Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (4 page)

Wait a minute.  Think.

She was on edge.  Had been since she’d woken up early that morning, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.

No.  I’ve been on edge since Knile walked back into my life two days ago.

Talia wasn’t sure if she’d had a coherent moment since Knile had appeared out of thin air in her basement, materialising unannounced from the shadows as he always seemed to do.  He’d asked for her help getting into Grove, and she’d done as he asked, and then he’d continued on his way again.

But he hadn’t left her thoughts yet.

And now thoughts
of Roman were floating around up there as well, banging around inside her already addled head and complicating things further.  Latent feelings of guilt had been aroused by meeting the boy again, emotions that she
’d thought she had caged in a deep dark place and secured with an iron padlock, but which had come bursting through her defences with dismaying effortlessness.

And just when things couldn’t get any worse, Knile had called her back again yesterday afternoon to reveal that Roman was in danger, that the boy was about to walk into a trap, and that it was up to Talia to prevent it from happening.

Typical, Knile.  Never around when I need you.

But even as she thought that, she knew that she couldn’t brush the responsibility away quite so easily.  Talia was as much at fault for abandoning Roman as Knile was.  They had come to the decision together, telling themselves that it had been in the boy’s best interest to send him to Grove, that he would have a better life there.

Whether it had been a decision based on altruism for the boy or just her own pure selfishness, she now couldn’t be sure.  She’d asked herself that very question a hundred times in the years since it had happened.

In any case, she had to make things right.  Roman was in danger and it was up to her to save him, to warn him.  Knile was gone and he wasn’t coming back.  There was no one else to do the job.

She pulled her hand back from the door and looked over her shoulder at her dismal little kitchen, her modest living room with its threadbare carpet.

Not much of a place for Roman to live in, but we could manage.  Him and me, we could be happy here, if that’s what he wanted.  If he agreed to it.

First things first.  Before anything else, she had to reach the boy and try to cut through his animosity toward her, make him listen.  She had to divert him from his course toward this Candidate program that Knile had spoken of, and maybe after that there would be time to discuss a reconciliation.

So how do I get in contact with him?

Yesterday
afternoon, after the call from Knile, Talia had set out immediately toward Grove to see if she could gain entry in the hope of finding Roman inside.  That plan had not worked.  She had been turned away by the guards at the entrance, and this time there had been no old friends to show up and
help her past
them.  Discouraged, she had returned home, intent on rising early the next day to wait outside Grove yet again in the hope that Hildi or perhaps even Giroux himself might see her and usher her inside.

But now that she thought about it, maybe there was a quicker way to achieve the same result.

She pulled out her holophone and searched through her contacts.  She did not have numbers for Hildi or Giroux, but there was a general contact for Grove that might put her in touch with the right people, or even Roman himself.

The other end picked up almost immediately, and a young man with neatly combed black hair appeared on the display.

“Good morning, Grove exports.”

“Hi,” Talia said.  “I’m looking for Giroux.”

The young man all but rolled his eyes. 
“I’m sorry, Giroux does not take direct calls.  If you have a customer identification–”

“This is not a business call.  This is a personal matter that’s very important.”

“I’m sure it is, but I’m not the person to speak to about that.”

“Who is?”

The man sighed. 
“If you have a customer identification number–”

“I’m a personal friend of Giroux.  If you’ll hand the phone over to him, he’ll tell you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Talia Anders.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

Talia grunted, exasperated.  “Listen, a boy’s life is in danger.  I need to speak to Giroux right now.”

“Which boy?”
  The man’s patience seemed to be running thin.  “
What are you talking about?”

“His name is Roman.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Please, just put me through to Giroux–”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.  And now I have other matters to attend to.”

Talia’s desperation grew.  “Put
me through to Giroux, you stuck-up little bastard, or I’ll come over there and–”

The image of the man disappeared abruptly as the call was disconnected.  Talia stood staring helplessly at the blank screen.

Well handled, Talia.

“Okay, that approach isn’t going to work,” she said to herself.  “Time to go back to Plan A.”

She fixed the respirator to her face and headed to the door, this time showing no hesitation in turning the handle.  There was work of her own that was awaiting her in the basement, she knew, and she had an important deadline to meet by noon the next day, but that was not enough reason to make her think twice about leaving.  Right now, she needed to find Roman.  Everything else could wait.

The orange glow of morning light stabbed into Talia’s retinas like glinting knives after the relative gloom of the interior of her house.  The pavement and asphalt outside glistened in the
aftermath of an early-
morning shower, a deluge that had undoubtedly dumped more toxins from the sky across the exposed surfaces of the city.  Talia stepped carefully around the deeper puddles, showing caution even though the poisons were unlikely to permeate the leather of her boots on contact.

One could never be too careful after a storm had passed through.

So intent was Talia on her feet that she almost collided with a man standing on the footpath in front of her house.

“Mornin’, Talia,” he said, smiling beneath his respirator.  There was dirt crusted on his face and a yellow residue around his eyes that might have been dried mucus.  His pallid skin was flaky and grew darker toward his hairline, as if he’d been wearing something on his head that had stained his flesh.

Talia started, cursing her inattentiveness.

“Crumb,” she said, recognising the man.  “So nice to see you.”  She smiled sardonically.

“I was just ’bout to say the same thing,” he said amiably.

She’d seen Crumb around a lot lately.  She didn’t know much about him – not what he did for a living, or even his real name, but enough to know she didn’t want to hang around for a leisurely chat.  She looked upon him as she would a stray dog, the type that, once fed even the slightest morsel, would follow you around for the rest of your days in the hope of receiving another.

She kept walking.

“Say, you lookin’ hot today, Talia,” Crumb said, loping along beside her to catch up.

Talia rolled her eyes.  “Damn, Crumb.  You’ve been brushing up on your moves, haven’t you?  That’s pretty smooth.”

“You think?” he said, oblivious to her sarcasm.

“No.  Now go away.”

“Where you headed, girl?” Crumb persisted.

“Out.”

“Need some company, yeah?”

“No.”

“Fine-lookin’ woman such as you, ’course you do.”

“I said go away, Crumb.”

“Aww,
now, wait a second, darlin’.  I seen some visions of you and me together.  Powerful apparitions, y’know?”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  I was on one side of the planet, and you were on the other.  At the bottom of a deep, dark pit.”

He made a wheezing sound under his respirator that might have been laughter.

“Now, now, girl, don’t you be–”

“Get out of my sight, Crumb,” Talia snapped.  “I mean it.”

Crumb kept up with her for a few more paces, his expression darkening to a scowl, and then his eyes fell upon two Enforcers who stood in the road up ahead talking to a group of youths sitting on the curb.  Crumb faltered, then
, with one last glare at Talia, broke off and went on his own way.

Talia shook her head.  There had been a time when cretins such as Crumb had not been so prevalent, but these days they were more or less the norm.  Talia couldn’t seem to walk around
her own neighbourhood now without sighting them, hiding in the shadows and watching, talking amongst themselves, scheming with barely concealed greed.

She felt like an outcast in the streets she had once thought of as her own.

Perhaps that was what had hurt Talia the most in recent times.  These days she felt like a relic, something that had been left behind.  In her younger days she, Knile and the others in their gang had lived in poverty, worse than she experienced now.  They had been afraid of Enforcers and of rival gangs, and had never known where their next meal might come from.

It hadn’t been much of a life, but at least they had experienced a kind of togetherness.  A camaraderie.

The sharing of their problems, of their misery, of their fears, had somehow made it all bearable.  They had divided the weight of it.  Together they had made it through, and even experienced times of happiness through the despair.

When the group had fractured, all of that ended.  Knile and Mianda
had
headed their own way.  Roman had moved to Grove, and the others in the group had gone their separate ways.  For Talia, something vital had been lost.  It wasn’t just her companions who had left, but in many ways her support structure, her ability to cope with the hardships of life.

Over the years she’d told herself that she was doing okay, but seeing Knile and Roman again had been like a cold bucket of water in the face.  She’d been deluding herself all this time.  She knew now that she’d been on a gradual slide toward despair over the past few years, that things were getting worse and that she was unlikely to turn things around unless something drastic changed.

Maybe this was it.  Maybe this was her moment.  If she could pull Roman out of this mess and repair the damage that had been done, perhaps they could have a future together.  She
and the boy could be a family again.

Maybe she could reclaim that feeling of belonging once more.  And perhaps that was even more important than the other goal she’d been working toward all this time, the one that centred
on leaving this world behind.

She continued along the street.  Wisps of steam curled from the asphalt in the wake of the storm.  The youths who sat on the curb gave her passing glances from under their hoodies as the Enforcers continued to interrogate them about some private matter.

Talia glanced skyward.  The klaxon would soon be sounding at the Reach.  She wondered how much time she had before the convoy set off from Grove again, and if Roman would be a part of it.

What if he disappeared into the Reach and never came back out again?

Talia quickened her pace, turning down a narrow alleyway that would take her in the direction of Grove.

She stopped dead.  Crumb was standing there not far away, somehow having gotten in front of her again.  He was very still and intent, his expression far more sinister than it had been when she’d last seen him.

“What the fuck?” she said, trying to hide the trepidation in her voice behind a veil of outrage.  “Are you following me, Crumb?”

“No.”

There was no trace of that air of pleasantness from before.  His attempts at charm had been discarded.  Talia didn’t like it.

“Get out of my way, creep,” she said, starting forward and waving at him imperiously.

Crumb held out a hand to bar her way.  “We’re gonna have to do this the hard way, darlin’,” he said quietly.

She didn’t realise that someone was behind her until it was too late.

5

Knile awoke to the sound of a distant clamour, like the moan of a thousand tormented voices crying out in dread and fear, a piteous wail that was unfathomably deep and sorrowful.  Still mired in dreams and with thoughts muddled, he imagined countless saggy grey faces turned up at him, watching from the depths of some dark and inescapable pit with blank eyes and slack jaws.  From between their mottled and colourless li
ps came that noise – that drawn-out, wordless howl that somehow resonated in his bones and made him feel cold and empty inside.

It’s the klaxon
, he thought remotely.
  It’s just the klaxon.