Five Days Dead (19 page)

Edward Toll hobbled across the wooden bridge that separated his orchard from the rest of the world. The storm had come and gone and other than a gentle rain; none of it had disturbed his apple orchard. In the distance, the dark clouds still broiled and he could smell a hint of smoke in the summer breeze and knew for weeks to come the mountains would burn.

He knew the Federation would do nothing to stop the fires from burning the Wilderness; they had learned the lesson of wildfire and let nature replenish itself in its own time and way. There was wisdom in that.

He stood staring south for some time and sensed that the drifter was in harm’s way. He was now without weapon and surrounded by his enemies. Edward Toll found that no matter how hard he tried he could not bring himself to care.

He remembered the man Harley Nearwater when he had been but a boy. He remembered him swinging at the Orangeville City Park and that his Sara had noticed the boy and went to take him an apple from the orchard. But when he glanced toward the young boy, Edward’s eyes had jumped to the future and he had seen that this boy would bring death to his Sara. It would come at the hand of the boy swinging on a swing, reaching for an apple. Edward knew even at that moment that it would not be an act done in malice. The boy on the swing would be acting out in an effort to help in his own way. But it did not matter. His Sara would be dead. He had denied the boy one of his apples and when he looked at him, he hoped that he knew, even as a small boy, that there was an old man who hated him. He hated him very much.

To the north Edward sensed that Quinlan Bowden and his children were safely home again. They hurt and they grieved but they were safe. For now. That was well and good.

Standing on the edge of his bridge leading to his orchard, he knew without knowing that a visitor had been by, a creature of power and possibility and cunning and hatred. In time, he would have to parlay with the Gray Walker.

He looked down the canyon road and knew that in the days and years to come there were those in the little town of Orangeville and the great big world beyond that would suffer. There would come a time when he would have to do something about that. But it wouldn’t be today. Today he would sit in his orchard and remember his Sara.

He turned his back and walked across the timber bridge, which was old but not quite as old as him. He wrapped the orchard around him like a cloak and the world slipped away.

Oath of Fealty

Dusk was rushing toward them and Price was quiet when Orrin Hatcher, Ralph and Nina returned in defeat and pain, bleeding from countless little wounds and several larger ones. The crows had pecked and tore at their flesh and their eyes and the shiftless wanderer Harley Nearwater shot Orrin. While Ralph drove the big truck Nina glanced sidelong at the Wrynd king to see if he might lose consciousness, but he never did. He just looked forward, a storm on his bloody forehead and his eyes very distant. His scye sat inactively in his lap. She still wondered at the blast that had almost struck him down. She had never seen anything like it.             

She worried that Orrin might lose too much blood but did not dare ask if she could tend his wounds. He might kill her for even suggesting such a thing and in all honesty she was not sure she could contain her blood lust. To see the wounds of her king, to see the blood flowing from him, the desire to taste of him might be more than she could withstand.

She looked at Ralph, who had deep gashes in his face and on his hands and he nodded at her, smiling weakly. He loved King Orrin perhaps even more than she did. Since she could not tend to her king’s wounds, she did what she thought she could. She linked and ordered three medpacks. A stork delivered them as they pulled into the parking lot of the Castle Valley Inn.

Other than King Orrin, she was one of the few Wrynd in the tribe who had been a blinker before being turned. That Orrin trusted her enough to allow her to live when she could access the Link and possibly bring the Federation down upon them was a source of fierce pride to her. She hoped it meant that one day, when the Wrynd King truly took a queen that was his equal, that queen might be her.

Orrin sat in the jump seat of the old semi, his mind wandering the past as his arm bled down his side, the blood pooling in the seat and soaking his tattered pants. There was little in the way of pain, but Orrin seldom felt physical pain. It was the mental pain that wracked his body. Pain and loss and thoughts of revenge.

He was aware of Nina and Ralph beside him, aware of their concern and Nina’s desire to feed. For a time he considered ripping her throat out with his teeth to see if it might quell the storm of his thoughts, a storm broiling with failure and hatred and longing for a life that was no longer his. But he let the storm wash over him instead. It was a long time in coming. He knew when she ordered the medpacks. He had a tracker implanted on every Wrynd with a linktag when they turned and was alerted whenever they linked. He knew he was losing too much blood and took a mental note to reward Nina for her foresight when this was over. If he didn’t kill her first.

Ralph turned the rattling semi off of SR-10 and onto SR-6 and maneuvered the truck around the fallen Wrynd who had been slaughtered by the old wizard. Lightning blasts had scorched the earth and destroyed the asphalt of the highway. Orrin sighed and stared ahead and his tattered tongue ran along his fanged teeth. He used to have beautiful teeth, he remembered. His teeth used to be very white and straight and they were his without enhancement. He looked at his bloody arms and the gruesome tattoos beneath the blood. He used to have a lot of things.

Ralph took the off ramp and the truck coasted down South Main Street to the hotel, its lights flicking on as the smoke of the forest fires swallowed the sun. It looked like there were more than a dozen fires burning on the mountains and within the city, smoke and flame was engulfing the shuttered remains of the university. The entire city might burn before the night was through, but Orrin could not bring himself to care.

There were perhaps 200 Wrynd in the parking lot, milling about aimlessly, some sleeping and some eating actual stork-ordered food while they waited for the return of their king. Orrin didn’t recognize most of them. They were the recently turned and they had flared through their first dose of ink and were now waiting for the moment when they could flare again. He was running out of time quickly. He had a few days keeping his Wrynd horde together and organized and then they would start to submit to ink withdrawal and the madness would come, the self-mutilation, the death. If he could not get more ink, there was no way to prevent it.

The marshal had allowed the shipment once, but would she send it again, or would she send her deputies to rain down destruction?  He couldn’t count on the former and feared for the latter, which gave him little time to find the old man, little time to find Harley Nearwater and kill them both. After that, it no longer mattered. He would welcome his death. He had forsaken everything for duty to his Lord Judge and had betrayed Him by breaking the code he had sworn to uphold. The only thing left now was the sweetness of vengeance and then the relief of a cold death.

When Ralph parked the semi Orrin opened the door and climbed out, more unsteady on his feet than he would have believed possible. His scye hovered at his side and even it seemed unsteady, glowing not so brightly as before. Nina went to the stork and accepted the three medpacks. She handed one to Ralph, who took it with a worried glance at Orrin. She brought the second one to the Wrynd king, who wobbled on his feet and latched onto the semi door with his right hand and shook his head to clear his vision. He planted his feet and took the pack with a nod at Nina. She smiled shyly, pleased.

“Ralph.” Orrin’s voice croaked. He cleared it. “Tend to your wounds and then organize the others. I want to know who among us has experience with a weapon. Any weapon, pulse, sword, wrist rocket, it doesn’t matter to me. Gather up every weapon you can find in this hellish city and test them. If they have skill, separate them from the rest of the tribe and give them what is left of the ink. Let them flare. I want them back when they are done, ready to move.”

“Move where King Orrin?”

Orrin looked at him, his face bloody and torn, his eyes red. “Toward vengeance, wherever it may be found.” He took the medpack and walked toward the hotel, growing steadier on his feet as he went. The scye floated behind him.

In his room, Orrin dropped the medpack on the bed. He stripped out of his clothing and opened the medpack and the medical unit floated in front of him and made a quick scan of his body. It focused on the blast torn, gaping wound in his left shoulder first, using a half dozen slender metal arms to clean and suture the wound while administering a shot of medical nanobots to help with the healing process. It informed him sweetly that the muscles of his left shoulder and arm were too badly damaged to completely repair without a visit to a medprint, or he could choose to go with a synthetic replacement. Orrin nodded and told it maybe later as he went to sit on a bar stool and let the medpack finish its work.

With the severe wound sutured and the minor ones cleaned and repaired and on their way to healing the medpack returned to its case and shut down. Orrin went to the bathroom to shower, washing the blood from his battered body. Blood flowed between his arm and the powerband and he linked and unlocked it long enough to clean the blood away thoroughly. His arm beneath the band was pale white. Like death. He left the powerband off and when he was done showering tossed it on the bed beside the medpack. 

He ordered new clothes and food. While he waited for them to arrive he went behind the bar and pulled out his old pack; the pack where he had hidden his scye and his sidearm, the pack that held his betrayal to the Lord Judge. He fished inside the pack and brought out the last item of betrayal to his Lord.  The memory cube was an antique the size of his fist. He pushed a circle imprinted on one of its sides and a light band flashed from another. It was a simple hologram and it showed him in painstaking detail the memories and treasures of a life he had forsaken for duty. Watching the moving and still images there, the moments trapped in time seemed to be so long ago. It had been 10 years since he had been called before the Lord High Judge and asked to do his duty. His children would be almost grown now. Would they know him? Would he want them to know him?

It was an honor few could ever help to obtain, the Lord High Judge had told him. Orrin, who was Marshal Hatcher then, wished that Dedra could be there with him as the Lord High Judge honored him. He wished that Dedra was there and Boden and little Nathan, that they could see him reach the glory a lifetime of dedication and service had earned him.

Then the Lord Judge, sitting at his bench in a chamber so opulent, so glorious to behold that Orrin had to fight back tears as he walked down the sparkling, bejeweled floor to kneel before his Lord.

“I am a Marshal of the Federation, Knight of the Lord High Judge; I am the sword of justice. I do your bidding my Lord Judge.” Orrin’s voice had cracked with emotion and pride as he pledged himself to his Lord and when he looked up the beautiful Lord Judge was smiling down at him.

And then he was told what honor his service had earned him. He was to give up everything he held dear. His title, his star, his scye and his sidearm, his wife and his children, his life as he knew it was to be forfeit, and he was to become a Wrynd. Not only a Wrynd but a Wrynd King, a zombie of the Wilderness and he was to destroy with teeth and claw and fist and strength the enemies of the Federation. He was to be an instrument of the Purge and push the Federation’s people to a Hub or devour them.

The Wilderness must be purged, humanity must be protected and their rights endowed. It was the duty and the glory and the privilege of the Federation, its reason for existence. The Federation Senate and the people of the Federation would not allow the forceful relocation of citizens from the Wilderness and the Exodus was over. Those who would come to the Hubs had come already. The rest would remain in the Wilderness unless they were properly motivated. The Senate must abide by the people’s wishes, but the Lord Judge must answer to a higher authority. He must guide his people to their destiny, a destiny they were all too often oblivious of.

Humanity had all but ruined its calling, but the Federation had saved them, redeemed them and given them purpose, given them dominion over the earth and the digiverse and the potential to dominate the universe itself, in the proper time. The marshals were his servants of destiny and the Wrynd were as well. But to lead the Wrynd required men and women of great strength, great character and determination, men and women who could control their emotions even as ink consumed them with hunger, swallowed them in chaos.

Marshal Trevor Orrin Hatcher bowed his knee and swore his new oath of fealty to Lord Judge Syiada and Marshal Hatcher died where he knelt and Wrynd King Orrin was born. He would take up no arms in battle except for teeth and claw and fist and strength. He would terrorize the Wilderness of the Utah Hub and drive those living there to the Hub or slay them. He would forget his wife and his children and anyone he knew as Trevor Orrin Hatcher, in any realm, universe or digiverse. He would become a zombie for the Federation, an outcast, a drug addict, a cannibal. His tribe would never number more than 200 Wrynd. His wife and his children would be cared for by the Federation like the royalty they were. He swore his oath.

But even after swearing his oath he made his first betrayal. Before the carefully planned death of Marshal Hatcher, he ordered his memory cube and stored the images of a life he had forsaken for duty. He purchased his pack and hid away the cube and his scye and his sidearm. While he felt guilty for his disobedience to the will of his Lord, he thought he deserved this much, for what he had given, he deserved some small trinkets of the life he had lived.

Before he left the Palace of the Lord Judge, he was taken to a medprint and his straight, white, beautiful teeth were transformed into daggers, his long mane of hair was shaven and the grotesque images of death and mutilation tattooed on his body. The nails of his hands and feet were lengthened and strengthened and filed into claws.

Two aircraft left from the Palace that morning, the one he flew on and the one the Link reported he flew on. The one the Link reported he flew on exploded over Panama. There were no survivors. The one he was on flew to southern Utah.  As the plane hovered over the red rock of the desert, he was injected with ink and tossed out the cargo hold. St George and the Utah Hub twinkled in the distance. He killed 17 people that night on the outskirts of the Hub. He ate some of those he killed, delighting in the discovery of what parts were sweet, what parts were bitter, relishing in the joy of the flare. The next day with the flare subsiding but the memory and the hunger of it still in his mind, a stork arrived with a case of 50 vials of ink. He started his tribe that day, never letting there be more than 200 among them so as to not raise the alarm of the Federation Senate. They were a pestilence, like the Rages, but they were of no great concern.

He had crossed paths with Harley Nearwater in the 10 years since becoming Wrynd King. He was someone the neands and pilgrims in the Wilderness feared almost as much as the Wrynd, so he served his purpose. But not killing him had been a mistake.

Orrin could not tell you he was happy in this new life the Lord Judge had given him because there is no happiness among the Wrynd, only hunger and lust. He was all but insatiable in his hunger and his lust and he knew that was why Lord Judge Syiada had chosen him. But then came the day when he had linked and gone to the Utah Hub and saw Vania and the memories of the life he used to live came flooding back.

Vania looked so much like his Dedra that he thought at first it must be her. But then he realized she was younger than his Dedra had been even before he took his oath. She was young and she was powerful and she was beautiful beyond measure. He watched her and her weakling husband and children play in the park through the Link and he knew that he must have her, that he deserved her for all that he had lost in the duty of his Lord. So he sent his Daggers to gather her up and he introduced her to ink himself, so consumed by desire for her that he could barely contain himself. She had cried and begged for her life, prayed for her husband and her children, but when the ink stained her veins black she was voracious and killed all five pilgrims he had set aside for her. The next day, with the flare soothed within her, he arranged for the mobile medprint to meet them in a clearing on top of the mountain and she was tattooed and given claws and teeth and made his queen. She was not his Dedra, but in so many ways she was better.