Armageddon's Children (10 page)

IT IS TESSA
who brings Owl to him when he is still new to the city and living alone in the underground. He is just fourteen years old, and Owl, who is called Margaret then, is an infinitely older and more mature eighteen. Hawk has gone to meet Tessa for one of their nighttime assignations, and she surprises him by bringing along a small, plain, quiet girl in a wheelchair.

They are standing in the lee of the last wall of an otherwise collapsed building, not a hundred yards from Safeco, when Tessa tells him what the older girl is doing there.

“Margaret can’t live in the compound any longer,” she says. “She needs a different home.”

Hawk looks at the girl, at the chair, and at the outline of her withered legs beneath a blanket. “It’s safer in the compounds,” he says.

Margaret meets his gaze and holds it. “I’m dying in there.”

“You’re sick?”

“Sick at heart. I need air and space and freedom.”

He understands her right away, but cannot believe she will be better off with him. “What about your parents?”

“Dead nine years. I have no family. Tessa is my only real friend.” She keeps looking at him. “I can take care of myself. I can help take care of you, too. I know a lot about sickness and medicines. I can teach you.”

“She is the one you are looking for,” Tessa says suddenly.

She cannot walk,
Hawk almost says, but keeps the words from slipping out, realizing just in time what sort of judgment he will be passing.

“Tell her what it is you want to do,” Tessa presses. “Let her tell you what she thinks.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“If you don’t, I will.”

Hawk flushes at the rebuke. “All right.” He speaks without looking at Margaret. “I want to start a family. I don’t have a family, and I want one.”

“Tell her the rest.”

She wants him to speak of his dream. She is determined about this, he sees. She is like that, Tessa.

His gaze shifts back to the older girl. “I want to gather together kids like myself, and then I want to take them away from here to a place where they will be safe.” He feels like a small boy as he speaks. The words sound foolish. He has to tell her something more. He takes a deep breath. “I saw that I would do this in a dream,” he finishes.

Margaret doesn’t laugh at him. Her expression does not change at all, but there is a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “You will be the father, and I will be the mother.”

He hesitates. “You believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t your dream be as real as anyone else’s? Why shouldn’t you do what you say you will? Tessa says you’re special. I know what she means. I can tell by looking at you. By listening to you. I don’t have dreams anymore. I don’t even have hope. I want both again. If I come with you, I think I will find them.”

He shakes his head. “It is dangerous in the ruins, outside the compound walls. You know what’s out there, don’t you?”

“I know.”

“I can’t be with you all the time. I might not be there to protect you when you need it.”

“Or I you,” she replies without blinking. “Life is a risk. Life is precious. But life has to be lived in a way that matters. Even now.” She reaches out her hand. “Take me with you. Give me a chance. I don’t ask for anything else. If you decide it isn’t working out, you can bring me back or leave me. You are not bound to me. You owe me nothing.”

He does not believe this for a moment, knowing that if he agrees to take her with him, he is accepting responsibility for her on some level. But the force of her plea moves him. The intensity of her eyes captivates him. He sees strength in her that he has not often found, and he believes it would be a mistake to underestimate it.

“She does not belong in the compounds,” Tessa says quietly.

“Nor do you.”

But in the end it is Margaret who goes with him and Tessa who stays behind.

IT WAS MIDMORNING
when he departed with Cheney for the waterfront. The day was overcast, but not rainy, the air thick with the taste of chemicals and the smell of putrefaction. The wind was blowing off the water, the ocean waste spills making their presence known. It was like this on the coastlines when the wind was blowing the wrong way. The spills, which had taken place even before the start of the wars, had all but overpowered the natural cleansing ability of the oceans and left millions of square miles fouled. Their poisons were dissipating, but the detritus washed back up regularly through the estuaries and inland passages to clog the shorelines and remind the humans that the damage they had done was mostly irreparable. Some of those poisons were carried onshore by the wind, which was what Hawk could taste on the air. He closed his mouth, put a cloth over his face, and tried not to breathe.

A futile effort, he knew. The poisons were everywhere. In the air, the water, and the land, and the things that lived in or on all of it. There was no escaping what had been done. Not for the humans alive now. Maybe for those who would be born a hundred years down the road, but Hawk would never know.

He had waited with Owl until the others awoke, eaten breakfast—a meal consisting of oatmeal, condensed milk, and sugar, all of it salvaged from packaging that time and the weather had not eroded—then called the others together to give them their marching orders. Panther was to take Sparrow, Candle, and Fixit and try to retrieve the stash of bottled water that the latter had discovered with Chalk on the previous day. Bear was to take Chalk up on the roof and retrieve the water storage cylinders, which would have absorbed their purification tablets by now. River was to stay with Owl to help look after Squirrel. He had given strict warning that no one was to go outside alone or to become separated from the others if out in a group. Until they found out what had done such terrible damage to the Lizard they had stumbled across yesterday, they would assume that everyone was at risk.

“So that changes things how?” Panther had sniffed dismissively as he headed out the door.

Hawk had waited until Panther’s group was gone and Bear and Chalk had departed for the roof, then warned Owl again to keep the door barred until she was sure who was on the other side. Just to be certain, he had waited on the other side of the metal barrier until he heard the heavy latch click into place.

Now he stood outside in the street, waiting while Cheney relieved himself, thinking of the dead Lizard, still bothered by the mystery behind the damage it had incurred and determined to find out what had caused it. To do that, he needed to visit the Weatherman. The sky had turned darker and more threatening, as if rain were on the way. And it might be, but it was unlikely. Days like this one came and went all the time, gray and misty and sterile. Rain used to fall regularly in this city, but that wasn’t true anymore. Nevertheless, he wore his rain jacket, the one Candle had found for him. In one pocket, he carried a flashlight; in the other, two of the viper-pricks. It was always best to be prepared.

He looked around for a moment, seeking out any signs of movement, found none, and headed downhill for the waterfront, Cheney leading. The bristle-haired dog padded along with his big head lowered and swinging from side to side, his strange walk familiar to the boy by now. It might seem as if Cheney weren’t entirely sure where he was going, but the look was deceptive. Cheney always knew where he was going and what was in the way. He was just keeping watch. Cheney knew more than any of them about staying alive.

He had found the big dog when he was a burly puppy, foraging for food in the remains of a collapsed building in the midtown, half starved and unapproachable. The puppy growled at him boldly, warning him off. Intrigued, Hawk knelt and held out a scrap of dried meat he was carrying, then waited for the dog to approach. He watched him for a very long time without doing anything, gray eyes baleful and hard and suspicious. Hawk waited, meeting the other’s dark gaze. Something passed between them, an understanding or recognition, perhaps—Hawk was never sure. Eventually, the puppy came a bit closer, but not close enough to be touched. Hawk waited until he was bored, then threw him the meat, turned, and started off. He had other things to do and no place in his life for a dog, in any case. He had only just brought Sparrow and Fixit into the underground to join Owl and himself, the start of his little family, and finding food for the four of them was a big enough problem without adding a dog to the mix.

But when he had looked back again, the puppy was following him, staying out of reach but keeping close enough so that he would not lose sight of him. Three blocks later, he was still there. He tried to shoo him away, but he refused to leave. In the end, his persistence won him over. He had stayed with him all the way back to the entrance to the underground, but refused to come inside. Finding him still there the following morning, he had fed him again. This had gone on for weeks until one day, without warning, he had decided to go down with him. On reaching their home, he had looked around carefully, sniffed all the corners and studied all four kids, then picked out a corner, curled into a ball, and gone to sleep.

After that, he had stayed with them inside. But he had never become friendly with anyone but Hawk. He allowed the others to touch him, those bold enough to want to do so, but he kept apart except when Hawk was around. The boy couldn’t explain Cheney’s behavior, other than to attribute it to the fact that he was the one who had found the dog when he was a puppy and fed him, but he took a certain pride in the fact that Cheney, to the extent that he was anyone’s, was clearly his.

He glanced over at the big dog now, watching the way he scanned the street, sniffed the air, kept his ears perked and his body loose and ready. Cheney was no one to mess with. He was big to begin with, but when he felt threatened he became twice as big, his heavy coat bristling and his muzzle drawing back to reveal those huge teeth. It wasn’t just for show. Today Hawk was carrying one of the prods for protection. But once, when he wasn’t, less than a year after he had found Cheney, he had gotten trapped in an alley by a pair of Croaks—zombie-like remnants of human beings who had ingested too much of the poisons and chemicals that had been used in the terrorist attacks and misguided reprisals that followed. Half dead already and shut out of the compounds, the Croaks roamed the streets and buildings and waited to die. Croaks were extremely dangerous. Even the smallest scratch or bite from one could infect you. This pair was particularly nasty, the sum of their rage and frustration directed toward Hawk when they saw he couldn’t escape them. But they were so intent on the boy that they hadn’t noticed Cheney. It was a fatal mistake. The big dog had come up on them in a silent rush and both were dead almost before they realized what had happened, their throats torn out. Hawk had checked out Cheney afterward, fearing the worst. But there wasn’t a mark on him.

After that, Hawk was convinced that Cheney was worth his substantial weight in daily rations. He quit worrying when he had to leave Owl and the smaller children alone. He quit thinking that he was the only one who could protect them.

The street sloped downhill in a smooth, undulating concrete ramp that was littered with car wrecks and debris from collapsed buildings. On one side lay a pile of bones that had been there for as long as he could remember. You didn’t see bones often in the city; scavengers cleaned out most of them. But for some reason no one wanted any part of this batch. Cheney had never even gone over to sniff them.

Ahead, the waterfront opened up in a series of half-collapsed wooden piers and ruined buildings that left the concrete breakwater and pilings exposed. The waters of the sound spread away in a black, oily sheen clogged with refuse and algae, disappearing offshore in a massive fog bank that hung from clouds to earth like a thick, gauzy curtain. There was land beyond the fog, another piece of the city that stuck out south to north in a hilly peninsula dotted with houses and withered trees. But he seldom saw it these days, for the fog kept it wrapped tightly, a world far removed from his own.

He reached the waterfront and stood looking about for a moment, Cheney working his way in front of him, left to right, right to left, nose to the ground, eyes glittering in the thin light. Left, the steel skeletons of the shipping cranes rose through the mist like dinosaurs frozen in time, dark and spectral. Right, the buildings of the city loomed over the dockside, their windows thousands of black, sightless eyes whose glass had long ago been broken out. The waterfront itself was littered with old car hulks and pieces of the buildings that had come down with the collapse of the piers and the concrete viaduct that had carried traffic through the city long ago. A dark figure moved in the shadows of a building front, one of the few still standing, there for just an instant, then quickly gone. Hawk waited in vain for another look. It was something more scared of him than he was of it.

He started down the waterfront toward the places where the Weatherman could usually be found. He kept to the open spaces, away from the dark openings and rubble where the bad things would sometimes lie in wait. Croaks, in particular, were unpredictable. Even with Cheney present, a Croak would attack if given a chance. Of course, anything would attack street kids because they were the easiest of prey.