Hawk ignored him. He stroked Candle"s blond head and cradled her against him. "It"s all right, sweetie, it"s all right. Tell me. Where is the blood?
Whose is it?"
The little girl shook her head, then opened her eyes and looked at Hawk.
"Here. It"s here. But I can"t tell whose it is."
Hawk went cold and for an instant thought about doing what Panther wanted and just leaving without taking this business any further. He forced himself not to begin looking around the room for whatever might have caused Candle"s vision to come to pa.s.s.
"Do you see anything else?" he asked softly, holding her gaze, showing her he was not afraid.
She shook her head again. "I"m sorry, Hawk."
"No, it"s okay. You have nothing to be sorry about."
He got back on his feet, bringing her up with him, still holding on to her, waiting until she was steady enough to release. Then he looked at the others. "I"m still going up. I"ll do it alone. No one else needs to go. I want to see what"s up there, take a quick look around. The rest of you wait here, and I"ll be right back. If something happens, get out right away."
"No!" Candle said at once, reaching for him anew, grabbing his wrist.
"Don"t go up there, Hawk! Don"t!"
"Candle, let go," he said firmly, and he disengaged himself, moving her back into Bear"s arms. "I"ll be careful."
Her head lowered, her eyes closed, and she began to rock. "Don"t go, don"t go," she said, over and over.
The rest of them kept silent, but they were saying the same thing with the looks they gave him. He turned away quickly and started up the stairs.
"Aw, man!" he heard Panther exclaim. "Wait up!" Then the other boy was beside him, his dark face clouded with anger. "Can"t be letting you go alone.
You die up there, who you think gets the blame? C"mon, let"s get this over with!" Hawk nodded, and together they began to climb.
IT TOOK THEM awhile to get to the top floor. Hawk had decided that it would be best if they worked their way down rather than up. He thought that Fixit might be on to something. Cats liked to climb, so it figured that Tiger and his bunch, true to their name, might have chosen a place on the upper floors. If so, the pa.s.sage from this building to the next was probably going to be found there.
But the top three floors were higher than the adjoining building, and a quick look out one of the windows on the highest revealed that there were no ladders or ropes allowing for descent to the other building"s roof. So they went down to the first floor that allowed direct access and began searching. The rooms were all the same, their windows broken out, their sleeping and living rooms cluttered with decaying furniture and trash, their carpeted floors waterstained and worn, and their papered walls cracked and peeling. Hawk searched them swiftly, aware that the light was continuing to fail, conscious of a quickening in the approach of darkness. He did not like this building. He did not like how it made him feel.
Finding nothing on that floor, they descended to the next. Almost immediately they discovered the makeshift door that had been knocked in the wall of the rearmost sleeping room. After a futile pause to listen for signs of life, they stepped into the adjoining building and found themselves inside a warren of rooms that had once been offices, filled with desks and filing cabinets, with shelving and books, and with machines that no longer ran. The rooms were shadowed and empty of life, and there was no sign of the Cats. They searched the entire floor without success, then went down another floor and started again.
"How many we gonna search?" Panther whispered, his voice conveying a mix of uneasiness and frustration. "This gonna take us for ever!
Hawk agreed. They began moving quickly from floor to floor, not bothering with a thorough search, but settling for a quick scan that would reveal any sign of occupancy. They got all the way down to the ninth floor before they found what they were looking for. Nine floors, nine lives, Hawk was thinking before he realized what he was looking at.
"Frickin" h.e.l.l, Bird-Man," Panther breathed softly.
A huge section of the wall was broken out near the stairwell, and Hawk could tell at a glance that the damage was recent. It hadn"t given way on its own; it had been forced. Beyond the rubble of the wall a body lay half buried in the debris. Farther in, doorways and entries had been forcibly broken out and widened, their jambs shattered, the supporting walls ripped apart. Even in the heavy layer of shadows and thin veil of weakening light, Hawk could detect other bodies scattered about.
Everything, for as far as he could see through the damaged walls and entries, was torn to pieces.
He stepped into the room, climbed over the rubble, and bent down to the first body. He had to pull part of an old curtain off it to make certain it was one of the Cats. It was an older boy, his eyes open and staring, his face contorted in pain and horror. There was a huge swollen purplish mark on his neck with a dark center, as if he had been stung. Hawk had never seen a wound like it. He studied the body for other damage and didn"t find any. With Panther following, he moved on.
They found a dozen dead boys and girls of varying ages, some of them bearing the same purplish mark and others simply crushed. One was decapitated and another missing both arms and one leg. The level of violence was shattering; the Cats had been caught unawares and unable to defend themselves. It looked as if they had tried to flee, but there had been no escape.
Despite his revulsion and Panther"s whispered insistence that they get out of there, he pressed on. In the very back room, they found Tiger and Persia.
Tiger had apparently been trying to protect her, his body half flung across hers where she lay sprawled on a mattress that was pushed up against the back wall. The short-barreled flechette lay on the floor to one side, bloodstained and bent. Hawk picked it up. Both barrels had been fired. Tiger"s head was almost torn loose from his body, and his neck bore the same strange purplish mark they had seen on the bodies of the other Cats. He had fought hard to protect his little sister, but in the end it had not been enough. Hawk stared down at him, unable to find the words to express what he was feeling. He could hear Panther mumbling from across the room, the words dark and angry.
He glanced at Persia. She bore the same sting mark, but her face was peaceful. Perhaps she had died quickly and without knowing what was happening to her. Sadness emptied him out. She was only eleven years old. No one should die at eleven. He knew it happened every day, that it had happened every day for as long as he had been alive and much longer before that. But knowing it didn"t make witnessing it any less horrific. He wished he had come earlier to his meeting with Tiger. He wished he could have done something to prevent this.
He looked around at the wreckage of the rooms and the scattering of bodies. What in the world had done this?
Then he caught sight of Persia"s right leg. It had been severed cleanly at the ankle, and the foot was missing. On the other foot, clearly visible against the white surface of the bloodstained mattress, was a pink tennis shoe with silver laces.
He remembered that on his way here he had seen its mate not two blocks from their underground home, and he felt his heart stop.
Owl!
Shouting frantically for Panther, he raced from the room.
Chapter TWENTY-TWO.
OWL SAT QUIETLY in one corner of the common room, poring over another of the medical books she had been researching since Hawk and the others had left, her eyes scanning quickly from page to page. It was the fourth book she had opened, but she still didn"t know anything more about the Weatherman"s form of plague than when she had started. There just wasn"t enough written about the plagues; so many of them had developed in the aftermath of the chemical attacks and poisonings that there hadn"t been time to write anything down, let alone find the means to publish it. She was relying on texts that were out of date twenty years ago, but it was all she had-that and her personal experience, which wasn"t much better given the rapid evolution of sicknesses all over the world.
She rubbed her eyes to ease the ache of her weariness. She wished sometimes that she could walk, that she wasn"t confined to this wheelchair. She wasn"t being selfish, although she had her share of those moments, too. She was simply frustrated at being unable to just get up and see what could be done instead of having to rely on others. She wanted to go down to the waterfront and have a look at River"s grandfather, but Hawk would never allow it. He might agree to bring the old man to their underground home, but only if she was able to give him some a.s.surance that doing so would not endanger the family. It was bad enough that River was already exposed to whatever her grandfather had contracted. Hawk would never risk exposing the other children, as well.
She wasn"t even sure, thinking on it, that he would allow River back. It seemed inconceivable that he would not, but Hawk could be intractable about certain things, and this might prove to be one.
Across the room, where he lay curled up in his favorite spot, Cheney stirred awake suddenly and lurched to his feet with a low growl. It was the second time he had done so in the last few minutes and the fourth or fifth since Hawk had left, and she knew right away what was happening. The big dog was reacting to the noises in the wall they had both been hearing for the last two hours.
Sparrow appeared in the bedroom doorway, her young face dark and intense.
"It"s back there now," she said. She gave a quick toss of her blond head toward the rearmost bedroom, which was Owl"s. "And it"s moved into the ceiling."
Before, it had been under the floor of the boys" bedroom, and before that somewhere outside the walls entirely. Each time, Cheney had leapt up and gone sniffing from corner to corner, hackles raised, a low growl building in his throat. He did the same thing this time, working his way to the back of their quarters, big head swinging from side to side, nose to the floor and then lifting. Owl had no idea what was going on, so she watched Cheney"s progress, searching for clues.
"What do you think it is?" Sparrow asked her.
She shook her head. "It"s making a lot of noise; it must be something bigger than a rat. Maybe a Spider or a Lizard prowling about, one that doesn"t know the rules yet."
That was what she said, but it wasn"t what she believed. The sounds didn"t remind her of any she"d heard a Spider or Lizard make. They didn"t remind her of anything she had ever heard. She found herself wishing that Hawk would return, even knowing she was perfectly safe within the shelter of their hideout, behind the reinforced iron-plated doors and heavy concrete walls and with Cheney to protect them. She knew she was letting her fears get away from her, but she couldn"t seem to quite stop them from doing so.
She listened some more, but the sounds were gone. She exchanged a quick glance with Sparrow, who shrugged and went back to reading to Squirrel. She liked it that Sparrow had begun taking such an interest in books. Some of it had to do with her willingness to a.s.sume the big-sister role with Squirrel, whom she adored. But some of it was due to a real interest in learning how to read and wanting to learn what all those words could teach her about life. Sparrow had endured a harsh and brutal childhood, one that she had revealed in full only to Owl, and there was every reason to believe that she would never be interested in anything but honing her considerable survival skills. Yet here she was, reading books as if nothing mattered more. Life could still surprise you sometimes.
Owl settled back in her wheelchair and returned to perusing the medical books. She wished she had a better understanding of medical terms. Most of what she knew she had learned through practical experience while still in the compound. She had no formal training. But if someone in your family or a close friend of your family didn"t know medicine, your chances of survival lessened considerably. Owl had always been interested in seeking out ways to protect the lives that others would be quick to write off.
"Can Squirrel have a cola?" Sparrow called out from the other room.
Owl said yes, watching Cheney reemerge from her bedroom and wander back over to his spot on the floor. He had an uneasy look to him, and even as he settled back down, he kept his head lifted, his black eyes alert as they stared off into s.p.a.ce. She listened again for the strange noise, but it was gone. She looked back down at her book, reading. Maybe Tessa would know something; she would have Hawk ask her at their next meeting. She wished those meetings didn"t have to take place, that Tessa would just come live with them as Hawk wanted. It was too dangerous to meet in violation of compound law. It would take only one mistake for them to be discovered, and if they were, retribution would be swift.
The sound came again, a scrabbling this time, directly overhead. Cheney was on his feet at once, thick fur bristling, muzzle drawn back in a snarl. Owl glanced up, tracking the scrabbling as it moved across the ceiling from the front of the room to the back and toward the rear bedrooms. Cheney tracked it, as well, hunching after it in a crouch, dark eyes furious. Owl turned her wheelchair in the direction of the noise and waited. The noise ceased.
Then, all at once, it began anew, a furious digging sound this time, a ripping away at things that suggested a determination or frenzy bordering on madness. Sparrow appeared in the doorway once more, mouth agape as she stared at the back rooms. She was holding Squirrel by one hand. The little boy"s face mirrored his uncertainty.
Owl didn"t know what was happening, but she didn"t think it was good.
"Sparrow," she said as calmly as she could. "Get several prods from the locker and bring them to me."
She wheeled herself over to the front of the room, close by the ironplated door, and beckoned Squirrel to come join her. The little boy hurried over and climbed into her lap. "There, there," she cooed, soothing his fears as he buried his head in her shoulder. "It"s all right."
Sparrow removed three of the prods from the locker and brought them to Owl. She took two and propped them against the wall behind her. She let Sparrow keep the other. At the far end of the room, Cheney was all the way down on the floor in his crouch, so agitated he was shaking as he inched forward, then crabbed slightly to one side, muzzle lifted toward the sound of the scrabbling.
Cracking sounds resounded through the underground like gunshots, sharp and unexpected, followed by a slow shifting of something big. Cheney backed away toward the center of the room, keeping his eyes on the bedroom ceiling. Then, all at once, the entire ceiling in Owl"s room gave way. It happened so fast that she barely had time to register the event before it was over. Heavy chunks of plaster, wooden beams, and wires and cables embedded in the mix came crashing down under the weight of a huge dark presence. Dust billowed into the air, momentarily obscuring everything. Squirrel screamed, and even Sparrow jumped back in shock. Owl was already thinking that they had to get out of there.
But it was too late. The dust settled and a nightmarish creature emerged from the debris. At first, Owl couldn"t believe what she was seeing. The creature was a long, jointed insect that looked to be a type of centipede, but one that was hundreds of times larger than it should have been, stretching to twenty feet and rising four feet off the floor. Its reticulated, armored body was supported by dozens of crooked legs and undulated from side to side in a snake-like motion as it advanced. Feelers protruded from atop its shiny head, and a pair of wicked-looking jaws opened and closed from below. There were spikes everywhere, and bits and pieces of clothing and debris hung off the tips like strange decorations. A series of bulbous eyes dotted its flat, hairy face, eyes that were blank and staring.
Cheney was on it at once, tearing at the spindly legs, ripping them off as fast as jaws could close and teeth could shred. The huge insect whipped about to snare him, using mandibles and body weight to try to tear or crush the big dog, but Cheney was too quick and too experienced to be so easily trapped. The battle raged back and forth across the far end of the common room, the combatants smashing everything from furniture to shelves to dishes to lights. Owl and Sparrow watched in horror, transfixed by the ferocity of the struggle. Squirrel just hid his head and begged someone, anyone, to take him away.
For a time it seemed that Cheney would prevail, darting in to tear off legs and rip at armor plates, then darting away again. But the giant centipede was not affected by the damage done to it. It was a creature Owl instantly decided must have been mutated by the chemical and radiation attacks that had taken place as much as five decades earlier. How it had grown to its present size or why it had appeared here was fodder for speculation, and the answers would probably never be known. What mattered was that its alterations had given it tremendous strength and stamina, and not even the considerable wounds that Cheney was inflicting seemed to affect it.
Eventually, the effort began to tell. Cheney was tiring, and the centipede was not. The razor-sharp jaws were beginning to find their mark, ripping at the big body, tearing off chunks of fur and flesh and leaving the big dog"s mottled coat matted and damp with blood. Owl could tell that Cheney was slowing, that his attacks were less ferocious and driven more by heart than by muscle. But Cheney would never quit, she knew. He would die first.
When he went down, it happened all at once. He was tearing at still another leg, searching for still another weakness, when the creature"s jaws finally got a solid hold on him and clamped down viciously. Snarling and snapping, Cheney twisted furiously. Slippery with his own blood, he broke free, but the effort sent him tumbling all the way across the room where he slammed against the wall and went down in a heap. Gasping for air, his flanks heaving and his legs scrambling for purchase on the concrete flooring, he struggled in vain to rise. Blood welled up from the wounds caused by the insect"s jaws, and Cheney snapped at them furiously, as if in terrible pain.
The centipede advanced toward him, jaws wide.
Owl turned quickly to Sparrow. "Take Squirrel and get out of here. Get as far away as possible. Try to find Hawk and warn him."
She knew she had just p.r.o.nounced a death sentence on herself, but she also knew that Sparrow could not get her to safety in time. Sparrow would be lucky if she managed to escape with Squirrel, and that was the best they could hope for.
"Sparrow!" she hissed when the other failed to respond.
But Sparrow was staring straight ahead at the centipede, her hands tightening about the handle of the prod, her lips compressing into a tight line.
Owl realized suddenly what she was going to do. No! she tried to say, but the word caught in her throat.
Sparrow stepped in front of her, a shield against the thing approaching, and brought up the prod.
BY THE TIME Sparrow was five years old, she already knew that she was expected to grow up to be like her mother. It wasn"t just that everyone hoped for it; it was that they talked as if it were an inarguable certainty and the completion of her transformation awaited only her achieving maturity.
Physically, she was already a miniature version of her mother, with the same lanky body, big hands, mop of straw-colored hair, crooked smile, and fierce blue eyes that could pin you to the wall when they were angry. She even walked like her mother, a sort of saunter that suggested great confidence and a readiness and willingness to act.
She liked being thought of this way, as the daughter who would one day become her mother. Her mother, after all, was a legend. Her mother was a furious fighter and canny leader. Her mother was a warrior. Growing up to be like her was what any little girl would wish for.
But her mother never spoke to her of any of this. Her mother did not seem to have these expectations for her-or if she did, she kept them to herself. Her mother did not once tell her that hers was the path that Sparrow must necessarily follow. Her mother only told her that she must be her own person and find her own way in the world. What she would give her were the skills and the training that would let her survive. But her heart would have to tell her where she was meant to go.
Sparrow wasn"t certain if she believed this or not. What she knew is that she adored her mother. She did not know who her father was; he had been gone before she was born and no one ever spoke of him. Her mother was the seminal figure in her life, and everything she was or hoped to be was a product of that relationship. She thought about her father, but only rarely and never with more than pa.s.sing interest. She thought about her mother all the time.
Her mother was as good as her word. She trained Sparrow to fight-to attack and to defend. She worked her until Sparrow was ready to drop, but Sparrow never complained. She was a good student, and soon she had mastered the exercises her mother had given her to do. Her dedication was complete. She was not yet big enough to be effective, but she knew she would grow and when she did, she would be ready. She trained every day that her mother was not away, and she practiced on her own when her mother was gone. She was determined to be the best; she was set on making her mother proud.
They lived in the mountains, high up on the slopes in a fortified camp that her mother had established years before Sparrow was born. It was from there that her mother led her raiding parties on the slave pens and the slavers that terrorized everyone. Most of the villages surrounding were small and poorly defended-easy prey for the ravers and the madmen. The larger compounds, the safe ones, were in the cities, miles away from where she lived. Her mother didn"t trust them. Her mother believed in freedom and independence; she placed her trust in speed and mobility. Her camp was settled on a cliff shelf accessible only by a series of narrow trails that no one but those who followed her knew about and which could be easily defended. The shelf was fronted by a sheer cliff wall and backed by heavy forest leading up to the impa.s.sable slopes of the mountain behind it. It was a good location; it had kept them safe for a long time.
But, as it so often happened in the postapocalypse, their success caused resentment, resentment turned to treachery, and treachery gave them away. Word of their existence spread; vivid descriptions of their raids on the slave camps and the slavers traveled far and wide. Eventually, their enemies began to hunt for them in earnest, and found out where they were. Then one among their number grew jealous and betrayed them. It was a foolish act, one born of anger and poor judgment and not of deliberate intention to cause harm. But the result was the same. The slavers found the path leading in and a way to get past the guards and laid their plans carefully.
They came at night, when most were sleeping. They advanced in silence until they had overcome the guards, and then they charged in screaming and firing their automatic weapons. They were on a mission of destruction, and they were ruthless in their efforts to carry it out. They killed everyone they came upon-men, women, and children-making no effort to take prisoners or to distinguish those who resisted from those who tried to surrender. There were dozens of them, all heavily armed, fed by chemicals or their own peculiar madness, and without a single drop of remorse to give them pause.
Sparrow woke to the sounds of weapons fire, and then her mother was beside her, s.n.a.t.c.hing her up and bearing her from their shelter and into the teeth of the madness. Without speaking a word and without slowing, her mother carried her through the camp-past the dead and dying, past the fires burning everywhere, past shadowy forms that flitted through the night like ghosts. Sharp bursts of gunfire rose all around, and Sparrow closed her eyes and prayed for it to stop.
She was terrified; she wanted to cry, but she would not let herself.
Then they were huddled together in the darkness, and her mother was kneeling in front of her, their faces only inches away. Her mother wore a backpack and carried her Parkhan Spray. "I need to have my hands free to use my weapon. Stay close to me. I will not leave you behind, no matter what." She paused. "I love you, little one."
A moment later she was back on her feet, holding the big, black-barreled Spray in front of her, swinging it about and yelling at Sparrow to run. Together they raced across a short stretch of open ground between two of the burning shelters, her mother firing the Spray in short bursts at the dark forms that rushed toward her. Sparrow heard the hiss and whine of bullets as they flew past her head and saw the muzzle flashes of the enemy weapons in the shadows. The sounds were terrifying, and she ran as if she were on fire and only the rush of the wind could extinguish the flames.
They reached the woods behind the camp, the weapons fire tracking them all the way, and suddenly, just as they pa.s.sed into the trees, she felt a fiery sting on her arm and another on her leg. She heard her mother grunt and saw her falter, then straighten and continue on. Biting her tongue against the pain of her wounds, she followed. They ran deep into the trees, away from the carnage of their home, the sounds of death slowly receding behind them as darkness and shadows closed about.
They ran a long way after that before her mother slowed, and by then they were deep into the woods and climbing the slope behind them into the mountains.
Her mother glanced back at her, saw that she was holding her injured arm, and stopped at once to take a look. As she did so, Sparrow saw that the whole front of her mother"s shirt was wet and slick with blood.
"Mama, you"re hurt!" she whispered, reaching for her.
Her mother intercepted her hands and held her away. "No, there"s nothing wrong," she said quickly. She smiled quickly. "Are you all right? Can you walk?"
Sparrow nodded. "Then we have to keep going."
They climbed high into the mountains, and soon all they could see of the camp was a fiery dot burning out of the blackness below. But the sounds of the killing were still audible, shrill and terrible, and Sparrow was forced to listen. She knew what was happening. All of her friends, all those people she had grown up with, were gone. Only she and her mother and perhaps a handful of others had escaped. Tears flooded her eyes with the realization that she would never see her friends again. She wiped at the dampness and tried not to let her mother see.
It was only an hour or two before dawn when her mother finally allowed them to stop. They had come through a pa.s.s and were on the other side of the mountain, and the camp and its horrors were left behind. They sat together on a gra.s.sy berm that provided them with shelter, facing west across a plain dark with night and a sky filled with stars. Her mother had abandoned the Spray sometime back, but she still wore her backpack. She stripped it off now and pulled out clothes and boots for Sparrow to change into. She was breathing heavily, and the blood from her wounds coated both the front and back of her shirt. She seemed unaware of it as she watched Sparrow change out of her nightdress, but her eyes were filled with pain.
"We"ll rest here until morning, little one," she said. "Then we will walk west to the ocean. It will take a couple of days, but we will go slowly and carefully and watch out for danger." She reached into her pack and pulled out a flechette handgun. "This will be yours until we reach our destination. Don"t use it unless you are in real danger."
Sparrow listened and nodded, not knowing how to reply. Finally, she said, "You have to stop the bleeding, Mama. You have to bandage yourself so it will stop."
Her mother smiled and reached for her hand, pulling her down beside her.
"I need to rest a little while first. You should rest, too. We have a long walk ahead of us. Can you make that walk? Are you strong enough to walk all the way to the ocean?"
Sparrow nodded, staring into her mother"s clear eyes. "I can walk anywhere you want me to, Mama."
Her mother squeezed her hands. "Then everything will be all right." She sighed heavily. "I have to rest now. I"m very tired. Don"t forget, little one. I love you. I will always love you."