Armageddon's Children (23 page)

WHEN THE GAME
was finished, he took Panther, Bear, Fixit, and Candle with him to forage for purification tablets for the catchment system. They had been running low on the tablets for some time, and he had been delaying replenishing their stock because it meant traveling all the way across the city to a supply source nearly two miles away, a distance he didn’t normally like to travel. But clean drinking water was a must, and he couldn’t put off the trip any longer.

Owl and the others retired to the underground to work on cleaning and mending chores, busywork that would keep them all occupied until the others returned. Hawk took the biggest and the strongest with him, a necessary precaution on a journey into territory that was only marginally familiar. Candle was the exception, but he took Candle because of her ability to sense danger. It would take them all afternoon to go and return, and there was no guarantee they would find what they were looking for, but at least with Candle present they would have a better chance at staying safe.

The day was gray and overcast and the streets deserted. It rained on them as they walked, a misting that left them beaded with water droplets. Panther was still griping about the outcome of the stickball game, which his team had lost. He walked wing on the right with Fixit on the left, Hawk on point, and Bear and Candle in the center. Hawk glanced over at him every now and then, distracted by his mumbling, half inclined to tell him to shut up and knowing it wouldn’t do any good. All four boys carried prods. Panther held his like he was hoping for a chance to use it.

Panther was carrying around a lot of pent-up anger.

He had been born on the streets of San Francisco, the youngest of five brothers and sisters. He was called Anan Kawanda. He was mostly African American, but with other blood mixed in, too. His father was dead before he was born. No one ever talked about what had happened to him, and when Panther asked he was told that no one knew. His mother was tough and determined, part of an extended family living in Presidio Park, a group that disdained the compounds and the countryside alike. They lived in tents and deserted buildings and even on platforms constructed in trees. There were several hundred of them, all part of the same neighborhood before the move to the Presidio. Most were black and Hispanic. Most knew more than a little something about staying alive. His mother and the other adults believed that survival depended on adaptation to the altered environment, and that in turn meant building up immunity to the things that threatened you. The changes in air, water, and soil could be tolerated once you developed this immunity, and living behind walls or fleeing to the countryside was not the answer. They were city people, and the city was where they belonged.

Freaks were a threat for which there was no immunity, and some of the bigger, meaner ones—the mutations—preyed on people like them, people living out in the open. But the community was well armed with flechettes, prods, and stingers—dart guns loaded with a particularly toxic poison. They organized themselves into protective units within their enclave, and they never went anywhere alone. Sentries stood watch at all times, and the children were heavily guarded. There were rumors of rogue militias roaming the countryside and attacking the compounds. There were rumors of atrocities committed by creatures that weren’t human, that were something less, creatures of a darker origin. Neither of these dangers had surfaced in San Francisco yet, but no one was taking any chances.

There was a plan for evacuation from the city when they did appear, but no one really believed they would need it. Panther grew up playing at survival and quickly passed into practicing the real thing. In the brave new world of collapsed governments and wild-eyed fanatics, of plagues and poisons and madness, of bombs and chemical strikes, childhood in the traditional sense was over early. By the time he was seven, he already knew how to use all the community weapons. He knew about the Freaks and their habits. He could hunt and forage and read tracks. He knew which medicines counteracted which sicknesses and how to recognize when places and things were to be avoided. He could keep watch all night. He could stand and fight if it were needed.

He grew up fast, athletic, and strong, a quick study and an eager volunteer. By the time he was twelve, it was already accepted that one day he would be a leader of the community. Even his older brothers and sisters deferred to his superior judgment and skills. Panther worked hard at being the best. In the back of his mind, he knew he’d need to be. Talk of the armies that were sweeping the eastern half of the country continued to surface. Everyone knew that things were getting worse, that the dangers were growing. Once, long ago, there had been talk about things going back to the way they were—a way Panther knew nothing about and could only envision. But that sort of talk had diminished over time. It was accepted that the past was lost forever and nothing would ever be the same.

It bothered the older men and women, the ones who remembered a little of better times. It was less troubling to Panther and his peers, who only knew things as they were and felt comfortable with the familiar, no matter how dangerous. It seemed to Panther that the best any of them could do was to take things one day at a time and watch their backs.

For a while, that was enough.

Then one day, shortly after he turned fourteen, he returned with four others from a weeklong foraging expedition and found everyone he had left behind dead. They lay sprawled all across the park, their bodies rigid with agony, arms and legs flung wide, mouths agape, blood leaking from their ears and noses. There was no sign of violence, no evidence of what had killed them. It looked as if whatever was responsible had disposed of them quickly. It had the appearance of plague.

Panther searched the camp all the rest of the day and into the next, prowling through discarded containers and debris, desperate to find the cause. He did not think he would find any peace until he solved the mystery. But nothing revealed itself. When it finally became apparent that it wasn’t going to do so, he broke down and cried, kneeling amid the bodies, rocking back and forth until he felt emptied out. Something changed inside him that day, something that he knew would never change back. Everything he had believed in was turned upside down. Preparation and skills alone weren’t what would save you in this life. What would save you was luck. Pure chance. What would save you was something over which you had no control at all.

He buried his family—his mother and brothers and sisters—ignoring the protestations of his companions that he was risking his own health by touching the dead, refusing to listen to their warnings that what had killed them was almost certainly contagious. When he was done, he said good-bye to the others, who had chosen to stay in the city and to seek admittance into one of the compounds, salvaged what he could of weapons and supplies, packed them on his back, and started walking north.

Weeks later, he arrived in Seattle and found Hawk and the Ghosts and his new home.

For the first week after he became a member of this new family, he was willing to talk about what had happened to him. After that, he never spoke of it, consigning it to the past, a part of his life that was over and done with. But Hawk could tell that he hadn’t forgotten it; he simply kept it locked away inside, white-hot and corrosive. The pain and anger were always eating at him, and he had yet to find an effective means of dealing with them, of healing himself so that he could put the past to rest.

Sometimes it seemed as if he never would.

Hawk glanced over at him now, at the dark intense features, at the restless, troubled eyes. Panther caught him looking, and he glanced quickly away.

The trek through the city went swiftly and without incident. They encountered no Freaks, no other tribes, and no obstacles that slowed their passage. The day stayed dark and the air damp. Mist rose from the pavement and clung to the buildings, cloaking everything in gauzy trailers. Before long, the skeleton of the Space Needle came into view over the tops of the buildings, its ragged spire lifting skyward like a torch gone dark. Once, people could take an elevator to its top to an eating place and view deck that looked out over the whole of the city. But that was back in the days before hand-cranked generators and stairs were the best anyone could hope for, when there was citywide electricity and the elevators still worked.

It must have been something to see, he thought suddenly. Not the city—you could still see the city if you climbed to the viewpoints on the hills that surrounded it—but the population that made the city come alive, all the people and the traffic and the movement and color before everything fell apart.

Their destination appeared ahead, a broad two-story building with its plate-glass windows broken out and its façade scorched by fire and scoured by the elements. Hawk had found it by accident on a foraging expedition two years earlier: a storage and distribution center for chemical supplies, including purification tablets. The stock was too extensive to carry out in a single load or to try to store in the limited space of their underground home. But the tablets were precious and difficult to find in a time when retail outlets had long since been pillaged and emptied of useful goods. So he had taken what he could pack on his back and hidden the rest in the basement behind a cluster of empty packing crates. So far, his secret stash had not been disturbed.

They walked to the front of the building and stood looking through the broken-out windows for a moment.

“So what’s the plan, Bird-Man?” Panther asked in a singsong voice.

Hawk ignored him, casting about the shadows and the mist, listening to the silence and trusting to his instincts. He peered down the streets where they tunneled between the buildings and through the misty haze. Rain had dampened the pavement, leaving it slick and oily, and the air smelled of metal and old fish. He glanced at Candle, who met his gaze and shook her head.
No danger so far,
she was saying.

He turned to the others. “Fixit, you wait just inside, out of sight, and keep watch. The rest of us will go get the tablets.”

They climbed through one of the window frames, avoiding the door, which was barred and chained. Inside, the building opened through layers of deep shadows and long, hazy streaks of gray light to a jumbled collection of shelves, tables, counters, boxes, and debris of all sorts. Leaving Fixit at the front wall, Hawk took the others toward a half wall that separated the front and back of the store. Inside the half wall, a trapdoor opened onto stairs leading down into the basement. Once again, Hawk hesitated. He didn’t like the feel of the entry, never had. Then, brushing aside his fears, he switched on his solar-powered torch and started down.

The stairs ended in the very center of the basement, which was ink-black and musty and spread away in all directions to walls only faintly visible in the dim light of Hawk’s torch. Packing crates were stacked against the back wall, concealing the supplies they had come for. The wall to their left was partially collapsed, leaving a black hole that opened into the basement of the cavernous adjoining warehouse. The hole was ragged and slick with moisture, and the room beyond so thick with shadows that it was impossible to see anything. A deep, pervasive silence hung over everything.

Right away Candle said, “Something’s down here.” She pointed to the hole in the wall and the impenetrable blackness beyond. “In there.”

Everyone swung about to face the collapsed wall, prods coming up defensively. They stood motionless for a moment, listening. Nothing happened. No movement, no sounds. The seconds ticked away, and the basement seemed to grow stuffy and warm.

Finally, knowing he had to do something, Hawk started forward to take a closer look.

Candle grasped his arm instantly, pulling him back. “Don’t go in there!”

Hawk looked at her in surprise. “What is it?”

She shook her head. Her face was pale and drawn, and her eyes wide with fear. She could barely make herself answer him. “We have to get out of here. We have to get out right away.”

The way she said it made it clear that she felt there was no room for argument. Hawk looked at the others. “Go back up the stairs, right now.”

“Wait a minute!” Panther was right in his face, his voice angry. “We came all the way across town to turn tail and run? You want us to leave the tablets behind?”

“Go back up the stairs,” Hawk repeated.

“Go back up the stairs yourself!” Panther snapped, and wheeled away.

As the others watched in disbelief, he started toward the back of the room and the deep shadows, ignoring the looks directed after him, oblivious to Candle’s hiss of warning. Hawk started to follow, then stopped as he realized he could not turn Panther around without risking a confrontation that would likely do more harm than good. Not knowing what else to do, he swung the thin beam of his torch after the retreating figure to help light his way. Panther reached the piles of crates and moved through them, neither hesitating nor hurrying.

Then, abruptly, he disappeared from view.

Hawk held his breath and waited. He glanced left quickly. Within the black hole of the collapsed wall, everything was still. But the shadows of the room seemed to coalesce into something huge.

In the next instant Panther reemerged from between the crates, carrying a box of the precious tablets, his prod cradled loosely in the crook of his arms. He crossed the room to where the others waited, went past them without stopping, and started up the stairs.

“Come along, children,” he sneered.

No one argued. They went up from the basement with hurried glances over their shoulders, crossed to the front wall of the building where Fixit was waiting, and climbed back through the broken window. Outside, they stood uneasily in the street and stared at one another.

“What happened?” Fixit asked in bewilderment, looking from one face to the next.

“Good thing you got me along to do the tough stuff,” Panther declared, giving Hawk a meaningful glance. “Got to have someone who ain’t afraid of the dark. Got to have someone to face down the bogeyman when he crawls out of his hole.”