Carry the Flame (15 page)

When neither she nor Burned Fingers obeyed his command, he drew his cheek from the burnished wooden stock and shook his head without once breaking eye contact with them. Nothing about his speech or gestures appeared hurried. “Trying to shoot me would be even more stupid than shooting the dragon.”

“You might get one of us with that relic,” Burned Fingers said, nodding at the vintage rifle, “but then you're dead.”

He shook his head again, and in the next instant they saw why: armed guards marched over the rise with slaves chained to an old, empty circus wagon. The red paint had faded, gold filigree on the trim boards was peeling, and a painted American flag, emblazoned on the baseboard, had snapped off. But the iron bars looked strong.

“Who are you?” Jessie demanded. She turned back to make sure the Komodo wasn't moving.

“I am the Mayor for Life,” he said in the same easy voice, but there was nothing casual about the way he held the bolt action on them. “And I will tell you only one more time to drop your guns.” His tone hardened as metallic clicks forced Jessie and Burned Fingers to freeze. The Mayor's smile returned as half a dozen gunmen closed in on them from behind.

Jessie laid down her weapon, straightening as screams and cries came from the direction of the caravan. She tried to race across the sand, but a man tackled her. A second gunman jammed his fat black revolver into the back of Burned Fingers's head. The marauder dropped his sawed-off. Jessie was dragged by her hair to her feet as the slaves rolled the wagon past them toward the Komodo.

“This is actually your lucky day,” the Mayor said. “If you had not gone looking for our beast, you would have been destroyed by mines. Do you know
where
you are?” He spoke with notable emphasis for the first time.

“The Great American Desert,” Burned Fingers said, looking directly into the dark glasses.

“We call it the Bloodlands. It could get very messy for you, too, if you cause any trouble while we try to get the dragon in the cage.”

A gunman signaled the slaves to turn the wagon around after they'd towed it within twenty feet of the Komodo and woman. The lizard's eyes moved, but the rest of it remained still. Four slaves eased a ramp from the rear of the cage, resting it carefully on the sand. They kept glancing toward the Komodo. If the creature attacked, they'd be trapped by their chains.

The gunman who directed the slaves unlocked a metal cuff on a short, muscled man and pointed to the woman. The slave crept forward on his hands and knees. When he neared the Komodo, the dragon's yellow forked tongue flicked at him, triggering the slave's panicky retreat. He backed into the barrel of a handgun.

Jessie noticed the Mayor's bolt action now slung over his shoulder, her M–16 pointing toward his newest prisoners. His smile beamed brighter than ever.

The slave moved back to the woman, taking her arm and dragging her away quickly, leaving a trail of blood on the sand.

“She tried to escape,” the Mayor said to Jessie and Burned Fingers. “But he tracked her down because he was even hungrier than her.”

Now Jessie could see the extent of the woman's savage mauling and knew her survival was doubtful. A gunshot sounded from behind the dune that she and Burned Fingers had come over minutes ago. Jessie spun around. A burly man grabbed her arm so hard she felt bruised. Looking back, she saw the Mayor nodding at the gunman with the slave. He seized the wretch's shoulder and pointed a pistol at the cage.

The slave hesitated only briefly before wrestling the woman's arms from her sides and dragging her up the ramp. Her eyes widened and she started screaming as the Komodo trudged toward her, drooling pink saliva. The creature flicked its long, strangely bright tongue at the bloody sand, then hurried after her feet.

“No, no,” the woman shrieked, trying to pull her legs up to her body. Each touch, taste, and smell of her made the beast move faster.

The Mayor nodded when the slave hauled the woman to the front of the cage. A guard opened a narrow door for him, and the slave jumped out of the wagon. The guard locked the door right away as gunmen secured the rear of the cage. The Komodo stood over the woman, its huge head unmoving as its tail snaked through the bars and hung to the ground.

A child's cry drew Jessie's gaze back to the dune. Another group of gunmen were gathering the caravaners. Leisha and Kaisha, the conjoined twins, were roped to their father. None of the others were tied up, except for Hansel and Razzo, leashed to a gunman with a truncheon.

The Mayor stared at the twins and yelled loudly, “Bring me those two,” enunciating each word precisely before glancing at the cage. The Komodo still stood over the woman, neither of them moving.

A gunman forced Augustus and his girls forward, and warned the other caravaners not to move.

The Mayor stepped close to Leisha and Kaisha, peering at the peculiar V formed by their short necks. When he reached to touch them there, Augustus said, “Don't, brother. Don't do that.”

The Mayor turned to the missionary. “Do you know what you have here?”

“My daughters,” Augustus said fiercely.

The Mayor shrugged. “You have something the Alliance wants very badly. Something they will pay enormous sums for. In fact,” he gazed at all the caravaners, “they will want all of you because nobody gets to cross the Bloodlands. No . . .
body.
” The poor play on words appeared to amuse him. “But you two,” he returned his attention to Leisha and Kaisha, “they will want you most of all.” He leaned closer to the girls. “And do you know why?”

They didn't respond. Jessie kept an eye on the wagon. The dragon's head hung over the savaged torso of the young woman, its dark rubbery lips spilling long strands of saliva onto her exposed intestines.

“I will tell you why,” the Mayor continued, still inches from the girls. “Because they are insane. Did you know that? They are a great power, and they are insane. They think you are a demon from hell, and nothing you say will ever change their minds.”

“You can't give them to the Alliance,” Augustus pleaded. “They'll kill them.”

“Yes, they will,” the Mayor said calmly. “And the way your daughters will die will be terrible.” He took off his glasses, the whites of his eyes as starkly prominent as his bright teeth. “But we made our peace with them long ago. We keep the Bloodlands clear of all travelers, and they bring us girls like her.” He put on his dark glasses and looked back at the wagon. “After they have a baby, they are shipped to us. It is a profitable arrangement, and we will do nothing to interfere with it.

“You,” he pointed to the gunman by the twins and their father, “do not leave them, no matter what. And you two,” he stared at the girls once more; Leisha was crying, “accept your fate, and count yourself—”

“Please, no.
No,
” the young woman in the circus wagon screamed.

The Mayor and everyone else stared at her. The woman was swiping feebly at the forked yellow tongue probing her ripped torso.

Jessie caught Ananda's eye.
Don't look,
she mouthed, but needn't have. Ananda and M-girl were already holding each other close and lowering their gazes to the ground. But Bliss stared at the cage. Most of the others did, too.

“As long as we use bait—and they are hungry—they will climb into the wagon, so we keep them hungry,” the Mayor said. “And wait till you fight him. There is nothing like a Komodo in the fight pit. He is a monster. You will see,” he said to Burned Fingers. “Maybe you, too,” he said to Jessie. “I like what I see in you.”

She looked at Burned Fingers, who glared at the Mayor. The man's teeth were on full display, his pleasure unmistakable. Jessie wondered if he was insane, too, if this desert he called the Bloodlands eventually turned everyone into a crazed shell of what they had once been. If its most brutal survivors formed a massive black hole that forced the unwary into the final gravity of its inescapable grip.

A slave lifted a large canister with a long hose, feeding water into a trough that stood to the woman's side. The lizard stepped toward it, crushing her foot. She screamed. The beast drank, lifting its head to drain the water down its long throat while the woman clawed the air as if she might pull herself into the open sky beyond the bars.

The Komodo looked at her dumbly, then clamped its massive mouth around her bloody chest and back and lifted her off the floor. Its movable jaw opened wide, like a python with a pig, and in a series of bites the giant lizard worked the flailing, shrieking woman around its maw until her head disappeared into its throat, leaving most of her torso hanging out of its mouth, legs kicking wildly. The Komodo gulped three more times, inhaling all but her feet, which no longer moved. Then they vanished, too.

“Do not try to escape,” the Mayor said.

Gunmen pushed Jessie and Burned Fingers forward, and slaves dragged the wagon away.

Jessie's legs felt wobbly.
Who are these people?
She eyed the guards and gunmen closely for the first time. Many were covered in burn tattoos of spears and swords and viciously coiled serpents—crude welts carved by fire—up and down their bare backs and chests. Their
faces.
Most were African-American, but not all. Standing only feet away were three brutal looking white men with thick beards and identical fleur-de-lis tattoos on their arms; two Latinos, also heavily inked and burned; a broad-shouldered albino with thick Slavic features, cloaked in fabric pale as his skin; and two Asians.

The slaves were of a similar ethnic mix, but with far fewer burn tattoos. Otherwise, little but chains and lack of weapons distinguished them from their captors, until she noticed two men, shackled together, who were each missing an eye. Then she looked at the other slaves closely and saw an empty red socket peering out from every one of them.

Once the procession settled into what felt like a shocked rhythm to Jessie, she tried to account for everyone on the tanker truck and van. The gunshot she'd heard earlier still plagued her.

“Turn
back,
” one of the white gunmen ordered her.

She couldn't. Not yet. She was still trying to find little Cassie among all those larger bodies. The girl might have slipped away, or run off. That's what she'd done at the Army of God. Jessie doubted the Mayor's gunmen would have shot Cassie, given any girl's value.
But they might be crazy as him.

The gunmen backhanded her without another warning, snapping her head to the side. She yelped from the impact of his stiff leather wrist guard, which scraped her cheek raw and left it burning.

She was so stunned she had to force her breaths, and warned herself not to falter because it felt like that could be fatal. She tried focusing on her thirst, trading one pain for another, which helped until the air filled with the Komodo's flatulence. She thought she'd vomit. Several guards and the Mayor laughed.

They labored across the sand, stopping when the slaves were ordered to dig out the wagon's wood and iron wheels. The Mayor demanded Brindle, Jaya, and Erik help them, conspicuously overlooking Augustus, still tied to his girls. That's when Jessie realized that Maul, the tanker truck driver, was missing. With another scan of the caravaners, she confirmed Cassie's disappearance. Maul was devoted to her. She was his dead friend's daughter, and Jessie had no doubt the big bald driver would have done everything he could to save Cassie, even if it meant getting shot.

The Mayor watched the men work, smiling wider than ever. He might have been on a beach outing, for all the pleasure he took in the sand.

They climbed a large dune that opened onto a twenty-mile view of the desert. Through the harsh eastern glare, she spotted what must have been an old wrecking yard with cars stacked eight high in long rows. Sand had drifted over them randomly, burying up to three levels of the smashed and burned vehicles, while leaving the first row visible only feet away.

But the wrecking yard wasn't as lifeless as it first appeared. Shirtless, nearly naked men wormed their way out of the narrow openings, climbing down from even the highest levels with the ease of apes before jumping the last ten or twenty feet to the soft sand. The hundreds of windowless, doorless cars looked like a massive beehive coming to life, and the men who emerged shielded their eyes and stared at the wagon and long line of slaves, captives, gunmen, and guards.

The Mayor gestured dismissively at the ragged men of the wrecking yard. “They are a defeated people but they trade with us. They bring us dried vegetables and fruit, and we do not kill so many. Fair is fair,” he laughed. “Otherwise, we don't need them. We have many slaves.” Jessie heard another layer of accent under his Caribbean inflections but couldn't place it. “And now we have more slaves—and pretty girls to sell to the Alliance.”

Dutch, she thought, trying to ignore his continued threats against them. From one of their old colonies. Aruba or Curacao. But nothing in her estimation could explain the madness with the Komodo, except for the world they'd all inherited equally.

“Is that where we're going?” Burned Fingers asked more gently than Jessie would have thought possible for him.

The white gunman who'd backhanded her cracked Burned Fingers on the head with his rifle butt. The marauder dropped to his knees, swaying under the unblinking gaze of the man. His back was riddled with fat red welts so mean-looking it took Jessie several seconds to notice that the burn tattoos formed a constellation of crosses. The gunman pressed his rifle to Burned Fingers's ear and ordered him to stand.

Burned Fingers staggered to his feet, the first signs of physical weakness that Jessie had ever seen in him. She would have taken his arm, but feared it would get them both killed.

No one spoke till they descended the dune. Then the Mayor turned to Burned Fingers, and all of them stopped. “This is where you are going, burned man. This is where all of you are going. The City of Shade. I want you to take a good look at this magnificent palace.”