The Vagrant (6 page)

Too late, the Vagrant sees. His hands itch for the sword but they are full already. His foot lifts, wanting to rush to her side, but he cannot put the baby down here, dares not take it back into danger. Head low, he carries on.

A crowd gathers around Lil, boots stamping down.

The tension in the air grows, drawing tighter with each kick. Kell’s people step back. Between them, Lil’s body lies face down in the dirt, a sliver of blood runs from her temple.

Alone, her death would be but a whisper. She is not alone. Many have fallen, each adding weight to a cry that passes beyond mortal ears and into another place, where it demands response.

With a shriek, the air splits above the fields, and something that should not be manifests within its shell. The pipe arches groan with the added weight, until the Unborn’s chain snaps, unleashing its cargo upon the wretches below.

Just once, the Vagrant turns back.

The Unborn’s burst shell rocks back and forth, spurting liquid from many cracks.

Long grasses undulate, a sea of pale yellow, allowing glimpses of the new horror birthing in the field. Where it finds people it consumes them, not the careful possession of its elders but a wild, destructive instinct.

Above it, the air ripples and folds, fighting to close once more.

Most in the fields have been taken by surprise but those further out pause in their petty struggles. Weapons are trained on the new threat, men and women briefly united in their desire to survive. Precious bullets are spent.

Voices fade away, the grass whispers.

Nobody emerges from the field.

In its sheath, the sword begins to hum softly. The Vagrant rests two fingers on the hilt but the noise does not quieten. He walks away, leaving Kendall’s Folly to its fate.

Gravel crunches rhythmically underfoot. The suns rush across the sky, manic compared to the broken mountains that inch past. Under their uneven shadows, the Vagrant walks. Their progress is steady.

The baby will not stop crying. It screams beneath his coat, inconsolable. Neither the warm dark under his arm nor the stimulus of the landscape bring consolation.

There is little sustenance in the Blasted Lands, and so sacks of fruit and food are magnets for the lean denizens slipping between the rocks. New breeds appear regularly, half-breeds, quarter-breeds and blends unrecognizable. People have given up naming them. Most are lumped together as food, threat or nuisance.

Eventually steps slow, the group’s previous exertions demand their due: the resting of tired limbs and heavy hearts. The Vagrant squeezes pasha juice into the baby’s down-turned mouth. Even the sweet liquid fails to draw a smile, though the smacking of lips and swallowing is more palatable than the wailing.

As the hours tick by the Vagrant and the baby cling to each other, sometimes stealing snatches of oblivion. While the baby dozes, the Vagrant’s amber eyes twitch.

Something ventures forward from the twilight, hunting. It scampers lightly, alert for danger. Scurry, pause, scurry, pause. Eyes dangle from its head, bouncing with each advance on sinewy threads. Its flickering tongue tastes the air before it storms the last few feet, scaled legs whirling with effort. Blisteringly fast, it seeks a way into the sack, racing up the coarse fabric, an opportunistic thief.

Overhead a shadow moves. Preceded by a spike of white hair, it descends, opening until it blocks the creature’s path; a moving, living cave.

Feet frantically spin in the opposite direction but the creature cannot stop, momentum delivering it straight into the cavernous mouth.

As the suns rise, the goat chews.

A rising wind flicks at their eyes, throwing grit and flecks of moist matter. The Vagrant moves on, arm raised against the clouds of dust that blow past.

Distantly, shapes are visible, seeming to grow out of the ground.

At first the shapes are simply shelter. The Vagrant crouches behind a structure, leaning into boned fabric that gives but takes his weight. Breathing becomes less laboured and he looks around, running his fingers along the edge of the thing he sits by. Coarse plastic is stretched around a frame that juts out of the ground at a forty-degree angle. The external bars are two inches thick, made for burdens. His hand pauses as it reaches the frame’s end; the metal there is flat, edged.

Something has cut through it.

The Vagrant frowns, investigates further. Objects lie just beneath the surface, so badly broken they seem foreign. He tightens his grip on the baby, digging one handed.

Half buried in dirt and tipped on their sides, the waggons from the caravan are not immediately recognizable.

Neither are the bodies.

A face emerges, brushed into view. Sores stand proud on desiccated skin. Something has stolen the moisture, the eyes and more from the corpse. Further excavation allows it to be worked free. Tattered clothes hang loose on shrivelled bones, ridiculous, clown-like. The Vagrant slides his hand between the layers and new smells rise up. Muscles work in his jaw but he does not stop, exploring nooks and secrets.

When his hand seeks air again, it brings out a prize. Small, silver, shining: a coin. The Vagrant stares at it, emotions threatening at the edges of his face. Amber eyes look back from the coin’s flawless surface, accusing. Under that stare his compsure breaks, swept away by grief and guilt.

Disturbed, the baby stirs in his arms, wriggling until a more comfortable position is found. Sleepy hands find the Vagrant’s thumb and establish a firm grip.

The Vagrant looks from coin to baby and back again.

Nodding grimly he puts it away.

When the winds falter after hours of pounding, and racing clouds slow and settle, the caravan’s inglorious end is revealed. The scene appears ancient, aged by the elements.

The waggon’s roof moves, rising at the centre, a plastic pyramid. Dirt rolls off as it sweeps upward, folding, falling aside to reveal its treasures. From the hole, the Vagrant pulls himself into the afternoon, squinting against the light. He walks around the wreckage, baby tucked under his arm. It sucks on his sleeve, watching his fingers as they tick off the bodies, one by one.

There should be more bodies than fingers but there are not.

Beneath the Vagrant’s boot, things crunch. He steps to the side, finding more uneven ground; it flattens under his weight with a long wheeze.

The baby giggles.

Crouching, the Vagrant finds a blob of black rubber as big as his fist, trailing tubes, a backup lung now redundant. Standing, he drops it back in the dirt and it wheezes again.

The baby laughs louder, reaching for the sound.

He goes to move on but urgent tugging at his collar demands attention. He looks down at the baby, raising his eyebrows; in miniature, his gesture is mirrored. The Vagrant’s eyebrows stretch a little higher, again he is matched. For a time both hold their position. There is no obvious winner in this contest, no clear rules.

Both parties break with dignity intact.

However the baby is dissatisfied. Straining against his arm, it points at the discarded respirator. Victorious or otherwise, it wants a prize.

Dutifully, the Vagrant delivers the lung to its new owner.

The Vagrant searches for abandoned treasure. From the wreckage he finds a crate full of decorated fabric. Some he cuts for the baby; a new wrap of shimmering girls and imaginary lakes. Some he cuts into a long strip, which he folds thick and lays across the goat’s back. For himself, the Vagrant makes a scarf, covering his face with softness.

Further hunting procures food containers, a cracked scope and a navpack. He holds the projector high to help ailing solar cells. Sunslight seeps through and in return they stutter out an image, low-res and incomplete, mapping the land that was. A ribbon of blue light marks the caravan’s route. Verdigris, the next place never visited, is close by. Further north are mountains and beyond them swirl meaningless logos; broken cities reshaped and remade by the Uncivil.

Lifting the scope to his eye, the Vagrant searches the horizon, turning slowly. In the distance he sees a figure watching, stone still, shaped like a person.

Soon they leave the caravan, striking out towards the mountains. A fast pace is kept and the nameless figure is left behind.

The Vagrant does not relax.

Sometimes they march to false wheezing and laughter, sometimes to muffled snoring but they do not stop until it is dark.

Their arrival has been noticed. From a crack in the ground rises a head, curious, leathery. The local peers at their camp but does not like what it sees, returning to the earth.

At first light the Vagrant looks through the scope again. Two figures stand distantly behind, unmoving. To the south east is a third figure, apart from the first pair, yet like them.

Frowning, he lowers the scope. Small hands tug at his collar and he looks down. The baby raises its eyebrows but this time the Vagrant’s brow does not lift. He grabs the goat’s leash and pulls it sharply, taking them away from their pursuers.

In his arms the baby freezes, shocked. Possibilities cross the tiny face. With renewed force, it tries again; eyes grow wide, stretching towards its forehead.

Glancing down, the Vagrant’s mouth twitches but his attention soon flickers north, then south, scowling both ways. Dust rises at their feet, stirred by the returning wind.

Again his collar is tugged. His sharp look down is met by surprise; little features collapse inward, forming thunder. With all its might, the baby glowers.

Stolen from tension, two smiles bloom.

They press on. Dirty clouds belch over them, shrinking the world. The Vagrant stares into the obscuring mass, eyes watering. Often he glances over his shoulder, the view frustrating in every direction.

Ahead, a fence-like arrangement of bones stands tall, as if propped up like a proudly cleaned plate. The ribcage is several metres high, made massive by its infernal patron, now abandoned. The Vagrant attaches fabric to them, forming a colourful shelter. With each gust threaded women dance manically.

They wait for the winds to ease, eating, resting, and milking.

When calm comes again, the Vagrant jumps up, swinging the scope from left to right. He finds the three, still separate, closer now. A fourth and fifth emerge from the dust to the south west.

He rips the shelter down, splitting lakes, and prepares to run.

The dust retreats with them, offering a first glimpse of Verdigris. Four of its towers have fallen but three remain defiant, high discs glinting on their tops; golden ears warmed by the second sunset.

Between the travellers and the towers stands a sixth figure, too low now for the light to reach it.

The Vagrant slows, a muscle flexes in his jaw. Trapped.

Slow and inevitable, the hunters draw in.

The Vagrant looks back often and each time they are closer. He has yet to see them move. Five pursue, driving them towards one ahead, waiting, blocking the way to Verdigris and safety. In the sky, faster than either group, the suns have almost set.

Despite the failing light, details emerge on the figure ahead. A knight of sorts, risen from the ranks of the Seraph, an infernal mirror of what was. Behind its armour unseen growths reach for freedom, distorting metal, disturbing its cloak. Smoke wafts from its helm, marking cracks and joins.

With irrefutable firmness the goat stops, refusing to go further. The Vagrant does not argue, crouching slowly, laying the baby amidst the dirt. A wheeze is heard, followed by laughter. He does not react, his face unreadable as he stands again, facing the knight.

Only thirty metres separate them, the Vagrant crosses them quickly. At his side, the sword trembles with anticipation. He draws. The motion catches a final ray, lining its edge in gold.

In answer, the knight raises a bloated weapon, twisted steel and living jade, discordant, suffering.

Behind him, not close but not so distant, echoes come. Five moans join the first, then, from the north east, a tortured cry, longer than the others, closing.

Amidst the cacophony, the baby’s whimpering goes unheard.

Sword high, the Vagrant attacks. As he nears the enemy his downward arc slows, struggling through air thick with wailing, welcoming the heavy parry.

The return attack is powerful, deathly.

The Vagrant does not wait for it, stepping, spinning and striking again. A hump of armour falls away. The Vagrant sees skin exposed, clinging like wet rag to shrivelled bone.

The knight stops swinging for its nimble opponent, groaning defensively, holding him at bay. It knows it cannot defeat him. It does not need to.

Inexorably its troop draws in.

The Vagrant feints left, goes right, makes an opening, doesn’t take it, keeps moving, turning faster than his enemy, behind it now, cuts low, a triumphant note blasting bone and backs of knees.

It sways, moaning, descending as the Vagrant sprints back, scooping baby and leash in one hand.

He looks up; misshapen swords loom over them, too close.

They run. This time the goat is happy to oblige.

Ahead, Verdigris rises hopeful. Against its silhouette hulks another shape, charging, trying to cut off their escape. A seventh knight, like the others but greater, more purposeful. The threat spurs them to greater speeds.

Blade first, the lumbering figure reaches for them.

They feel the breath of its dirge but pass by safely, momentum unbroken.

The knight ploughs on past them, unable to stop. It tries to turn as it decelerates, unable to match its more nimble prey and is forced to watch as they near the city’s sanctuary, well beyond sword-reach now. Frustrated, it returns the keening thing to its sheath and pulls forth a stubby lance.

Something flies past the Vagrant’s shoulder, sizzling into the gates, munching stone. He turns, sword held protectively before him, backing the remaining distance. Seconds after the first, more shots arrive. He cuts them from the air, burning fragments showering around him. One ignites the corner of his coat, another catches the goat’s tail.

Flame sprouts, the goat protests but they keep running, trailing smoke as they vanish into Verdigris’ embrace …