Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall (6 page)

Nester clans stayed close to the ruins, where they scavenged a way of life, and were left alone by the survivors who'd cast them out. They camped in the foothills, above flooding, where it was easier to pool water safely during the rains. But the dry spring and summer months always drove them back to the Seven Counties for clean, reliable water. Even a nester wasn't in a hurry to die from tainted water.

As DWP, Charles Warden had made an art of water testing and purification. He could predict with uncanny accuracy which basins would be safe to reservoir in and which would not. That knowledge had died wth him because most of his papers and journals had been carried off as well. Though Thomas had gone all the way to the College Vaults in search of his papers as well as for vengeance, he'd failed. But the common sense Charlie'd taught—runoffs or basins located near old garbage dumps were never to be touched—would live on after him. He'd finally managed to convince the nesters as well, though the treaties between them were chancy at best and what one clan held to, the next would not.

Blade knew a few of the favored runs, but not all of them, and he'd not found a fetish or totem on the nester's body to tell him which clan he'd come from. So all he had was his brief conversation with Two-handed Delgado to point his way. From Delgado's comments, this nester had probably been a scrub rancher—he could haunt the ruins all the way from Claremont to the fringes of Orange County, or anywhere in the foothills and dry valleys between. A nester might herd goats or sheep or even chickens in the foothills.

Outside the city boundaries of what had once been Santana and Orange, he pointed his gelding's head east, toward the Prado Dam. The canyon run into Corona County and then the deserts beyond was a flood plain. Although it appeared the cities had been built the length of the pass and up into the foothills, there was little left now but broken foundations and few of those. The seasonal torrential rains of December and January had carried away the last traces of civilization. On the other hand, providing you had a fair weather eye, the plain made a good area to graze and run cattle.

Both Harley and the burro protested the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the path Blade took. Harley, named for the venerable motorcycle which could still be utilized if gasoline could be found and if it was in good enough repair, was a stubborn, short in the front, wide in the rear chestnut whose intelligence could sometimes be questioned. But he was indefatigable and even though he moved reluctantly out of the fringes of Orange County, the horse's umbrage was not based on tiredness.

Rather, it came from coyotes and wolfrats.

Blade saw the predators, too. With a rattle of tall grass and dried eucalyptus leaves, coyotes, moonlight catching an occasional flash of their dun or green eyes, slipped past them nearly unseen. He could hear their yips from the foothills and ledges above him. Sand and pebbles sifted down on Blade from time to time. Coyotes were circumspect hunters. He didn't fear them unless he had an injured animal and the smell of easy prey became too tempting. He figured they had winded the corpse he freighted, but the meat wasn't fresh and the human smell daunting. The burro flicked his shaggy ears back and forth, neat little black hooves clopping obediently behind Harley's ground-eating pace.

Blade took his rifle out of its sheath under his left knee and checked the chamber. He had a general vial in place, a bullet that would explode in a fire flash when shattered. It wasn't lethal, but startling. It would scare off most predators. He resheathed the rifle but didn't snug it all the way in. Harley pulled at the bit, protesting yet again their pilgrimage into the darkness.

Thomas stroked the gelding's neck. The horse calmed under his touch. He knew what he was doing.

This time.

He'd been fourteen the first time he'd ridden out into the night. He'd left behind his fate, he'd thought, and gone in search of a killer, a nester raider, who'd broken all treaties and cared nothing for the fragile balance of the Seven Counties. It wasn't his job to go for the man's bounty, but he'd taken it upon himself anyway. He'd only been known as Thomas then, for a Protector generally took his last name from his mentor. It was an easy, convenient way of identifying the training as well as the abilities of the Protector. Lady Nolan, for example, had the healing skills a Nolan was famed for. She could also TK, Fetch or Throw, and she could Project imagery fairly well.

When he was fourteen, Thomas had found all his abilities broken. He could never be a Protector as his mentor had been killed in an assault by the Mojave mutants. Thomas bore the blame for that death though Gillander had literally moved Time itself to save the Palos Verdes community and the offices of the DWP from Denethan's attack.

He'd driven the boy away, sent him for help, a spindly, vague, sometimes vain and silly old man who wore suspenders gleaned from In-City, their elasticity as spent as his own life. And though Thomas had gone and warned Charles and the troops of a night raid, he'd never forgiven himself for leaving Gillander to die. Neither, apparently, had the old man. He haunted Thomas from time to time.

Thomas had not been able to return to study under another tutor. The powers of ESP had forsaken him, blocked by trauma, and would not open up no matter how coaxed. All because one old man had taught him
a
tremendous amount about life, how fragile and precious it was, and not one whit about how to kill to protect it. Not how to protect life from raiders like Denethan and the nester he tracked. In revolt, Thomas turned in another direction. The man he rode out to find and bring back to county justice had known, it was said, a hundred ways to kill a man.

The first and quickest way, Thomas found out, was to take him In-City. The treachery of the ruins and its predators he learned to avoid the hard way. He found the Butcher a thorough teacher—every time Thomas avoided a trap, he learned a lesson. The Butcher taught him not only the many ways a man could be killed, but also about the nesters and their clans. He learned how they staked their territories and marked them with fetishes, how they hunted and thought . . . and hated.

In the end, he'd caught the nester and avoided being contaminated by In-City, and he'd learned how to protect the fragility of life Gillander had taught him to love. He returned to the Seven Counties, took his last name from his weapon of preference, a blade, and became Charles Warden's executioner. His Intuition bled back into him slowly until he also became a full-fledged Protector, no longer denied his destiny.

He was tied to the ruins now, as marked by them and Butcher as by the scar that quirked his brow. But the creature which had done that was another story altogether.

Thomas reined to a halt now. He stroked his brow in remembrance as he looked over the broken road sketchily illuminated by a three-quarter moon. Chasing after the Butcher had changed him irrevocably, more than anything he'd ever encountered in his life, even training as
a

Protector. He'd gone back to the ruins time and time again, gleaning them, taking instruments with him that warned of the radiation and toxicity so that he took no more chances than necessary. It was a risky harvest, but never riskier than the night a beast had risen on two legs out of the dark, claws slashing across the camplire at him.

Wards laid down by the Protector had not swayed him nor had the fire. The claws that swiped across the corner of his eyebrow could have taken his head off at the neck if the creature had been so inclined.

It had vanished even as blood had filled the sight of his left eye. Shaking, he had sat down by the fire he'd so carefully constructed, and tried to staunch the flow. He'd been marked—marked as the creature's own—without warning or omen as to its meaning. He might have been a god or he might have been signed as prey. He still didn't know, nor had he ever seen a creature like that again. It resembled nothing in the realm of his experience, as used as he was to the results of genetic engineering and mutation.

Years later he'd been marked again, in the sea, but that debt he had paid, and though the teeth marks on his right wrist worried him from time to time, the dolphin goddess who'd scarred him demanded nothing of him. Those markings and those experiences had changed him forever into something he had not foreseen. The dolphin had been a mystical experience. He swam with her now and then when he returned to the coast. Her turquoise and silver beauty paced him above wave and below, for he was one of the few survivors left unashamed of his gills or their ability to take him where man was no longer meant to go. He would never forget the day Charlie had gone under the knife to have his gills cut out.

He understood now what he had not understood then, what it meant to be human, and he wished that he could have told Charlie so that his friend might not have suffered the stigma of his heritage. Too late. Always too late.

As for what Lady wanted of him, he did not know if he could provide it. She had her methods for fighting to protect the fragility of life and he had his. He loved her the way she was. It cut deeply that she could not do the same for him.

Harley stumbled, bringing Thomas sharply into the here and now. Behind the chestnut, the little burro tugged at his lead rope as if to remind him that the animals should be sleeping now, and grazing in the early morning, or he would not reach his destination by midday.

He found hard rock to guard his back, with no overhead ledges or brush to conceal potential stalkers, pegged the burro out, and hobbled the gelding. He laid his wards out with a murmur and a click of the stones, banked a fire despite the mild Indian summer night, rolled into a groundsheet and slept.

He was deep in dreamless sleep when Harley's sharp nicker of cold fear shattered the quiet.

Chapter 4

Somewhere it was written that cockroaches were going to inherit the Earth. Thomas knew he'd seen it and the evidence chittering in front of him would support that statement. He kicked his rifle loose from its sheath, scrambled to his feet, and grabbed it up. Harley was making admirable speed even hobbled, but the little burro was at the rope's end, braying in terror.

Cockroaches came in several sizes. In-City roaches were usually ankle- to knee-high, but this out-country dumpster size easily qualified as a "tank," big enough to make even a wolfrat reconsider. Antenna whipped at Thomas as mandibles moved. A string of slime dropped from a hairy jaw. The scent of the corpse had drawn it and it was hungry.

A fire flash wasn't going to deter it for very long. Thomas dropped the vial out of its chamber and patted down his jacket, searching for something with a little more kick to it. The inside flaps of his brown leather jacket were lined with sleevelike pockets, filled with vials of this and that, handy little concoctions. He slid his hand inside. The knobby end of a crooked finger bone slipped eagerly into his grasp. The last thing he needed now was a fight with witch power and his haunt. "Oh, no, Gillander, not now," he said and dropped the bones hastily back into a pocket. Another fumble for a vial with its embossed seal telling him what it contained and he grasped it in triumph.

The burro let out a squeal as the tank charged. Almost dwarfed by its shrouded burden, it spun at rope's end and kicked out. Thomas dropped the vial into the loading chamber and cranked the rifle. The roach sliced a second time and caught the burro along his shaggy withers. In the night, the blood looked blue-black as it welled up. The roach skittered around into position to charge again.

Thomas shot into the dirt at the creature's cable-width legs. The vial shattered on impact and exploded. In a shower of dirt and gravel, the roach flipped in midair and came down on its back with a death rattle of shell and insect anger. He helped it along with his wrist blade.

The little burro stood stubbornly at its pegging rope's full length, ears flicking forward and back in uncertainty. Thomas approached it, talking gently, and wrapped an arm about its shaggy neck. He could feel its heart thundering in its body. He pulled another vial from his jacket pocket and uncorked it between his teeth. The medicinal smell would stay on his mustache until he had a chance to wash, he thought ruefully. He poured the vial over the burro's shoulder and watched as it fizzed and a cloud of foam rose. The little beast shuddered under his ministrations, but Thomas knew the liquid didn't hurt, not really. And the carrion poison of a cockroach would be far more lethal. When the gash stopped foaming, it bled cleanly for a moment, then clotted abruptly.

Thomas slapped the creature's neck. "You'll be fine, old son. Now," he whirled, peering into the gloom. "Where the hell did Harley go?"

Harley had gotten pretty far down the canyon by the time Blade caught up with him. He'd kicked his fire site apart and moved camp with the search, knowing that neither animal would rest well with the roach carcass twitching all night. Plus, where there was one, there were bound to be more. He hiked with his saddle and tack thrown over one shoulder, rifle in the other hand, eyes squinted against the darkness until he sensed before he saw animal heat.

Harley's ears flopped forward and back in embarrassment as he walked up. Lather dried the gelding's neck and flaked off as Thomas thumped him in greeting.

"Even handicapped, you made pretty good time, old man."

The horse bumped him in the chest.

"I'm glad to see you, too. Your saddle was getting heavy." Thomas dropped it. "The bad news is, you now get pegged out like a common donkey." Harley snorted in disbelief, but Thomas was true to his word before dropping back down in a hollow of dirt and sand to sleep what he could of the remaining night away.