Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (21 page)

Cannon approached Adam from behind and took hold of his chair, gripping it like he would a large trophy. Adam couldn’t hold his fear any longer and started to hyperventilate.
Don’t tell him anything
, he thought.
Mayfly will find you, somehow, Mayfly will find you.

Cannon shoved Adam down into the muddy hole and Adam twisted himself around so that he fell on his back.
The impact crushed his hands and he grimaced, but he didn’t look up because he didn’t want them to see his eyes glowing with fear. Adam felt a ball of warm mud fall on his legs and then a bit fell on his face; soon he was covered completely, and the mud started to harden in the cold night air. He couldn’t see but heard the guards throwing more dirt on him, and then the soil was so heavy that he heard no more. The weight of the earth above got heavier and heavier, and then it stopped. Adam felt faint thuds from above and reasoned that it was the guards, smoothing out the ground. A minute passed and then he felt an enormous pressure, and then that too stopped.

That was their vehicle,
thought Adam.
They ran over me and then left.

Adam tried to move, but he was stuck. The pain of suffocation began, and within minutes he started to black out. He knew he’d wake up in an odd state; not quite dead, but conscious and still unable to move. He tried to kick his legs out
, but it was no use; even if he could free himself from the chair, he was still buried by tons of dirt.

He would never get out of here by himself; there was simply no way.

Mayfly can save me
, thought Adam before he blacked out.
He’s the only hope I have, but he’ll save me. He always finds a way.

THE REST HOME

They had taken a left fork in the road, another left, and then a right. At the next turn they took the center path of five roads, another left fork, and then a right turn that seemed to be taking them back where they came. The crew took on the quiet air of a group who
were considering that they might be lost, but Mayfly was confident that they were going the correct way. Adam’s instructions were dense but clear; their destination was impossible to find without a map, but with the map it was just a matter of time before they reached their goal.

Soon the road smoothed out into a long dirt road down a canyon
, and it started to snow again. Adam’s map indicated that there would be a colony just ahead and sure enough, there was another Wild Zone settlement on their left, precisely where Adam had said it would be. Mayfly couldn’t figure out how anyone could live this far north, but the group was still happy to see the village because it confirmed the map’s accuracy, and they relaxed a bit.

Mayfly relaxed too but didn’t want them to stop. He told Trey that they couldn’t risk running into trouble at this point; they had to reach their goal. Mayfly also argued that anyone living this far north in the Wild Zone was bound to be dangerous.
You have to be a predator to survive up here
, Mayfly had argued.
There is no other way.

The truth was, Mayfly wanted desperately to return to Adam. He could tell what Juan’s henchmen were going to do to him; he could see it in their eyes as the RV sped away.

Adam’s buried right now,
thought Mayfly.
As we drive, he’s under the earth, screaming.

Mayfly had never envied Adam’s immortality; Mayfly considered it as sort of an odd burden, like getting a job that one would have to hold for forty years. Mayfly had often used his own mortality as
a tool to bring him courage; whatever situation he faced, the worst that could happen would be his death. No one could torture or intimidate Mayfly, because fate had already dealt him a hand that he couldn’t change.

But Mayfly felt fear for Adam; he knew Adam’s nightmares, and so did everyone else.
I’ve got to get back there and save him,
thought Mayfly.
Somehow I’ve got to get back there and save him.

Trey brought the RV to a halt, flipped on the parking brake and looked
at the settlement in front of them, along with everyone else. Mayfly wanted to prod him to keep going, but it was no use; one Trey had already left the RV and was headed towards the colony’s tall, imperious walls.

/***/

Mayfly found the walls high, but thin; he could probably smash through them with a rock.

“It’s a village of
millennials
,” said Mayfly.

They were
definitely millennials; the settlement held all their trademarks: high logged walls and no windows for maximum privacy.

“Millen
nial-class spanners have almost no powers,” explained Mayfly to the group, his face grim as he spoke. “Their class simply ages rapidly on the outside without aging on the inside, so by twenty they look like old men and women even though they’re perfectly healthy. By forty they look like they’re two hundred years old, and after that they’re not fit to be seen in normal society.”

Mayfly had heard legends of millennials but had never met one. He knew that they could pass in normal society while they were young and could hustle by challenging normal humans to fights or even footraces
for cash. But millennials tended to disappear at age thirty due to their appearance; some became hermits or shut-ins, some lived as masked outcasts.

Some
come up here to live freely,
thought Mayfly.
This is the legendary “Rest Home” to which they retire. They’re still shy and build high walls, even though no one lives up here to see them.

“We should move on,” said Mayfly. “You n
ever know what’ll happen here—”

“Mille
nnials are harmless,” said Cattaga as she walked into the village.

We should still be on guard
, thought Mayfly.
Nothing this far north is harmless.

/***/

Brogg was about to punch through the front wall when Mayfly stopped him and simply pulled a thin wood panel back and slipped through. Once inside, he opened the gate and let the crew through. Two Treys stayed on the lookout, but the third Trey, Cattaga and even the Fountain followed Brogg inside the village.

The settlement walls were tall from the outside, but seemed absolutely stifling from the inside because they leaned slightly inward and blocked out both horizon and sky.
This village isn’t built to hide them from the outside
, thought Mayfly.
It’s built to hide the outside from them.

“It smells odd,” said Cattaga.

“Increase your sensitivity,” said Mayfly, “and tell us what it is.”

Cattaga’s eyes glowed
, and she breathed in.

“It smells like death,” she said.

/***/

They found the first millen
nial outside of his house. He was frozen and could have been dead anywhere from a few hours to a few months. Mayfly inspected him; he had the gnarled and thick skin of an old man but was probably only twenty years old himself. Mayfly knew that despite their elderly appearance millennials didn’t just drop dead, so he looked closer and found the kid had two bite marks on his frozen arm, about four centimeters apart. The skin looked corroded around the marks, as if a scourge had touched him.

Brogg found a second mille
nnial five minutes later; this one had been torn in half. It was an elderly woman, perhaps sixty, but the remaining part of her face looked to be ten times that age. Half of her was covered with frozen, sagging flesh and she had one remaining rheumy eye that stared lifelessly into the cold night. An unidentified carnivorous animal had gnawed the other half of her face, and it was a mess of bone and frozen blood.

“It takes something hungry to eat a face like that,” said Trey.

“I didn’t know berserkers came this far north,” said Cattaga.

“It’s not
a berserker,” said Trey. “Their kind find millennials repulsive.”

Mille
nnials are built to hide, not to defend
, thought Mayfly,
but still, something vicious came here.

“What do you sense it is, Cattaga?” asked Mayfly.

Cattaga put her hand to the frozen carcass of the millennial and then looked back at the first body. Brogg came out of another building carrying five more frozen millennials, which he dumped on the ground in front of them. Some had been mangled and some were mostly intact. One seemed completely untouched, save for two bite marks on his neck. No blood had come from the wound; like the first victim, there was simply a corroded area around the bite that spread out and faded over the rest of the body.

Cattaga concentrated on her hand and the nail on her smallest finger grew pointy and thick. She stabilized the finger with her other hand and dug out some frozen flesh around the body’s bite wound. She tasted the frozen blood inside and then spat it out.

“They’ve been poisoned,” said Cattaga. “At least some of them have, and—”

There was a rumbling from above
, and a plane swooped over their heads. Mayfly ducked for a moment and then took a quick look at it before it disappeared. It was a simple propeller-driven bush plane with no weapons and didn’t look like one of Juan’s machines. Mayfly was wondering how a bush plane could get this far north when Trey turned around and gasped.

“The Fountain,” said Trey. “She left.”

Mayfly looked around and found that Trey was right; the Fountain was gone.

/***/

They found her at a tree about a hundred meters behind the settlement. The tree looked to be coated with ice, but upon a closer look it was covered with some sort of hanging silk. Though it was outwardly beautiful, something about the fibers gave Mayfly chills.

Mayfly caught eye contact with the Fountain
, and she smiled at him.

“
Do you know what this is?”
she asked in Arawak.

“
I don’t know,”
said Mayfly in kind
, “but I don’t like it.”

“This is from a creature,
” she said. “A creature that takes life.”

“
This is from whatever killed the old ones behind the walls?”
asked Mayfly.

“
Yes,” said the Fountain. “The silk comes from deadly creatures to hold their children. Your friend is handling their young as we speak.”

Mayfly looked at the tree and saw that two of the Treys were bringing what looked like a large, gelatinous sac of ostrich eggs to the ground. Mayfly looked up and saw that there were two more of these sacs hanging in the tree, and then found that almost all the trees surrounding them were covered in silk that held sacs.

“Check this out,” said Trey, holding up his egg. “There’s a wolf in here.”

Mayfly looked at the eggs and shuddered; they were each filled with an eight-legged spider-wolf pup, pale and young but well developed and ready to hatch. Mayfly looked at the rest of the eggs hanging from the trees; they were all moving, and a few on the top were already breaking through their soft shells.

“Spider-wolves killed everyone in this village; either through biting them in half or leaving their poison. They’re probably out hunting now, but they left their young here,” said Mayfly. “That means they’re coming back.”

/***/

They heard the thin howl of adult spider-wolves in the distance, perhaps returning from a hunt, or perhaps returning to hunt them. Mayfly had a hard time seeing what was happening from within the millennial settlement; it was built for privacy and there were no towers to look out. Mayfly became worried; the village’s thin doors wouldn’t protect them against an onslaught, and its high walls wouldn’t let them see the wolves coming.

“Brogg,” said Mayfly, “build a few towers so we can look outwards. I don’t care how you do it, just build some towers.”

Brogg looked around and then destroyed one of their houses, revealing a dead millennial couple that looked to be ten thousand years old. Brogg took the materials from their house and built a makeshift tower, and then another one. Two Treys climbed each one and looked beyond the wall.

The team was snapping into action all around Mayfly, but he couldn’t move.
Adam’s fear is burial,
thought Mayfly.
Mine is spiders.

“Mayfly, get up here!” said the Trey perched atop his tower. “Your vision is better than mine.”

Mayfly couldn’t move; he tried to remember that he was fighting for Adam, the Fountain and the mayflies trapped in Juan’s asylum, but something within him told him to
run
; to run through the forest and never come back.
The wolves are trapping me,
thought Mayfly.
I’m trapped in their web just like—

“Come here, Mayfly … ” said Cattaga, turning him around and pulling him back into a dark corner.

She put her lips to his for a long time, holding him firmly. Mayfly had kissed hundreds of girls before, but had never felt anything like this; it was as if time had stopped. Cattaga let go and smiled at him.

“I had my salivary glands release serotonin,” she said. “It’s a neurotransmitter that helps alleviate anxiety. You should have gotten enough of it.”

“Almost enough,” said Mayfly, and he kissed her again.

Mayfly indeed felt better; like there was an invisible barrier between him and the spider-wolves outside. He came out of the corner saw the Treys on Brogg’s perches, looking outward.
It’s a good thing he didn’t see me kissing her,
thought Mayfly,
because she seemed to have enjoyed it.

The Treys’ ledges were spread out across the wall and they spread themselves so they could see a panorama. Mayfly felt bad; he had stolen women countless times before, but had never taken one from a friend, let alone someone who had saved his life before and was keeping him alive now. Brogg snapped him out of his thoughts by picking up Mayfly from behind and propping him on his shoulders and then walking to a low part of the wall where they could both see.

Mayfly saw that many of the eggs outside were breaking open, and some had already hatched. The spider-wolf pups crawling out of them were small but fully functional; they snapped their jaws, bounded about and made small howls. To make things worse, the adult spider-wolves had heard their children’s howls and were coming out of the woods to return to them. The adults weren’t particularly large, but their teeth were sharp and they were good at climbing; many had been staying in the trees and were descending the trunks facing forward.
If they decide to attack us,
thought Mayfly,
our walls will be useless.

What was more, the spider-wolves acted
intelligently
. They spontaneously huddled in groups and one spider-wolf would howl and its troop would listen, and it soon became clear that they had some sort of a plan. Trey looked at Mayfly with a blank stare; he had no idea what to do if they were to attack. Mayfly went through twelve different scenarios in his head, came up with the best solution and then brought everyone around. One Trey got down and two stayed up on the wall.