Falling Sky (25 page)

“Oh, come on. You love this.”

Whether or not she does, I do. I'm not the cloak-and-dagger type, but this is the most excitement I've felt in a while. And Miranda is no longer lurking in the forefront of my mind.

“Ready?” I ask.

Claudia looks at Rosie. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she says. Claudia repeats it back to me.

“Follow my lead,” I say.

We've been watching the building for a little while. We've only seen one person inside.

I walk up to the door of the building and knock on it. Loudly, firmly. No stealth in that.

A man, harried-looking and perspiring, opens the door and glares at me. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I got a delivery,” I say.

“What?”

“A delivery. Cloth. Linen. Textiles.”

“Tex-what?”

“Textiles,” I say loudly and slowly.

“Look, I don't—” he begins.

I grab his arm firmly and pull out a worn, folded piece of cardboard, trying to make it look like I'm gently escorting the man inside. Once he clears the door, I shove him all the way in. Rosie and Claudia quickly follow.

I kick the guy's leg out from under him and push him to the ground. His head bounces hard against the floor. He snarls, so I do it again and he goes out.

“What are we going to do with him?” Rosie asks.

“We can't leave him here,” Claudia says. “He might wake up while we're down there. Raise an alarm. It would be best to kill him.”

I wonder who this man is. He doesn't look like one of the Vikings. He could just be someone trying to get by. “I don't feel comfortable killing him. Especially while he's unconscious.”

“Then what do you want to do?” Claudia asks.

I rack my brains trying to think of something. “Why don't we put him in one of these?”

“What? In the drums?”

“We can gag him,” I say.

“Oh, this gets better and better all the time,” Rosie says.

“There's not much else we can do about it,” I say.

“Yes, there is,” Claudia says. She bends down to the man and grips his nose and mouth firmly. Soon he starts to buck, but she keeps her grip firm. Then he goes limp.

“Claudia,” I say.

“What? You think he's innocent? No one in this operation is. This way he can't fuck us.”

“You didn't have to kill him.”

She stares at me, frowning. “You want your ship back or not? Ben, you need to pick a side.”

I stare back at her, my jaw set.

“If he was a Feral you wouldn't have thought twice.”

“But he wasn't.”

“Argue later,” Rosie says. “We need to get rid of him.”

“Look for a place to stash the body,” Claudia says.

The building is mostly just a big storage space, but we find a small cavity in the floor that holds some boxes and a few smaller canisters. We're able to wedge the body down into it. We cover it carefully with a wooden cube that seems to exist as seating.

Claudia rustles up a crowbar and we start prying off the lids of the drums.

I can't help but think of the dead man. I couldn't do what Claudia had done. Yes, if he'd been a Feral I would have done it without compunction. Done it again and again and again. Hell, I have. But not a man. Not like that.

It makes me think of Miranda. She feels that way about the Ferals, too. That they're all people who can be saved. Humans. Just because I disagree doesn't mean I don't understand.

Still, the one attacking me wasn't unconscious. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

“So,” Claudia says. “Into the barrels?”

I nod.

Each of us picks a drum and lines the inside with the blankets and other padding. “How are we going to seal them up behind us?” Rosie asks.

“Well, we don't want to seal them too tightly,” I say. “Or else how will we get out? Just pull it on and I'll give it a few taps.” We try playing with the lids for a bit and I find a way that we can get them to stay on and still get them off again. Claudia hands out some cardboard, torn into thin strips, which gives us enough room that the lids don't seal completely.

“What about breathing?” Rosie asks.

“We poke holes in them,” I say. “But keep them small and not noticeable. There's supposed to be liquid in these drums.”

Eventually we all climb in. I make sure Rosie and Claudia are secure before I help seal the lids. Then I get into my own.

From here it's all waiting. Our drums stand on a pallet with wheels. We moved some of the full drums off to one side of the room. When they come for these, they'll wheel us onto the transport ship.

It's all waiting from here.

And that's something that I don't do very well.

The inside of the drum smells of chemicals, something like oil but sharper, an odor that tickles my nostrils. I try to shift into a comfortable position, but it's hard. My legs are bent up under me, and my arms don't have much room to move. I try to stretch and relax my muscles when I can, but I know that when I get out of this thing I'm going to be sore and stiff and hurt.

I try not to think about it. Instead I think about the
Cherub
and seeing her again, but my body keeps trumping my brain and bringing me back to where I am and how goddamned uncomfortable it is.

My breath sounds loud in the enclosed space and I hope it's not audible from outside. It sounds like all of Gastown can hear me.

I hate waiting.

Of course it could be worse.

Much worse.

It has been. In the past. One time in particular.

It was back when my dad was alive. At some point after Claudia had left us, off to do her own thing, tired of tagging along after a father and son duo, despite the activities she and I had got up to when my dad wasn't around.

The
Cherub
needed repairs, and Dad was working on those, but he sent me down to the ground to look for some food. I said we never separated, and that was true for scores, but he figured the
Cherub
was nearby and there was no sign of Ferals in the area.

I was supposed to stay near the ship, see what I could scrape up, if anything. More often than not, there was nothing. Maybe some berries. Maybe mushrooms. But this, like most of the stops, yielded nothing. I didn't think Dad would mind if I roamed for just a bit. Everything seemed clear.

So I did. I walked down the slope of the hill I'd climbed down to. There were some bushes farther down the slope and I figured they might have something edible on them.

I was moving quickly—no sign of danger, but then again I was on the ground—and then I slipped and fell and tumbled into a hole.

I fell through earth and roots and rocks, getting scraped and banged up by the descent, and all I could think of was holding tight to my gun. A man without a gun was an easy target, and Dad had always taught me to hold tight to mine.

Then I hit bottom and the wind blew out of me and it took a moment for me to orient myself.

The smell hit me first. The unmistakable scent of Ferals.

I fought against the rising panic inside of me. Stifled my breathing so it wouldn't give me away. It still sounded loud in my ears. Then I heard the rasping and gibbering of Feral voices. Close. Not on top of me, but very close. And there were several. How many, I couldn't tell. But more than I could take on by myself in the dark with who knew what flying around in the air. And the fall had ripped some of my coverings loose.

The thought made the panic surge again. I could be lying in Feral piss. Feral shit. All contagious. All swimming with the fucking Bug.

I started to move, slowly, tentatively. Still on my belly. Trying to figure out what was around me. Each scrape against the ground made me sure the Ferals would find me. That they would hear with their sharpened hearing. Or smell me with their sharpened smell. In a way, the grime and muck of the hole would help me in that regard.

I managed to crawl my way to a pile of dead leaves and twigs and other cast-offs that must have fallen in the same hole I had. As much as I could, I burrowed my way into it. Then I lay there, and waited.

I didn't know what else to do. If I went out with my gun blazing, the Ferals would have me in no time. I couldn't see. And they had the advantage.

Of course I didn't exactly know what I was waiting for. It's not like Dad was going to know where I went. And even if he did, what could he do without landing himself in the same predicament.

I waited and I listened. Sometimes the noises would get fainter, farther away, and yet they would sometimes return. They ran the gamut of Feral sounds—howling, yelping, barking, snuffling. Little sighs that repeated over and over.

But I waited, and I hoped, and maybe even prayed a little, that I would figure out a way out of the mess.

I don't know how much time passed. It could have been an hour. Or hours. I had no way of knowing. I just lay as still as I could, breathing as softly as I could, waiting and hoping and sweating with my fear. At one point I found myself trembling, and it was all I could do to make myself stop. All of my will was bent to keeping myself still. Otherwise I knew my teeth would chatter and that would give my position away.

Then, after some time, I heard shrieks. In the distance, then growing fainter. And then . . . silence.

I decided it was the only chance I had to make my move. I scrabbled free of the deadfall and tried to make my way out of the hole I had fallen in. But the sides gave me no purchase. I couldn't find a way to haul my weight back up it.

So I moved forward. I reached the stone of a cave wall and then kept following it, still doing my best to minimize my noise, breathing through my mouth as much as possible, my free hand on my gun, ready to bring it up and start taking out any Ferals that might come at me.

Yet none did.

Eventually I saw light and then, beyond, an opening to the outside.

I ran for it. It might not have been the smartest thing, but I couldn't help myself. I ran for the blessed light, my gun still ready in my hand, and I ran out into the light and it was the most glorious thing I could imagine.

Dead Ferals littered the ground outside the cave entrance. Nothing moved. Still, I kept my gun up and gave them a wide berth.

A shrill whistle got my attention and I looked up the hill to see my father with a rifle in his hand, looking down at me. I learned later that he had come looking for me, had seen the hole and had followed the hill down to the cave entrance. When he saw Ferals there he had started shooting from a place of cover. The nest had emptied to go after him, but he had taken them all out. It wasn't a big nest, but he'd still taken down five or six of them from his position.

I wanted to hug him when I saw him. I wanted to thank him. But the look he gave me stopped me cold. There was, of course, the ammo that had been wasted taking out the Ferals. For no good reason at all. No salvage. No food.

But even worse, I had been down in the dark in a Feral nest and he could see the places where my coverings had torn away.

He checked me over, his face serious. Amazingly, there were no cuts, no lacerations from the fall. My clothing was all that was torn, though I was badly bruised.

“You kept your mouth covered?” he said.

“Of course.”

He checked my face anyway.

Then, after he was satisfied, he nodded and we headed back to the
Cherub
, both of us with guns out, scanning for any stragglers.

He didn't yell at me. He didn't have to. I knew he was angry, disappointed, and it hurt. It would've been easier if he had yelled. If he had hit me. All he did was shake his head and give me silence.

Even worse, he kept his distance for the next day or two. And I knew why. Though there were no apparent signs of infection, there was still a chance the Bug had won out. That the persistent fucker had worked its way inside of me and started the process that would turn me into one of Them.

Thankfully, I was clean. But the silence continued for at least another day beyond that.

Eventually, because it was driving me crazy, I went to him. “I'm sorry,” I said yet again. “It won't happen again.”

He gave me a stone face. “See that it doesn't” was all he said.

That was my Dad.

I think about him and that moment as I am forced to wait inside the drum. I think of him and realize how much I still miss him. How much I would take his stone-faced silence over losing him. How I would gladly suffer his displeasure and disappointment if it meant that he were still around. But wishes die in the Sick. They choke and drown on infected blood.

Then, after some time, I feel the drum moving and I know we're off to the transport ship.

My futile wishes go with me.