Mutant City (9 page)

‘Dark in there.’

‘We’ve got the torch.’

‘Still dark.’

The boy rounded on the hulking figure next to him, his top lip drawn back in a snarl. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that! But take a look about you, Brick. There’s no other way for us right now. We either see where that leads –’ he jabbed a finger in the direction of the opening – ‘or we go back the way we came, where we know there’s no food, kiss goodbye to the time we’ve already spent getting
this
far and try another mountain that we
hope
doesn’t have any dark places on it!’

Brick stared at his feet. ‘Your lip looks funny when you get angry,’ he mumbled.

Rush took a deep breath, calming himself. ‘Look. I’ll take the torch and go ahead first. The way my luck is running, it’ll be a dead end. But if it
does
go somewhere that looks promising, I’ll come back and we’ll go through together. How does that sound?’

He was answered with a shrug.

He held out his hand. ‘Torch.’

Brick dug around in his pocket and came out with it, putting it in the boy’s hand.

‘Look at me,’ Rush said, suddenly feeling a little guilty for having shouted at the big guy. ‘I won’t be long. Stay here and wait. See if you can spot Dotty. I know she’ll find us, she always does, but I’d rather have her back with us when we go through.’

‘Be careful,’ Brick said. He added something else, but Rush was no longer paying attention. Something about ‘bad things coming out of the dark’.

Rush soon left the daylight behind. If he turned to look back, he could still just about make out the figure of Brick standing close to the entrance, but ahead the inky darkness was complete. The little cone of light thrown out by the torch didn’t penetrate far, but it was enough to show Rush that the fissure carried on deep into the heart of the mountain. The floor of the passageway soon began to get steeper and, despite the fact that this quickly blocked off any sight of the light behind him, he was grateful that the incline meant he was heading up and not down. He came across pinch points where he had to turn sideways to get through, as well as sections where the cleft opened up. Water intermittently dripped from above so he was soon soaked to the skin. At one of the sections where the passage became wider Rush realised that the mountain above him might not be as solid as he’d hoped. Rocks and rubble littered the floor, making the going underfoot different here: muddier than the hard surface he’d been walking on until now. He shivered, trying not to think too much about the vast mass of rock above him. He swung the torch up, but it hardly made any impression on the darkness overhead. Shining it towards the floor illuminated tracks. His heart quickened and he crouched down to inspect them more closely. Cloven-hoofed animals had passed this way. Mountain goats perhaps, or maybe sheep? The animals had used this pathway in the past, and that meant it led somewhere.

He had no idea how long he’d been walking – it prob­ably seemed much longer than it really was – but there was a smell and it was getting stronger. An eggy, foul stink that made his empty stomach clench. He stopped for a second when the light from the torch began to dim again. As he was about to wind the handle to recharge the dynamo inside, he sensed a very faint light up ahead. He frowned, thinking he must have imagined it, but it was there all right. Somewhere up ahead was the tiniest hint of daylight. He switched the torch off and carefully carried on in the direction of the glow, putting a hand out to use the wall beside him as a guide.

He stood in the entrance to a cave. A small break in the rock high up in the roof away to his left allowed in a shaft of light which fell at an angle on to the huge lake dominating the subterranean space. The surface of the water shimmered in the darkness as hundreds of jet-black droplets rained down from overhead. But neither the lake nor the narrow shore that surrounded it held much interest for Rush: he only had eyes for that small hole in the cavern roof, a hole that might be their way back out to the mountain again.

Rush nodded to himself. Turning, he left the cave behind him and hurried back in the direction he’d come, switching Tink’s torch back on as he went.

Usually so cautious, Rush’s pleasure at discovering a possible way out, and his eagerness to let Brick know, meant he didn’t bother to investigate the cavern properly. If he had, he would have spotted the stark white animal bones scattered around the stony shoreline: bones of the same animals that had made the tracks in the passageway. Bones of the last creatures to visit that place.

Zander

Zander Melk stood looking down on to the world below from his top-floor office at the ridiculously high Bio-Gen Tower complex his father had had built. The place was a symbol of power and wealth, and loomed over the buildings around it. ‘Look at me,’ it said. ‘I can do anything.’ Zander reflected that it was precisely this attitude his father had adopted throughout his life. As CEO of the biggest and most powerful genetic-modification and robotic-enhancement corporation in City Four, his father had achieved an almost god-like status among the city dwellers whom he helped achieve ‘perfection’, and the man had delighted in the adoration and adulation. But the old man’s time had come to an end. It was Zander’s turn now, and he was determined to do things differently; his father’s harsh policies regarding the Mutes were no longer what the Citizens needed. Zander could sense the winds of change, and
he
should have been the man to funnel them in the right direction. Now that was at risk.

The younger Melk’s elevation to president should have been a shoo-in. His father’s power and influence should have meant there was little standing between Zander and power. Each city elected ten principals to represent them, and these in turn elected one of their number to head the Principia, the body governing the Six Cities, as its president. There was only one man in the election against him, and the maverick media tycoon Towsin Cowper was hardly the most popular member of the assembly. If his father considered Zander to be liberal, he saw Cowper as someone who wanted to open the doors to each of the Six Cities and invite the freak hordes to come in and make themselves at home. But his father’s revelations had thrown an enormous spanner into the works, threatening to destroy Zander’s political aspir­ations for good.
What had the old fool been thinking?
There were strict rules governing the interaction of Pures and Mutes. Anyone wishing to visit the mutant slums outside the Six Cities’ walls had to apply for a day pass, and no
mutant could set foot within any of the cities. And yet his father had deliberately created a number of . . . he struggled to find a suitable word . .
.
hybrids!
If news of his father’s deeds escaped, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

Now it was left to Zander to clean up the mess. Just as it was up to him to try to find a new way to deal with the ‘mutant problem’.

The tower that these offices topped was one of only a handful of buildings tall enough to give a view over the city wall at the sprawling squalor beyond them. Even though the ghetto slums where the freaks lived were on the other side of immense steel bulwarks, the mere thought of the teeming masses out there was enough to make Zander’s skin crawl.

The Principia, under the control of his father, had secretly hoped that deprivation and disease would be enough to see an end to their irksome neighbours. They should have known better. The Mutes had survived the apocalypse, and survived it ‘topside’. They were resilient; he had to give them that. And they bred, oh boy, did they breed! He grimaced at this last thought, unable to imagine a city dweller’s child being produced in
that
manner. Extracorporeal pregnancy had been the norm for many years now – children were grown in the laboratories of facilities such as Bio-Gen, in synthetic wombs to ensure they were
exactly
what their parents wanted, with no defects of any kind. Defects and deformities had no place inside the cities’ walls. Outside, it seemed that little but abnormality prevailed.

They bred like rats, and their numbers grew and grew, and as this accretion went on unchecked, so the sizes of the slums expanded, creeping ever nearer to the cities like a cancer metastatically spreads towards healthy organs.

Their own space, that’s what they needed. It was Zander’s plan, should he get into power, to set up reser­vations; land far away from the cities, designated for Mutes. He would incentivise the slum dwellers to move there, and possibly have to resort to other tactics to remove those who would not do so willingly. When he’d proposed the idea to his father, the old man had dismissed it out of hand, telling him, ‘Out of sight does not mean out of mind, boy.’ But it could work, he was sure of it.

He turned away from the window, catching sight of the large metal plaque bolted to the wall behind his father’s desk. This was the original, though there were countless copies. Scratched and warped, with a big number four on it, it had been part of the door of Ark #4, one of six vast underground facilities set up as havens for those people who would build the new world following the Last War. It was from these arks that the Six Cities emerged, constructed above the vast subterranean complexes where the ‘Ark Children’ had lived for more than forty years while the world above burned and died. One of these bygone pioneers had been his great-great-grandfather, Zebediah Melk. When, in their thousands, Zebediah and the other Ark inhabitants finally emerged into the sunlight again, they were surprised to find they were not the only sur­vivors. Others had endured. Despite being bombarded by atomic, biological and chemical fallout, those left to die topside had not been wiped out. But they
had
been changed. The Mutes his ancestors encountered were far more freakish than anything around today. In fact, the vast majority of mutants looked almost normal these days. Sure, there was the odd ‘lizard skin’ or ‘web hand’ around, but not so many. Nonetheless, their DNA was screwed, and he agreed with the decree by the Ark Children – who after all were charged with creating the new world – that the two groups should never merge. The old expression ‘You can’t grow perfect corn if you start with bad seed’ was as true now as it had ever been.

The mutant settlements were the only way to go – ship them out and let them have the ‘rights’ they were demanding in their rallies. Mutant rights? Who’d ever heard of anything so ridiculous? His plan could work. But first he had to be elected as president, and that meant erasing all trace of his father’s stupid mutant hybrids.

Anya

The wagon jostled along the path, throwing those on board around like rag dolls. The way through the mountainous region where Anya and her guardian, Kerin, lived was arduous and slow, but by taking a more direct route, off the recognised tracks and lanes, it was agreed they could make better time and avoid any ARM units that might be in the locality. This decision, however, meant Kerin would have to stay behind.

Anya’s guardian had lost a leg a few years back, and it was agreed that the trip would be too much for her.

Tink got the impression that neither the teenage girl nor the woman charged with caring for her were particularly upset by this decision. Their relationship had broken down somewhat over the last couple of years, and although there were tears shed by both parties prior to the departure, he was pretty sure they were both a little relieved to have some time apart.

They’d been lucky with their timing. As they made their way through the foothills of the mountain that had been Anya’s home for the last thirteen years, they’d spotted an armoured vehicle high on a pass above them, climbing towards the cabin they’d left behind.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Tink said when he saw the worried look on the girl’s face. ‘It’s you they’re after, not Kerin. Once they realise you’re gone, they’ll leave her alone.’ He hoped so anyway. They’d agreed Kerin would tell the ARM that the pair had left, but say they’d gone over the mountains, in exactly the opposite direction to the one they’d taken. He thought the men might accept her explanation: that way
was
the best direction if you were trying to escape. Tink and Anya waited beneath the cover of the trees until they were sure the men were gone. Urging his harg forward, Tink, with Anya sitting on the jockey-box by his side, set off, determined to put as much distance between them and the men as possible.

A few hours later, when the pair found themselves in a patchy forest of evergreens, Tink brought up the subject of Anya and Kerin’s relationship, asking what had gone wrong.

‘She doesn’t like me changing,’ the teenager answered. ‘You know, when I shift into other forms? She says I shouldn’t do it.’

‘You can understand her concerns. If you were seen –’

‘Tink, we live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Our nearest neighbour is more than ten miles away. All last year we didn’t see another soul until you came by just before the winter. Nobody.’ She gave a little shake of her head. ‘It’s easy to get a bit of “cabin fever” up there. You know, go a bit gaga –’ she made a twirling motion with a finger at her temple – ‘so I’ve been going out. Taking another form and getting away for a while.’ She paused. ‘It’s been causing arguments.’

He nodded, but he knew there was more to it than simply what Anya was telling him. While they were alone, Kerin had spoken to Tink, explaining that the youngster struggled to transform back into her human form after she’d been out on these trips. She described how recently, after going out to investigate strange sounds in an outhouse where they kept their winter fuel, Kerin had opened the door to discover a nightmarish chimera. The creature was bluish black, with bright yellow eyes and closely meshed scales, so its skin looked like that of a snake. In form the beast itself looked more leopard-like. Long black canines hung from its upper jaw, and from the look of the blood on the creature’s front, they had been employed lately to good effect. The creature let out a tortured screech, its back arching high over legs held out stiffly before it.