Armageddon's Children (3 page)

He hoped that after his business here was finished and it was time to sleep again, the dreams might let him be for at least one night.

Houses began to appear in the distance, dark boxes against the flat landscape. There were no lights, no fires or candles, no signs of life. But there would be life, he knew. There was life everywhere in towns this size. Just not the sort you wanted to encounter.

He eased the AV down the debris-littered highway toward the town, past broken signs and buildings with sagging roofs and collapsed walls. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement.
Feeders.
Where there were feeders, there were other things, too. He scanned the warning gauges on the Lightning and kept driving.

He passed a small green sign off to one side of the road, its lettering faded and worn:

WELCOME TO

Hopewell, Illinois

Population 25,501

Twenty-five thousand, five hundred and one,
he repeated silently. He shook his head. Once, maybe. A hundred years ago. Several lifetimes in the past, when the world was still in one piece.

He drove on toward his destination and tried not to think further of what was lost and forever gone.

H
AWK WALKED POINT
as the Ghosts emerged from their underground lair beneath what had once been Pioneer Square and set out on foot for midtown Seattle. It was an hour before midday, when trade negotiations and exchanges usually took place, but he liked to give himself a little extra time to cushion against the possibility of encounters with Freaks. Usually you didn’t see much of them when it was daylight, but you never knew. It didn’t pay to take chances. As leader, it was his responsibility to keep the others safe.

The city was quiet, the debris-littered streets empty and still. Storefronts and apartments stood deserted and hollow, their glass windows broken out and doors barred or sagging. The rusted hulks of cars and trucks sat where their owners had abandoned them decades ago, a few still in one piece, but most long since cannibalized and reduced to metal shells. He wondered, looking at them, what the city had been like when vehicles had tires and ran in a steady, even flow of traffic from one street to the next. He wondered, as he always did, what the city must have been like when it was filled with people and life. Nobody lived in the city now outside the walls of the compounds. Not unless you counted the Freaks and the street children, and no one did.

Hawk stopped the others at the cross streets that marked the northern boundary of Pioneer Square and looked to Candle for reassurance. Her clear blue eyes blinked at him, and she nodded. It was safe to continue. She was only ten years old, but she could see things no one else could. More than once, her visions had saved their lives. He didn’t know how she did it, but he knew the Ghosts were lucky to have her. He had named her well: she was their light against the dark.

He glanced momentarily at the others, a ragtag bunch dressed in jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers. He had named them all. He had tossed away their old names and supplied them with new ones. Their names reflected their character and temperament. They were starting over in life, he had told them. None of them should have to carry the past into the future. They were the Ghosts, haunting the ruins of the civilization their parents had destroyed. One day, when they ceased to be street kids and outcasts and could live somewhere else, he would name them something better.

Candle smiled as their eyes met, that brilliant, dazzling smile that brightened everything around her. He had a sudden sense that she could tell what he was thinking, and he looked quickly away.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They set off down First Avenue, working their way past the derelict cars and heaps of trash, heading north toward the center of the city. He knew it was First Avenue because there were still signs fastened to a few of the buildings eye-level with the ornate streetlights. The signs still worked, even if the lights didn’t. Hawk had never seen working streetlights; none of them had. Panther claimed there were lights in San Francisco, but Hawk was sure he was making it up. The power plants that provided electricity hadn’t operated since before he was born, and he was the oldest among them except for Owl. Electricity was a luxury that few could manage outside the compounds, where solar-powered generators were plentiful. Mostly, they got by with candles and fires and glow sticks.

They stayed in the center of the street as they walked, keeping clear of the dark openings of the buildings on either side, falling into the Wing-T formation that Hawk favored. Hawk was at point, Panther and Bear on the wings, and the girls, Candle and River, in the center carrying the goods in tightly bound sacks. Owl had read about the Wing-T in one of her books and told Hawk how it worked. Hawk could read, but not particularly well. None of them could, the little ones in particular. Owl was a good reader. She had learned in the compound before she left to join them. She tried to instruct them, but mostly they wanted her to read to them instead. Their patience was limited, and their duties as members of the Ghosts took up most of their time. Reading wasn’t necessary for staying alive, they would argue.

But, of course, it was. Even Hawk knew that much.

Overhead, the sky began to fill with roiling clouds that darkened steadily as the Ghosts moved out of Pioneer Square and up toward the Hammering Man. Soon rain was falling in a soft, steady mist, turning the concrete of the streets and buildings a glistening slate gray. The rain felt clean and refreshing to Hawk, who lifted his angular face to its cool wash. Sometimes he wished he could go swimming again, as he had when he was a little boy living in Oregon. But you couldn’t trust the water anymore. You couldn’t be sure what was in it, and if the wrong thing got into your body, you would die. At least they had the rain, which was more than most of the world could say.

Not that he had seen much of that world. At eighteen, he had lived in exactly two places—in Oregon until he was five and in Seattle since then. But the Ghosts had a radio to listen to, and sometimes it told them things. Less so these days, as the stations dropped away, one by one. Overrun by the armies of the once-men, he assumed.

Once-men.
Madmen.

Sometimes they learned things from other street kids. A new kid would show up, wandering in from some other part of the country to link up with one of the tribes and provide a fresh piece of news. But wherever they came from, their stories were pretty much alike. Everyone was in the same boat, trying to survive. The same dangers threatened everyone, and all you could do was decide how you wanted to live: either inside the compounds like a caged animal or out on the streets like prey.

Or, in the case of the Ghosts, you lived underground and tried to stay out of the way.

It was Owl who knew the history behind the underground city. She had read about it in a book. A long time ago, the old Seattle had burned and the people had buried her and built a new city right on top. The old city had been ignored until parts of it were excavated for underground tours. In the wake of the Great Wars and the destruction of the new city, it had all been forgotten again.

But Hawk had rediscovered it, and now it belonged to the Ghosts. Well, mostly. There were other things down there, too, though not other street kids because other street kids respected your territory. Freaks of various sorts. Lizards, Moles, and Spiders mostly—not the dangerous kind, though he guessed they could all be considered dangerous. But these kinds of Freaks ignored them, stayed away from their part of the underground, and even traded with them now and then. These kinds of Freaks were slow-witted and shy. They could be bad and sometimes scary, but you could live with them.

The Croaks were the ones you had to be careful of. They were the ones who would hurt you.

Something metal clanged sharply in the distance, and the Ghosts froze as one. Long minutes passed as the echo died into silence. Hawk glanced at his wingmen, Panther and Bear, the former sleek and sinewy with skin as black as damp ashes, the latter huge and shambling and as pale as snow. They were the strong ones, the ones he relied upon to protect the others, the fighters. They carried the prods, the solar-charged staffs that could shock even a Lizard unconscious with just a touch.

Panther met Hawk’s gaze, his fine features expressionless. He made a sweeping motion with his arm, taking in the surrounding buildings, and shook his head. Nothing from where he stood. Bear had a similar response. Hawk waited a few minutes more, then started them forward again.

Two blocks short of the Hammering Man, at the intersection of First and Seneca, movement to his left stopped Hawk in his tracks. A huge Lizard staggered out from the dark maw of a parking garage, its head thrown back. It moaned as it advanced up the street toward them, its approach erratic and unfocused. Blood soaked through dozens of rents in the thick, plated skin. As it drew closer, Hawk could see that its eyes had been gouged out.

It looked like it had been through a meat grinder.

Lizards, Moles, and Spiders were mutants, humans whose outer appearance had been changed by prolonged or excessive exposure to radiation and chemicals. Moles lived deep underground, and the changes wrought were mostly in their bone structures. Spiders lived in the buildings, small and quick, with squat bodies and long limbs. Only the Lizards lived out in the open, their skin turned scaly, their features blunted or erased entirely. Lizards were very strong and dangerous; Hawk couldn’t think of anything that could do this to a Lizard.

Panther moved over to stand next to him. “So what are we doing? Waiting for that thing to get close enough to hug us? Let’s blow like the wind, Bird-Man.”

Hawk hated being called Bird-Man, but Panther wouldn’t let up. Defiance was too deeply ingrained in his nature.

“Leave it!” Panther snapped when he didn’t respond quickly enough. “Let’s go!”

“We can’t leave it like this. It’s in a lot of pain. It’s dying.”

“Ain’t our problem.”

Hawk looked at him.

“It’s a Freak, man!” Panther hissed.

Bear and the others had closed ranks about them. Their faces were damp, and their hair glistened with droplets of water. Their breath clouded in the cool, hazy air. Rain fell in a misty shroud that obscured the city and left it shimmering like a dream. No one said anything.

“Wait here,” he told them finally.

“Shhh, man!” Panther groaned.

Hawk left them grouped together in the center of the street and walked toward the stricken Lizard. It was a big one, well over six feet and heavily muscled. Hawk was slender and not very tall, and the Lizard dwarfed him. Normally, a Lizard would not intentionally hurt you, but this one was so maddened with pain that it might not realize what it was doing until it was too late. He would have to be quick.

He reached into his pocket and extracted the viper-prick. Tearing off the packaging, he eased up to where the Lizard lurched and shuffled, head turning blindly from side to side as it groped its way forward. Up close like this, Hawk could see the full extent of the damage that had been done to it, and he wondered how it could still even walk.

There was no hesitation as he ducked under one huge arm and plunged the viper-needle into its neck. The Lizard reared back in shock, stiffened momentarily, then collapsed in a heap, unmoving. Hawk waited, then nudged it with his toe. There was no response. He looked down at it a moment more, then turned and walked back to the others.

“You just wasted a valuable store on a Freak!” Panther snapped. His tone said it all.

“That isn’t so,” River said quietly. “Every living creature deserves our help when we can give it, especially when it is in pain. Hawk did what needed doing, that’s all.”

She was a small dark-haired twelve-year-old with big eyes and a bigger heart. She had come to them on a skiff down the Duwamish, the sole survivor of a plague that had killed everyone else aboard. Fierce little Sparrow had found her foraging for food down by the piers and brought her home to nest. At first, Hawk hadn’t wanted to let her stay. She seemed weak and indecisive, easy prey for the more dangerous of the Freaks. But he quickly discovered that what he had taken for weakness and indecisiveness was measured consideration and complex thought. River did not act or speak in haste. The pace of her life was slow and careful.
She’s like a deep river, filled with secrets,
Owl had told him, and he had named her accordingly.

Panther was not impressed. “Nice words, but they don’t mean spit. We don’t live in the kind of world you keep talking about, River. Most of those creatures you want to help just want to see us dead! They’re nothing but frickin’ animals!”

Bear leaned in, his blunt, pale face dripping rain. “I don’t think we should stand out here like this.”

Hawk nodded and motioned them ahead once more. They spread out in the Wing-T without being told, disciplined enough to know what to do. Panther was still muttering to himself, but Hawk paid no attention, his mind on the dead Lizard. If there was something in the city that could take on and nearly kill a Lizard that size, then they needed to be extra careful. Up until now, there hadn’t been anything that dangerous to contend with, not counting Croaks. He wondered suddenly if maybe a pack of them had done this, but quickly dismissed the idea. Croaks didn’t inflict that kind of damage. No, this was something else—something that had either crawled up out of the deeper parts of the underground or come into the city from another place.