Barren Sky, page 12
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? What’s left for me to do? I survived the global shit show. I lived here for a few good years. I’ve got no wife, no kids. The world won’t even blink when I’m gone.”
Dia wrapped her arms around Willie and he gingerly patted her on the head.
“I’ll blink. I care.”
“What good is that? Some little runt that can’t tell the difference between fresh water and pond scum?”
She laughed, and that made Willie smile.
“I still think there’s a way out of this. For all of us.”
“Then stay here the night. Sleep on it and come back to the castle in the morning.”
“Won’t Quinn be looking for me?”
“I’ll cover for you.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, I got a feeling about you. If there is any chance of Los Muertos making it through this, I think you’ll have something to do with it.
Chapter 25
Dia decided against a fire, instead, walking through the abandoned house, exploring—it never amazed her how many things the old people had needed to survive. On most days, Dia carried everything she owned on her back. But these folks had had rooms—no, buildings—full of items.
Over the years, this house had been ransacked. First by humans and then by time. She’d started on the ground floor and noticed a hole in the ceiling where water had flowed in from a hole in the roof, all the way to the ground. Irony? She wasn’t sure, but Dia knew that water as destroyer and life-giver was a paradox which humans had lived with long before she had arrived on the planet, and they’d most likely be dealing with it long after she’d turned to dust. Most of the furniture had been overturned, burned, or partially eaten by wild animals. Probably shortly after the world had ended, someone had painted words on the walls.
“Fuck you.”
“Eat shit.”
And, of course, one wall had been covered with a huge dick and balls.
She smiled, but not because she found any humor in the profanity or the human anatomy. Dia had spent enough time in the ruins and on the road to be conditioned to those things that might have been more shocking in another time. You cared less about dick drawings when you had three days or less to find clean water.
The kitchen sat in rusted glory. She’d decided not to open the refrigerator, having learned from her time exploring that nothing good would come from doing so. Dia had found everything from rotting human remains to a family of raccoons when she’d opened refrigerators, and none of that had helped her.
She went upstairs and through the bedrooms. The mattresses sat in torn shreds or had become soggy planters for a variety of wild mosses and ivy. Closet doors lay on the floor like broken teeth and, in one bathroom, the toilet had been ripped off the bolts and thrown into a corner. The seat appeared to be sticking out at her like a tongue.
There were other rooms full of black plastic devices with cracked windows, toys, and gadgets from another time, all meaningless and useless to her. She went through the master bedroom and stood on a balcony, putting one foot out first to test the integrity of the structure. She’d seen decks fall off buildings for no reason.
There, Dia stood in the still night, and put her hands on the railing and closed her eyes. This. This was what she so craved in the ruins. The people had gone and taken their ghosts with them, leaving nothing more than a mausoleum of things. Nobody would bother her here. No one to fight over the kill or ration the water. She’d come across other people in the ruins during her time exploring them, and rarely had a word been exchanged because they felt the same way she did. They, too, enjoyed looking up into a dark velvet canvas with strings of celestial light hung across it. They did so without interruption or distraction.
Unfortunately, she no longer had this. Her decision to chase the deer across the bridge had led to this, though, and she would deal with the consequences. It didn’t mean she regretted the decision. Dia regretted nothing, living life as it came and trying not to look back. But here she was, nonetheless, forced to contemplate a situation in which she saw no positive outcome.
Lane had died for her, but did she really owe him anything? Quinn? Willie and Snowball? Shiva was here for the water—and here for her. If she really cared about any of these people and their clans, she’d run off into the ruins and never return. Wouldn’t she? Dia could go east, sticking to the northern route once the spring thaw arrived, skirting well north of Denver Venganza and heading across the Badlands and back to her home. Could she return to Erehwon? Save her tribe? Maybe. But what of Shiva? Would she not return?
As she walked through the house and sat before a fireplace with charred streaks running over the stone hearth and up the wall, Dia began to think through other options. A cold chill rattled her chest. She crumpled some paper and lit it with a lighter before throwing the legs of several broken chairs on top of it. The flames devoured the dry wood as the almost instant heat and light made her squint.
What if the Rangers and surviving Los Muertos could seriously band together? Since Shiva’s arrival, the clans had tolerated each other inside of Albion, but how long would that last? If Shiva was really preparing for a siege, the fighting inside the castle’s walls would be worse than what might take place outside of them.
There had to be people living in other parts of the ruins. In a city the size of San Francisco—not to mention Oakland and the rest of the Bay area—there had to be more. Maybe Willie and his people had never had a reason to look. And maybe the others simply hadn’t gotten to Treasure Island yet. If the Rangers and Los Muertos truly set aside their differences to fight a common enemy, could they win?
Probably not.
But Dia wasn’t sure if there was another option. If she fled the ruins and never returned, she’d have to live with the fate of those people for the rest of her life. Dia would have to swallow the guilt of having knowingly abandoned them for the sake of herself. She’d made that decision before with much more ease. But Lane had taken care of her, and Willie seemed like he’d die protecting her out of some old-world chivalry. And this was after she’d stumbled into their plant only a few weeks ago. She wasn’t sure she could turn her back on them now, not without years of silence spent contemplating the betrayal.
Shiva wouldn’t kill her. Dia knew this, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fall in battle. Soldiers, villagers, and innocents always died from conflict, and nobody could guarantee anyone would come out the other side with their life.
Dia could do her best to get Quinn and Willie to bring the clans together, to fight under one flag. They might even be able to summon far-flung clans to stand against the Venganza. But, in the end, she knew Shiva would defeat them all. Dia had seen what the Venganza had done to the tribes in the Cleveland ruins. They’d killed their infant sons, stolen their daughters, and burned their villages to the ground. Dia had no reason to believe Shiva would act differently here.
Erehwon was dying of thirst and Shiva would do anything to save the settlement. Ironically, Dia felt the same way. Although, she wondered if that was Shiva’s true intention. The woman had proven to be selfish to the detriment of any other living creature close to her.
A wolf howled, and Dia walked over to the door. She was able to close it, but the knob and deadbolt had been broken off a long time ago. Dia could give an animal the appearance that it couldn’t get in, but she couldn’t stop it from coming inside. If the wolf came to her door and nudged it open, Dia would be left to either succumb to it or kill it. She knew she couldn’t outrun the alpha male because the pack would eventually hunt her down.
Running through the ruins had worked for her as a child, but it didn’t seem to be an option now. Tomorrow, she’d hike back to Albion and meet with Willie and Quinn. With new Venganza warriors showing up in Shiva’s camp on a daily basis, there would be no more time for deliberation.
Defeat seemed inevitable, but the clans could choose their own fate. And so would Dia. This time, she would not run.
Chapter 26
Dia had scavenged enough scrap wood to last the night. The room on the ground floor with the fireplace made her more vulnerable, but the night had come fast, riding on a cold wind out of the north. It whistled through the holes in the roof, the gaping walls, and broken windows, and so she was willing to sacrifice safety for warmth at least for one night.
She’d done her due diligence, searching the structure and not seeing any evidence that anyone had been inside of it for years. The spray-painted walls and litter left behind was that of another time, when the prospect of the world ending still must have seemed like a dream.
The fire crackled and hissed at her, the wood oozing with latent moisture and the water sizzling on the logs. Dia stared into it as she stretched out on the floor. Pieces of the original carpet remained, smelling of mold and animals. She’d stacked hunks of carpet next to the hearth, and while it didn’t provide much padding, it did help to keep the chill from seeping into her bones.
She stared at the flames and, within a matter of minutes, Dia surrendered to her heavy eyelids and dropped into a deep sleep.
She stood on a rocky outcrop overlooking the ruins of San Francisco, Oakland, and the bay. The sky had dispersed the clouds, but glowed with an ethereal orange instead of a cool blue. An ocean wind came from the west and pushed her hair out of her face, the air redolent of salt spray and seaweed.
As Dia scanned the empty landscape, she saw movement below. Near the Golden Gate Bridge, at what had used to be a park at the foot of the steel giant.
In her backpack, Dia found a looking glass, what the old timers called binoculars. She put them up to her face, feeling the cool touch of the lenses on her skin. She dialed in the focus until the blurry figures and movement sharpened into real humans.
Although she didn’t recognize the faces, she knew two distinct groups had gathered—the Los Muertos and the River Rangers. They stood on opposite sides of an imaginary line, facing each other but not speaking.
And then, the clouds swirled above, and the sun plummeted into the Pacific. The outcrop she’d been standing on hadn’t moved under her feet, but it now looked out over the Great Lake, a familiar green-jeweled body of water with the ruins of Cleveland on the shore.
She ran through the steel canyons, now being chased through the ruins as she had been as a little girl. Her mouth felt dry and her heart pounded in her chest.
“Dia.”
At the sound of her name, Dia winced, running down East 9th Street toward the lake, where the twisted ruins of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had sat undisturbed for years.
The glow of torches appeared two blocks behind her. They were coming.
She sucked in the cool air, not tasting the salt as she had while exploring the ruins on the edge of the Pacific. Here, the air tasted like burnt plastic and copper.
Dia made a left on Rockwell Street and sprinted past what had once been a hotel, the double-set of glass doors empty and staring at her like dead eyes.
“Dia.”
She recognized the voice, and that made her run even faster. Hado was gone. Dead. Dia would not stand around and face the demon that must have stolen her body and her voice.
When she looked at her feet, Dia realized that she was a little girl again. Her legs not as powerful, her stride not as long. And when she glanced over her shoulder again, the torches had closed the distance to about a hundred yards.
“Stop running.”
But she couldn’t, or she’d die. Somehow, Dia knew this.
She turned down an alley and climbed behind a dumpster. A brick wall closed off the end and her pursuers would enter the alley before she could turn around and get out of it. She would hide, and they wouldn’t find her. Or she would die. This was life in the ruins.
As the orange glow formed into the burning tips of torches, she could see the Venganza masks. The warriors had their weapons, and their bodies were painted—just like they’d been so many times when she’d been a child.
She cut off a short sob, using her feet to push her body deeper into the tight crevice between the dumpster and the wall. The Venganza wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the space to reach her, but she suspected there were enough of them to drag the rusted container into the alley and expose her like a cockroach in light.
“Come out, girl.”
That voice. It was Hado’s, that much was clear. But was it the Hado who had hunted her in the ruins as a child, or the Hado who had given her own life so that Dia could live?
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
Dia’s dream mind whirled. Could she trust the phantom? What other choice did she have?
“You’re wearing the charm.”
She put her hand on her chest and felt it, the last physical connection from Katy, passed to Hado, then to Dia.
Dia took a deep breath and crawled out from behind the dumpster. A row of Venganza warriors stood fifteen feet behind Hado, who was now three feet from Dia. She continued speaking after removing her mask. “I found the charm on the shore. Can you believe that?”
Dia shook her head.
“Me neither. I mean, that was really the only thing I ever found. No hunks of the boat, no piece of the mast. I didn’t expect to find anything and had to assume Katy went down with her boat.”
Dia nodded.
“But then, a few months after she sailed into the storm, I’m walking along the beach and I see something sparkle in the sun. You know Erie. Shiny shit washes up on the shore all the time, so I didn’t think much of it. I saw my hand reaching down for it almost as if the hand belonged to someone else. I felt a tingle when my fingers touched the charm. I grabbed it out of the water, shook off the sand, and held it up in front of my face.”
“And it was Katy’s charm, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Dia. It was. I can’t explain it. Didn’t know what it meant. Shit, it might not have meant anything. But here I was, holding the charm my mother bought for us, the one I gave back to her before allowing her to die in the lake she so loved.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know what it means. That is something for you to ponder, I suppose.”
Dia’s dream mind considered it, thinking about the two charms that had been crafted as one. Each half had been worn, by a woman and her daughter—a physical representation of an unbreakable bond.
“Although they had always been separated,” Dia said, staring into Hado’s eyes. “They could have been stronger together.”
Hado nodded. “That would seem to be a universal truth.”
“Should I put the charms together? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
The Venganza standing behind Hado extinguished their torches, dropping a black curtain on the ruins and the lake in the distance.
“You can’t stand alone, girl. Nobody can.”
Dia reached out as if to grab the revenant, but Hado’s form faded into smoke and an utter darkness fell upon the dream world.
She blinked, and found herself transported back to the overlook in Northern California. The River Rangers and Los Muertos stood below her, this time shoulder to shoulder and in a line facing a battalion of Venganza warriors with Shiva at the front. A gull cried, and Dia shivered.
She opened her eyes to see dying embers fading, their dull orange swallowed by grey ash. The house groaned, and so did Dia when she felt the ache in her lower back. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the gods had spilled purple ink on the horizon.
Dia sat up, rubbed her eyes, and put her hand on the charm now hanging around her neck. She would go back to Albion, and when she did, she’d explain to Willie and Quinn what had to be done if they wanted to survive Shiva’s siege.
Chapter 27
“Well?”
Dia looked at Willie, unsure of how to answer.
“Did you think on it?”
She shielded her eyes from the sun now peering over the horizon and scattering diamonds across the deep-blue Pacific. The blazing sky promised a cloudless day and calm weather while the whitecaps churned against the shore, the undercurrent strong and violent.
“I did. I think we must unite the clans. Take a stand against Shiva. If we don’t, she’ll destroy Los Muertos and the Rangers alike.”
Willie leaned back against the wall, biting into an apple and watching the men move through the courtyard with an odd mix of morning cheer and bravado. The scouts had brought back news that the arrival of Venganza warriors from all points west of the Mississippi had not relented.
“You want Quinn.”
“I’d like to speak with her. And you. Alone.”
“You think she can spare time now? Why would she talk to you with all the other shit she has to deal with?”
“Because I have something I need to share with her. With you, too.”
A Ranger appeared and nodded at Willie. “Her highness commands your presence around the table.”
Willie took one last bite of his apple, raised his eyebrows, and winked.
“I’ll be bringing the girl with me.”
The Ranger shrugged and turned around, leading them to the meeting. Dia followed Willie. When they walked into the room, several Rangers had already been seated with Quinn at the head of the table. Snowball sat to her left with several empty chairs on his right. Willie and Dia sat there, and once they’d pulled their chairs in, Quinn began.
“The Venganza are now too many. Shiva has brought warriors from all the western ruins. Her numbers have swelled to the thousands while we sit in Albion with dozens. Our forces, even combined, are now outnumbered by at least ten to one.”
A heavy silence fell upon the table. Not even Willie offered a witty remark or self-deprecating joke.
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