The Dream Widow (13 page)

“The soldiers continue to impress me, Your Grace.”

The Consul shrugged––or shivered, Darius could not tell which.

“I supposed you’re ready,” she said.

“Certainly. D Platoon will break up the camp while the rest of us advance.”

“A storm is coming,” said the surgeon blandly. He jerked a finger at the feathered clouds in the sky, emphasizing his point with a gesture rather than tone of voice.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Darius. “We’ll be inside the village before sundown.”

A scattering of shots cracked in the distance.

The Consul glanced toward the gunfire, then back to Darius. “Are we being attacked?”

“No, that’s the girl we captured.”

He gave a thumbs-up to a bear soldier wearing three yellow stripes on his sleeve. The dozen murderous-looking men led their black dogs to a tent on the far edge of the camp. They held the chains with tight fists as the dogs sniffed and slobbered.

“It seems to me, senator, that your prisoner has escaped,” said the Consul.

Darius ran the tip of his tongue along his lips. “That was the plan. Thanks to the fine doctor her wounds have been sewn up, and now the little deer leaves a strong-smelling trail as she gallops back home.”

He turned to the armored monster and climbed metal rungs to the flat roof. On top Darius faced the mass of soldiers and spread his arms.

“Men, our long march is almost over and the filthy nest these savages call home is near. Out of any people I know in this barbaric wilderness, they’re the most deserving of our pity. Why? The machinery of the old times is within their grasp, but wasted like pearls before swine. They’ve attacked and killed good men even before I can offer the hand of friendship. While you and I follow the sensible laws of modern man, they react from the basest of emotions. I expected the first meeting of our two peoples to be happy and peaceful. I planned to free them from their struggles and the chains of the past, but now you can see these are backwards, wolfish people who understand nothing but blood. If they only knew whom they have offended––Consul Nahid’s men and the finest soldiers north of Albu City! You will meet their savage anger on the field of battle today and crush it with your own! Burn their hovels. Capture the women. Kill everyone else!”

“Yes sir!” roared the soldiers.

“Bring me the girl called Badger,” shouted Darius, “And that filthy demon Wilson and be rewarded with a knighthood!”

He raised a fist and the armored monster screamed to life.

“What makes the Circle turn?”

Steam blew from the throats of the men.

“BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!”

“What does a soldier do?”

“KILL! KILL! KILL!”

REED LAY ON HIS BACK, exhausted from helping guide Wilson through Carter’s surgery. The sand was soft and the ocean water warm. Jack said it wasn’t like that in the real world, in the passed-away world. What was it like now?

Above the frothing churn of the waves, a woman’s voice spoke.

It is barren, a strand of death. A place of ghost-sickness.

Reed sat up. “Who’s that?”

A prisoner in the land of sleep like you.

“Are you––Dreamer?”

That would be one name for me.

“Can you help Jack? Can you teach me anything?”

A seagull landed clumsily, spraying clumps of moist sand on Reed. A high-pitched staccato squawked from the red-tipped, golden beak.

There’s no time. Your people are in danger.

Reed stretched out his hands and drew a wide rectangle in the sand. A map of Station and the surrounding area shimmered to life. Tiny spheres of light clustered at the center. Reed touched a flashing pinpoint on the far right side of the map. A name floated in the air––”Major Elizabeth Vasquez”––along with vital signs.

Reed swatted away the seagull. It flapped into the sky as he stood up from the sand.

“Open channel to the surface,” he said.

The seagull turned lazy circles above Reed’s head and watched him with black, shining eyes.

“Open channel!”

The bird glided into the thick fog.

The connection is open but your protege must be absent.

“I can see that, thank you.”

Can you?

Reed paced the fifty meters of sand, hands clasped behind his back.

“There has to be another way to reach him,” he said.

Send a message with the woman.

Reed shook his head. “Mary? She’s not talking to me.”

There could be other ways, unwise and dangerous. You will need to look within.

Reed crossed his legs in the soft sand above the waves. He slowed his breathing and whispered a poem.

“GETTING YOURSELF KILLED won’t change anything,” said Wilson. “The Circle didn’t attack last night, so there’s a chance they don’t know where we are. The important thing is, Lizzie could still be alive.”

He stood near Hausen at the end of a workman’s table. Rifles had been removed from the armory’s secure room and were being dismantled and cleaned by Mast and five machinery assistants. Hausen stood at the end of the line and inspected each rifle before moving them to another table.

Hausen shook his head. “Stop talking––I’m her father, you idiot! I don’t want to think about my daughter around those animals.”

“They’ll be waiting for you.”

“The Circle can’t wait for us and come after us at the same time. Which one is it, genius?”

“I’m just trying to look at the best options. Reed and I spent hours patching together Carter and I don’t want to do that again. Listen–”

“No, you ‘listen,’” said Hausen. He pulled back the bolt-action on a rifle, eyeballed it, and slammed it forward. “I’m in charge of the defense. That’s from Reed. Stop trying to keep me from doing that.”

“I’m not.”

“You made Carter bring what was left of your father all the way from Springs.” Hausen aimed the rifle at the wall and dry-fired it with a snap. “My daughter is only a klick or two outside the line. I want her back, even if it’s just to bury her in the Tombs.”

“But they have a tank. Don’t you know what that means?”

“A tank is a machine. All machines are run by men, and all men are flesh and blood.” Hausen set the rifle on the other table.

Wilson frowned. “All right. I’ll wake my trainees.”

“Don’t let these ‘Nighthawks’ or whatever you’ve called them use any fancy tricks,” said Hausen. “That stuff you taught her didn’t help my daughter and it won’t help them.”

INSIDE HIS ROOM Wilson slid the ancient revolver into his belt holster. The wedding bracelet chafed the skin on his left wrist. He still wasn’t used to wearing it all the time.

A high-pitched chirp echoed from the corridor. Wilson ran to Reed’s office––his office now––and touched a triangle on the smaller display.

“I’m here!”

“Finally,” said Reed. “I’ve been trying to raise you for ages.”

“Sorry. I was busy trying to keep Hausen from barreling down the mountain on a rescue mission.”

“Lizzie doesn’t need to be rescued, Wilson. She’s back on the map.”

Wilson looked up at the wall display. In the eastern section of the map a single square flashed.

“I’m leaving. She’ll need medical treatment.”

“Wait! Leave a few Runners here. That’s the only way I can reach you.”

“Got it.”

Seconds after Wilson dashed out of the rectory, a triangle with an exclamation point flashed on the eastern edge of the map. A swarm of triangles joined it and grew into a mass of flashing, angry bees.

HOARSE BARKING DROVE LIZZIE through the forest. The muscles in her arms and legs trembled from blood loss or something deeper but she ran despite that, like a fox before the hunt. She was long past the regret over passing on Runner training and choosing Medic. Her outstretched arms kept branches from whipping into her face. Stumbling forward on feet numb from the frost-covered ground, she fell painfully and often.

The aspens rose in waves over two ridges, sunflower-bright in the morning. Lizzie recognized the route from the night before. The perimeter was near.

The barking of the dogs was a sharpened stick that prodded her forward. Lizzie might have wondered why someone held the dogs back, if she’d had the time. But she didn’t, and so she ran.

A field of tall grass lay ahead, the blades heavy with frost. Beyond lay the forest and pass into the valley. The granite pyramid of Old Man rose above it all, backed by orange clouds of dawn.

Lizzie made it halfway through the field and collapsed.

INSIDE THE EASTERNMOST DUGOUT Badger squinted against the light of the rising sun. She nudged Zhang with an elbow and pointed to the field.

“That’s her. Down there.”

Zhang shaded his eyes. “Where? Oh, I see it.”

Badger wriggled out of the underground shelter’s tight exit and Zhang followed her through pine trees to the edge of a stream.

“Did she stop?”

“Stop talking,” said Badger.

Red-winged blackbirds trilled in the morning sun. A pack of dogs barked in the distance.

Badger slid down the bank and splashed across to the other side. Zhang scrambled after her and up the muddy bank to the field.

They ran through the waist-high grass, startling a flock of bobwhite. The quail flew north and Badger found Lizzie lying on her side. A white bandage wrapped around the girl’s head was soaked with blood, and her damp clothing was covered in tiny seeds of grass.

Zhang touched Lizzie’s chest. “She’s still breathing.”

Badger took the other arm and they dragged the girl back to the stream. The barking was louder now, but Badger still couldn’t see any dogs.

A volley of shots cracked the air. A bullet snapped close to Badger’s ear and she hit the dirt.

“Cat’s teeth,” she cursed.

“Here,” said Zhang, ripping cloth from his shirt. “Roll her onto me.”

Badger shifted Lizzie onto Zhang’s back. He tied the girl’s wrists together and put them over his head.

“Keep crawling,” said Badger.

She sprinted away from Zhang and the cover of the tall grass. Shots popped after her like a green log thrown onto a fire.

STILL AT THE EASTERN END of the pass, Wilson and his students heard the gunfire and ran faster. They caught up to Hausen and his men at a forest dugout as the sun rose in the scarlet east.

“Take Anders and these men a hundred meters that way,” said Hausen to another hunter. “We’ll dig in here.”

“Dig in?” said Wilson. “What about your daughter?”

Hausen pointed to the stream at the edge of the forest. “She’s coming. We can see the trail in the grass. All right––spread out and don’t shoot till you have a target.”

Wilson stuck his head in the window of the dugout. It was dark and empty.

“Where’s Kira?”

Hausen shrugged. “Not here. Zhang’s missing too.”

Another volley cracked from the trees on the other side of the field, and clouds of blue-gray smoke floated lazily over the grass.

Robb pointed. “There she is!”

A girl ran across the open field, dark braids whipping behind her head.

Wilson pointed along the tree line. “We’re following her!”

“I’ll give covering fire,” said Hausen.

Wilson led the group of twenty-nine teenagers south through the forest and paralleled Badger’s flight. More shots boomed across the open field and she dropped into the tall grass.

Wilson’s throat closed up. He stopped and jerked his arms left and right.

“Take cover behind the trees. Fire at the smoke!”

He heard a distant yell from Hausen. Thunder rolled through the forest as the men from Station aimed and fired at vague figures in the haze across the field.

Wilson’s students crouched and used the rough-barked trunks of pine trees to steady their rifles. The first dozen students chose their targets carefully and fired.

Near Wilson, Mast centered his sights on a muzzle flash. A shadow moved and his index finger brushed back on the trigger. With a deafening crack, the rifle kicked his shoulder. He pulled the bolt up and back, slid a new shell in the chamber, and slammed the bolt forward.

The tall grass shivered at the edge of the field and Badger slithered out on her elbows and knees into a dead zone of fallen pine needles.

Both Mast and Wilson slid down the hillside and grabbed her under the arms, but Badger shook them off and pointed south.

Soldiers in tall black hats ran through the aspens at the edge of the field, behind giant, broad-headed mastiffs with glossy brown and black-striped hides.

All three ran up the slope to Wilson’s students.

“Dogs!” he yelled.

He pushed his palm to the ground and waved a line with the other hand. The three dozen teenagers adjusted their facing to the south.