Tourist - 10



Title: Tourist (Part Ten)

-In Which Shadows Lengthen-

We searched the entire North quarter of the sewers for survivors. Eventually, we checked the other two tunnels before heading back south, from where we’d come. We found no survivors of the fire; those that had escaped had not thought to return. It was only the musicians, however, that had been gutted. Darren insisted it was a message to him, a warning, but he would not say from who.

The message itself was clear enough. The rebellion ends NOW. The government would find another dumping ground for its science experiments. The Writer’s Guild would move on, rewarded for its betrayal of the other sectors.

It wasn’t until we were nearly back to the dumps that the events of the evening registered. The Siri, still gripped painfully in my hand, glistened wetly. I cleaned the blade with an oily rag as Darren trudged wearily into the cockpit.

I sat quietly in the body of the plane, listening to the hum of the lights above me. Though the blade was clean, I kept seeing the dark maroon stain behind my shut eyes. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to forget what I’d done...or the look of stricken horror on the face of the young man I had beheaded.

No older than me. He was just doing his job...I shook my head. I wish I’d died with the rest of them. I didn’t belong here, this wasn’t my place, and returning to the freezer for another fifty years was looking increasingly tempting. I’d thought that 2249 was bad. I must’ve been kidding myself.

As if hearing my thoughts, Darren let out a series of muffled sobs behind the safety of the cockpit door. I wrenched my eyes tight and wished I could do the same to my ears.

“How’s your arm?”

I looked up to find Ben limping towards me, slouching against one wall to take pressure off his leg. I glanced down at my arm, realizing it had healed both completely and without scar. “Fine,” I answered, the word tasting plastic.

“How did it go?” Ben asked quietly, his eyes locked on the Siri. I wondered for a moment if he could see the blood as I could.

“I killed a man. He was bleeding...” I stopped, seeing the man’s surprise again.

“It’s always hard the first time,” Ben said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“No, I won’t,” I said flatly. “I don’t want to get used to it.”

The staccato of Ben’s steps echoed around the plane’s interior. He regarded me with his cold eyes, the eyes I had mistrusted - and, to a certain extent, still did. He regarded me: The traitor, the misfit to the cause. I had never been one to take human life, not ever. But the dead, stretched out in front of me, refused to be erased from my vision. I looked away from Ben, only his shock of yellow-white hair visible in my peripheral view.

~*~*~

“Darren,” I called, and the man turned easily to me. I was sure of how I looked, after another sleepless night. It had been two days since our venture back into the Round, and Darren’s first trip out of the cockpit.

“Daniel, excellent.” He clapped me on the shoulder and gave me a diamond-bright smile. “I’d like to return to the ruins as soon as possible.”

I stared at him.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked me, his forehead creasing delicately.

“Why would you want to go back there?” I felt as if I had swallowed glass.

Now he stared at me. “Daniel, we’ve got to find out if there are survivors. Ben’s still incapacitated-”

“Hold on!” I shook his arm off, and held up my hand in protest. “Darren, there can’t be any survivors. Don’t you remember...”

The words died in my throat as Karl emerged from the cockpit, appearing at Darren’s shoulder. His mouth was a thin line of determination, and he had sallow, dark circles under his eyes.

“Mr. Jones had a horrible dream,” he told Darren, but his shadowed eyes held mine. “He dreamt that there were no survivors of the fire. He went back while you were asleep, and found the tunnels empty.”

Empty. I blinked.

Darren turned to me, pitying. “I’m sorry for your horrible dreams. But thank you for going back to check.” With that, he disappeared behind Karl, going outside into the dumps.

I still held Karl’s gaze.

“What did you do to him?” I hissed.

Karl seemed mobilized by my words. He stepped around me, reaching for his soiled apron. ‘I had to. He was hysterical for too long. I was afraid his mind had gone.” He slipped the apron over his head, and expertly tied the strings behind his back.

“So you erased his memory?”

“Precisely.” He watched me carefully as I staggered under the realization. “Darren is too important a man to risk insanity.”

“You stole from him,” I accused quietly. “You stole the closure of his life and replaced it with an empty substitute.”

“I can do it to you, if you’d like,” Karl offered, spreading his hands. “It must be an awful burden to bear.”

I stepped carefully out of his reach. “No, thank you.”

He shrugged indifferently. “I’ve got to go check on Ben.” He turned away and disappeared down the passage, but his head poked back out for an instant. “Of course, I don’t have to caution you against telling Darren the truth. It would leave him quite conflicted.” Then he was gone again.

“Of course,” I said to no one, though I was sure the doctor heard me. He probably heard and watched everything we did. I glanced around carefully before following Darren’s path out into the waste.

~*~*~

By evening, Ben managed to join us out in the dumps. He leaned heavily on a staff, which even I had to admit did not seem to interrupt his allure or his danger. Darren met him with his thousand-watt smile, and Ben returned it with a weak grin. But it was the stormy glance Ben cast my way as a greeting that let me know Karl had briefed him on Darren’s alterations, as well.

“How’s your leg?” Darren asked.

Ben shifted his weight experimentally, and shook his head. “Not so good. The bone is knitting slowly, and there’s some muscle and nerve complication that I don’t quite understand. Karl says maybe another week.”

Darren shook his head slowly. “That’s too long. We’ll have to move on anyway.”

“Move on?” I asked. “To where?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you’d said earlier, about trying to find a place away from here. A place where we could be safe.”

“No such place,” Ben supplied.

Darren awkwardly fingered a piece of grimy plastic next to where we sat. “We leave at first light.”

~*~*~

The three of us sat quietly and watched the suns et behind the grime and be replaced by the steady glow of garish city lights on the horizon. Ben and I sat quietly, thinking of those lost. I wanted to tell him that I’d seen his partner scavengers. I wanted to give him that peace of mind. But I couldn’t. Not even if Darren hadn’t been sitting between us. I realized slowly that we were not safe here, not safe anywhere, if Karl was with us. He had too much control over Darren, and too much influence over Ben.

Darren went to sleep his blissful, memory free sleep with Karl a few hours later, and still Ben and I sat and stared. His bad leg stretched out in front of him, his legs expertly manipulated the staff. I knew he’d be just as lethal with that piece of wood as he could be with a sword. Under other circumstances, I would’ve felt close to the body guard, being able to share the silence with him. Instead I only felt empty.

Eventually, Ben left, too.

It was in this emptiness and solitude that I heard the scrabbling. Positioned as I was -above the crevice that led to the entrance to the plane- I could see the flowing shape that approached with inhuman speed.

I crouched on my haunches and watched it pause outside the metal door. I drew my Siri silently, but the shape seemed to turmoil around. I set my jaw and jumped from my hiding place onto the shape.

It moved around my fall, appearing in front of me, darting back and then stopping uncertainly. I slashed at it as it darted forward, slashed and rolled toward a ditch for protection, and the thing gave out an inhuman yowl that made my skin crawl.

But there was no counterattack. The shape was gone.

The door was suddenly thrown open, Karl rushing out into the night with the loud glow of halogen from the interior.

“What happened?” He asked, panting. “I heard it cry out.”

“What was it?” I demanded, dropping out of my defensive stance and picking up a fallen and torn rag at my feet. It had blood on it.

He took his time answering. “A drifter, maybe. They show up here sometimes and don’t leave for days, trying to break in. They feed on human flesh.” He paused. “But they usually travel in packs.”

At the mention of additional creatures, I stepped back inside the plane with Karl. He bolted the door securely behind us.

“You did well with that sword, Daniel. Whatever it was.” And then he had gone back to the cockpit and I was left holding the bloodied cloth in one hand and my rage in the other.

continued in part eleven...