Timeless (The Cartographer Book 3) (9 page)

“What the hell was that?” I exclaimed, pointing at the bird vanishing in the distance.

“The people of the Badlands were not the only victims of the impact,” Yori replied. “The wildlife suffered just as much. Sometimes, some of them make it over the wall, but most of the time they are harmless.”

“Most of the time?” Kedge cocked his eyebrow.

Yori ignored the question and instead headed toward the front of the bus where he exchanged a few words with his brother. I watched the store recede and wondered what horrors lay beyond the wall.

The bus slowed as we pulled up behind a truck. It was higher than any trailer I had ever seen. Our bus was at least fourteen feet high, but the truck towered over it. We lumbered behind it for about a half mile before it turned off a dirt side road where I noticed it had sixteen axles. It headed toward what looked to be a warehouse in the distance, leaving a cloud of dust and debris behind.

Yori noticed my interest in the truck. “It's a weapons factory,” he explained. I noticed a hint of annoyance in his voice. His face was twisted with anger. “This is what your group came here for, I assume. We may be uncivilized rebels, but we are not ignorant of events outside our world. We know why you came. You sought an allegiance with the Order and wished to add their military might to that of your own, did you not?”

I looked at Vigil who stood rigid with his arms folded across his chest. “We came here to do what needed to be done in order to defeat our enemies.”

Yori moved to the window and placed his hand on the top of the couch. “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. He turned slowly and his eyes fell on me. “Do whatever you can to defeat your enemies,” he repeated.

“Within reason,” I blurted. I had no idea at the time why I said it. Perhaps I felt the need to justify our decisions—either to him or to myself.

Yori chuckled. “Did you hear that, Mazu? Within reason he says.” He turned and looked at our prisoner.

“Go to hell,” Mazu grumbled in response.

Yori turned back to me. “I don't think he agrees with you.” The bus slowed down and a concerned look crossed his face. He hurried to the front of the bus.

Kedge sat up and joined Vigil at the window. Up ahead, the road veered around a corner and disappeared behind a wooded area. To the left of the woods stood a foreboding gray brick wall which, by my estimate, had to be at least four hundred feet tall. I moved toward the front of the vehicle to get a better view. About thirty yards ahead, a lone figure sat hunched over an object in the middle of the street.

Jori stopped the bus, turned to Yori and nodded. Yori sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I had hoped we would make it further than this,” he muttered.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

Mazu broke out in laughter. “What he is trying to say is you are dead.” He struggled against his bonds and tried to stand up. Yori roughly shoved him, causing him to fall backwards on the couch.

“You'll be needing that,” he said to me, indicating the rifle strapped over my shoulder. “Follow Jori out the door, stick close to me. Whatever you do, don't wander off the road.”

“So what is it?” I asked. “What's going on?”

Yori frowned. “You will see.”

Jori stood by the exit door with a darkened scowl spread across his wide face. “Keep your mouths shut and your weapons close.”

“It's just one person,” Kedge replied sarcastically. “I'm sure us big strong fellas can handle him.”

Yori's mouth curled into a wry smile. “With The Forsaken, it is never just one.”

“How do you know it is a Forsaken?” Vigil asked. “Perhaps he is just a wanderer?” I noticed Vigil fidgeting with the silver bracelet on his arm. His finger caressed the falcon's eye gently. Despite his question, he was taking no chances.

“I guess we will see,” Jori replied enigmatically before opening the door. Air from the outside poured in. It smelled stale, almost sulfuric and I realized that despite the wall, the air from the Badlands overtook the good air from the other districts.

Kedge, Vigil and I stepped out of the bus, sandwiched by the brothers. Yori held his sword tightly by his side. Jori held a pistol out, trained on the subject in the road.

We were about fifteen feet behind him when Jori turned to us. “Stay here.” He left us and approached the figure cautiously. His gun never wavered while pointed at the back of the person's head. He stopped about five feet away.

The object on the ground was not an object at all, but a body. It was so badly decomposed I couldn't tell if it was a male or female. The hunched figure was rummaging through the corpse's pocket and scavenging items when he heard Jori approach. He stopped what he was doing and turned his head slowly.

When he turned completely, I nearly dropped my gun. His face was missing. His head was nothing more than a pale blank slate of skin. His hair was spaced apart in short, dark patches, giving his head a soccer ball appearance. I wondered how he could see us until I saw the two eyeballs embedded in his neck line. When he saw us, he made a soft, mewling sound—similar to a wounded cat.

“Holy Jesus!” I croaked.

Kedge uttered a surprised gasp. “What the hell is that?” He lifted his rifle defensively.

The faceless man stood. He was gaunt and his clothes barely clung to him. They were a tattered mess and looked as if they had been run through a shredder. He was unarmed with the exception of a small, silver cylindrical object, which he gripped tightly in his hand. His eyes bulged from their neck sockets and they stared at us wildly. His mewling became louder while fidgeting with the object in his hand.

Jori shouted “
GET DOWN!
” and tackled Kedge and Vigil to the ground. Yori grabbed me by the collar and shoved me violently to the ground like a rag doll. Before I had the opportunity to ask what was going on, there was an explosion. Gore and body parts rained on us. I gagged when I saw an eyeball roll past.

Jori was up in an instant, pistol in hand. I scrambled to my feet in time to see a group of at least twenty people emerge from the shadows of the woods. They were of various sizes and shapes, but all were extremely disfigured. Some had two heads. Others were legless, walking on hands attached to extremely long arms. Unlike their recently deceased companion, they all had faces. Some of them were located on their head, others had them on their chest. One of them was missing a head but had a face on a large bulge protruding from his back, like some macabre version of Quasimodo. No matter the physical location of their face, they all had the same expression of hate. They clutched primitive weapons ranging from spears to hammers which seemed to be manufactured from carved wood and scavenged metal. One hammer had a bent steering wheel for a head.

“Well now,” Kedge muttered as he backed away from the edge of the road, “this is quite the predicament.”

Without hesitation, Yori slashed the first of The Forsaken across the stomach, unleashing his guts all over the road. A surprised
O
spread across the poor unfortunate creatures face (one of the few who had its face in the normal location) before falling to the ground in the pool of its own gore. This action caused the others to pause only slightly before they uttered a collective scream of rage.

“Well that can't be good,” Kedge whispered.

“Were you always the master of the obvious or did you come to learn it over time?” I retorted.

Instead of answering, he lifted his rifle and shot an approaching Forsaken. The one who had no legs charged me. His muscled arms pumped furiously as he closed the distance between us. I shot him in the chest and the momentum sent him flying backwards where he came to rest alongside the road. I noticed more of The Forsaken pour out from the woods. There had to be at least forty of them now. I looked at Jori's desperate expression and knew we were in trouble.

“GO BACK!” he shouted.

We nearly bowled each other down on our way back to the bus. After scrambling up the stairs and slamming the door, Jori jumped behind the wheel and started the bus. Before he could go, The Forsaken surrounded the vehicle and started to pound on the windows and doors. They rocked it so violently I was sure it would tip over at any moment.

One of the windows shattered and broken glass showered Mazu. “Do
something
!” he cried frantically.

Yori fixed him with an icy stare. “Why don't you pray to your god, Brasus? Perhaps he will get up off his golden toilet and actually do something!”

Despite being distracted, firing out the broken window, Kedge brayed laughter. “I think I like this guy,” he said before shooting a Forsaken climbing through the window.

Due to the violent rocking, Jori couldn't get the bus into drive and chose instead to attend to the door, which was nearly torn off the hinges. Bloated fingers pulled on the door like a group of sausage links trying to sneak their way in. Jori kicked at them awkwardly, but they continued their furious clawing.

Another window shattered and Vigil ran to it. He flipped a tiny switch on his bracelet and tendrils of light extended about two feet from each end, giving the bracelet a crossbow-like appearance. The falcon head embossed on the top sprang to life and its mouth opened, revealing a white globe of light inside. He pointed his hand toward the window and before I could ask what he was doing, a bright bolt of white light shot from the mouth. A flash of heat brushed my face before the bolt met its mark— an unfortunate Forsaken, who had managed to make his way halfway through the window.

“This isn't going to end well,” Jori growled and kicked once again at the sausage fingers at the door. The bus rocked violently and cracks weaved their way across the windshield. Jori's face twisted in a fierce scowl as he observed one of the cracks snake its way toward the steering wheel.

“It is over if they get through that windshield,” Yori remarked.

“What if we head to the upper level of the bus and pick them off from there?” I asked.

Yori and Jori looked at each other and nodded in unison. “Let's do it!” Jori agreed and led us toward the stairs.

“Hey, wait a minute, don't leave me here!” Mazu shouted.

I scrambled up the stairs and almost tripped over one of the dead guards. His throat was slashed open in a macabre smile and congealed blood had pooled around him. I stepped over his corpse, opened one of the windows and started firing at our attackers. I took out two whose bloated, deformed bodies were stuck in the windows. Two more pulled out the corpses and slid through the windows before we could take them out. A brief scuffle could be heard downstairs before an ear-splitting scream wafted upstairs. The scream ended abruptly and turned into a choked gurgling sound before falling silent.

“Well, there goes our hostage,” Jori lamented before firing another shot into the crowd.

Yori took up a defensive position at as the two Forsaken ascended the stairs. “Stand back, it's a bit tight here,” he commanded.

The four of us continued to fire from the windows picking off whoever we could, focusing on those who managed to reach the shattered windows. The first Forsaken to reach the top of the stairs was Quasimodo. He clutched a crude spear with a bent tip. The blade was covered in fresh blood.

Yori swung his sword, but it was parried by the headless hunchback. The face on his hump smiled viciously. He saw an opening and moved in for the kill, which was his mistake. Yori realized his opponent would underestimate him so he faked another strike which Quasimodo casually knocked away. With a violent thrust, his sword was sticking from the creature's side. He screamed and it was such a high pitch that I was convinced it would shatter the remaining windows. Yori held onto his sword and kicked him squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling down the stairs into the other Forsaken. The momentum carried them both to the bottom. Suddenly, the rocking of the bus stopped and new voices could be heard outside.

“Something is happening out there,” Vigil said.

I ran to the nearest window in time to see plasma beams striking down The Forsaken caught in the rear. Those closest to the bus turned and formed a defensive perimeter. The Forsaken cried out in terror as each plasma beam seared their flesh. The smoke from the carnage wafted through our windows, causing me to gag.

“What's going on?” I wheezed.

“It appears we are being rescued,” Jori replied.”

“Yours?” Kedge asked.

Yori shook his head. “Our people do not have weapons like that.”

“Neither does the Order,” Jori countered.

“Ours?” Kedge turned to Vigil.

A look of uncertainty crossed his face. “Not that I'm aware of.”

I peered out the window. The smoke was beginning to clear and I could see shapes emerging from the woods. At first, I thought they were armored people, but as they came closer, I realized they were not people at all. They were robots—about twenty in total. Black robots with arms outstretched and smoking fingers.
Familiar
robots.

“It can't be,” I muttered. “It's impossible!”

“What is it, Nathan?” Kedge asked.

Before I could answer, a man stepped from the woods with a rifle in his hands. He removed the dark goggles from his eyes and rested them on the top of his head. “Cease fire!” he shouted.

“Janero!” I cried and turned to Jori. “We need to get out of here now!”

He nodded. “Say no more.” He hurried down the stairs and shot a surviving Forsaken in the head as it tried to clamber up the stairs.

We followed him. I reached the bottom of the stairs just as he leapt into the driver seat. The windshield was a mess. It was cracked so badly that I could barely see out of it. Yori picked up The Forsaken's bent spear and smashed it outward. Jori slammed on the gas and the momentum of the vehicle threw me into the corpse of Mazu. A blood-filled gash was embedded in the side of his neck. I felt a wave of panic wash over me, but closed my eyes and remembered Vanth's teachings: “
Fear is a tool of emotion. It can be turned into a weapon, just like any other tool. Always remember that Nathan.
” With my eyes closed, I remembered.

My eyes flew open when I heard the first crash. Jori slammed the bus into the first wave of robots. It wasn't long before the bus was rocked with explosions. Janero's men of metal fired on us. The rear window exploded and shattered glass flew into my face. Luckily for me, I managed to get my arm up in time to deflect most of it and save my eyes.