I raised my cup, clinked it softly with Brak’s, and drained it in one go. Rising to my feet I said, “Your cup, your sack, you carry it all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest in your truck’s cabin.”
9
Twinkle Eyes
We found the dead bodies halfway up the hill. They were probably laid in a neater file before animals had dragged some of them aside. The smell was strong, but our bodies immediately reacted by reducing our sensitivity to it. Still, it was not a pretty sight.
“Between forty or fifty of them,” Galinak said. “A slaughter, yes, but where’re the rest of them?”
“Taken?” I said, then added, “Slaves?”
Galinak shrugged and we moved on.
We ended up spending the night in the highest house on top of the hill.
Looters had done a thorough job of going through the village, but still they left plenty of stuff behind for us to use. I found a pair of worn boots that fit. One even had real leather lining. In a different house I got a cloak and some clothes, old and torn but definitely a step up from what I’d been wearing.
On the downside, I was attacked by a dog who was either protecting its turf or had grown a taste for feeding off the remains of the slain. Galinak reacted fast, but not fast enough. The bite I received wasn’t painful—my skin healed surprisingly fast—and we did end up having dog stew for dinner. So I wasn’t complaining.
It was Galinak who found the three moonshine bottles in the cellar. He insisted I rub some of it over my rapidly healing wound. It stung a bit, and I used the cloth of the farmer wife’s dress to bandage my arm. The rest we drank.
“Are you going to do things different?” Galinak asked me unexpectedly. We were sitting around the burning hearth, trying to consume enough moonshine to be able to eat Galinak’s dog stew. My body resisted the first few mouthfuls, but with enough resolve, mind always triumphs over matter.
“What do you mean?” I took another swig from the bottle.
“Some Trolls I used to know, when they had a close call, a brush with death, they swore they’d do things different for the rest of their lives. A few of them actually changed their ways, but most of ’em couldn’t shake the habits.” Galinak drank some more. “You and I didn’t just have a brush with the grim reaper, we grabbed his bony arse and gave him a wet smacker on his lipless mouth, but now we’re alive again. That sort of thing changes your outlook on life.”
I did not know what to answer, so I reversed the question. “What are you going to do differently?”
Galinak shrugged and filled his mouth again, then passed the bottle. “Not sure. Guess I won’t take orders from nobody no more.”
“Was there ever a time when you did?”
He chuckled. “You only know the old, wise, and tender me, Twinkles. I used to be obedient, a little more respectful to authority, but now—” He sighed. “What about you?”
“I remember promising myself in the City Within the Mountain, just before we went on the mission, that if I ever got out of there alive, I’d find a nice lady and have a family of my own.” I gestured at my body. “Not going to happen with this body now.”
“You said you were from around here. Maybe go see your folks, visit your family?”
I took another deep pull from the bottle and shook my head. Things were starting to get misty in my peripheral vision. “My story is not so different from Rafik’s, you know. One day you’re living happily in some remote little village, the next day you wake up with these.” I pointed at my eyes, momentarily forgetting this was not my old body. “My dad had coin and influence where we lived, and the people there were not as zealous as in Rafik’s village, so no ax or hot pokers for me. But a marked son was a major blow to the family. I was locked in a room for a whole month before LoreMaster Harim came to our house. Then I was whisked away. I know now that this was the right thing to do for all involved, but for a thirteen-year-old boy who loses his family in the blink of an eye …” I took another pull from the moonshine. “I was … crying every night for a long time, then I got angry for a while, then I got over it. Years later I got word my dad had passed away—they didn’t even tell me how. My older sister was already married, and my mother and two younger sisters moved to another part of the land for some reason. That’s the last I’d heard.”
“Still. Family,” Galinak said. “Maybe once we figure out what to do and”—he wiggled his finger unsteadily at me—“what not to do. We could track them down, have a meet, you know …”
Even in my state I registered Galinak said we when talking about tracking down my long-lost family.
“I never got to thank you, Twinkle Eyes,” he suddenly said. “You saved my life, twice.”
“What are you talking about?” I swallowed another mouthful of the bitter drink, ignoring my body’s warning regarding my current condition.
“Back in the City Within the Mountain. If it wasn’t for you, negotiating like that, we would have just ended up Lizard chowder.”
“Ah, that, but we did end up as Lizard chowder.” I passed the bottle back, and Galinak drank some more before continuing.
“Yea, but they extracted our minds.” He pointed at his head. “That’s because of you. And now, here I am back in the living, again because of you.” He passed the bottle back.
“To be honest, Rafik told me you were coming with me before I managed to ask,” I said, and checked the bottle I was holding. It was empty.
“I’m sure that those rust-fucker Tarkanians wouldn’t have just sent me alone on this mission.” Galinak opened the second bottle. “Nah, I know why I’m here, Twinkle Eyes. Here’s to you, and here’s to life.” He raised the bottle and drank deeply.
I vaguely remember slurring words of infinite wisdom as we went through our second bottle. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, containing many old stories, tales of Salvationist adventures, more than a few lurid songs, then smashing through a wooden door and eventually passing out blissfully on the stairs to the cellar.
Waking up in a bunker filled with poisoned air was worse than what I felt the following morning, but not by much. Galinak was nowhere to be seen, so after washing my face and drinking boiled well water, I slowly began exploring the rest of the house. On the second floor I found an old hunting rifle under a pile of debris. There were no bullets, so it was probably more useful as a club, but I kept it anyway.
The makeshift ladder leading to the attic creaked, but bore my weight. The roof tiles had several bullet holes, and rays of light penetrated the gloom. Still, without my enhanced sight I would not have noticed the footsteps marking the dusty floor and the fact that one of the floorboards was slightly cleaner than others. Moving it earned me a splinter but was absolutely worth it. As if the bag of fifty metal coins I found, the two water skins, and the steel hunting knife were not enough, I carefully pulled out two other items of interest. The first one was a live snap, not a drawing, of a family of seven who hugged and smiled happily at me despite the creases. I guessed the snap had sentimental value to whoever hid it here or whoever was meant to find it. I kept it without really knowing why. And there was a map. This, too, was not a crude hand drawing, but rather a pre-Catastrophe-era, fully detailed folding map.
Memories surfaced and flooded my consciousness as I spread it on the floor. I knew maps like this. My LoreMaster was an avid collector and used to spend hours in his tower, bent over with his nose stuck in them. I heard his voice lecturing in my ear, “Great cities fall into great ruins in a matter of years and towns or villages vanish into the woods in even less time, but mountains, rivers, and lakes remain, more or less, in the same place. With enough attention to detail, old pre-Catastrophe maps could prove extremely valuable.”
Before we parted ways, LoreMaster Harim gave me a map and list of his hideouts, telling me to use whatever I found to keep the Guild of Historians alive, but I had failed both him and the Guild by being torn apart by Lizards in the City Within the Mountain.
I turned my attention to the map I was holding and magnified it tenfold with my sight. This newly awakened memory gave me an idea of where we were, and I marked the village on the thin paper with a circle made by a piece of coal I found on the floor. Now I just had to figure out where we needed to go.
I looked up and examined the roof of the attic, and I spotted a trapdoor. There was no ladder in sight, but a successful, and quite daring, balancing act over several pieces of piled-up furniture meant I could open the trapdoor and stick my head through. Getting my body up there required a bit more work, especially when Galinak still hadn’t shown up, but I didn’t care—I was acting like a man possessed. When I finally made it to the top of the roof I was in a kind of euphoric ecstasy. Childish. Stupid. I know. But it felt good to seek a solution to a mystery and then solve it. I desperately needed to know why I’d been given my life back, and walking away without finding a way to answer this question was not an option for me. I began experimenting with my vision, zooming in and out, trying to see as far as I could and to memorize the topography.
At the edge of my enhanced vision I saw the distinct silhouette of the City of Towers, my old home.
“Hey!”
I stopped zooming and turned my head down.
“Look what I found.” Galinak was sitting bareback on a horse. “Took me ages to tempt him to come over, but once I got my hands on him, he became very obedient.” If Galinak was suffering any setbacks because of last night, it didn’t show.
This was definitely the best day of our new lives, so far.
“Well done,” I shouted in reply. “Now let’s gather what we can carry. I know where we can go and gear up.”
“Really?” He danced the horse in a circle. “And where is that?”
I didn’t bother to shout back. Instead, I turned to study the hills to our north.
“We are going to visit an old friend,” I whispered to no one in particular.
10
Peach
Wake up, Lady Peach. We’re making a tinkle stop.”
I opened my eyes and had to blink several times before I could focus. I’d dozed off simply to gather some strength, but the conditions inside the truck’s cabin were far from ideal. I was jammed in the backseat among heaps of junk, dried meat, a keg of beer, and several primitive guns that looked as if they were taken from the museum of historical armaments.
To make matters worse, suspended above my head by chains and ropes was an old, heavy machine gun. It swayed dangerously with the rocking of the truck. If that thing fell on my head it would be the short end of this vessel. The old truck was jerking sideways as much as it was moving forward on the broken road, and it made me nauseous and weak. Having to duck every so often so as not to get hit by the machine gun wasn’t helping things.
“Sure,” I said weakly, the taste of dust in my mouth. I’d already lost the contents of my stomach three times in the last five days and was down to my last five nourishment pills.
Brak was the driver. I didn’t know why he kept a cowl over his head during the entire journey, even in the oppressing heat of the truck’s cabin, but other than that he was still the chatty, glass-half-full kind of guy I’d met in the looter’s camp. In fact, I believed the reason Brak agreed to take me along was less about the contents of my sack and more about companionship.
Trevil kept to his silent brooding and spoke to me only when it was necessary. He also kept his revolver on his person at all times, remained vigilant throughout most of the journey, and took the entire night-watch duty, refusing even when I offered to relieve him for a few hours. He’d never expressed his consent to taking me along, and my educated guess was that he was not happy about it but had given in to Brak’s whim.
Brak had introduced Trevil as his cousin, but I had my doubts they were blood related. It wasn’t just that their physiques and demeanours were extremely different; there was something in the way they related to each other that spoke of a different sort of familiarity. There were other signs; my womanly instincts told me neither of them ever looked at me like the men at the bar had. Yet they refrained from touching each other, or expressing their intimacy in any obvious way. I spent time during the journey wondering why they kept their relationship a secret. The world I came from had long accepted same-sex relationships, and Tarakan society was even coming to terms with human-Angel relationships. Sadly, it seemed like the world I’d woken up to might have fallen back to its old inhibitions.
Brak parked the truck and turned to me, sweat glistening under his cowl. “This spot is really beautiful, Lady Peach. We should go to the ridge and look down at the valley.”
The look Trevil shot his companion was so apparent I almost laughed.
“Oh, come on, Trev.” Brak gestured at me. “Look at her. Lady Peach needs a bit of fresh air, and you need some peace and quiet from my chattering.”
Trevil shrugged but leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as we climbed down. It was a short trek through rich, tall grass, and we had to climb down a bit till we got to the ledge, but Brak was not exaggerating. It was an odd sight that filled me with mixed emotions. The vast lowland below was filled with destroyed buildings, roads, and bridges, but it was also rich with vegetation. I even spotted several small fields with clear signs of cultivation.
“This is where we’re going”—Brak pointed in the distance—“Lakewood Hope. It’s a new settlement built over ruins. They named it Lakewood because it’s between a lake—”
“—and a wood,” I said, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah, Lady Peach, that’s right. My grandad came here after the breaking of the world. He was one of the founders of Lakewood Hope and my father lives there, and my older brother. My sister got married seven seasons ago and moved away, but she moved back when her man went foraging too deep and too long in the contaminated cities and died of sickness.”
“So, it’s just you and your cousin on the road, then?”
The look of momentary vagueness in Brak’s eyes was all the proof I needed.
“Yeah … just me and Trev on the road, looking out for each other.” He changed topics. “You never told me where you’re from, Lady Peach.”
A part of me was listening to Brak while another was trying to figure where I was, but I was never strong in topography. “I am from very far away,” I answered.
“I gathered that—your accent is not from these parts—but how far?”
I levelled a stare at him. “Where I come from people do not need to hide who they love.”
Brak quickly turned his head to watch the land below. “That’s far away indeed then,” he said quietly. “So, what brings you here?”
There was no reason to lie. “I don’t know yet, but I need to get to the City of Towers.”
“That’s quite a ramble, Lady Peach. Your best course would be the town of Newport and to buy a ride with a SuperTruck driver to Regeneration, but I hear the Tarakan highway is blocked nowadays.”
There was so much information crammed into Brak’s last sentence I had to figure out which question to ask first. “The Tarakan highway network? It still functions?”
“Oh yeah, Lady Peach, there’s a lot of it that’s still intact, but you need a SuperTruck to ride it proper, not our kind. You know of SuperTrucks?”
I nodded. The toll-operated highways and the selling of what were fondly called T trucks were one of the most lucrative side businesses of Tarakan. SuperTruck was definitely a good name for those machines, and I was happy to find out some had survived. It meant my trip to the City of Towers could theoretically become much shorter.
“But you say the road is blocked?”
“That’s what I hear, Lady Peach. Some warlord took a part of it for himself, made a roadblock, and is taxing the SuperTruck drivers. They say this warlord has some kind of heavy cannons on carts that can blow you away from a mile’s distance, and that a few truckers who tried to break through died along with their trucks. So now the only way to get from Newport would be the back roads on trucks like ours.” Brak pointed in the direction we came from for emphasis. “And that could take you several weeks, maybe a whole season. And I hear Regeneration is under siege, too, although it could be just a rumour.”
I did not recognize the places Brak mentioned, but it seemed that violence never ceased for a moment, even after Armageddon.
We both heard the very long honk of the truck’s horn. “Oh, Trev is getting impatient with us.” Brak smiled, but when two more short honks followed his smile faded and he began running back, pulling out a gun from his belt. “It’s our signal for trouble,” he shouted as I ran after him. “Hold on Trev, I’m coming.”
I hadn’t touched any of the guns in the truck, assuming such an action would not be appreciated, but I still had my sword. I pulled it out and went after Brak. My vessel’s shape and size meant I could easily blend into a market crowd in a reconnaissance mission, but it had short legs and was not built for speed, so I was trailing behind when I cleared the small hill. It turned out Trevil was travelling towards us. The truck cut through the tall grass, swaying dramatically, and I could count three figures holding on to the top of the truck, slowly progressing to the cabin. They were dressed in a mixture of rags and animal skin. A little behind them was a cloud of dust made by more men on horses galloping towards us. There was no time to zoom in or count them as we ran towards the truck.
There was a shot and a body dropped from the passenger side. I could see that Trevil was still in the driver’s seat but I guess Brak was too battle nervous to have a clear grasp of the situation because he screamed, “Trev, no,” stood his ground, aimed and shot wildly at the men on top of the truck. All three men ducked, but one of them shot back just as Trevil managed to steady the vehicle. I heard Brak shout and saw him fall into the tall grass just as the truck pulled over. One of the men on top skidded forward and fell in front of the cabin; another used the momentum to jump down, roll in the soft grass, and come up pointing the gun at the prone Brak. He did not pay attention to me, a middle-aged woman barely taller than the grass, until the moment I cut his arm off with the power sword.
Trevil climbed out of the driver seat. There was blood on his shirt. He shot the man who fell in front of the truck and began running towards us, unaware that the third man on top of the truck had gotten up on his feet and was aiming his gun at Trevil’s back. ESM kicked in. I grabbed the severed arm before it hit the ground, turned it and pressed the finger on the trigger, shooting above Trevil’s head. It was an old gun, and I think I missed, or maybe grazed the man, but it made him lose his balance and fall from the top of the truck. I ran and stabbed him with the sword as Trevil bent down and picked up the groaning Brak, put his arm around him and began carrying him back to the truck. The men on horseback were a moment from catching up with us, and there was no way we could push Brak into the cabin and drive away on time. I sheathed the sword, bent down and picked up the other gun. “Start moving,” I shouted at Trevil. “I’ll stall them.”
I ran as fast as I could while crouching low in the tall grass, and I heard the thunder of hooves approaching. My personal, inner briefing was short and bitter. I had a pair of unchecked, old guns with only the element of surprise on my side and short-spanned ESM facing an untold number of armed riders. Those were not odds I wanted to work with. Three horses passed me, and their riders noticed me too late to react. The fourth one almost trampled me and I had to roll sideways. I emerged from the tall grass shooting with both hands. All around me men and horses screamed and fell. My left-hand gun emptied after five shots, and I figured I had one or two more shots in my right. I ran to where a rider fell as bullets began whizzing around me, and an arrow struck the ground in front of me. A rider was lying on the ground, still breathing, but nursing a gunshot wound, his pump-action shotgun at arm’s length. When he saw me he tried to reach it. I shot him twice, dropped the handguns, and went to retrieve the shotgun. I was in the midst of a fog of war, the sort that gets you killed quickly. Somewhere behind me I heard the truck’s engine roar. I rolled again, picking up the shotgun with both hands, turned, shot a charging woman off her horse, ducked, and ran fast along the tall grass as bullets chased me. Without the ESM I would have been dead already, but my body was beginning to weaken. The truck was already moving away as I began racing after it. I knew that this action would be the last physical exertion I could muster before I collapsed from exhaustion. Already my sight was beginning to get blurry.
I saw a lone horse and went for it. He might have been docile, in shock, or too slow to react to my ESM speed, but I managed to reach him and jump-mount. I had never been a horse person, but I had put in my fair share of saddle miles during various assignments which had brought me to the farthest corners of the world. The saddle was makeshift, leather and animal skin, but was surprisingly soft—not that I had time to enjoy the sensation.
My attack had momentarily disoriented the riders, but they were circling for another charge at the truck. I estimated there were more than a dozen left. I ducked my head low and urged the horse forward. Hitting a moving target from horseback was a very difficult task, but it didn’t stop my pursuers from trying. Bullets and arrows flew past me with enough density to pose a threat. I kept my head down and urged the beast forward with my heels. The truck was built for endurance but not for speed, even on a paved road. Reaching it on the back of a galloping horse took only a moment. I manoeuvred to the right side of the truck, then grasped the first thing I could reach, a rusty ladder. My horse suddenly veered away and I was left dangling, holding onto the ladder with one hand, my feet almost touching the ground. The shotgun dropped to the ground and a second later I saw the truck roll over it. Normally climbing to relative safety would have been easy enough, but after ESM, my vessel was reaching the end of its physical ability. Through desperation alone I managed to get a foothold on the ladder, but all I could do was cling to it and watch as the first rider reached the truck. He was a burly man with a wild beard, dressed in a bearskin and high fur boots. In his hand he held a long spear with a wicked-looking metal spike on the end of it. I didn’t need to use my imagination to guess what he would be trying to do first. He aimed the spear at me as he got closer. Trying to climb up would just expose my back to him, and besides, my arms and legs felt like they were made of stone. I managed to draw the sword with my left hand as the rider closed in on me, but as I pressed the power button, nothing happened. It was either broken or depleted of energy cells. The rider lunged with his spear and I barely managed to deflect it. Two other riders were close behind him. One had long, braided hair and was holding a gun in her free hand. The rider with the spear tried again. This time the tip of the spear missed me but the sharp metal brushed against my skin and without registering the pain yet, I felt the skin on my thigh open. I willed my legs to climb up the ladder but his companions got within shooting distance and were just taking their time to get closer so they wouldn’t miss. I was going to be shot, and then the vessel’s strength would not be able to hold on to the ladder and I would fall down to the ground. If I was lucky I would get run over by the truck and be done for the fast way.
The burly rider aimed his spear again just as his chest exploded and he flew backwards from the saddle. I turned my head to see Brak, white as death, leaning from the roof hatch, aiming the truck’s heavy gun. He shot three more times, single cannon-like bullets that flew above my head and missed, but they were enough of a threat to make the riders veer away and hide behind the bulk of the moving truck.
