, and arrowheads, while not easy to make, could be fashioned from cast-off metal or flint or any number of materials. Not quite the same as bullets.

Dad brought the
Cherub
down to the house. It was a sprawling, massive structure, composed of asymmetrical elements. Lots of glass, though that could always prove a problem. Most of it looked intact, though. Behind the house was a large pool that Dad said had been used for swimming. Swampy water filled it, nature reclaiming the structure.

We lowered the ladder and Claudia was first down on the ground as usual. She kept her bow up, an arrow fitted to the string, scanning for any Ferals. I came down after her, my .45 in my hand. Dad brought up the rear with his revolver.

We moved one at a time, covering each other's movements. We'd worked like this so many times it had become routine. Still, I felt as anxious as a cat between two Ferals, the way I always did when it was my turn to cover. I was good at spotting Ferals—I knew that—but it was something that if you fucked it up, you weren't likely to get a second chance.

Everything looked good by the time Claudia got to the house. We'd discussed how to get inside but in the end had opted to smash through one of the windows. It would create some noise, possibly attract any Ferals inside, but it was the quickest way and no one liked to be fumbling at the lock while potentially under attack.

Claudia pulled a long rod from her belt and swung it at the window. I moved my eyes back to scan the surrounding area and waited for the sound of the glass cracking.

It didn't come.

I couldn't stop myself from turning back to look at her.

“Fuck,” she said. “It's reinforced.”

Which made sense of the fact that they were unbroken. Something like that would hold up to the wind and to Ferals. But it also meant that Ferals were unlikely to be inside. Unless, of course, some fool had left a door or window open.

“We'll move around to a door,” Dad said. “Keep your eyes open.”

We followed the outside wall and soon came to a small set of stairs leading up to a door. The wood of the steps had rotted through, but again, this meant that Ferals were unlikely to have penetrated the building.

“Cover us,” Dad said to Claudia. Then he hoisted me up to the door. It was locked, of course, and I couldn't see a way to get inside. “Should I shoot it?” I said.

Dad didn't answer at first. Firing my gun now would alert anyone in the area. But we were up on a hill and the trees would cover us. It wouldn't necessarily give away our position.

“Okay,” Dad said at last. So I shot the lock and with a few hits from the butt of my pistol was able to get the door open. I pulled myself inside, flattened down to the floor, the pistol still out, alert for any movement.

I didn't see any, nor did I notice the smell that characterized a Feral dwelling. Still, that didn't mean anything. Willing my hearing to its best ability, I reached down my hand for the next person.

Dad boosted up Claudia next, and with me pulling and him pushing, she was soon up by me and able to cover me from the inside. Then Dad came up last.

“Smells good,” he said. Claudia didn't seem convinced.

Dad shut the door behind us. It was one of the things we had often disagreed on. I was of the opinion that it helped to have the door handily open in case, for example, the house was filled with Ferals and we had to go running to get away from them. In this case, we couldn't just go through the windows to escape.

Dad, on the other hand, felt that leaving it open was an invitation to any Ferals that happened to wander by, and he didn't want a Feral sneaking up on him while he was exploring.

Dad always won this argument.

We moved through the house. It looked like someone had been in it, had cleared some of the things away, but not everything. There was bound to be some decent salvage inside. I resisted the urge to start tearing everything apart and stuff it into my pockets. That was another thing Dad had taught me. And yet another variation in salvage philosophy.

There are some who would say that in a strange place like that where you're not sure if you're walking into a Feral den, the best thing to do is to grab what you can as quickly as possible and then get out as quickly as you can. Those people would likely tell you that any salvage, no matter how good, is no use to you if you're dead.

I can understand that line of reasoning. I like living, prefer to keep that going as long as I can.

But Dad liked to play a longer game. Sure, we could have cleared off with the first things we saw. Taken some books, some small electronic equipment. That might have got us by for another few months. But a bigger score meant more security, and Dad always trusted his instincts in situations like that. And he felt that there was something more important there.

We stuck together, moving throughout the rooms of the house. Dad never let us separate, not that we were likely to. It always was better to have someone cover you.

We moved through what was once the house's galley to a few sitting rooms and then to one large room that was filled with some old-fashioned games. I recognized a few of them from other houses, but whatever the rules were, or how they were played, were beyond me. Dad didn't even know. And the odds of finding a full set of anything, after all, was highly unlikely.

So far I had noted what could have been a decent haul. There were books. And small electronics and what must have been art pieces that could be used for raw materials—steel and glass, stone and fabrics. But Dad kept us going.

We went up to the bedroom, which had a huge bed, now covered in dust but piled high with blankets and pillows. Claudia looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I rolled my eyes at her, but I couldn't help smiling.

“I don't think there's anyone here,” she said. “Maybe they left and this place was just too tightened up for anyone else to get in.”

“Maybe,” Dad said. “But something doesn't seem quite right.”

I tried to figure out what he meant. I felt it, too, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

“Here,” Dad said, interrupting my thoughts. He stood before a wall in the room.

“What?” I said.

“There's something here,” he said.

I walked over and examined the wall where he was looking. He was right. It wasn't natural. You could tell where the ends met. Things weren't completely flush. The angles were all wrong. “What is it?” I asked.

“Some kind of hidden room,” Claudia said.

I looked at Dad and smiled. The hidden score. Concealed objects tended to be valuable.

“How do we get it open?” I said.

We looked around for some kind of hinge mechanism, a place where the door would move from, but it wasn't obvious. I prodded at the wall, tried to find some kind of opening device or a switch or panel. It reminded me of some of the books I'd read as a kid, mysterious temples with secret doors.

Eventually we found the seam of the door and tried to jam things into it to lever it open. With the three of us pushing on it, we were able to open up the gap a tiny bit, but something prevented the door from moving. Either there had been swelling over the years or an earthquake shifted things or maybe it just malfunctioned.

Then Dad had an idea.

He made me open one of the bedroom windows which I did easily enough. Then he pointed up to the
Cherub
. “If we can't crack it, she certainly can.”

“But if you take her up, anyone around will see,” I said.

“I think it's worth the risk,” he said.

Claudia nodded. “Yep.”

All three of us went outside, covering Dad until he was onboard the
Cherub
. Then Claudia and I returned to the house. Dad lowered the winch from the
Cherub
's gondola, and we snaked it into the open bedroom window and hooked it to the edge of the door, ratcheting it into place. With a shake from me, Dad started winding the winch in.

The line went taut, and nothing budged, then with a desperate, wrenching squeal, the metal pulled back from the wall and scraped against the floor. Dad was able to tell that it moved and shut down the winch.

The excitement of the moment died down when I realized that we didn't know what, or who, was in the room. Claudia and I exchanged a glance; she had her bow up and ready and I had my gun up and out. We moved around to the entrance, ready to cover each other.

The stink that rolled out from the room almost had me firing my gun because I'd only smelled the like near Feral dens. But my brain soon sussed out the difference. This was not the smell of filth and shit and rot. This was the smell of death. Even Claudia raised her scarf to her face and turned away.

I moved forward. I didn't know what else to do. And I was still motivated by what might be in there.

Dust, or what I thought was dust, swirled in the entrance. Dim lighting cast shadows throughout the room. It was some kind of safe room. Lockers and storage units and cots lined all the walls. But that wasn't what drew my attention.

In the center of the room, near the door, was a figure. Dead. Partially decomposed and contorted. I gave it a wide berth and beckoned Claudia to come in with me, partially because we needed to go through the room as quickly as possible, especially with the
Cherub
still above us, but also partially because the sight of this body disturbed me.

The score we were hoping for, frankly, wasn't. It was evident that at one point the storage units had been filled with food and water. There was still some water left, but not enough to be truly valuable. Besides, water was never that much of a desperate thing. There was some clothing, blankets, and the like. But nothing we could use.

There were also bones. Bones that weren't quite dry. Piled up in several of the storage units. I won't go into the details or the smell. Not all of them were adult bones.

Claudia and I were able to piece together what must have happened. This apparently well-to-do family knew the Bug was coming and they hid themselves away with what they thought was plenty of food and water and supplies. Only it wasn't enough. Or maybe the door just got stuck before they could come out to resupply. But the food was all gone. And people started to die and . . . well, those remaining ate the others until there was only one left.

I'll be honest—it made me gag. Cannibalism wasn't uncommon among Ferals when food supplies were low. It was one of the things that made them animals. Monsters. Other. But here was a family of human beings, seemingly uninfected, who had ended up acting just as monstrously.

I turned away, stumbled out of the room to get something resembling fresh air. Claudia came out after me. Putting one arm around me, pulling me close. For the first time I saw that she was shaken, too. We held onto each other for some time.

As we separated, I looked into her eyes and saw . . . something I'd never seen before. Something bright. Something intense. Something desperately alive. And it sparked with something inside of me.

We separated and started gathering up what meager salvage we could, attaching it to the winch to be pulled up to the
Cherub
. Then we did what we could to get out of that house and back up to the sky.

Later that night, Dad collapsed into drunken sleep. He had been counting on a score, and all we ended up with was what we might find in any number of other places. I hovered at the edge of Claudia's room, the supply area we had converted into her quarters. She looked up at me. Not smiling, really, but with something bright and hungry in her eyes.