Prophet's Journey, page 16
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
“Someone said she has wings,” whispered Paama.
“I kinda do. They’re not like bird wings. They’re made out of light. Officer David said they’re ‘astral energy.’ Dunno what that means. I can’t fly, just fall slow.”
“Grandpa said she reminds him of something from the Ancients’ books,” said Paama. “Before our gods spoke to the great King Malcolm, the Ancients followed a primitive mythology that only had one god.”
Ooru chuckled. “No way. How could there be only one god?”
“I know, right?” Paama giggled. “Grandpa said they believed their god was like totally powerful and had no flaws or weaknesses and was perfect. But, it never did anything. They still had bad stuff happen all the time and their god didn’t do anything about it.”
“Do your gods ever do stuff?” asked Althea.
The kids remained quiet for a minute.
“Umm, not that I’ve seen,” whispered Paama. “But they’re angry with us for what the Ancients did. We’re still being punished. And the Ancients made up a silly god. Nothing can be perfect. The real gods aren’t perfect at all. Lexus and Mercedes are always trying to kill each other, even though she really likes him. And Audi is arrogant. Thinks he’s better than all the other gods with his fancy rings.”
“Beemer is the king of the gods though,” whispered Ooru. “He made the throne that our king or queen sits on. Only royals are allowed to sit on it. And Lockheed is scary. He sent war birds to burn the Ancients’ cities.”
“Lord Starbucks likes to play games. Sometimes he gives us energy, but sometimes he makes us tired. Internet can’t be trusted either. He’s always trying to look at ladies when they don’t have clothes on, and he keeps trying to steal Lady Victoria’s secret.” Paama shivered. “I meditate to Dell before I get in the bath so he’ll keep Internet away from me. Even if he is a god, I don’t want him watching me in the bath.”
“Dell?” asked Althea.
“He’s the god that controls Internet.”
“Apple can control Internet, too,” said Ooru. “But she doesn’t usually listen to people when they ask for stuff.”
Paama sneezed. “Ugh. It’s dusty down here. My grandma said Apple only listens to meditations if you offer up a big pile of coins.”
Althea didn’t think these gods really existed, though Internet sounded creepy. She slowed while approaching an obstruction in the passage. “Does Internet do anything else but watch girls taking baths? Oh, look out, there’s a bunch of junk here. A bar you can trip on.”
“Umm, my grandma said Internet is the god who made cats.” Paama nearly tripped over the rod but caught herself against Ooru. “He loves cats, ladies with no clothes, and umm, I think she said he makes trolls, too.”
“What’s a troll?” Althea stopped and looked back at them.
“I don’t know, but Grandma said they’re mean. We should probably run away if we find one.”
“What do they look like?” asked Althea.
“Umm. Not sure. Grandma told me they are huge and fat, smell bad, and love to do mean stuff… but they can’t really hurt anyone.”
“Oh.” So strange. Althea resumed walking. “How do you know about all these gods if you’ve never seen one?”
“The Ancients worshipped them.” Ooru stumbled over a small clump of debris, squeezing her shoulder to keep from losing his grip. “The gods’ sacred symbols are everywhere… especially Lord Starbucks and the great M.”
“The great M?” asked Althea.
Ooru nodded. “He had many temples all over the Ancients’ world and gave the people god-food because he liked them, but they became greedy for his power and ate too much of the enchanted food. He made some Ancients fat and sick as punishment.”
“Lady Visa and Lord MasterCard had a lot of power,” said Paama. “Their sacred marks are on almost every window in some places.”
Althea couldn’t say for sure if the Transit tribe’s gods existed or didn’t, though they did seem to have a lot of them. Even if those gods did exist, she doubted they cared much about the people in the settlement. The machine men didn’t come from gods, but from the bad city in the west. When she’d told Officer David of the one she found stuck in the creek, he had been astounded she survived the encounter. She didn’t remember too much of what he said, only that people had sent those machines out into the Badlands to clean it up—but something went wrong.
Althea frowned. The Many.
Paama and Ooru whispered back and forth, debating for quite a while if Amazon or Disney had the most power among the gods. Eventually, Althea spotted color up ahead in a patch of sunlight leaking in from a hole smashed in the ceiling of a large chamber. She paused at the end of the concrete pipe, toes curled over the edge, and leaned forward to survey the room. The floor, suspiciously flat dirt, looked like an easy drop, only about two feet down from the pipe. Most of the chamber’s ceiling had crumbled inward, forming a natural ramp of broken concrete covered in tufts of grass and weeds on the opposite side of the room. The walls of a former building surrounded the top of the opening up above, making her feel as if she stood at the bottom of an enormous pit.
“Is it safe?” whispered Althea.
Ooru and Paama squeezed up beside her for a better view.
They listened in silence for a moment, then nodded. Ooru made a ‘shh’ gesture.
Althea smiled, then jumped down—and her feet sank into the floor. What she thought to be too-perfectly-flat dirt turned out to be gooey mud. She sank past the middle of her thighs, the hem of her dress resting on the muck. Gasping at the cold, she stretched her right foot down, but her toes didn’t find anything more solid than goop. She flailed her arms about, but couldn’t really move.
“It’s too deep,” whispered Althea. “I’m stuck.”
“Take my hand,” said Ooru.
She reached up.
Paama grabbed one arm, Ooru the other, and they hauled her up out of the muck, pulling her into the pipe. She sat on the end, feet dangling, and spent a moment scraping mud off her legs before standing up again.
“Do like this.” Paama slung her spear across her back on a strap, then shimmied out of the sewer passage to the wall, placing the tips of her boots on a thin metal pipe while clutching a ridge of concrete above her head.
Althea peered down at her legs. The coating of mud turned her grey as if she’d been painted. Even standing still on the concrete tube, her feet threatened to slide out from under her. She scraped her soles at the edge a few times, then stretched a leg out to the narrow pipe. Her shorter stature than Paama forced her up on tiptoe to reach the two-inch ledge over her head where the concrete wall changed to bricks. Her arms both straight up over her head made her feel like a dead squealer someone had hung up to be gutted and cleaned—far too awkward. She pivoted left ninety degrees and balance-beam walked on the one-inch pipe, following the other girl in a slow sideways creep to the corner, then along the next wall. Ooru waited for Paama to reach the collapsed wall-turned-ramp before climbing out after them.
Heel-to-toe, Althea crept along the pipe to avoid the mud sink, keeping her upper body pressed as flat to the wall as possible. As soon as she got close to the solid ground of the rubble ramp, she jumped, landing a few inches in front of the mud pool.
Pamma whistled. “Wow. Nike was watching you.”
“Huh?” asked Althea, wiping her feet on a tuft of grass emerging from a crack.
“He’s the god of warriors. Strength, agility, that stuff. He helped you do that. I’ve never seen anyone walk on a pipe that small before.”
Althea shrugged, then scraped her hands down her legs to get rid of more mud. Once Ooru arrived, the trio climbed the ramp together. Numerous cracks and gaps in the chunks made for easy steps and handholds, her fingers and toes finding good purchase on the coarse rock. She breezed up the last six feet of near vertical wall with ease, clambering over the edge into a large room. Two giant rusted tanks the size of small houses stood on either side, long brown-red stains on the concrete floor revealed the path of frequent water flowing toward the pit she’d emerged from. Large mounds of trash occupied the corners behind the vast, old machines… something within them rustling.
“Umm,” said Althea.
An army of enormous rats erupted from the debris piles and scurried out from under the old boilers.
“Wow, you’re good at climbing,” said Paama.
“I’ve done it a lot.” Althea eyed the rats, which gradually took notice of her and sniffed at the air.
“Ack!” yelled Paama as soon as she could see over the edge. “Darkbites!”
“Rats?” asked Althea.
“No… rats are half this size. These are bad.” Paama peered up at her, not climbing any higher.
“Can still eat darkbites.” Ooru slithered over the edge onto his chest. “Gods… so many.”
“Yeah, but darkbites can kill us. Rats can’t… and we can’t fight all of these,” whispered Paama. “Too many. They’re gonna eat us. Back down, fast.”
The rats crept closer, still sniffing.
Althea leaned forward, giving off a telempathic radiance of trust and affection. The mass of rats relaxed from front to back as if a visible wave rolled over them. In a moment, they ignored the kids and proceeded to root around under the giant machines.
“They will leave us alone. Don’t hit them.” Althea took a few steps forward.
“Umm…” Paama hesitated.
“They’re ignoring us.” Ooru reached down to help Paama over the edge.
“I’m making them friendly.” Althea continued advancing, easing her feet around broken small appliances, crushed cans, and plastic boxes. “Are those big things going to hurt us?”
“No. They’re old boil machines.” Ooru pulled Paama up off the wall.
Althea padded across the room, watching the ground to avoid stepping on rat droppings or sharp metal fragments. Paama swung her spear off her back and kept it ready, but didn’t attack any of the dog-sized rats. She threw out a lot of fear, but didn’t look frightened.
I’d be afraid of these creatures too if I couldn’t make them calm. They could bite my arm off.
A short metal staircase at the far left corner led to an opening that hadn’t seen a door for a great many years. Althea crept up and peered out at a field of rubble dotted with the remains of numerous large machines. They varied in shape and size, some as big as small buildings, others no larger than Officer David’s flying car. Several had utterly disintegrated on impact with the ground, leaving fields of scattered metallic bits. She counted twenty dead machines before she couldn’t think of any more numbers for the rest.
“Wow,” whispered Althea, saddened at the thought each one meant at least one person—if not more—had died. But, the flying machine that brought her out here also blew up, and she didn’t sense any death… so maybe the people controlling it escaped somehow.
“Shh,” whispered Paama. “Don’t wake the Sky Monsters.”
“They sleep.” Ooru nodded to the left, then advanced along the shadow of an old sidewalk, little more than a flat trail in the otherwise uneven grey dirt.
Althea almost giggled at them for mistaking broken machines as sleeping monsters… but Karina and Father thought it normal to ruin water by peeing in it. She used the toilet in the house because they wanted her to. Digging a hole outside didn’t waste perfectly good drinking water.
Ooru took off at a sprint without warning. Althea hesitated for a second before remembering what he’d said about doing whatever he did. She took off after him. They raced down the road running for a few minutes until he veered to the right and slid feet-first into a small concrete pipe sticking out of a debris mound. Althea crawled in after him, Paama behind her. He lay on his back nose to nose with her. Paama’s rapid breathing puffed over Althea’s feet.
Why did you run? asked Althea telepathically.
He twitched in response to her voice inside his head. “Saw a Silver Man walking around to the left. Dunno if it noticed us.”
She nodded, her long hair draped all over his chest and face.
The narrow pipe didn’t have much room. Rubble had crushed it only about eight feet from the opening, and Ooru already crammed himself as tight to the blockage as possible. Without climbing half on top of Althea, Paama couldn’t scoot in deep enough to pull her legs out of the daylight leaking in at the end.
Althea pressed herself to the side, leaning against the pipe so she could peer back at the end. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
“Why not?” asked Paama.
“The pipe’s open to the outside and it’s straight. A machine man could shoot us really easy and get us all with one bullet because we’re stuffed together.”
Ooru sputtered, trying to blow Althea’s hair off his mouth.
Paama drew in a sharp breath. “She’s right. This is a bad place to hide.”
The older girl backed up, grabbed Althea by the ankles, and pulled her out. She, in turn, grabbed Ooru’s hands and dragged him to the end of the narrow tube. He scrambled to his feet and ran off again, leading them past two cross streets before taking cover inside a ruined car. The girls huddled low on the floor in the back seat while Ooru knelt high enough to watch out the window. A few minutes passed before he and Paama felt confident no Silver Men had spotted them.
Ooru pushed the door open with a loud rusty creak. They climbed out of the wreck and resumed hurrying down the street in the shadow of crumbling buildings. At least the boy appeared to know where he wanted to go, never hesitating when making turns. A few blocks later, they cornered onto a street that still had a surprising number of intact—though decrepit—buildings. Faded spray paint formed symbols all over, sometimes numerous ones overlaid on each other as if people had been arguing. Some frozen words said things like ‘Death to Feds’ or ‘UCF is the future.’ One read ‘Disney’ under a strange symbol made out of three circles. Several said things like ‘Corporations for Freedom,’ ‘Corporate Power is People Power,’ or ‘Allied Corporate Council – No Taxes Ever!’ Most of the paintings like that had been crossed out with simple black paint forming the word ‘traitors.’
At the end of that block, the ruins gave way to a vast open field of dirt and rubble, all the buildings reduced to mounds of dirt, grey powder, and twisted metal sticks. The largest solid piece of wall remaining didn’t look any bigger than one of those ‘refrigerator’ things. Two enormous halves of a formerly massive flying machine appeared to explain why such a wide area had flattened so much. It had crashed here with enough fury to disintegrate everything around it to dust. Other, far smaller, flying machines also lay scattered about the area in front of them, one even stuck into the dirt nose-first like a knife.
Althea whistled at the sheer number of wrecks. “Wow, there are so many.”
“The Silver Men hate the Sky Monsters and kill them whenever they can,” said Paama. “But the Sky Monsters get so angry when they die that they turn into fire.”
“We’re almost there.” Ooru tapped Althea on the shoulder, then pointed at a building out in the rubble that looked like six giant plates stacked on top of each other. It didn’t have windows, rather wide open strips on each floor packed with the rusting corpses of cars, hundreds of them.
“That’s the Cursed Place?” asked Althea.
“Yeah. But not really. The Cursed Place is under it. This is the dangerous part. We have to go across open ground with nowhere to hide. So… we gotta run super fast.”
“I can help.” Althea grasped his hand, then took Paama’s. She linked her mind to their life essences, but not as deeply when healing, only enough to boost their energy and make their muscles stronger. “Okay.”
“Whoa. I feel weird,” said Paama. “My legs are itchy.”
Ooru bounced. “What did you do? I can’t stop moving.”
“More energy.” Althea beamed. “You won’t get tired for a little while.”
“Ready?” asked Paama.
Althea released their hands, focused her power inward to boost herself, then nodded.
Ooru pushed off the corner of the building they’d been hiding behind and ran fast enough to kick up a trail of silt. Paama zoomed after him. Althea took a deep breath and threw herself into a full sprint. Having provided her friends the same increase to strength, speed, and stamina she used, she found herself having to work hard to keep up with them. Though her legs moved faster, the other two had a slight advantage in stride length from being taller that balanced out to dead even.
They raced out across the desolate field, weaving around the dead sky monsters on their way to the building full of cars. A silvery shimmer way off on the right spooked her, but she didn’t stop or slow down to look back at it. If it had only been the sun gleaming off a crashed flying machine, it wouldn’t matter… and if the flash came from a machine man’s armor, she didn’t want it to see her.
Their long sprint ended at the side of the odd building where a cracked strip of road formed a ramp that led down to a basement level, also filled with the remains of cars. Ooru hurried inside. Althea ran after him, trying not to slip on the smooth concrete floor.
At the bottom of the ramp, he leaned against a car, out of breath. “Whoa… we made it.”
“That was amazing,” rasped Paama. “I’ve never run so fast in my life!”
Althea smiled. “We made it.”
“Contaminants detected,” said an echoing, digitized voice from deeper inside the sunken garage.
17
Wheelbot
Whirring came from a passage on the left a short distance in front of them.
Ooru grabbed Paama and dragged her to the floor with him behind a car on the right side near the entrance ramp.
“Telemarketer,” rasped Paama.
“Ooh, if your dad finds out you said that, you’re gonna be in trouble!” whispered Ooru.
Althea swallowed hard and crept up to a concrete column on the left, peering around it at an aisle between rows of dead cars, wide enough to be a street. A wheeled machine man rolled toward them, its fat rubber tire squeaking on the smooth concrete. It pointed both its gun arms in her direction, its multiple lens eyes flaring bright red.
