Slavemakers (19 page)

THE BOY STOOD
atop his aerie in the pouring rain. The storm had come from the north, heralded by billowing dark clouds barely above ground level, that swept over the green lands and obscured the dark hulks of the ruined buildings marking the borders of his territory.

A cold rain, a harbinger of the changing seasons. A warning he had never ignored . . . until now.

He shivered. This was the kind of cold rain that got deep under his skin, the kind that blossomed into a thick weight in his chest that made it difficult for him to breathe. That filled his head with a quantity of green goo—semiliquid—that never seemed to run out no matter how much of it he expelled.

He thought of it as the green sickness. He'd come down with it a few times over the years, and it left him feeling so weak and shaky that it was hard to hunt, and
it would sometimes last for days, even weeks, forcing him to rely on his stores.

It came most often in this season, especially when he was cold and wet. So normally he waited out rains like this one in one of his shelters.

But not this time. Not when he had more important things to think about, to accomplish.

And standing here in the cold rain wasn't the only thing he was doing differently. He'd also been neglecting many of his responsibilities, like gathering firewood, hunting, collecting fruits and nuts, smoking meat for winter stores.

And eating.

He'd always known that food came first. That his chances of surviving—the day, the month, the winter, each year—depended first and foremost on making sure he had plenty to eat. It was a simple, obvious conclusion.

And, equally obvious, it was most important to stockpile food before winter fell, those long months when meat was scarce and crops nearly nonexistent. From the bees hastening from one late-season flower to the next with an urgency they never showed in midsummer, to the squirrels fattening themselves up as they built their winter nests high in the strongest oaks and maples, to the lions, the mother dragging one injured, struggling deer or raccoon after another back to the den for her cubs.

As part of that world, he'd always understood all this. But even so, now he spent hours every day, in every weather, at his game instead. His game. His work. His labor.

His
training
.

Training he'd neglected for far too long because he'd always believed he was already powerful enough. Until
she'd shown herself to him, and he'd seen how truly vulnerable she was. That while he'd been measuring his life in years, hers might have only weeks, days, remaining.

That understanding, that series of revelations, had made his world flip on its head. All this time, he'd been learning the wrong lessons. He'd focused on the honeybees gathering nectar and pollen, the flocks of sparrows somehow feeling storms coming days in advance and feasting on seeds, the mother lion with her bloody prey, and missed the point.

He'd failed to see that the sole point of the bees' hectic foraging was to keep the queen and larvae alive. That the sparrows spent days, weeks, showing their babies how to find food, and that the mother lion, in bringing back an injured deer, had been training the cubs to hunt for themselves.

Training her cubs. The boy supposed that someone, his own mother, must have taught him to hunt as well. Trained him. Helped him stay alive until he could manage for himself.

Because he couldn't remember any of that, or her, he'd missed the point.

Training was all that mattered. And he was not yet powerful enough.

No: That wasn't true. He had the power.

It was something else he was lacking.

*   *   *

ONCE THE RAIN
ended, the fog, chased by the wind, sometimes obscured the world from him—and him from the world—as it passed by.

But he didn't care what he saw and what he didn't, not here, not in his world. He was elsewhere, where he didn't need to use his eyes.

For hours he stood there, until the fog blew away and the sun broke through, drying his clothes—the mist rising from him like it did from the pond below—and warming his bones.

But he barely noticed. He was still far away, learning.

Learning how to reach out in new ways.

Preparing for the first time to take care of someone else.

His body might be wasting away, but the most important part of him—the only part he cared about—wasn't. That part was gaining strength.

THERE WAS COMPLETE
silence.

No, this wasn't true. Jason could hear the cawing of crows fighting over something down by the old wharves. The whistle of the wind as it swept through the stone structures around them. Even the whispery sound of the dead thieves' insubstantial bodies tumbling along the stone plaza, driven by the gusty breeze.

No. Not dead.

Even as he glanced down, he saw one of the wasps' legs twitch. The tip of another's stinger, close to where the girl lay at his feet, much too close, gleamed white as it poked from a thief's abdomen.

Fighting off a sudden surge of panic, he bent over and hoisted her off the ground. She was so light, so insubstantial, all long skinny limbs and matted hair brushing against his face as he lifted her.

She was not dead, either. Still semiconscious, but
aware enough to link her arms around his neck and help him hold her as—expecting any instant the attack to resume—he looked around.

The frozen tableau was just beginning to shift again. The last-stage hosts had fallen to the ground, just as their masters had, but they, too, were still alive, making feeble, disorganized motions with their hands and feet.

Watching them, bile rising in his throat, Jason wished for a moment to be free of his burden. With his machete, he could free the camp of these monsters in just a minute or two.

The ridden slaves, five or six of them in view, though deprived of their riders, hadn't been affected so strongly. But stunned as well by whatever the girl had done, they were moving away, their normally expressionless faces showing something remarkable. Something that Jason never thought he'd see in one. Shock. Even pain.

And the human slaves—

The human slaves were running, saving themselves, like humans almost always did. Heading for the fort's catacombs. For where Chloe was, if she was still alive, and the breeding chambers, and her father, too.

Again, Jason was desperate to be free of the girl who clung to him. To fight his way into the catacombs or to die trying.

Instead, he turned to look at the leader. She was staring at the girl, but then she transferred the full intensity of her gaze to him. “What did you do?” she asked in a voice like wire.

He shook his head and answered her question with
his own. “The others,” he said, and coughed. How long had it been since he'd talked out loud? Freely?

“From your ship,” he went on. “Are they coming for you?”

She gave her head a fractional shake.

“Good.” His gaze flickered over the awakening thieves. Soon enough, the ridden slaves, too, would be back under their control, and the hosts. The attack would resume, and this little pause would have had no meaning.

“Now go,” he said.

In his arms, the girl gave a little moan. The sudden tension in her body showed that she was closer to consciousness.

“And take her with you,” he said.

The male sibling stepped forward to take the girl from him. But the woman stopped him with a glance.

“That man,” she asked Jason. “Is he dead?”

Jason's eyes sought out the torn-apart form of the stocky one who'd been killed at the onset of the battle.

The woman grimaced. “No. The other. The one they took.”

Jason hesitated for a moment. He could read her thoughts. They were all prepared to die, these brave, foolhardy visitors, in the attempt to rescue the captive.
Malcolm.

They would die, and Jason would, too, for no purpose at all. He wouldn't even have the satisfaction of taking more of the slaves with him before he did.

“I imagine he's dead by now.”

For a moment her ferocious gaze clouded with what
he thought was grief. But then her chin lifted. “We have to be sure,” she said.

“No, listen.” He gestured at the tableau around them. At his feet, some of the thieves were back up on their legs. They moved with unfocused motions, like ones that had been beheaded, but they were coming back, and quickly.

“Either way, he's beyond your reach,” he said. “Stay alive. Go. Now, or it won't matter.”

The female sibling said, “Shapiro, look around. If we're going to move out, let's do it.”

But the leader, Shapiro, was still staring at Jason. “How many of you are there?”

Of us.
“Too many for you,” he said. “And I'm the only one who won't try to kill you.”

Shifting his grip on the girl, he looked down and saw she was awake and watching them with wide eyes. “Can you walk?” he asked her.

She nodded, then stretched her legs toward the ground. When he let go, she staggered a little on her feet. Placing her undamaged hand on his arm, she kept her balance.

“Take her with you,” he said again to the woman. “Please.”

Shapiro nodded, letting her gaze rest on the strange girl's face. But for one more moment she hesitated. “And you?”

Jason looked over his shoulder at the slaves gathering for a new attack. Waiting only for the hive mind to recover before they attacked again. Already, some were beginning to approach.

“Me?” he said, looking down at the thieves on the
ground nearby. They still weren't flying, but had regained enough mobility to move away, to seek a safe distance from the strangers' vaccine. Only his proximity was keeping him alive for now.

He'd expected them to run, to leave him behind, but now in an instant he saw another possible future . . . and the strategy that might make it happen. That could give him the chance to rescue Chloe.

“I'll be dead thirty seconds after you walk down the stairs,” he said to Shapiro.

Without hesitating, she said, “Then you're coming with us.”

He shook his head. “No. I'll stay.”

Her gaze flicked over the mass of thieves covering the yellow-brown walls and stairs. A few of the wasps were already rising into the air—short, hesitant flights, but not for much longer. Two of the last-stage hosts were back on their knees.

“And die the minute we leave?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then feel free to kill yourself,” she said. She turned away from him and headed down the stairs, stepping past the body of her dead shipmate without a glance.

“But do it on your own time,” she called back. “And not until you've answered every last one of my questions.”

Jason had been counting on that.

He had no idea how much of the interchange the girl had taken in. But now she looked at him through those strange sea-glass eyes, took his hand in her undamaged one, and, with a tug that was much stronger than he'd expected, led him down the stairs. Staying close to him
every step of the way, protecting him with her own force field, the siblings walking close behind.

Jason allowed himself to be led away from the fort, from Chloe.

Were she still alive, he knew she would want desperately for him to escape, to be free. As he would for her, she would willingly sacrifice her life for his.

But that wasn't Jason's plan at all. If this chapter of his story ended in death, as the last one did, this time he would not be only a witness.

And if one of them, and only one, would live, it wouldn't be him. Not this time.

Refugia

“HOW MANY DO
you think?” Mariama asked. “I'm guessing . . . three. Four if I'm lucky.”

Her eye to the rifle's telescopic sight, she was on her knees at the front of the hide, watching the activity in the plaza perhaps two hundred meters away. The hide, which she'd built years ago deep in the crook of a kapok branch and maintained ever since, and which gave a clear view over Refugia's southern wall.

Though Mariama hadn't built it for the view, but in case something very much like this happened someday.

“If everything breaks right, maybe five,” she said. Then she paused, thinking. “I won't even have to worry too much about my aim. Not in this world.”

Sheila, sitting behind her and in the corner of the platform, as far from the railing and the view as she could get, said, “Mariama?”

Mariama ignored her. “Just make them bleed and they'll die sooner or later. Sooner.” She paused again. “Rather do it clean, though. Clean kills.”

“Mariama.” Sheila's tone was sharper. “Tell me what on earth you're talking about.”

Finally, Mariama turned her head and returned her friend's gaze, Sheila's expression igniting a different kind of disbelief in her.

From what she could see, Sheila seemed to have spent the past twenty years actively forgetting every lesson the Fall had taught her. Even now, even in the face of all this evidence of human—and thief—nature, she seemed determined to hold on to at least some of her naïveté.

Mariama didn't have time for it. She had never possessed any illusions about the earth and its inhabitants, and she wasn't about to start now.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about.” Mariama didn't bother to hide the edge to her tone. She gestured at the plaza below, where figures were moving around in the morning mist. “How many of them I can kill before they make it to cover.”

Sheila, silent, looked away. Of course she'd known. For some reason, she'd just wanted to hear the words spoken out loud. Maybe she'd thought forcing Mariama to say them out loud would change her mind.

Well . . . no. It wouldn't.

Looking back over the railing, Mariama hefted the rifle in both hands. The Arctic Warfare, its manufacturer had called it, a name that had made her laugh when she'd first learned it. But she'd liked the feel of it, the power of
its .308 bullets. After practicing with it out on the firing range, she knew she could hit a human-size target at six hundred meters, and what that direct hit would do.

That was the most important thing: that the Arctic Warfare, designed for use on the tundra, would do just as much damage here in the rain forest.

*   *   *

DOWN BELOW, THE
invaders worked, bringing seasoned logs from the colony's wood supply and stacking them in the plaza.

As Mariama watched through the scope, two more came into view. They were already wearing stolen clothing, black pants made on one of Refugia's old sewing machines and colorful T-shirts hoarded from the Last World.

That made eight. Could she kill all eight before any escaped?

Probably not. Malcolm could have, if he hadn't chosen to sail away. The twins, too, probably, but they'd gone with Malcolm.

So many of Refugia's best fighters missing, leaving Mariama as good as alone. Why had anyone thought that was a good idea?

Because they'd gotten soft. Because they'd told themselves lies.

There was nothing to do about it. In getting Sheila to safety up in this hide, Mariama hadn't seen who else—if anyone—might have escaped. Even though she thought there must be dozens of others scattered around
the forest, she had to assume the two of them were the only ones still free.

For about the hundredth time since they'd climbed the ladder up here, Mariama felt the familiar red anger flood through her. She wasn't a great shot. Good, but not good enough. She tended to get impatient, and her aim grew sloppy. Her skills were best up close, hand-to-hand, with different weapons.

Six would probably be her maximum.

“Listen,” Sheila said. Mariama, focusing on the scene below, had nearly forgotten she was there, much less that they were in the middle of a conversation.

“They're still people, some of them,” Sheila, the physician, the empathetic aid worker, said. “Still human.”

Mariama laughed. She knew this would offend Sheila, but at that moment it didn't matter to her.

“And some of them aren't, not anymore,” she said. “You saw that as well as I did.”

Again, Mariama saw Nick Albright falling, heard his last shout.

“And anyway,” she said, “who the hell cares if they're human or not?”

*   *   *

IN THE PLAZA,
the eight invaders had finished stacking the firewood. Mariama had long since understood what its purpose was going to be.

At the far end of the hide, Sheila had been watching a thief crawling on a slender branch perhaps ten feet away. Though Mariama could only glimpse the thieves down in the plaza as sudden twists of grainy darkness
amid the dispersing fog, she knew they were there, too. She could smell them, the reek of abundance.

She watched as Sheila looked away from the thief and down at the plaza. Then she sat forward and, head tilted, took in the scene below with sharper attention. After a few moments, her eyes widened, and she raised her hands in front of her as if trying to ward off something assaulting her.

A thought. A realization.

She swung around, and now her face was so white that Mariama thought she might faint.

“It's a pyre,” Sheila said. “They're building a pyre.”

Mariama was quiet.

Red spots rose in Sheila's cheeks. At that moment, something in her expression changed. Changed forever, Mariama thought.

Watching, she felt a mix of relief and sorrow. She'd always believed that the world
should
have room in it for people like Sheila: the empathetic ones, who valued sympathy and understanding as the highest attributes of humanity.

It should have, but it didn't.

Sheila's gesture with her arm was violent enough to startle the watching thief. It rose a few feet in the air before resuming its perch.

“Kill them,” she said in a flat tone Mariama had never heard from her before.

Mariama shook her head. “Not yet.”

Meaning,
There's still something I need to see.

Again Sheila understood.

And covered her eyes with the palms of her hands.

*   *   *

ONE OF THE
slaves went around the club building and returned carrying a lit torch. Moving quickly enough to convince Mariama that he was human, he applied the flame to several spots at the base of the stack of wood.

Soon Mariama could see flames licking around the smaller chunks and fragments. It would take a while to fully ignite, to become hot enough, but not that long. The wood had been well prepared.

Then all eight headed away and out of sight. But Mariama knew they would be back.

No more than a minute had passed when the first two reemerged, carrying a body between them. Looking through the rifle's sight, Mariama recognized who it was: Annette King, a teenager who'd been born in Refugia. Her face, a pale blur, stared up at the sky.

The two invaders tossed her on top of the pyre.

Seeing her, looking at that pale face, blank in death, and remembering the lively, sharp-witted young woman she'd been, Mariama understood something else. That though the majority of Refugia's dead were likely going to be made up of the usual casualties of a disaster—the old, the frail, the youngest, all those who couldn't move fast enough—they'd be far from the only ones.

They'd be joined by a less predictable cohort: the natives—those born here—as well as those who'd come when they were children. The ones who hadn't seen the Fall, the apocalypse. The ones who didn't grasp how important it was to run, who'd never learned that ten seconds might mean the difference between death and survival.

Thinking this over, Mariama must have made a sound, because Sheila, head down, hands pressed over her eyes, said, “Is it Jack?”

Mariama said, “No.”

“You'll tell me when it is.”

Mariama didn't reply.

Sheila said, “Mariama, you'll tell me.”

“Yes.”

The second body was another native, a boy named Michael who'd been one of Jack's friends. Mariama did not recognize the third, carried facedown, her clothes removed. She must have been one of the invaders.

The next, his gouged body nearly black with dried blood, was Nick Albright. Then a girl named Melanie Thomas, another Refugia native. Two others from among the invaders, and then three Fugians, including Spencer Browning, at eighty or so one of the colony's oldest citizens.

This courtly old man's desecrated corpse thrown, like all the others, with no care or delicacy atop the pile of sprawled, disorganized limbs and dead-eyed faces.

After that, the invaders did not return to the club. Instead they waited for the flames to spread, the pyre to grow hot enough.

So that was all.

No: not all. Seven Fugian deaths
here
, in this plaza, but already Mariama could see other columns of smoke rising over Refugia. Other pyres.

“They're done,” she said. “No Jack.”

Sheila dropped her hands and raised her head. Her tear-stained face looked wild, almost feral, wide eyes and mouth open so her teeth showed.

“You're sure?”

Mariama nodded.

But Sheila had also seen the smoke from the other pyres. Any glint of hope in her face was extinguished.

Then she blinked, seeming to regain focus. “They're just standing there,” she said.

Mariama said, “Yes.”

“So kill them.”

Mariama lifted the rifle, placed the stand on the flat railing of the hide, and again bent over the telescopic sight. “This is going to be loud,” she said. “You might want to cover—”

“All of them,” Sheila said.

*   *   *

THE FIRST ONE
in her sight had a thief rider.

Mariama had been sighting on the target's head, the close-cropped graying hair revealing a lice-bitten scalp. But now she shifted her aim, just a fraction, so when she pulled the trigger she knew that the bullet would blast apart the target's neck. Would kill the thief at the same time that it killed its slave.

The stock hammered against her shoulder, but she held the gun steady. Even as the sound of the shot echoed through the forest, she glimpsed a bloom of red, but already she was shifting to the next target. She noted that it was standing still, only its head turning toward where the first was falling to the ground. And then she pulled the trigger, and knew it was falling as well, even as she didn't bother to watch.

If she'd had time, Mariama would have laughed. The thieves could overthrow human civilization, enslave whoever was left, even destroy Refugia and all who lived there, but they didn't know and see all. These had never seen the effects of gunshots, so they didn't know how to react.

Not even the hive mind was all-powerful.

The next one, a female, smaller, slighter of build, had taken only one step away from the first two when the bullet's impact lifted her—it—half-off the ground. Mariama had missed the head shot on this one, but as it went down to the ground, writhing on its back, blood spouting from its chest, she knew that didn't matter.

Three.

For the first time Mariama took her eye from the sight and looked at the scene as a whole. She could see flurries of movement—people running, a skein of thieves—at the periphery of her vision, but paid no attention to them.

Refocusing, she saw that two of the invaders remaining in the plaza still seemed stunned by the unexpected assault. But the other three were running, heading away from the pyre, the pile of bodies, and their own dead, toward the shelter of the buildings beyond the plaza.

Three human slaves. Mariama sent a thought their way.

You guys left it too long.

But, though her need to hurry made her aim sloppy, her reflexes and the speed of the big bullets gave her the time she needed, barely. It took five shots, not the three
it should have, but in the end, all three targets were lying on the ground.

All the humans. Two were still, their spreading blood outlining them in black, while the third, the fast one she'd missed twice, was on his knees just in the doorway of the club. He held the stump of his blown-away right arm pinned beneath his left in an attempt to keep the bright red arterial blood from draining away.

A futile attempt. Even as Mariama swung the rifle away, she saw him topple sideways.

Two cartridges remaining in the clip, two slaves remaining as well. Slow ones, though seeking refuge at last. One was being ridden. But the other, a female, was something else. She was no more than fifteen or sixteen, clearly far too young to have been born in the Last World. A native, like Jack Gilliard and the others here. A born slave.

Mariama brought each down with a single shot.

Then, finally, her ammunition clip empty, the gun hot in her hands, the smell of burned powder suffusing the air, Mariama lifted her head. She placed the rifle carefully at her feet, flexed her cramped fingers, rolled her shoulders, and took a deep breath.

Sheila was still staring at the scene below. Now only one of the targets, the human bleeding near the club door, was moving, and he only feebly. Other than that, the plaza was still except for the flames dancing in the pyre and the smoke swirling upward.

Finally, Sheila turned her head. Her face was pale, harrowed, but there were no tears in her eyes, no disgust or revulsion or horror in her expression.

“All eight,” she said.

Mariama nodded.

“Not enough.”

“No.”

Sheila nodded. “But it's a start.”