Chapter 38
38
Day two in the Adult Quarter, or the Porn Quarter, as Rutger had laughing told her. The limp had finally made Cyn decide to say yes to Willow examining her. And also Vincent’s words.
She smiled at him as she rubbed the side of her aching left leg. They’d only just set off again after breaking camp, and she and Vincent had been walking alongside each other, though not saying much more than hi to each other until now.
“You really think I should get it checked out?”
“Yes.” He nodded, gravely, with that immense head of his bobbing so outrageously she half expected it to snap at the neck. If he had a neck. The beaster rockman was a blob of irregular proportions rather than man shaped. At least Lennox and Neo had hair. “I used to be a nurse, and that limp seems a problem. I’m told we have a long way to go.”
“Mmm.” She straightened. Others were passing them. Willow had already asked her if she needed any help. Vargr had apparently suggested she look at Cyn and that had made her, purely on reflex, say no. He wasn’t her keeper.
“Rumor has it you heal anything, so why not this?” He gestured at her leg.
“Everything still hurts for a while. Punch me, and I hurt. I guess I’ll see if she wants to do it.”
And of course when she went to jog up to the front of the convoy, her leg gave way, and pain shot up it. “Fuck.” She muttered a few quieter curses, massaged her leg again, then set off limping.
“Stay there.” Vincent barreled past her, his billowing red satin robe making him resemble a sumo wrestler with a skin problem. She prayed he wore underwear beneath that.
Cyn struggled onward, limping, and the pain did seem to be lessening. A few minutes later, Vincent returned.
“She says tonight, unless you can’t walk at all, or keep up?” Lips pursed, he eyed her. “Well? I’d offer to check you out, but these digits don’t feel crap nowadays.” He waggled the brown stumps.
“It’s improving.” Though she couldn’t help gingerly testing it. Cyn grimaced as she put weight on her foot. “I swear it is. Thanks for the help.”
“You’re welcome.” He stayed with her and looked attentive, making her wonder if he planned to catch her if she fell over.
No shoes, a red kimono, lumpy skin, and he was a lovely man or rather beaster. What counted was what was inside. Why on earth did the Adult tribe hate him and the other two?
Rutger had gone off scouting and scavenging with Vargr. The two of them were still buddies. She wasn’t sure if that miffed her or made her want to be with them.
With them, of course. She should stop denying it. She was pining for them, but surely it was all due to those bondmating chemicals?
So,” she said, distracting herself from her leg and other miseries. “How did you get into the Nietz experiment? If you don’t mind saying? I’m curious but also have no idea how I got into it. Or into Maelstrom , which is not quite the same.”
“Maelstrom?” He stopped and looked at her. “I had heard you were different, of course, but not that name. Do you have a tattoo, here?” He put his hand to the back of his neck. “Neo and Lennox have one like me. It says Maelstrom.”
Speechless, she could only look at Vincent for a while. The implications from that had struck her instantly.
“You do then? From the way you’re staring, I’d say it is a yes.”
“Yes, I do have one there. Cannot recall when or how I got it.”
“Well. It was done while we were anesthetized, so no doubt that would be you too.” The floor here was covered in pieces of glass, and Vincent had no shoes yet he kept going, oblivious. No blood showed in his tracks.
“Not really consensual tattooing then.”
“No.”
“Hmmm. My limp’s almost gone.”
Luckily, because they’d reached a spiral set of stairs and already the point wing-soldier was descending. Going down, again. So far, they’d lost about twelve stories. According to Willow, ground level was the goal, before they reached the Rad Zone. She was worried about radiation, but they planned to go in cautiously and stick to the outer edge.
Like everywhere in this apocalyptic world, the floor was strewn with lost items from the time when humans ruled. She often wondered what had happened to the owners of such items. Purses, cellphones, playing cards, orphaned shoes, dust, and a skeletal foot with skin shreds sticking to it.
That last owner, she imagined them toiling upward, sucked by the Lure, despite their missing foot. Stains on the concrete stairs might have been their blood. What a cheerful day she was having.
She looked up. “What did you say, Vincent?”
“You okay here? Need help?” Vincent hesitated as he offered his hand, and she saw an expectation of rejection in his eyes. As if most wouldn’t touch him. How would it be to change as he had?
She feared this was her future. He too was Maelstrom and that part of the great experiment seemed to have pushed people to the limits, or past them.
“Thank you.” She could walk okay now, but she took his hand. His skin was hard and felt as chalky as it looked, covered in fine grit that shed onto her hand. The beaster was a head taller than her but far wider. The steps made crunching sounds under his bare feet, and he left a track of brown smears of chalk.
With the handholding it felt as if they were a bridal couple in some quirky quasi-horror descending to their doom. She smiled and decided she really liked Vincent.
They were five stories down before they again headed horizontal, along another shopping district with avenues wide enough for buses. Vincent had aided her most of the way without any complaint.
“What has Maelstrom gifted you with?” She’d finally grown the courage to ask.
“Gifted?” His whole face twisted. “With ugliness, according to some.” He shook his head when she protested. “I did say yes to it, signed a contract, believe it or not even though we were staring at extinction. We thought it would save the world. I have no regrets really. I am alive, and that’s by itself a wonderful situation. Okay, what else? Not much scratches our skin. We are very strong, as you could see from our car barrier. The Lure does not affect us at all.”
She halted. “What? And have you tried seeing it? Can you manipulate it? Because I can. The threads are visible to me. They are a sort of see-through pink. Or I used to be able to play with it, change who it affected.”
“No, we can’t. I cannot even see it. We tried after we heard your story. As far as I can tell that’s a total no.”
“But…” Absentmindedly, she kicked aside a discarded but still miraculously inflated football. It went flying into one of the shops beside them. Cyn stared at the smashed window with the edges of sharp fragments. It was a sex shop. Rutger was going to be getting far too many ideas. “Ummm. What we were saying? Oh yes. I just wondered if you’ve ever tried going up Top and killing…” She gulped, and her heart slowed into what felt like a loud thump, thump . Please say yes to this. “And killing a shitload of Ghoul Lords. Because if you resist the Lure, surely you are the answer we need?”
His sigh was long and his face distorted, as if this pained him. “There were ten of us created. Us three…” He waved at where Lennox and Neo stomped, just ahead. “We stayed in reserve near Big Daddy, the vehicle you seek. Yes, we were there and yes, it was a rather unique mechanism.”
“Are we going the right direction to find it?” Way to drop a doozie of a fact. “Have you told anyone else this?”
“It moved around, so I don’t know where it ended up. No, we haven’t said but if we find it, we will help you use it, if we can. But us as the great destroyers of the Ghoul Lords? I’m afraid it’s a no. Everyone who went up, when they emerged from the stairway at the Top and the sunlight hit them, they slowed as if their joints had become frozen. They shielded their eyes from the glare as if blinded.” He acted it out, held his arm over his eyes as well as he could with inflexible limbs. Vincent inhaled. “We watched it on the drone cam the doctor deployed. They were swamped and killed, or should I say dismantled, within minutes. The stinkers took them apart.”
Fuck. “I’m so sorry, Vincent.” She had nothing of comfort to say, could not fix this, but knew her face showed her grief. This was awful.
He shrugged. “I hear they hate the darkness; well, we are the opposite. Even the other beasters have that problem. Your friends like their sunglasses, yes? The nanites seem to make us light sensitive. This was not a good piece of planning by the doctor.”
“No. It was not.” Though the light did not bother her. She was the only one, again. The different one. “My leg is better.”
“Good. You will still go see Willow when we stop.”
Oh my. It was cute he wanted to mother her. Cyn smiled. “You’re a good man, Vincent.”
It mightn’t counter what he’d seen, had happen to him, but at least she could say this.
“I try to be.”
A commotion ahead drew them to look, and she saw that Rutger and Vargr had returned from scouting. After talking awhile at the head of the disheveled column of people, Rutger made a beeline for her. He came to her side and took a few paces before reaching for her hand.
So good to feel him again. The pleasant heat of contact spread through her.
“I hope you’re not stealing my girl, Vincent.”
The rockman coughed out a laugh. “No. No. We have been talking, though, and I convinced her to get herself checked over later. She had a limp.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I heard it from Willow. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He swung Cyn’s hand like a schoolboy on a date. “Vargr flew ahead to scout our route down to the Rad Zone. A long way down he found a place we are going to visit when we reach it.”
From the devious twinkle and promise in his eyes, she guessed what it might be. “Sex shop?”
“Of course. I saw such interesting things. Also, I have news for you, Vincent.” He leaned forward to speak across her. “We encountered your not-so-nice friends, some of the Adult tribe. Though they weren’t happy you were coming with us, we have permission to pass through the quarter, unmolested.”
Unmolested? “Wasn’t Willow exchanging comms with all the tribes along the way?”
“Not these. They are assholes and would barely speak to us even. Everyone sees the advantage in being one people, except them.”
It wasn’t a good omen. What if more tribes in more quarters refused to band together? No matter how excellent any weapons or strategies might be, they needed a lot more beasters to succeed at taking down the Ghoul Lords.
“I know it isn’t great, but it is what it is. There will be others, Cyn.”
“Yes.”
“The older you get…” Vincent said quietly but in his rough voice, “… the more you learn how people are never the same. It’s both good and bad.”
“Mmm.” She shook her head, still unhappy.
“Here’s something different. Something to cheer you up. Neo over there once ate a piece of Ghoul Lord and survived.”
“What?” She and Rutger stared at him.
“He found it lying on a balcony. We were exploring a distant Quarter some days ago. We are silent and good at hiding when we need to be. Like ninjas.” He grinned. “Anyway, we found a white thing like a bit of an octopus tentacle. And Lennox being the hungry fool that he is, picked it up and ate it before I could say, wait a fucking minute.” He snorted and raised his hands. “He lived. I figured out what it was from a small piece that’d snapped off. I’ve seen the analysis done on a dead one, so I know what they look like.”
She couldn’t help laughing along with Rutger until it struck her where that piece of tentacle had come from. The piece she’d dropped escaping from the Ghoul Lords. Had to be that. Was it coincidence? Of course.
It showed how tough these rockmen were.
How different they were.
Only the light above was their undoing, and they were Maelstrom just like her, these humans blown up into balls of some crusted rock-like calcified flesh. Their fingers were too thick to use as they should, their joints stiff.
Did it do this to all people? Was this why only the last desperate few had been given those Maelstrom nanites? With other beasters, the nanites seemed slower to transform. She had stalled for those five years above, while in limbo with the other feeders, waiting to be eaten. Now that she was free of the Ghoul Lords she was changing.
A chill swept her. Where was this taking her?
That night, she lay on her side on a bed in one of the abandoned apartments to let Willow examine her, deathly afraid as she’d never been before. Was her body falling apart? The mattress smelled of dust. The walls were perfectly coordinated in color with the rest of the apartment rugs and furniture. Red, grey and cream. Modern chic. Sculptures from artists of renown sat on the tables. A toy car lay on the floor, though crushed from being under Rutger’s feet.
Vincent was here too, leaning nonchalantly on a wall, as if he hadn’t knocked off part of a door frame to get in here.
“You’ve had a limp, Cyn?” Willow asked softly. She sat on a chair and held Cyn’s hands.
“Yes. But it’s gone now.”
Rutger was perched on the bed above her pillow. Vargr was absent, no surprise there. “And she gets headaches and a few pains. Anything else I don’t know?” He raised his brows.
“Ummm. The pains are mostly when I try to mess with the Lure. And yes, I am still trying now and then. It is important. I have been forgetting things but figured that isn’t new. Everyone forgets stuff.”
“True. That is me.” Vincent nodded. “My head is full of rock, though.”
“Pfft,” Cyn scoffed.
“Shush,” Willow drifted her hands higher up Cyn’s arms, the blue in her skin and eyes highlighting in brilliant specks.
In this quiet room Cyn had heard the grit grinding in Vincent’s neck folds when he nodded. Or was that from his spine? She frowned then tried to relax. Willow preferred calmness, right? Again she heard the sotto voce whispering from Willow. It seemed a subconscious action that possibly helped her to concentrate.
After five or ten minutes, Willow released her, giving her hand a last pat. “I can’t find anything like an injury, though there is one anomaly.”
She twisted her mouth. “Good or bad? What is it?”
Willow stood, stretching, then rolled her shoulders while looking down at Cyn. “This is all a new science, if you want to call it that, but I couldn’t detect any nanites in your head, brain area, not even your neck. That’s odd. They normally spread throughout the blood system.”
“Cardiovascular system,” Vincent corrected.
“Oh. Well. Is that bad?”
“Like I said, I don’t know, but I suggest you avoid head trauma.” She smiled weakly. “You might not heal from that anymore.”
“That’s everything? Sorry, I missed most of that.”
The new voice was Vargr’s, and Cyn switched her focus and saw him hovering behind Vincent. He didn’t smile but he did fix her with a stare that said something better than hate.
For which, she gave a big thank you to whoever was in charge above. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed.
“Hi there!” Willow tried to usher him forward, but he stayed where he stood. “Yes. That’s it. That’s all I can detect. If anything else happens, Cyn, be sure to tell me.”
“I will. This was all a storm in a teacup. Pretty sure I’m fine.” She swung her legs back and forth enthusiastically, grinning. Vargr was worrying about her…