The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (27 page)

              “He was good… a good boy, clean… not like me.” He shook his head as if he were chasing a fly or a nagging thought. “Didn’t take drugs…didn’t… clean, he was clean…” Suddenly Thor threw his head up, his eyes bulging, and his voice boomed across the arena. “Why the hell did he die?! Why Jared, why? Why did you drop dead, man?”

              Not getting an answer upset Thor even more, and he started kicking the body. Crowbar and Padre tried to pull him away and calm him down but Thor didn’t want to be calmed down. He slugged them and roamed crazily, growling like a wounded bear. Scrap-Iron and Big Mike sprang to their feet to pull Thor away from the body. He kept punching and hitting so they quit trying to calm him down and started punching back. In a few seconds the gang was engaged in a riotous brawl. Faces were bloodied, beer bottles were smashed and wielded as weapons. Nico watched his gang come completely unglued, all bonds to reason severed. His boys had turned into scared wild animals, the beauty of their Banger spirit gone. This was the darkest episode in the life of the Vaqueros, but it brought him the moment of clarity he so desperately needed. Life was short, almost meaningless, and the only thing that would make it worthwhile was to die fighting for something better. He looked around and spotted Quinn sitting on a bench, pained by what was unfolding, and, looking at her, felt bereft and alone.

              The funeral was brief and solemn. Nico had stepped in and brought his guys back to order, hoping he had corralled their lunacy for a while. They had wrapped Jared’s body in a simple canvas bag and buried him outside the walls. Again, Quinn brought everybody together. Jared was the first friend she’d ever made in the Sanctuary and her sincere, kind words made a beautiful eulogy that somehow brought peace to the rest of the Vaqueros. He saw it in their eyes, the thought that even if they went, there would be somebody to remember them with kindness. Now she was sitting in the nosebleed section of the former sports arena, watching the sunset that the collapsed west wall revealed. He joined her and watched the molten orb tinge the skyline with tangerine and magenta hues.

              “He’ll never see another sunset again.” Nico’s voice sounded hollow. “It’s stupid, I know, Jared wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who’d go all emo over a sunset but still… kinda gotta wonder if it’s the last sunset you’ll ever see.”

              Nico put his hand over hers. Quinn turned to face him and her eyes reflected the glow of the setting sun.

              “It doesn’t have to be like that, you know,” she said.

              Nico looked at her, uncomprehending.

              “I can help. I can detox them, make them feel better. I mean,
really
better.”

Nico fixed her with a look. “You’re talking Neo-Spartan stuff.”
“Yes, and…?”

              “It’s dangerous. They’ll know.”

              “Let them. Look, Jared is the first friend I made here. Maybe the first friend ever. It’s been hard here, but these guys made it feel like home, strangely enough. I see why you care about them.”

              “It’s too risky.”

              “How can I know what I know and not use it to help them? To help you?” She took his hand. “Nico, I want you to see not just one but lots of sunsets. You’ve got to let me help. I don’t care how dangerous it is.”

              “You sure about this?” he asked.

              “Yes, but you’ve gotta help me.”
              He tilted his head at her quizzically.

              “You have to talk them into it.”

              “Why should it be hard to talk them into feeling better?” he asked.

              “Because first they’re going to get really sick.”

              “Sick?”

              “Yes, from taking these.” Quinn produced her leather pouch and brought out a handful of small vials filled with liquid and little sachets of dried herbs. “Dandelion, Milk Thistle, Burdock Root, Black Walnut. If your people start a regime of this now, maybe we can put off what happened to Jared for a much longer time.”

              “Why would getting sick make them feel better?” he asked.

              “Because they’re detoxing. I know I might sound like some voodoo nut, but if you do what Neo-Spartans do you can actually extend your life some.” There was an excitement in her voice.

              “How much is some?”

              “Even with the organs you have, if you clean them up and stay away from the wrong foods, you can slow down the degeneration.”

              “Define some,” he said.

              “You do it regularly… maybe you squeeze out another eight, ten years. Maybe more, who knows?”

              “What?!”

              “You can live longer as long as you stay away from the wrong foods. There’s plenty of right food around if you know what to look for.”

              Nico shot to his feet, imbued with energy. He paced and thought and imagined. He plunked himself on the couch and looked through the goodies from the leather pouch.

              “Eight to ten years more?! Consider them persuaded. Okay. What do we got here and what does it do?”

              She looked at him, and a smile she hadn’t felt in weeks blossomed on her pretty face.

* * *

              There was no use pretending that the finer details of the next forty-eight hours weren’t better off forgotten. Human physiology could be pretty charmless when you got down to it and the Vaqueros excelled in that department. As Nico roamed the rows of cots in the makeshift field hospital, the sweating and moaning from the toughest hombres he’d ever seen made him wonder whether the treatments he had talked his guys into were going to shorten their lives by years instead of extending them. He had acted as a guinea pig to set an example and to show them that they could trust Quinn. Setting an example sucked. At one point he had begged her to just kill him. But he survived and chose to remember only the moments when Quinn spent hours near his bed doing her best to alleviate his suffering. His admiration for her reached a whole new level. She was taking a huge risk. Believing in the natural way was a heresy, and it immediately labeled you as the enemy, as a Neo-Spartan or a defective Eugenic. Not that law and order were observed here in the Sanctuary, but nobody liked inconvenient truths shaking the base of convenient lies. He had told the guys this was some secret fad she had picked up from a frou-frou Eugenic from Grand View Heights. Whether they bought it or not he couldn’t tell, but the idea of triumph over the ever-present sense of doom made them go for it. They suffered the cleanse, some with less dignity than others, but they survived it. He wondered what had done them more good, the herbal potions or the hope that they were adding more years to their lives. Yes, eight to ten years wasn’t forever. But it was long enough to write a book. To build a house. To meet the love of your life. To leave the world a better place than it was. Eight to ten years with the possibility of more was a winning the lottery… to all but one.

              Tyra had treated this whole cleansing deal with extreme prejudice. She wasn’t going to trust anything that Quinn suggested. The “stay-alive-longer” rap that Nico gave her didn’t work. Since when did Bangers care about life? Bikes, beer, and burgers—that’s what made her join the Vaqueros, and if he was going to turn this into the squeaky clean freaks convention then maybe it was time to reconsider her membership. She didn’t leave though, she hung around, watching the guys come out of the disgusting stage of the treatment and get that new bounce in their step, and she dismissed it with a “humph.” Every night, she trailed after Nico and the toughest guys he had rounded up to hunt for dandelions, nuts and berries, and she waited for her opportunity to gloat. Nico hated digging the weeds as much as the next guy and it showed. Their macho side couldn’t stomach the fact that they were turning into grazing animals. It didn’t help that other fight gangs watched them and pointed, laughing at the big tough guys picking the dainty yellow flowers. More than once Quinn had to drop her basket and steer some behemoth back to his weed digger before he jammed it through a competitor’s heart. Tyra grunted her gleeful “humph” again and Nico imagined her calculating how many days before he had a revolt on his hands.

              But every morning, the Vaqueros would go through the soup line for their unmodified meals and peace would settle over the group. Nico lost track of the number of times he repeated the mantra to his people: “Eight to ten, maybe more.” Hope was brought into play in the form of dandelion salad, sautéed mushrooms, berries with a garnish of ground nuts. Everybody agreed these were the weirdest meals they’d ever had; and everybody ate every single morsel. When they went back to the training arena, having more than one sparring session became the norm. Nico noticed he didn’t have to watch like a hawk how many fights his guys had during training time. What was dangerous before now seemed normal. He would cast a look at Quinn and think of her as the Vaquero dandelion—pretty on top, deep tough roots on the bottom and a source of miraculous life.

              But he wasn’t the only one who was casting looks in her direction. The fighters’ endurance didn’t go unnoticed by Tyra. She was connecting the dots in her head, and when she emitted her signature “hmph” it now carried a different note. She had stumbled over something and she was storing it for use at some convenient moment in the future.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

              Dr. Mallory had continued to experiment on Gabriel with a variety of sickening compounds, but somehow or other the young Neo-Spartan had adapted. Gabriel was fed up with indulging the doctor’s sick obsession with discovering every secret his unusual Neo-Spartan body had. He and Davies had guided the rest of the boys to the pantry where they had scarfed down tons of modified foods, and now Gabriel wanted to make sure the gorging had produced the desired results.

              Mallory hadn’t revealed any set-backs, and Gabriel couldn’t think of any furtive way to fish out information about the progress of his plan. The doctor talked to him as if he were his favorite lab pet, and one day Mallory had burst into the infirmary, distraught over the news he had just learned that he had been moved to number 107 on the organ transfer list. He had been incredibly resentful. He had done the footwork, laid out the plan, designed all the lab gear and procedures—he was the man personally most responsible for saving Grant Hughes—and now he was number 107. Gabriel had tried to figure out if this sudden fall from grace had something to do with the condition of his boys, but before he could arrive at any conclusion, the doctor had thrown him into another insane experiment.

              Mallory had long since ascertained that he and Gabriel were the same blood type, so his current worry that his organs might not last long enough incited him to attach himself to the receiving end of a transfusion of Gabriel’s blood. He was bound and determined to feel what it was like to experience the energy and exuberance for life that beat within Gabriel.

              Gabriel watched dubiously as Mallory had arranged for his and Gabriel’s blood to be traded. He’d been sure that nothing in particular would happen. He’d been wrong. Where Mallory’s skin had begun to glow, Gabriel had turned pallid, his joints and muscles pained. Three pints of transfusion later Mallory had bounded to his feet like Jekyll discovering Hyde and enjoying an endless stream of strength, while Gabriel slumped like a popped balloon in his chair.

              Mallory saw Gabriel back to his cell and bounced away, while Gabriel lay on his cot and tried to pull himself together. He closed his eyes for a minute and when he awoke it was dark, and Davies was poking at him.

              “Where you been? I’ve been waiting.”

              “Huh? He just brought me back,” said Gabriel groggily.

              “That was hours ago. Oh, man, what did they do to you this time?” asked Davies.

              “Nothing,” said Gabriel, and he forced himself upright, but nothing he did could let him fight his equilibrium, and he fell back onto the cot.

              “Come on dude, we gotta raid the pantry again. Our tests are still within normal range.”

              The bad news Davies delivered shot some adrenalin through Gabriel’s veins and he struggled to stand up.

              “Help me to my feet. We gotta find something stronger.” Gabriel saw Davies’s unconvinced look, “I’m sure once I’m standing I can get my balance,” said Gabriel, with a clenched jaw.

              Davies did as he was asked, but Gabriel crashed his head into the wall like a drunk, and slid to the floor. “Forget it,” said Davies, “you’re useless.”

              “No. I’ve got to do this,” insisted Gabriel.

              “We’ll start again tomorrow.”

              “
No
. Tomorrow might be too late,” said Gabriel. He forced himself up onto one knee. Davies offered a hand but Gabriel indicated no. He turned his body so that his shoulder was against the wall, and this time, as he forced himself to his feet, he used the wall for balance.

              “Great, you gonna parkour like that?” said Davies.

              “We can’t wait, Davies. They’re starting the transplants. We’ve gotta get sicker, and fast.”

              Gabriel moved himself along using the wall, inch by inch. But it was agonizingly slow-going. Davies tried to be encouraging.

              “That’s it, get your blood pumping,” Davies said.

              “I think that’s the problem. It’s Mallory’s blood.”

              “Dude, you’re toast. He’s ancient. He’s like what, thirty-five? Look, you stay here, you gotta recover. I’ll do whatever–”

              “No, I’m going,” said Gabriel. He pushed away from the wall and promptly fell down. He managed to catch himself and push upright again. Together they made their way out toward the sea of beams and cross-bars. Gabriel looked at his favorite world and a ripple went through his body. He breathed deeply and pushed to his feet. There was an eight-foot gap between himself and the first landing across from him, but a three-story drop if he missed. He recalled what Kilbert had told him about living up to expectations and decided that living down to them would feel worse than the pile of goo he’d be if he fell. He backed up, gathered every molecule of strength available in the blood from Mallory, and catapulted himself across. He made it, barely, lost his grip, reacquired it and sweated bricks as he forced his heart to stay in his chest. Davies dived across and joined him.

              “Cool,” he said, “you found a whole new level of excitement.”

              Painfully, carefully, the pair followed their well-travelled parkour route to the ceiling-accessed pantry room. Sweating and gasping, Gabriel pulled open drawers and cabinets and looked in them.

              “What are we looking for?” asked Davies.

              “The highest concentration of corn syrup, fructose, guarana, caffeine, and sodium citrate on the planet,” said Gabriel as he pulled out a can of liquid. On it, a colorful comic devil character wearing a demented grin poured red-hot liquid into his mouth.