Chapter Seventeen
“Unlike the rest of their bone structure, the enamel of infected teeth can only strengthen over time due to a constant infusion of HBRS pseudo-cells from the salivary glands. You can add bites to the list of problems that will never solve themselves.”
–Dr Ava Sherman. Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. 2 Months After.
* * *
“Holy shit! Is he dead?”
Leah pressed her gloved finger against Liam Fenix’s throat and waited for a pulse. “No, Buttercup. He’s just passed out.”
“I didn’t know humans could go to sleep like that,” Kurt said.
Leah winced. “They don’t normally. This must have something to do with the altitude and lack of water. We’ve been pushing him hard.”
“We have?”
“Look, you two do me a favor and get him in that bed upstairs. Let the guy rest it off.”
Buttercup frowned. “I don’t know, boss. This town’s the only one we’ve seen for days, and it’s right on the road. You sure we want to sit here much longer?”
No, Leah thought. I’d rather be on a boat, zipping off to the ass end of the world. “Just do it.”
Liam Fenix got laid to rest and her crew went to work fortifying the place. The spike traps got reset, and a perimeter was established. Soon, Kurt went off to Hunt, while Buttercup kept a low profile outside, scanning for threats.
As shelter went, they could have done worse. The humans had done well to maintain this place before being driven out. The useless electronics had all been tossed to the wayside to make more space for storage and bedrolls. Varnish had been applied to the redwood walls sometime after the outbreak, and far less rot had set in because of it. The floor creaked less than she would’ve expected, and the weight of the roof pressing against the second floor showed little signs of giving way.
Leah considered reapplying the grease she needed to keep her suppressor properly silenced, but found herself instead at the kitchenette reading while Mastermind did the same. She had lost all the books she’d pilfered from Liam Fenix’s house during the firefight, but as luck had had it, her favorite novel had been stashed with her M16, so she wasn’t without mental sustenance during these lulls.
For all of Hades’s ideas, using books as currency was perhaps his best. Hollowing accelerated when the mind went idle and existence became pointless, and nothing kept a brain busy like a good story. So long as rezzers could focus on something other than their miserable world, they could keep their reservoirs strong.
And so that was what Leah chose to do now. As the oldest Hunter, she had wealth beyond all others, and could get just about any book she wanted with ease, but this series had always had a special place in her heart, since the moment she’d first graced her eyes onto its pages. It was a story about a teenage girl who fell in love with a vampire. In spite of the biological differences between the two, they somehow managed to shatter through the gap to form a tender relationship.
Leah had read this particular novel more than a hundred times, but the one advantage to hollowing was that no memory stayed permanent, and so revisiting some scenes still brought her the same emotions as they had at first. Each read evoked senses that she seldom got to appreciate. It was as though her own soul hadn’t trapped in this desiccated shell, and that she might find love herself. As if she wasn’t any less than human.
But Leah was still this undead creature, and this story was only a story.
“How fucked are we, Mastermind?” Leah asked. A moment of silence passed unopposed. “Go on, don’t hold back. I know you’ve done the math already. Give me the numbers.”
He sighed. “We are only averaging approximately twenty miles a day, spread over a thirteen hour period. That reserves an eleven hour bloc for Liam to sleep, relax, and eat. The extra time has helped us to stave off hollowing, but our pace remains stymied by our human companion’s limitations.
“Though by your own admission, Hades will believe that you originated in San Jose and not Reno, that presupposition will not hold true for long. Mother did us no favors by alerting everyone of our trajectory. Had she gone northwest instead of due north, we might have afforded ourselves more security, but I’d calculate that even if Hades does not know the final destination for certain, he will have sent advanced parties to watch every outpost east of the Seaside area, both large and small. Our destination will be in that net, so he will not be far behind when we poke our heads out.
“And that is if we assume that he will not catch us before we arrive. Other Hunters will have been contracted by now, with the reward incalculable. A single crew would have difficulty following our trail, but supplemented with biodiesel vehicles, long-range telecommunications, UAV imaging, and whatever hidden resources that Hades has at his disposal, and we cannot stay invisible much longer…”
“Just give me a timetable,” Leah said.
He stroked his chin. “Four to six more days under our current approach before someone discovers our location. Whether we silence them or not, we can then expect a heavier response within eight hours, the kind that we will not be able to defeat.”
“I figured as much. What if we buy ourselves time? Maybe lay low somewhere else for a while?”
“Obscuring our objective with an elongated route may provide us with more leniency, but that will also give our enemies more opportunity to entrench themselves in the region. I suspect that this strategy would create more long-term problems than solutions. After all, Mother does not intend for Reno to be our final destination. We do not know how far this contract goes.”
She buried her face in her palm. “So what the hell can we do?”
Mastermind grinned. “Have you ever heard of the old world technique of ‘praying’? I heard that it was quite a popular remedy for impasses like the one we’re experiencing.”
“Don’t get cute. This is serious.”
“I am at a loss then.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I cannot remember the last time you’ve ever said that to me.”
He frowned. “The unfortunate truth is that Liam’s mortality is an albatross around our throats. Unless we can drive him to surpass his own limitations, he will get the rest of us purged, and there is nothing to be done. We do not have the speed, the manpower, or the nourishment to keep this game going much longer.” He held up his book again. “So I would argue that we’d best embrace the sanctuary we’ve been afforded and hope that circumstances change on their own.”
Leah fell silent and ran her fingers along the marble kitchenette top. There had once been a peaceful lifestyle here, long ago. She could just imagine the mother standing in this very spot, slicing up vegetables to supplement the fish her husband had caught, earlier in the day. One of the children would be playing in the living room with toys, and the other would barrel down the stairs nearby. The mother would scold them to be more careful. This was an old house, after all, and their father had only just bought it with the money from that big promotion. They hadn’t let the house “breathe” yet.
It was all a clever ruse, of course. The mother was only trying to balance her children’s autonomy with their security. Children deserved to enjoy their young lives, free from harm. Innocence was a precious resource in a chaotic world, and letting them savor it to their heart’s content was the virtuous path. Humanity had fought so hard and for so long to allow them this gift, so it was only reasonable that they reap the benefits that they had created for themselves. Thus, the mother would cherish and protect her children’s own purity, just as her parents had done before.
Leah dragged her nails across the counter. Why must she have been denied such luxuries? Sure, she could imagine such a life. She could even close her eyes and picture it, as she had done every time she’d read her novel. But she could never experience it for herself. The Hollowing blunted all emotions, expunged the memories of those it affected, and rendered its progeny infertile. There was no childhood for her kind, nor any family to have for support. Those were extravagances of the living. Rezzers knew nothing other than patching the holes of their own reservoir, lest it crumble and they lose their souls. Bolstering the self was the sole paragon to strive for. The only virtue that mattered. Where the story of life was one of empathy and evolution, theirs was nothing more than postponing a protracted death. What value was a family here?
And yet, a relic had entered their dying world and thrown it off balance. Liam Fenix lay above, dreaming of the family he wished to regain. He had driven his body to the brink of death in pursuit of this delusional goal of reuniting with them. It was a foolish, arrogant, and destructive burden he had thrust onto the rest of them, and one that Leah knew would be doubled the moment he awoke. For the living would die over their dreams, and his fate had been tethered to hers. Would she really go as far as Aspen to indulge this fantasy?
Part of Leah yearned for the older days, before she allowed the parasite of hope to poison her own Rez. Things were simpler then, when she and the rest of the Hunters roamed the wastes, killing anything that threatened them, with no regard for where it would one day go. The odds were no more arduous than how to survive the day, and the world was tinted only in shades of black and white. Survival was all that mattered, and the future was irrelevant.
Leah missed those days, now more than ever.
“Do you remember when we first came together?” Mastermind asked after some time.
“You mean before the Styx went up?” Leah asked.
“No, I am referring to the time after the city was built and I lost my old crew.”
Mastermind had once led a group of Hunters himself, and had been responsible for procuring the most vital supplies that early Pandemonium needed. But they were all killed one day, so he came to Leah and offered to join forces. It was a pivotal change in their relationship. One that had defined the many shifts her own crew underwent.
“Of course I remember,” Leah said with a yawn. “We’ve been through too much together.”
“Do you know what my old crew used to call itself?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
He smiled. “‘The Munchkins’. We were a strapping young lot, we were. All trapped in the frames of small children when the Hollowing came, my Munchkins and I could get to the places that the rest of you could not. An ideal company for those who wished to scavenge undetected.
“I was not near as intelligent then as I am now, however, and thought that there was no need to pervert my ranks with elderly equals. Fighting seemed a pointless strategy for those who could evade with ease. But then a subway tunnel trapped us betwixt two hollow herds, and there was nothing to be done. My Munchkins became no more.”
He stared downcast into the floor. “It was my vanity that got them killed. I did not choose adult-sized Hunters because I wanted to prove to the rest of you that I was more than capable of surviving by my own prowess. By appeasing my ego, I had sacrificed my Munchkins on the altar of arrogance.”
Leah pat him on the shoulder. “I’ve lost people too, Mastermind. More than I care to remember. You shouldn’t beat yourself up.”
“But I must! Those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it, which was why I came to you and offered to combine our talents. You were respected for your aptitude, but also for your grace. There was none more willing to put the safety of others above themselves than you. If I was to learn from my mistake of placing my own pride above our community’s safety, then that lesson could only be gained under your stewardship.”
Where’s he going with his? “Appreciate the kind words.”
“That is why I must now ask you something very important.” He paused, moisture building in his eyes. “Why did you make the same mistake as me, mum? Why did you choose yourself over us?”
Leah froze in place, her fingers against the counter. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Mastermind would put the pieces together, but that did little to dull the pain of his words. It was worse than the disgust she’d been feeling with herself.
Leah could have denied the charge, or pleaded ignorance, or grown angry that he’d challenge her, or simply changed the subject. She could have told him that it was complicated or that he’d never understand.
“What gave me away?” was all that came out instead.
“Oh, an amalgamation of your recent behavior. The anger, the mood snaps, the propensity to force loyalty to you above mutual respect. You were not conducting yourself like the Leah I had first met. Why, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen you on Pride!” A red tear came free. “When you left in pursuit of Liam on your own, I knew that you had bartered our souls in exchange for your safety. It was painful to see history repeat, mum.”
Now her own eyes were starting to water. “If it makes you feel any better, Hades gave me one fuckload of an offer. Partial ownership of Elysium, infinite food, full access to the library, the works. All to throw a couple friends under the bus.”
“Then you are twice the fool I thought you were. Hades would have never let you reap the prospects of such a generous deal. He was merely manipulating you into doing the detestable for him.”
Leah nodded. “I know that now. What can I say? Hades had me beat. He knew that if he dangled the shiny toy in front of my face, I’d walk straight into the trap, and bring all of you in it with me.” Her nails dug into her palms. “Just like I did when I started this mess by taking Liam for myself. It was all narcissism.”
But Mastermind stayed fixed. “No, mum. That is where you are mistaken. Saving the human was your moment of redemption, not of rapacity. You knew that there would be consequences for yourself, even if the others might persevere in your absence, but you chose to pursue that goal, regardless.”
“A lot of good that did us. We’re still dead in a week.”
“Perhaps.” He smiled. “Or perhaps our story does not end here, and we will outlast this current crisis long enough to fight another day. Together.”
She dabbed back the tears. “You’re not going to tell anyone?”
“It would be ill-advised to complicate our dilemma with more drama. I shall have plenty of time to scold you for your missteps when we have triumphed later. You can play the role of the melancholy maiden then, perhaps over a bottle of fermented salmon gore.”
She cracked up to that, somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “Fuck. You’re a better friend than me, Mastermind.”
“Then let us remember the roles that have borne us so much success. Leave the strategy to me, and the leading to yourself, and we will all survive this ordeal.”
How the hell did he always manage to stay so positive? Even with the odds so far stacked against him and the truth of her betrayal unearthed, Mastermind was still willing to cast everything aside and play the pompous jackass like nothing had ever happened.
“Got anything to get us out of here faster?” Leah asked. “I don’t think the human will be waking any time soon.”
He winked. “I have just the idea.”
