Chapter 14
14
The caravan descended eight stories, with Cyn kept in the middle. There were two foot and two wing-soldiers, as well as Vargr and Maura, plus Orm, Toother, and Rutger. They carried no shopping carts filled with supplies, but the soldiers had backpacks filled with whatever the Mercantors thought would make for good trades.
Ridden by Orm, Toother kept mostly to the front. The nanodog was twice the size of a tiger, only he had cream-colored curled hair, like a deadly poodle, one with triangular front teeth and baby wings. They were that sparkly nanite blue and sprouted in the right place for wings, if dogs ever had wings, but were far too small to ever help him achieve lift-off.
Toother had been confirmed a he . She’d asked Orm if he was male. Orm’s out-of-control lively blue hair made it difficult not to stare whenever she spoke to the dog rider. He’d outfitted Tooth with saddle and bridle and reins, though her impression was that the nanodog went wherever he did due to some non-verbal commands, since the reins were never pulled on.
Eight stories down they struck a museum—huge rooms filled with exhibits of dinosaurs and Egyptian artifacts, an exhibit of the historical local fauna, and a specially gathered exhibit dealing with the excavations in New Zealand. Faded brochures, abandoned handbags, toppled wheelchairs, and lost shoes lay spilled across the floors, as well as a few desiccated skeletons still dressed in the clothes they’d worn when the Lure hit them. It was a macabre reminder.
Not that any of them needed reminders.
Cyn did, though. Sometimes her lack of memories made her feel as if this was all that had ever existed. She stepped around the skeletons they came across and was thankful for her second chance. As would be Maura.
The woman had responded again to her removing the influence of the Lure, and as long as she stuck close to Cyn, the effect stayed in place. That was gratifying. She’d found a use for herself, something more than just being a mysterious escapee from the top story. She could control the Lure to some extent, though she also guessed this had alarmed Boaz.
If she could control it, he’d probably made the leap to wondering if she was related to Ghoul Lords. Win some, lose some. Hopefully this biotechie in Worshipper could examine her blood and pronounce her a beaster, or similar.
Not unexpected to Rutger, their splendiferous-horned caravan leader, this was the route he’d used to reach Mercantor, and a trainway nearby led across the gap to his own Mercantor Quarter.
The trainway was adjacent to the museum, to allow visitors easy access. On the way out, they passed a small dinosaur skeleton, and she gazed up at this monstrous creature that had been extinct for millennia only to now watch this small party of not-quite humans go by.
“Makes you wonder if we are the next ones to go extinct, doesn’t it?” Maura said. “Serve us right. We’ve done it to so many species. Bald eagles, elephants, tigers, and all the little creatures most people barely noticed are gone.”
“Yes.” She twisted her mouth. “Terrible.”
“We have been awful custodians of our planet.”
A somber note on which to leave. What future lay ahead for the last people on Earth? Could she even count herself as human anymore, as Maura did?
The trainway outside consisted of three rail lines, and on the far side was a wall that’d been punched through by some sort of explosion. Concrete lay in pieces and blocks. Twisted reinforcing curled from the hole, and rubble was strewn across the rails. Through the hole she glimpsed the charred remains of cars. She could still smell smoke and ashes.
“Happened a lot in the tunnels in the last days.” Vargr nodded at the mess. “I’m flying ahead to check for problems. Be good and stay safe.”
He winked at them both then launched himself into the trainway where it crossed the void between the quarters, as marked by red signs and lines around the circumference of the tunnel.
She watched him fly, admiring the sweep of his wings, the run of muscle slab over muscle, the wind he created with each flap, and the pretty motes leaping along the feathers. If she had to be bond-mated to someone, at least she’d snared a pretty one.
Feathers jarred loose were fluttering down. One of them landed near her foot. The blue motes had died already, sadly. She picked it up, thinking to keep it as a memento—which was silly considering she had the real deal front and center most hours of the day—and was surprised by the weight. How did he fly with wings made of feathers like this?
Cyn tucked the feather into a pocket in her new, many-pocketed and very practical leather jacket. Along with her black jeans, her diabolical gray, button-front shirt, and a belt with a large skull-and-crossbones, she figured she was all set to do some awesome stuff on this trip.
She could kick butt, kick beaster butt even. A few cockroaches scurried past and as she strode forward, she squashed one under her boot.
“Looks like they were right,” Maura observed, stepping gingerly around the bug corpse. She too had found some jeans, as well as a blue T-shirt, and had even, from the looks of it, used a knife to crop her white hair into a shorter style. “The roaches are still around even if humans are almost not.”
“How is your memory of the invasion? Because I can barely recall it.”
“That bad? I remember it pretty well. Or at least I think I do.”
“We have a long walk along this trainway. A full day before we find Rutger’s place. Tell me about it.” The questions she had to ask Maura would wait. Boaz wanted someone present to record her answers.
“Sure. I can do that. Thank god I found some good shoes for this walk.”
“If it gets too much for your feet, ask one of these to carry you.” She jerked her head at their followers.
The rearward guard paced along behind them.
“Hmmm. Sexy ones too, hey? I like the one you caught. Vargr.”
“He’s okay.” She smiled. “How did they take over, the Ghoul Lords? Why didn’t we nuke them or send armies in? Was the Lure strong even then?”
“Yes it was. They somehow knew to take out the governments and defense system operators first. Planes fell out of the sky when the pilots flew near the top story. The army was the first resort and you can imagine how well that fared. That first day they landed all over the planet in one enormous flood of white wings. Drones and satellite images showed them as these tentacled beings with sails like manta rays floating and diving through the stratosphere. No flying saucers, so that wrecked a few people’s expectations.”
She laughed derisively.
“They had enough numbers to flood a lot of the Earth with the Lure from Day One. Planes fell, cars stopped, people just got up and climbed, abandoned their jobs, their kids. The children mostly never made it to the top. It was a terrible butchery of a kind. Dr. Nietz came up with some sort of electronic insulation, but even that must have failed. He had ideas that man. He was in New Zealand when they came. If he’d stayed where he was, miles underground, he might have survived.”
“I vaguely remember his company having a toe in a whole lot of different things. Moon landings? Archaeology. Genetic research.”
“Yes, and AI, and probably flower arranging. The media loved it when he made those announcements. I will launch my own shuttle, create new understandings of the planet’s distant past! I never really got to meet him, not until the last day I can remember, and that day is pretty much a fog.”
“I get that, only the fog for me covers all of my past.”
“Tsk. We must correct that.”
“Keep going…”
Vargr flew back and said the way ahead was clear for as far as he’d travelled. He fell into place on Cyn’s other side and seemed happy to simply listen.
The guards accommodated Maura’s lack of night vision by carrying old electric lanterns with the setting on low. The light cast swung to and fro up the walls and over the tracks. At regular intervals a gridded square of tiny portholes high above let in spears of natural yellow sunlight.
It gave Cyn a surprisingly normal feeling to walk through this shattered land chatting to Maura, with Vargr ambling along, wings folded, his bare chest shining with sweat. Flying must be hard work. Roaches and rats made skittering sounds all around, though the charred remains of explosions and the blackened walls receded as they went further into the wide tunnel.
Her heartbeat slowed when they crossed the red line showing where the trainway entered the skyscraper on the other side of the void, and she realized she’d been imagining the tunnel cracking, crumbling, and falling into the chasm beneath it.
Was this the calm before the storm? If it was, she was still going to enjoy the stroll and the chat. She’d squash a few roaches, kick any rats that tried nibbling on her, using her lovely steel-toed boots, and she’d wonder how a man could fly when his weight was enough to leave dents in the softer surfaces he walked over.