Edge Walkers (16 page)

Gideon had known the woman whose skin was now worn by a Walker. He’d known her very well.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It’s not accurate to judge Temple’s world as backwards—a difference observed should not mandate an assignment against a pre-existing scale of valuation. Sometimes our standards must change. Sometimes we must. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

Carrie couldn’t stop thinking about the dead woman, about Gideon and that blur of heart-pounding action in the city. She shivered under the weight of those implications, and from a wind turning bitter as the day faded. She kept walking, too, following Temple into the hills.

In the city, Temple had rounded them up like so many strays. With a firm grip and a shove, he swept in the direction he wanted them to move. He’d strode to the front and Carrie had trailed after him, numb and stunned, Shoup and Jakes following in single-file. Gideon kept to a far distance.

Gideon had said nothing to her since leaving the city. But she replayed those last moments again in memory—Gideon staring down the street where that last Walker had fled. He’d taken one more futile step before Temple’s big hand, planted flat on Gideon’s chest, had stopped him. Fists tight, Gideon had turned, had stared at Temple for more than a long moment. Something passed between them. At last, Gideon had glanced once at Carrie, looked back at Temple and nodded, his jaw locked, his knife blade dull and stained red in his hand. What had he just agreed to with Temple? She still didn’t know.

She also didn’t look back—not more than a dozen times.

Gideon walked with his head bent, his stare on the ground, arms folded around himself as if he hadn’t healed from that gunshot wound, or as if his insides would spill out if he let go.

He’d known her
—had known the woman who’d once lived in that scarred body now animated by a Walker. Carrie shivered for she knew what that was like—it was worse when the dead walked again outside of dreams.

She’d seen Chand when he was no longer Chand—some
thing
had stolen his body. Seeing Chand had stirred her guilt, widened her sorrow into a gulf she still couldn’t span. And they had only been friends. Co-workers. For Gideon…she had an idea about who that Walker had been and she didn’t want to face that thought.

Thankfully, no one wanted to talk. Pavement gave way to rough ground. The city thinned, fell back, and foothills lifted. Carrie could stumble forward, numb, hungry, hating the damned things that walked the city behind her, staring at small shrubs that clung to the ground, at tiny pale wildflowers pushing through packed dirt and loose scree. Lichen clung to a few boulders and moss of some kind struggled for a hold. Existence living. The Walkers hadn’t consumed everything, but it looked as if they’d tried to. Or was this from the fallout of these people trying to push the Edge Walkers back into the Rift? Someone really needed to get rid of those things.

That led her back to the fact that Gideon and Temple were trying to do that. Except right now they were retreating, meaning they must believe more Walkers would be coming. More than anyone could handle.

She followed Temple in silence, hearing only the scuff of boots, the scrabble of some small creature moving away, the uneven rhythm of labored breathing.

The incline rose and she had to push everything into the effort of trudging uphill. Better to focus on legs that burned from the effort of a walk that changed to a climb. Air cooled and scraped her lungs. She’d skipped too many days at the gym, had let the project take over her life—literally now, it seemed. She wondered what was going on back home.

Had Kerrou figured out what had happened? If he’d sent in security—Jakes and Shoup, and those others now dead…too many others—he had to know something by now, right? But her notes would be in the lab and might be inaccessible. And if she hadn’t been able to cross back, was whatever blocking her also keeping the Walkers from crossing to Earth?

Hell, what if that was what the Walkers wanted—a door to their next feeding grounds? She stumbled, put out a blind hand and grabbed a rough boulder that steadied her. Ideas spun wild.

What if the Rift opening in her lab hadn’t been an accident? What if the power surge on her end wasn’t a cause, but an effect—the result of something else spiking the power, pushing through to make a small hole bigger?

She rubbed her fingers over her forehead, wiped off sweat and wanted to wipe away this fresh worry. A blister on her right heel nagged for attention. She’d kept her running shoes, but now she wished for boots and thick socks. She’d traded her bloodstained clothes for ones Gideon had given her. And was that woman—that Edge Walker—actually who Carrie thought she’d been? She glanced back at Gideon again.

Still head-down, not looking back, not looking forward.

Why didn’t you tell me?

But she’d known him only days, not the lifetime it seemed. Facing up the path again, Carrie watched Temple disappear around a bend that didn’t exist except as more barren slope. When she reached the same spot, she stopped and blinked in surprise.

Someone had cut a cave into the mountain—the cave she’d longed for back in the city. She swallowed and peered inside and wondered about insects and bugs. And bats. She’d never been fond of flapping things. But this did not look like your average, ragged natural formation.

Smooth edges and a round, uniform opening gaped before her, small enough you had to duck and press your arms tight to your sides to enter. She stepped into cool gloom, didn’t see Temple, but she heard the slap of his sandals, so she followed. Moist air wrapped around her and she pulled her tattered robes close. Sweat cooled on her skin, raised goose bumps on her arms. Light from the opening behind slipped into the narrow passage that curved and curved again before opening into a cavern.

Stepping from the narrow tunnel into wide space, she straightened.

Crystals nearly the size of fallen skyscrapers grew at slanting angles, creating a floor, opaque walls, jagged ceilings. Light gleamed, shimmered in phosphorescent greens and soft yellows. She’d seen photos of similar caves in Mexico—an astonishing sight, even on a flat image. To see the same in person but on a larger scale and with these glowing minerals—it took her breath, left no words for the vast, glittering cavern.

Shoup provided them when he stepped next to her. “Well, hell—Superman’s fuckin’ fortress.”

Jakes turned on him, silenced him with a look, before he turned to Carrie. “You got any better ideas? And I don’t want to hear Emerald City.”

She glanced at him, wondered if he might be joking, but he didn’t look like it. Pushing a hand into her hair, she shook her head. “At a guess? It’s not natural. Ideal shapes, no irregular crossing, no fragments. The Naica Mines—”

“The what?” Jakes asked, voice sharpening.

“Naica. In Mexico. When they drained it to mine deeper, they uncovered selenite crystals…gypsum, some of the crystals are over a meter in diameter and the main cavern’s half this size. This…this dwarfs everything. It has to be deliberate. I’ve seen synthetic quartz grown with hydrothermal synthesis—nothing on this scale. But it’s the light that’s really extraordinary. Chemical luminescence. The minerals must be absorbing photons from somewhere—there must be a low level radiation in the atmosphere. Nothing dangerous but enough to excite the electrons in the—”

“Brody?”

Turning, she blinked at Jakes. She’d slipped back into old habits, had forgotten everything but assembling and conveying information. It hit like a punch to her lungs how they might never get back to a world where reason mattered more than brutal survival. Throat tight, she looked away from Jakes, tracked Temple as he strode the path ahead, walking along a crystal bridge over an endless black abyss. What she wouldn’t give for six months to document this place—breakthroughs lurked here that would turn the science she knew on its head. She could feel them simmering in the crystals, a low level vibration that thrummed in her chest.

“Defensible,” Shoup said, gesturing with his gun to the meter-wide bridge. “We need, we can blow that fucker.”

She shook her head and leaned back to stare at the soft glow of the crystalline ceiling. “I don’t think we’ll need. We were working on perfecting EM pulses for subsurface mapping—the issue always came down to how do you handle highly conductive materials that return false reads. That’s got to be why they created this place—it’s a shield.” She turned to Jakes, started to gesture with her hands, fought to keep it to terms he’d actually hear. “It’s like radar. You sent out waves to find objects that’ll bounce back a read. To make a stealth plane, you eliminate the bounce, use materials that absorbs wave or deflects it. If these crystals are conductive—and I’ll bet they are, far more so than us—hit this with something to detect electrical activity…they deflect everything.” She waved again at the sloping crystals. Her fingers itched for a note pad. Was there something about these crystals that the Walker’s didn’t like—were they unable to feed off the chemical luminescence here? What could she use for materials analysis? Hadn’t Gideon mentioned something about how he’d been measuring ley lines? Had any of his equipment come through with him?

Turning, she looked for Gideon to ask, saw he’d slipped ahead and had caught up with Temple. The two men stood facing each other, silent and staring, shoulders tensed. Temple’s hands tightened into fists. He glanced at them and back to Gideon.

With a muttered word that fell indistinct into the open space, Gideon turned, strode away, deeper into the cavern. Temple watched him for a moment, his face set. Temple glanced back at Carrie—she had a quick image of Gideon in a room near water—but Temple turned to the side before the mental picture could solidify. He waved to someone out of view.

The woman stepped next to Temple first, followed by a child, both with dusky skin that matched Temple’s, but wearing bright robes in a soft fabric. Others followed, eased out from behind crystal walls, from hidden corners and crevices—children mostly, some women, one or two elders, one man leaning on a crutch. Carrie stared at the careful expressions, caught the glints from belted knifes. Throat dry, heart beating fast again, she heard the double click of two safeties switching off.

She put her hands up and out, shot a warning glance at Jakes, but he wasn’t looking at her. Stepping forward, she forced a smile that didn’t feel all that comfortable and didn’t last all that long.

Stares flickered to her—dark eyes locked on her. Curious caution stroked into her mind in rapid, gentle flickering whispers. In a blur, she saw how this world had once been.

Vibrant cities and thriving cultures—buildings decorated with family banners, streets crowded, rushing people, spreading suburbs, vast orchards, forests, open land where something like a yak roamed, tamed animals, wild ones, clashes between mountain dwellers and plains farmers, and the hurried rush of those who’d left the old ways for developing tech and cities. The imagery washed through in a flow, years passing in seconds.

And then that world burst apart.

She saw it in flashes. Lightning shot up from one building in the city center, from the roof with dual spires. The Rift opened, a slash in the sky. Edges—sharp balls of light—rained down. Chaotic disorder. Ruin, death, panic—run, hide, fight. A blinding light flooded the sky from that same building—the one with spires—and the world fell into shapeless gray.

Shaking, Carrie managed to pull back from overwhelming despair. Turning away, she grabbed a deep lungful of air. The sights shut off as if she’d turned off a news broadcast, so did the misery, the swamp of aching loss. Heart thudding, shaking inside, she glanced at Shoup who stood still, staring blankly at Temple and the others. She looked at Jakes and told him, “This is it. This is what’s left of their world.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The crystals are the key. They made it difficult for the Walkers to find us. Unfortunately, difficult doesn’t mean impossible. And I wish I’d thought of hat before we realized the Walkers were hunting something specific—me. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

Temple settled them with his family. Wife and daughter—and Carrie caught a brief image in her mind that Temple had had another child, in another house, another time. A boy verging on manhood, slim, tall, the look of his father in his wide-set eyes. The thin young face vanish in dazzling lights. She blinked—and knew he had not survived. He’d been taken by Walkers. She met Temple’s stare. Sorrow drew his mouth down in terrible grief. Temple turned away, pulled out large, flat pillows that he threw onto the floor.

A fire burned in the center of the room, small and bright, the light amplified by the shallow stone bowl that held it. Phosphorescence glowed soft on one wall and Carrie trailed her hands over the material, had her finger glow briefly with bits of mineral that stuck to her skin. She had no way to ask about it, not with Gideon absent, so Carrie sat. Jakes didn’t.

He gave a nod to Shoup and the two stepped into the tunnels that led from the main room of Temple’s living area, headed deeper into the back. Recon, Carrie knew. Those two wouldn’t be happy until they had the layout of Temple’s place down cold. For once, she didn’t mind the military mind-set at work. She wanted this place to be safe, too.

Jakes came back, shoulders relaxed, face no longer fixed and focused. Shoup strode in, weapon slung over his shoulder, grinning and buckling his belt. “Indoor plumbing. God bless runnin’ water.”

Carrie didn’t want anything, but she stood and walked back to where the guys had come from, to another smaller cave. Water slid down a wall, cold and spring-fed, she guessed. She washed, used the hole opposite, washed again, gave in and stuck her head under the water. Stripping down, she washed everywhere she could reach with her hands and no soap, dried herself with moss that lay in a stone bowl near the entrance. The moss itched, left a faint citrus scent. She found fresh, folded clothes on the floor of what seemed to be the main hallway, so she changed into dry soft trousers and a light, plain tunic that was snug, but almost fit. The trousers also had deep pockets, not that she had anything to go into them.