Armageddon's Children (15 page)

Right now,
she had said.

At once he thought of Tessa.

A
LTHOUGH LOGAN TOM
hadn’t expected to be able to track down the slave camp—hadn’t even been certain, in fact, that it was there—he stumbled on it almost without trying. Daylight was failing and darkness closing all about the countryside as he drove west out of Iowa into whatever lay beyond—he couldn’t remember and didn’t care to stop long enough to check maps that no longer had relevance—when he saw the glow of the watch fires burning on the horizon like a second setting of the sun. Crimson against the pale shading of twilight, the glow drew his attention instantly, signaling its presence in a way that all but invited him in for a closer look. He had seen this glow before—in other times, at other camps—and he realized quickly enough what it was and drove toward it.

Darkness had fallen completely by the time he arrived at a dirt road that led in from the main highway, driving the S-150 with the lights off and the big engine idled down to a low hum. As he approached, the watchtowers and the barricades took shape and the slave pens became recognizable. The glow emanated from a combination of lights powered by solar generators and pillars of flame rising out of fire pits. The latter gave the landscape a hellish and surreal look, as if devil imps with pitchforks might be prowling the countryside. The camp was huge, stretching two miles across and at least as deep. It had been a stockyard once, he guessed, that had been turned by the once-men and their mentors to a different use. The odor of cows and manure and hay was strong, although he knew that the smell could be deceiving and its source something else entirely.

By the time he cut the engine, still well back from the watchtowers and their lights, he could hear the mewling of the prisoners. He sat motionless in the AV, ashamed and enraged by the sounds, unable to stop himself from listening. He could make out shadowy forms moving back and forth behind the fences in the hazy glow of the lights, a listless, shuffling mass. Humans become slaves, become the living dead, made to work and to breed by the once-men and their demon masters. It was the fate decreed for all who weren’t killed outright during the hunts. It was the punishment visited on humans for their foolishness and inaction when the collapse of civilization began, and it was horrifying beyond imagining.

But, then, he didn’t have to imagine it. He had seen it so often that it was burned into his memory. It haunted him in his dreams and in his waking. It would not let him be.

He wondered for the first time what he was doing here. He had come looking for the camp in the way he had looked for such camps for years, a Knight-errant in search of injustice. He had done so without thinking about it because this was what he was given to do, all he knew to do to try to set things right. He would attack the camps and free those enslaved. He would kill the once-men and their demon masters. He would disrupt the breeding operations and destroy the slave pens. He would do whatever he could to right just a little of what had been turned so terribly wrong.

But his purpose in coming to this particular camp was unclear to him. He had been given a task already, one of monumental importance. He was to find the gypsy morph and identify it, then serve as its protector as it led a small band of humans to a place where humanity would rebuild itself in the wake of an approaching cataclysm that would finish what the demons had begun. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that task; Two Bears had made it clear that the future of humanity was riding on whether or not he was able to carry it out. Such responsibility did not allow for deviations or personal indulgences. He could not afford to risk himself in an attack that was, in essence, both. However terrible it was to do so, he must pass by this camp and continue on.

Yet how could he? How could he abandon these people and still call himself a Knight of the Word?

He tried focusing on the reward Two Bears had promised him. If he did as he’d been asked, the demon responsible for the murder of his family would be delivered up to him—that old man in his gray slouch hat and long cloak, that monster with his knowing smile and his eyes as cold as death. It was a bold promise, but he believed the Word would not have made it if it could not be kept. He wanted that demon more than he wanted anything. He had searched for it for years, thinking that sooner or later in the course of his struggle he would stumble on it. It seemed impossible to him that he could not. Even Michael, who had a knack for predicting how things would work out, had believed that eventually they would find it, that they could not avoid doing so.

But he had never seen the demon again, not once, not even the barest glimpse.

Still, he knew it was out there. He knew it the way he knew that the promise would be honored. He knew it the way he knew that the finding of that demon was the end purpose of his life.

He sat staring into the distance, wrestling with his conscience, then started up the engine on the AV once more, turned it around, and drove away from the camp and its smells and its sounds. He drove until he could no longer see its fiery brightness, until the horizon behind him was just a hazy glow. By then he was back near the main highway, alone on the flats in the darkness. He parked in the shelter of a copse of withered trees, set the perimeter alarm system on the AV, ate because he knew he should, and settled down to sleep.

HE STANDS WITH
the others in the shadows that fill the gullies that crisscross the terrain at the rear of the camp. It is nearing midnight, and the world is a black hole beneath a heavily overcast sky. A light rain is falling, something of a minor miracle in this farmland become desert. No wind blows to stir the silt; no breeze cools the stifling heat. Save for the moans and cries of the imprisoned, no sounds disturb the deep night silence.

He looks down at his weapon, a blunt, short-barreled flechette called a Scattershot. Michael has given it to him to carry, trusting him to use it wisely and safely. He is familiar with weapons, having been trained to use them since Michael took him from the compound on the night his parents and siblings died. The Scattershot fires a single charge that sweeps clean an area of up to twenty feet; it is a weapon meant to create a broad killing ground. He has been told that it will help against the things that will come at him, but that his best protection lies in keeping close to his companions.

“Do not stray, boy,” Michael has warned. “This is a dangerous business. If I did not think you needed to learn from it, I would not have brought you at all. Don’t make me regret my decision.”

He does not wish to disappoint Michael, whom he loves and respects and to whom he owes his life. He has dedicated himself to making certain that Michael never regrets having rescued him that first night. He grips his weapon tightly, waiting for the signal to advance. They have come to attack and destroy this camp, to free the humans imprisoned within, to disrupt the work and breeding programs set in place by the once-men who wield the power of life and death over those brought here from the compounds.

It is his first time on such an expedition.

He is twelve years old.

“Stand ready,” Michael whispers to those he leads, and the word is passed up and down the line.

When they attack, they come out of the gullies and shadows like wolves, howling and crouched low against the open ground, racing to gain the fences before the guards have a chance to stop them. Logan stays close beside Michael, shadowing him as he charges through the smoky haze of the fires, weapon leveled, safety off. He howls with the others, then cringes as automatic weapons fire sweeps through the darkness in a deadly rain. Most of the bullets miss, but a few find their targets, and men go down in crumpled heaps. In the towers and at the gates, once-men surge forward to repel the attack.

But the defenders are too few and too slow. Michael’s command is well trained and battle-hardened, and they have done this often. They know what to expect and are not deterred by the efforts of those within the camp to stop them. They gain the fences and cut the wires and are through. They gain the gates, set their explosive charges, duck aside as they detonate, and are through. They gain the masses of concertina wire rolled across gaps in the earthworks that serve as loading ramps, throw mattresses across the deadly spikes, and are through.

In a determined rush, Michael and those closest, himself included, burst through shards of wood, scraps of iron, and ribbons of wire, weapons firing. There is no attempt at this point to distinguish targets. It is assumed that anything moving outside the confines of the pens is an enemy. From within the pens themselves, the moans and cries turn to recognizable pleas:
Help me, save me, free me!
The cries are raw and desperate, but the attackers ignore them. They know what they are doing and how best to do it. Responding to the prisoners is a mistake that will get them killed. To succeed in what they are attempting, they must first eliminate the enemy.

They do so with a single-mindedness that is frightening. They stay bunched in their attack units, protecting one another’s backs as Michael has taught them to do, surging forward into the heart of the compound, destroying the once-men as they go. If they should encounter a demon, they will stand their ground and attempt to drive it back; if that fails, they will turn and flee. They do not expect to encounter one this night. Scouting reports say the resident demon is absent. Michael takes a chance that the reports are accurate because he has no choice. Encounters with demons are a part of the risk they all take.

They are lucky this night. No demon surfaces to challenge them.

There are feeders everywhere, but he doesn’t yet know what feeders are and can only sense their presence as they rush in a maddened frenzy through the dead and wounded, savoring the taste of pain and death and fear. Now and again, he catches glimpses of them from the corner of his eye, swift and shadowy, and he shivers.

The once-men are driven steadily back until all are dead or have fled into the darkness. When the camp is secured, one set of liberators begins to free the prisoners while another follows Michael. As instructed, Logan stays close to his mentor. He pounds through the darkness toward the cluster of cabins isolated in the middle of the camp while the pens around him are pulled down and the men and women imprisoned within are released. He glances down once at the Scattershot and finds that the metal of the weapon is cool against his skin. He realizes in surprise that he has not fired it.

Michael reaches the first of the cabins and kicks in the door. There is movement within, but Michael does not fire. Other men go to the other cabins and kick in their doors, as well. An eerie silence settles over this section of the camp, all the noise and furor suddenly gone elsewhere. The men who have come here with Michael lower their weapons and, one by one, step inside the cabins they have assaulted. Michael waits until they are inside, glances back to where the boy stands, and beckons him forward.

Together, they enter the cabin in front of them.

Logan thinks he is ready for what he will find, but he is wrong. He stands in the doorway openmouthed, his throat so tight he does not think he can draw another breath. There are children in the cabin, dozens of them, packed close as they huddle together in the darkness, pressed up against the farthest wall. They are dirty and ragged. They are pitiful to look at. Most wear almost nothing. Their bones protrude from their emaciated bodies like sticks bundled in sacks; they are held together by little more than ligaments and skin. They have the look of skeletons, of corpses, of ghosts. They are all ages, many younger than he is. They do not know what is happening. They stare at him in shock and terror. Many are crying.

They begin to beg for their lives.

“Look carefully, Logan,” Michael tells him. “This is what we have been reduced to by our enemies. This is our future if we do not find a way to change it.”