Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (24 page)

And if there was ever any doubt or question, or if anyone was ever so inclined, one could always venture out to that now infamous block just south of City Hall, pass the corrugated-box plant, and find the cold eyes of Crayton’s severed head staring sluggishly back.

T
he governor’s decapitated remains were on display for an amazing total of seventy-two hours, spawning a violent, territorial upheaval involving most of the scavenging animals in the immediate vicinity. After a vicious contest among multiple species, it was a single, solitary crow that came to stake its rightful claim on the decaying cranium. He perched proudly atop it, a grisly throne of the animal kingdom, until someone finally came to remove the gruesome spire from the ground.

What they did with Crayton’s head, I can only speculate. I didn’t trouble Zeke to acquire that information. What became of the governor’s head really didn’t matter to me.

My focus, unfortunately, was elsewhere.

Zeke had been up to its, now usual, antics, as it was more frequently struck with these awkward waves of someone else’s nostalgia. It became so awkward, in fact, I had to leave the room when I sensed a memory impending upon the near future. They were becoming something I could anticipate simply by the subtle changes in Zeke’s behavior just prior to an episode. I dodged them every chance I got.

Alice, on the other hand, would not elude the machine, but instead embraced the emotions that flooded the thing, certain that it was just part of the chimera method’s final process. A process I’d coined:
compute-berty
, which earned me a scowling glance from Alice. She found my wit to be about as impressive as my sensitivity, although I thought the term was rather clever.

Alice’s Vahana, as she newly dubbed the sitting craft in the sky, hadn’t moved a single percentage of any measurement known to man. It sat, stubborn as ever, in the same spot as the day before, and the day before that. The word, “Vahana,” as described by Alice, comes from East Indian mythology—a vehicle of the gods.

It was not unusual for me to find Alice at the workbench, staring blankly at the ship’s hovering hologram. She and Zeke would stare at it for generous lengths of time, neither of them appearing to grow bored. The craft was an apparent portal of endless fascination for the two of them, while I found watching grass grow equally intriguing.

“Good day to you, Vahana,” I said, crossing my arms upon discovering them admiring the hologram once again. “And may I say that you look absolutely
ravishing
this morning?” I chuckled a bit to myself, but Zeke and Alice didn’t appear to think it was funny. “Did Arcturus relay that, Scraps?” I asked, lifting my chin to the alien craft.

Zeke shook its head.

“It’s got a stupidity filter,” Alice quipped, her humor dry as ever.

“Oh, that makes sense,” I nodded. “It’s no wonder NASA didn’t have one then, huh?”

There was no response from either Alice or the machine.

“How ’bout we watch something else? There’s gotta be something going on downtown.”

“Arcturus will let us know if something is happening.”

“What can you possibly be gaining by having a staring contest with this thing every day?”

“It’s here for a reason,” Alice announced.

“Well obviously, but you’re not gonna find that out just by staring at it.” I placed my palms on the workbench and put my weight against it, drenching myself in the coolish-emerald light. “That thing might sit there for a thousand years before it does anything, and you’re gonna waste away gazing up at it like this?”

“That’s funny, coming from you, and the ignorance of that statement is quite astounding.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Alice broke eye contact with the hologram for the first time that morning. She turned her head, allowing me a moment of steadfast attention, which I was happy to receive at that point. “Your ancestors spent their lives gazing up into the sky, and from it they obtained an entire wealth of knowledge.” She pointed toward an astrology book resting on a shelf at the far wall. “Then they passed that knowledge down, generation to generation, so that we could be enriched as well.”

I could see then the
Codex Atlanticus
opened before her, and some early sketches of the Vahana upon the visible pages.

“You’re documenting this,” I noticed.

She nodded.

I shrugged and turned away. “I guess I’ll check on breakfast, then.”

The light outside was warm and inviting, but the air itself was cooler than I liked. I fastened an additional button on my jacket and pulled the garment closer to my skin, but a chill had already slipped in through a path at my spine. It was a chill that seemed to fit perfectly there, as if it was cast from an icy resin.

I couldn’t help but glance up at that thing in the sky, found myself cursing its very existence; and then, searching deeper, discovered the vile home of that negativity. It had crawled up from a dark and damp place, a place that could harbor as much hatred as you could stand to feed it, which is why it made the infamous list as one of the seven deadly sins. It was jealousy. And upon this internal realization, it was a humble embarrassment that soon came to cool those blistering coals.

Still, as silly as it sounds, I felt I was losing Alice to it, as if I’d been bumped a spot on her priority list. I quickly tried to push that feeling aside, knowing full well that there was no room for such distractions. I had to learn to adapt to that thing in the sky, along with Alice’s fixation towards it. Something told me the Vahana would not be moving on anytime soon. The thing could be permanent for all I knew— instructed to inhabit that same area of atmosphere until there was no more Earth left for it to occupy.

That was indeed a heartbreaking thought.

I worried for Alice. Her ability to cling to hope was unlike anything I’d ever known. That thing she called the Vahana would drive her like a lithium battery, drive her until her little, hybrid heart stopped beating.

“Do something,” I pleaded with the thing in the sky. “Kill us all if you have to, but just
do
something.”

Anything seemed better than it just sitting there for eternity; I’d almost rather the thing sprouted legs and terrorized the city. And yet it did nothing of the sort, or anything that would register as even remotely offensive. Until the thing made its intentions undoubtedly clear, it would remain an ominous agent, light-years outside the realm of my understanding.

I rounded a secondary junk heap to find an animal dangling from our trap. It was so still and silent that I first mistook it for dead, but as I came beside it, still minding my distance, it lifted its head to look at me.

It was a raccoon, but unlike any I’d seen before. The only pigmentation on its fur had been due to patches of dirt clinging to the dampest parts of its coat. As it stared drunkenly at me, I saw that both its eyes were swept in a hazy redness. I’d never seen an albino raccoon, as I’m sure it had never been so close to a human, so the two of us continued to stare thoughtfully at one another—the knife in my hand never appearing to trigger the creature’s hardwired survival instincts.

It never hissed or growled, never clawed or scratched. I had half a mind to give him a name, take him down to the cavern, and introduce him to one furious feline.

Luckily the other half of my mind decided against it; yet, I still couldn’t bring myself to end its life.

I reached slowly above the trapped leg of the white raccoon and gripped the trip-line. The animal followed my hand, but did not grow threatened by its movement. I released the tension, slowly descending the animal to the ground, as it stuck out its paws in anticipation. Once free to stand, the raccoon slipped its leg through the wire and limped warily away, keeping its reddish eyes on me until it disappeared behind one of many rusted objects.

I smiled to myself, pleased with the mercy I’d shown it, and turned to find Zeke standing directly behind me, its arms crossed over its chest.

“You let it go,” it observed.

“Jesus, Scraps!” I shouted. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Why did you let it go?”

“It was all white,” I said, “and therefore a miraculous creature. What are you doing up here anyway?”

“Experimenting,” it answered.

“Experimenting? With what?”

Zeke pointed through the debris, back toward the refrigerator door on the other side. “She has a theory,” it informed me.

I found Alice standing just outside the stairway, a cool breeze finding its way through her dark hair. She was staring up at the Vahana.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“It doesn’t respond to anything we send it.”

“I know that.”

“So let’s give it something it
has
to respond to.” She handed me a pair of binoculars, cranked up her Hellburner and aimed it at the hovering craft.

“Whoa,” I said. “I don’t think pissing it off is the best plan B, Alice.”

“Well, let’s see if you’re right then.” She pinned it with a perfect beam of scarlet phosphorescence, another impossible shot made to look like child’s play. I raised the binoculars to better my view.

A human myth says that the end of a rainbow leads directly to a pot of gold, but that there are tricky creatures assigned to shield the sought-after path, leading those on this quest instead into crafty circles and away from the glimmering prize.

As I watched that slice of scarlet take to the sky, the feeling I experienced must have been similar to what one of those mystical creatures would have felt, sitting there at the streaming base of refracted light.

“Don’t hold it for too long,” I advised. “Right now you’re sending up a beacon that anyone can follow.”

But as Alice struck the Vahana’s broadside, the thing reacted instantaneously, silhouetting itself with a purple burst that rippled outward from the point of impact.

“It’s got some kind of shield,” Alice said, keeping the Vahana pinned beneath the Hellburner’s fire, while the craft’s colorful defenses appeared to be absorbing the barrage of energy. It looked very much like a liquid—a portion of still lake suddenly struck by a stone.

“That’s enough,” I said.

Alice removed her finger from the trigger and lowered her weapon as the waves surrounding the Vahana’s hull receded to its former invisibility.

“Piece of shit,” Alice muttered up at the thing.

“Yup,” I agreed. “That is one passive-aggressive flying saucer.”

“It’s not saucer-shaped,” she corrected. “Just stick with Vahana.” She looked to me, noticing that my hands were free of any furry game. “Where’s breakfast?”

“He let it go,” Zeke shared.

Alice looked puzzled. “Why?”

“Because it was a genetic anomaly,” the machine clarified.

“A what?”

“An albino raccoon,” I told her. “I let it go, but we’ve got enough leftovers to throw something together.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. “I see,” she said. “It seems that all humans are prone to superstition; this much is undoubtedly true.”

“What does
superstition
have to do with anything?”

She tilted her head at me. “There are times when I wonder how you don’t understand what’s going on in your own head.”

“I’m about to be psychoanalyzed, aren’t I.” There was no question in my voice. It seemed as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun.

“Yes. You feel if you were to let harm come to the raccoon that, in turn, you would be letting harm come to me—that, somehow, the raccoon and I are connected.”

“That is both intriguing, and yet entirely wrong.”

“Is it?”

I nodded.

“How you can remain a mystery to yourself remains a mystery to me.”

“I think you and Socrates would have gotten along just fine.” I walked past her. “Surely you were a philosopher in another life.” I pulled open the refrigerator door and began my descent into the cavern.

“There are no
other
lives,” Alice called down to me. “This is the only one we get.”

I hadn’t seen Mohammad since the decapitation of the governor, and that made me uneasy. Zeke had also been unable to locate him through Arcturus, although the machine had tracked him to at least a large portion of the outer city. I had no idea where he would go after our meetings, and had no idea where he called home. I respected his privacy to a point, but we’d recently reached that point; given the present circumstances, a little
quid pro quo
was in order. Zeke’s satellite was on a constant lookout for the dark Fijian, and I eagerly awaited the notice of his next arrival.

Mohammad was a loose end, and I hated myself for it. If he were to decide to join Saint John’s little militia, bringing them to the cavern like a bloodthirsty mob, there would be consequences.

I found myself running drills with Zeke and Alice— much like the ones I used to run on the carrier vessel. In those drills, a torpedo theoretically gouged out a perfect six-inch diameter circle from the ship’s sturdy hull, and despite the gallons of sea that would have been blasting through the breech, the officers expected us to jam a large cone-shaped cork into the void with a mallet.

We ran the drills countless times, perfecting the delusion with an accuracy of dumbfounded jargon that we’d later been commended on. But, despite the orders passed down to us, we all knew that if such an ordeal had ever actually taken place, we would have exited the space and sealed it off from the rest of the ship; therein lies the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

So I started a few drills of my own, most of which involved Zeke sneaking up through the horizontal freight door. The above junkyard proved to be most valuable, should a fight be brought to our front door. There was plenty of cover up there, and we had the home-field advantage. In each separate drill we ran, I had instructed Alice to stay at her “post,” which happened to be at the monitor station in the cavern. There she could oversee the ensuing battle, but I knew, when push came to shove, she’d be up there with me and Zeke, and her Hellburner would only further tip the odds in our favor.