Armageddon's Children (14 page)

He kissed her back now, as eager for her as she was for him.

When she broke away finally, she was laughing. “You’d think we’d never done this. You’d think we’d been waiting to do it all our lives.”

She was small and dark, her skin a light chocolate in color, her hair raven black and close-cropped in a silky helmet that glistened even in the darkness. Her eyes were large and wide with surprise, as if everything she was seeing was new and incredibly exciting. She exuded energy and life in a way that no one else could. She made him smile, but it was more than the way he felt about her. She had an enthusiasm that was infectious; she could make you feel good about life even in the bleakest of times and places.

“Look at you,” she whispered. “All ragged and dirty and mussed up, like Owl hasn’t made you take a bath in a month! Such a boy!” She grinned, and then whispered, “You look wonderful.”

He didn’t, of course, especially compared with her in her soft leather boots and coat and bright, clean blouse. Compound kids always had better clothes. His jeans and sweatshirt were worn and his sneakers falling apart. But she would never tell him that. She would only tell him what would make him feel good about himself. That was the way she was. She made him ache inside and want to tell her all the good things he had ever thought about her all at once, even the things that he didn’t think he could ever tell.

“How is everyone?” She steered him over to the concrete bench set against the far wall and sat him down.

“Good. All safe and sound. Owl sends her love. She misses you. Almost as much as me.”

Tessa bit her lip. “I wish she could come back. I wish things weren’t so difficult.”

He nodded. “You could make things easier. You could come live with us. We don’t have a compound, but we don’t have a compound’s stupid rules, either.” He seized her hands. “Do it, Tessa! Come tonight! Become a Ghost! You belong out here with me, not inside those walls!”

She gave him a quick, uneasy grin. “You know the answer, Hawk. Why do you keep asking?”

“Because I don’t think your parents should dictate what you do with your life.”

“They don’t dictate what I do with my life. The choice to stay with them is mine.” Her lips compressed in a tight line of frustration. “I can’t leave until…My father would survive it, but my mother…well, you know. She isn’t the same since the accident. If she could use…” She shook her head, unable to continue. “If she could just use…”

She was stumbling all over herself, trying to get the words out. Stone blocks had crushed her mother’s hands when a wall in the compound kitchen had collapsed during an earthquake more than a year ago. It was an event that had changed everything for Tessa, who could barely bring herself to talk about it even now.

Hawk dropped his gaze. “If she could use her hands again,” he finished, “she would have a purpose and they wouldn’t have an excuse to put her outside the walls.”

Tessa nodded. “But it’s more than that. She’s crippled on the inside, too. She’s broken emotionally. Daddy and I are all she has. It would kill her if she lost either one of us.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “You know all this. Why are we talking about it? Why don’t you change your mind, instead? Why don’t you come live with me? If you did, they might let Owl and the others come inside, too.”

His hiss of frustration betrayed his impatience. “You know they won’t let anyone come in from the streets. Especially kids.”

She gripped his hands. “They would if you married me. They would have to. It’s compound law.”

She held him spellbound for a moment with the force of her grip and the intensity of her gaze, but then he shook his head. “Maybe they would allow me in, but not the others. A family sticks together. Besides, marriage is a convention that belongs in the past. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

“It means something to me.” She refused to look away. “It means everything.” She bent forward and kissed his lips. “What are we supposed to do, Hawk? Are we supposed to keep meeting like this for the rest of our lives? Is this what you want? One hour a week in a concrete windbreak?”

He shook his head slowly, eyes closed, feeling the press of her lips on his. It wasn’t even close to what he really wanted, but what you wanted wasn’t always what you got. Hardly ever, in fact. They’d had this discussion before—had it almost every time they met. She had begun talking about marriage only recently, however. It was a mark of how desperate she was to find a way to bring them together that she was willing to suggest it openly when she knew how he felt.

“Marriage won’t change anything, Tessa. I am already as married to you as I’ll ever be. Having an adult stand in front of us and say we’re married won’t make us any more so. Anyway, I can’t live inside a compound. You know that. I have to live on the streets where I can breathe. Someday you’ll want that, too. You’ll want it enough to come live with me, parents or not.”

She nodded more as if to placate than to agree, a sad smile escaping her tightly compressed lips. “Someday.”

He wanted to tell her that someday would never come. They had waited on it too long already. Until lately, their hopes and dreams had been enough. Time had slowed and all things had seemed possible. But now he was growing anxious. Tessa seemed no closer to him, no nearer than before. He saw their chances beginning to slip away and the weight of an uncertain world bearing down.

He exhaled in frustration. “Let’s talk about something else. I need your help. Tiger’s little sister, Persia, has red spot. She needs pleneten. I promised Tiger I would see if I could get her some.”

She looked down to where their hands were joined, and then up again. “I get to see you again tomorrow night if I can find some. I guess that’s reason enough to try.”

“Tessa…”

“No, don’t say anything else, Hawk. Words only get in the way. Just put your arms around me for a while. Just be with me.”

They held each other wordlessly, neither of them speaking, the darkness around deepening with the closing in of night. Hawk listened to the blanketing silence, picking out the faint sounds of small creatures scurrying in the debris and of voices drifting out from behind the walls of the compound. He could feel Tessa’s heart beating; he could hear her soft breathing. Now and then she would shift against him, seeking a different closeness. Now and again she would kiss him, and he would kiss her back. He thought of how much he wanted her with him, wanted her to come away and live in the underground. He didn’t care about her parents. She belonged with him. They were meant to be together. He tried to communicate this to her simply by thinking it. He tried to make her feel it through the sheer intensity of his determination.

And for the little while that Tessa had asked him for, everything else faded away. Time stretched and slowed and finally stopped entirely.

But then she whispered, “I have to go.”

She released him abruptly, as if deciding all at once that they had transgressed. The absence of her warmth left him instantly chilled. He stood up with her, trying not to show the disappointment he was feeling.

“It hasn’t been that long,” he protested.

“Longer than you think.” She hugged herself, watching his face. “But never long enough, is it?”

“Tomorrow night?”

She nodded. “Tomorrow night.”

“Do the best you can for Persia. I know it’s asking a lot.”

“To help a little girl?” She shook her head. “Not so much.”

He hesitated. “Listen, there’s one more thing. There might be something new on the streets. The Weatherman found a nest of dead Croaks down by the waterfront, by the cranes. He doesn’t know what did it. You haven’t heard anything about this, have you?”

She shook her head, her short black hair rippling. “No, nothing. The compound sends foragers out almost every day. No one has reported anything unusual.”

“They might not tell you. They don’t always tell kids everything.”

“Daddy does.”

Hawk nodded, not all that convinced that her confidence in her father was well placed. Adults protected their children in strange ways. He took her hands in his own and held them. “Just be careful if you have to go out. Better yet, why don’t you stay inside for a while until I know something more.”

She smiled, quick and ironic. “Until you can go out and take a look around? Maybe you should worry a little more about yourself. I shouldn’t have to do all the worrying for you.”

They stood close together in the darkness, not speaking, looking at each other with an intensity that was electric. Hawk was the first to break the silence. “I don’t want to let you go.”

For a long moment, she didn’t reply. Then she tightened her fingers about his and said, “One day, you won’t have to.”

She said it quietly and without force, but with a calm insistence that suggested it was inevitable. “I know I belong with you. I know that. I will find a way. But you have to be patient. You have to trust me.”

“I do trust you. I love you.” He bent forward to kiss her so that he wouldn’t say anything more, so that he would leave it at that.

She kissed him back. “You better go,” she whispered, pressing the words against his lips.

Then she slipped through the doorway leading back into the underground and was gone. He waited until he heard the
snick
of the heavy lock, and then waited some more because he ached so much he could not make himself move. He waited a long time.

HAWK WALKED BACK
through the city with Cheney at his side, the sky roofed by heavy banks of clouds that left everything shrouded in gloom. The buildings clustered silent and empty about him, hollow monoliths, mute witnesses to the ruin they had survived. There were no lights anywhere. Once, this entire city would have been lit, with every window bright and welcoming. Panther had told him so; he had seen it near the end in San Francisco. Owl had read the Ghosts stories in which kids walked streets made bright with lights from lamps. She had read them stories of how the moon shone in a silver orb out of a sky thick with stars glimmering in a thousand pinpricks against the black.

None of them had ever seen it, but they believed it had been like that. Hawk believed it would be like that again.

He worked his way through the piles of debris, around derelict cars and cracked pieces of concrete and steel, and past doorways too dark to see into and too dangerous to pass close by. The city was one huge trap, its jaws waiting to close on the unwary. It was a place of predators and prey. Their shadows moved all around him, some in the alleyways, some in the interiors of the buildings. They were always there, the remnants of the old world, the refuse left over from the destruction and the madness. He felt a certain sympathy for the creatures that prowled the night, hunting and being hunted. They hadn’t wanted this any more than he had. They, too, were victims of humankind’s reckless behavior and poor judgment.

He thought of Tessa and tried to figure out what else he could do to persuade her to come to live with him. But her attachment to her parents was so strong that he couldn’t see any way around it. He resented it, but he understood it, too. He knew that her feelings for them must be as strong as his own were for her. But things could not continue like this. Sooner or later, something would happen to change them. He knew it instinctively. What worried him was that when it did, Tessa would be standing in the way.

He would talk to her about it again tomorrow night. He would talk to her about it every night until she changed her mind.

When he reached the underground, he paused to take a careful look around, making sure that nothing was tracking him. Satisfied, he went into the building that led down to their home. He went quickly now, Cheney at his side, feeling suddenly tired and ready to sleep. The heavy door was barred and locked, and he gave the requisite series of taps to alert Owl of his presence.

But it was not Owl who opened the door. It was Candle. She stood just inside as he entered, small and waif-like in her nightdress, red hair tousled. Hawk waited for Cheney as he padded over to his accustomed sleeping spot, and then closed and locked the door behind them. When he glanced back at Candle, he saw for the first time how big and scared her eyes were.

He knelt in front of her right away. “What is it?”

“A dream,” she whispered. “Owl went to bed, and I stayed up to wait for you and I had a dream. I saw something. It was big and scary.”

“What was it, Candle?” he asked. He put his hands on her thin shoulders and found that she was shaking. He drew her close to him at once, hugging her. “Tell me.”

He could no longer see her face, pressed close to him as she was, but he could feel the shake of her head against his shoulder. “I couldn’t be sure. But it’s coming here, and if it finds us, it will hurt us.” She paused, her breath catching in her throat. “It will kill us.”

A vision, Hawk thought without saying so to the little girl. And Candle’s visions were never wrong. He ran his hand along her silky hair, then down her thin back. She was still shaking.

“We have to leave right away,” she whispered. “Right now.”

“Shhhh,” he soothed, tightening his arms to steady her. “That’s enough for tonight, little one.”