Prophet's Journey, page 39
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
“I’m hungry.” Althea cringed as her gut growled again. “What happened?”
“You lit up like a damn starship and started throwing off electromagnetic energy too strong for me to even measure.”
Althea’s eyebrows scrunched together.
“The injured closest to you regenerated fastest, so we gathered everyone around you. Then you passed out. I’ve been carrying you for two days. We’re clear of the ruins. Haven’t seen any sign of CRP all day today. Got into it with a wheelbot yesterday, but the plasma rifles make it easy to outrange them. Not a big deal. No one got hurt.”
Paama jogged over and handed her a large hunk of cooked squealer meat. The girl radiated a peculiar mix of relief, joy, and sadness. “Thank you.” She knelt beside her, head bowed against her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Althea couldn’t resist the smell of the fire-seared meat and attacked it like a feral critter.
“Ooru’s father died.” Paama sniffled. “He knows you couldn’t do anything since it happened so fast. He is upset because we hid with the children during the fight, but he is too small for war.”
Althea looked up, a wad of half-chewed meat nearly falling out of her open mouth.
“Don’t be sad. Everyone’s been talking. If we didn’t take this journey, we would have eventually all died. We knew that leaving our home would be dangerous, but it is better a few warriors die than all of us are killed.” Paama fidgeted. “They are starting to say you are one of the gods.”
“I’m not. I’m just a person like you, but I can do stuff.” Althea took another huge bite. “Please don’t treat me different. I only want to be a person.”
“Okay.” Paama managed a weak smile.
“Ooru likes you,” whispered Althea.
“I know.”
Althea whispered, “No, he likes you.”
Paama blinked. “Ooru? We’ve been like best friends for our whole lives.”
“You are close. That is why you are sad for his loss. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” Paama playfully punched her in the shoulder. “Even Noema believes this is better. Mariko’s medicine does not work well. We had to stay underground. Our garden was small, and it was dying. We ran out of food sometimes. If the plant lights stopped working, we only had rats, and hunting meant we had to go outside where the Silver Men could find us.”
“The worst is past,” said Teal. “We’re pretty well out of the CRP’s patrol range here. We might see a flyer or a wheelbot, but another day or two and they’ll just be a bad memory.”
Kye, Noema, Sumiko, and Bill approached, with most of the villagers behind them.
The overwhelming emotion of reverence in the crowd almost made Althea roll her eyes—but that would be rude.
“Please don’t worship me. I’m not a god. I just do psionics.”
The councilors and Kye sat nearby while Teal tried to explain the theoretical difference between gods and psionics. The sight of Althea erupting with light, floating into the air, and healing the spear-bearers injured at the hotel had made the Transit people afraid to not have her around. With her encouragement, their attitude shifted from worshipful to something akin to the way a child feared going too far from its mother. Althea didn’t mind that they had become fearful of being separated from her, just as long as no one treated her any different from a person. No offerings, no bowing, no weird rituals or whispering in her presence.
Teal’s explanation of psionics somewhat clicked with the councilors, who accepted that Kye used similar abilities. Traits that they formerly called ‘royal.’ Evidently, all past rulers of the tribe had possessed some manner of psionic ability, though they did not all share the same family. Whoever happened to display some manner of gift when the tribe needed a new ruler wound up going to the Cursed Place.
The councilors initially became restless when Teal attempted to explain that their cursed place was really an abandoned medical facility run by Ancora Corporation, a name they thought a goddess. Ell-Gee—while radiating nervousness—chimed in to support the idea that those ruins had been full of technology instead of magic or gods. He hastily added that he did not challenge the gods’ existence, merely that Ancora was not one of them. Althea suspected he feared angering the councilors more than the gods, which he likely didn’t regard as real.
Someone suggested having a celebration now that Althea had regained consciousness, however both she and Kye wanted to hold off—Althea because the attention embarrassed her; Kye because she didn’t want to make noise, use up supplies, or waste time. Once they arrived at their destination, then they could celebrate.
That, Althea didn’t mind too much.
The wounded all took turns thanking her. Some with bowing, some patting her on the head, others picked her up like a doll and hugged her. Althea adored the warm contact, moved to tears by the overwhelming emotions of gratitude. Anyone who felt a little too much like they revered her got a tweak from worshipful to simple affection.
Eventually, the tribe settled down for the night. Teal, who only slept as part of her human illusion, planned to help the spear-bearers keep watch through the night. With her ‘not quite mother’ roaming around instead of sleeping, Althea relocated her bed next to Paama and her parents in the shade of a huge tree.
Still feeling the exhaustive effects of the healing trance, she slipped easily off to sleep.
43
No Longer
The Transit villagers marched for several days, traversing woods and plains before reaching the dry scrubland that started to resemble the home Althea missed so much. She constantly flitted among the walking people, giving boosts of energy to the old or the small ones whenever they complained of being tired.
They stopped each night less than an hour before darkness to set up camp. Worry about provisions proved overblown as the land provided their hunters adequate squealer meat. Althea also helped forage some edible plants, teaching the scouts who accompanied her how to recognize roots or leaves they could eat. She confessed to being bad with mushrooms, forgetting how to know the good from the bad, so cautioned them not to touch any as the wrong mushroom would cause a most painful death.
Days under open skies had a noticeable effect on the mood of the villagers. At first, the smaller children who had never set foot out of the subway station had been frightened, refusing to let go of their parents. Even the older adults who hadn’t been outside in years roiled with anxiety. Their changing emotions reminded Althea of nervous flowers in early spring tentatively opening their petals. She didn’t think people belonged hiding underground all the time. The joyous wonder that swept among the tribe seemed to prove that.
Whenever they encountered anything shiny or technological such as an old car, random mystery appliance out in the middle of nowhere, or unknown wreckage, little Avie would invariably zoom away from the group to check it out. Despite a terrifying encounter—for Ell-Gee as the girl didn’t seem bothered—with a snake that required Althea cleanse venom from the girl, the little one remained undeterred in her curiosity.
Late morning brought a strong but warm wind across the scrubland, kicking up whorls of dust and a few tumbleweeds.
Althea didn’t quite know where she was, but the area appeared familiar. Of course, familiar terrain could still be days away from home. She walked along near the midpoint of the procession, sweating in the late spring sun. Wearing a full animal hide shirt had been nice further north, but around Querq—especially in the summer—she’d melt. Upon noticing some of the adults had traded their heavy fur shirts for garments of thin cloth or bare skin, Althea pulled her shirt off and basked in the wonderful breeze lifting the sweat from her upper body and tossing her agate pendant and hair around. She smiled, turning to let the wind dry the sweat from her back, brimming with happiness at no longer being in a place that made her shiver. She much preferred the hot, dry weather here to any place that people had to layer up in heavy, hairy things to survive. Her fur skirt had become warm and uncomfortable as well, but it was short, so didn’t bother her enough to shed it.
Teal didn’t react to the change in temperature, appearing as comfortable in her jumpsuit in the desert as she had in the chilly ruins up north.
Avie’s all-too-familiar squeal of delight made Althea look back.
Three adults lunged, trying to catch the adventurous six-year-old who zoomed off away from the caravan, having spotted something that attracted her curiosity. Teal bolted after her, overtaking the child with ease and scooping her off her feet. A loud wail of, “Aww! Blinkie!” came from Avie as Teal carried her back to her father.
“You need to stop running off.” Ell-Gee collected his daughter and held her. “What did she almost do this time?”
Teal gestured off at the desert. “Looks like some kind of disabled robot. Not CRP, but it could be dangerous.”
Ell-Gee paled. “Damn. Avie, do I need to put a leash on you?”
“I have cord if you need some,” said Teal.
Althea stuck out her tongue.
“Heh. Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” Ell-Gee wagged his eyebrows, proving he joked.
They continued walking until late afternoon. When the caravan stopped for a little while to rest, drink, and eat, Althea rummaged her cloth dress from Teal’s backpack and changed, packing the heavy fur skirt away along with the hide shirt. City garment or not, the much thinner fabric proved far more comfortable.
She wandered the temporary campsite, checking on the elders. One had broken a bone in his foot and didn’t even realize it. She crouched, grasping his ankle, and closed her eyes. Loud buzzing erupted nearby, the too-familiar sound of raider buggies. Not terribly concerned with simple raiders she could dismiss, she continued tending to his foot.
Two crude vehicles with wedge-shaped metal tube frames, huge rear tires, and tiny front wheels zoomed out from behind a giant picture wall sitting beside the highway up ahead. A crowd of approximately twenty raiders with wild hair and spiked armor charged out on foot behind the buggies.
Though the villagers vastly outnumbered the raiders, only five people among them had guns, plasma rifles taken from the CRP. The raiders charged in, whooping and screaming amid puffs of smoke and the rapid, random pops from primitive firearms. Bullets whizzed by; some villagers grabbed wounds and hit the ground.
Teal pumped a plasma glob into the buggy on the left, incinerating it to a fireball from one shot. The explosion of the ethanol tank covered the driver in flames. He jumped over the front end before the vehicle even stopped, tumbling into a burning logroll.
Althea broke her trance with the old man, lunged to her feet, and released a strong telempathic pulse of calm.
Everything fell silent except for the idling of a buggy engine and the squeaking of its shocks as it rolled off the highway onto dirt, its driver too mellow to do anything but sit there.
Teal, unaffected by Althea’s power, shot the buggy driver in the head, then shot the burning guy, putting him out of his misery.
“Stop!” yelled Althea.
She marched toward the mass of raiders who had all more or less slowed from charging to lazily walking closer. They had ceased shooting or waving bladed weapons over their heads. Some appeared bewildered, others took notice of her as she approached.
Whispers of ‘The Prophet’ rose up among the raiders, along with greed and a strain of toxic happiness she knew all too well. Some people with sicks in their brain-shapes, sicks she couldn’t repair, felt that kind of happy whenever they hurt others, stole things, or gained power. They almost always had that bad kind of happy whenever they captured the Prophet.
Althea walked up to their apparent leader, a giant of a man at the front of the pack. She barely stood as tall as his belt buckle. Wild black hair half covered his face, a spiked black collar around a neck wider than his head. Dusty steel panels adorned with nails and crude spikes hung from leather straps over his chest. He looked down at her, squeezing and relaxing his grip on a scrap-metal sword more than twice her size.
Contempt for those who would hurt the innocent welled up inside her. She roared, thrusting her arms out to the sides, forcing great fear into the minds of all the raiders. Several soiled themselves. Many screamed. All but one dropped everything in their hands and ran off in random directions, shrieking as if on fire.
The huge man broke out in a sweat, eyes wide, willful enough not to panic. He took a step back from her, a faint tremble visible in his hands.
“Wow,” muttered Teal. “I guess elephants really are afraid of mice.”
“Go away and leave these people alone,” said Althea.
The man edged backward. “You… Prophet. Belong to The Thorns now.”
“No. The Prophet is no one’s slave.”
He pointed at her. “The legends say…”
“The legends are wrong!” yelled Althea. “You have no right to make slaves of these people—or me.” She leaned toward him, continuing at a normal volume. “I will help anyone who asks, but I won’t let you be meanies!”
Teal snickered.
The huge guy twisted left and right, observing his raiders running far off into the desert in total panic. “What…”
“I will not be taken.” Althea held her head high, quite happy to be dealing with ordinary raiders and not stupid robots she couldn’t do anything about. “Go home and stop being mean to people.”
He reached toward her.
“Go home.”
The man recoiled, blinked, then grabbed his head in both hands, dropping his gigantic sword. Growling, he slumped to one knee. When he slammed his right hand down on the weapon’s handle, Teal raised her plasma rifle… but he merely dragged it with him as he regained his feet and trudged away, still shaking his head every few seconds.
“That’s amazing,” said Teal. “I didn’t think psionic abilities worked on creatures that didn’t have a brain.”
Kye laughed.
Once confident the raiders would not return, Althea stopped forcing calm outward and rushed to help those who had been shot. Fortunately, the primitive raider weapons and long range made the wounds painful but largely trivial since she could mend them and prevent infections.
Teal and Kye walked up beside her, watching as she removed a bullet from a woman’s side.
“You know,” said Teal. “I think we might actually make it to Querq.”
44
Wrong Turn
A few days after the raider attack, the caravan trudged uphill along an old highway flanked on both sides by tall rock cliffs. Althea walked on the dirt beside it since the Before-Time stone path burned her feet. Upon reaching the crest in the hill, she jumped into the air and cheered at the sight of Querq in the distance, a solid wall of buildings, metal, and concrete that sectioned off a retaken part of the Old City surrounding it. Her delight at being home radiated outward, lifting the Transit villagers into a similar state of elation that had the unintended but welcome effect of making everyone walk faster down the hill.
Teal smiled at her. “Well, here we are.”
“Thank you!”
“You shouldn’t thank me for helping you get back here. If my team didn’t grab you…”
“Then all these people would be in big trouble.” Althea smiled.
Teal raised an eyebrow. “You’re not even upset I kidnapped you?”
“I was before, but if you didn’t, the robots would have killed these people.” She gestured at the villagers behind them. “I am sad that Father and Karina worried about me.”
She whistled, shaking her head. “Wow, kid. Hey… would you mind doing me a little favor and maybe not telling anyone that I helped kidnap you?”
Althea looked down. “I don’t like speaking the false. Bad stuff happens when you do that.”
“Well, maybe just don’t say anything at all then. That’s not quite the same as lying. You kinda owe me one.”
“Huh?” Althea looked up. “Aren’t we even?”
“You wanted me to open that medical tank, remember? But I still escorted you home, so I’m up one.”
Althea examined her fingernails. “Great Forge.”
Teal playfully narrowed her eyes, then put an arm around her. “You salty little…”
Giggling, Althea hugged her. “I can’t tell Father the false. But I will tell him to forgive you because I have.”
Teal let off a deep breath. “Fair enough.”
Althea took her hand and walked with her at the front of the group. They followed the old highway to the outskirts of the Old City, and made their way among the ruins. A bonedog or two peered out of the shadows within buildings at them, but those creatures didn’t like the daylight and only snarled from their lairs.
Shouts arose from the Watch up ahead when they spotted the large group of 140 or so people approaching. They didn’t appear to recognize Althea until she walked up to within twenty feet of the giant blue-painted metal gate. Emmanuel and Natalia, the two Watch on the wall directly above the entrance, gawked at her.
“Hi!” Althea waved at them. “I’m sorry it took so long to get back.”
“Yeah, umm, sorry about that.” Teal jabbed her thumb back over her shoulder. “She kinda made a wrong turn on her way to Albuquerque.”
Emmanuel and Natalia appeared confused.
Althea looked up at her. “I thought you knew where to go? Did we make a wrong turn?”
“Oh, come on.” Teal thrust her arms out to the sides. “That’s funny. You never saw Rocket Rabbit?”
“No. Who would put a rocket on a rabbit?”
Teal laughed. “You poor deprived child.”
An electric motor—that sounded rather like a wheelbot—started up.
Most of the villagers jumped, giving off a spike of fear.
Althea pushed their emotions back to calm. “It is the gate. There are no Silver Men here.”
The gate slid upward on rattling chains, exposing the short tunnel through the wall. A path of thick metal slabs connected the cracked paving outside to the dirt road inside town. Grinning, Althea walked over the warm steel plates into her home, leading the villagers to the courtyard.
