Light Shaper (43 page)

“That is very reassuring.”

Barrow smiled. “I just think it’s the best way. Give me a few minutes to go in there, check everything out. Keep your gun at the ready.”

Rigel looked at Barrow with a stubborn expression, but Barrow held his gaze until Rigel looked down.

“Fine. But don’t take too long, or I will die anyway from this awful heat.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He turned to go, but Rigel grabbed his shoulder.

“Be careful,” Rigel said, and gave him a quick kiss.

“I will be. Don’t worry.”

Barrow walked past the perimeter fence quickly without looking back. He held the gun at the ready, every sense on high alert. His steps made no sound over the dust-covered concrete that paved the inner courtyard of the compound, flanked by buildings on three sides.

Barrow hurried over to the nearest building, all the while feeling as if he had a giant bull’s-eye painted on the back of his head. No one shot him, though, and he got to cover behind a wall still in one piece. Gun held low, he walked around the building and off to the far side of the compound that was hidden from view by the other structures.

There he saw the encampment.

It was as he had feared. There were three large vans there, along with four tents and crates upon crates of equipment that had been carefully organized around the vehicles. Barrow saw machine guns mounted on the tops of all three cars, currently unmanned but deadly looking nonetheless. In the middle of the camp there was a space that had been cleared out for cooking, as if the people who had set it up had been here for more than a day. There was even a clothesline with a couple of shirts strung out, set to dry.

Barrow had been right; it was a trap. And now he had to get out of there as fast as he could before anyone saw him. They could be anywhere. Hidden inside the buildings, maybe inside the tents or in the back of the vans, guns pointed at him right then. Had they gotten to Rigel already? Had they seen the two of them arrive and lain low so their quarry would approach close enough that there would be no way out?

There was a strong gust of wind, and something moved inside one of the tents. Somebody was in there, then. Barrow aimed his gun, selecting the target carefully before it could get out of the tent and shoot him.

Then a creaking noise sounded suddenly from behind him. It was the sound of a metal door swinging open.

Barrow spun around instantly, but something was already coming out of the door.

They had gotten him by surprise in spite of everything.

Barrow brought the gun to bear on the shape too slowly. He fired anyway, but even as he did it he knew it was too late.

RIGEL HEARD
the gunshot ring out like an explosion through the air, and he jumped, banging his shoulder against the wall, his finger tightening compulsively against the trigger of his weapon.

No.

He rushed out of the tiny enclosure where he had been hiding and looked frantically around, scanning the entire place without seeing anything that gave away what had happened. He took a step in the direction of the compound and then stopped, remembering Steve’s words. He had told him to get out if there was danger, to go back to the car and escape if he could.

Rigel grabbed his gun as tightly as he could without hurting himself and took another step forward. No way was he going to leave Steve in there alone.

He crossed the paved courtyard with his heart hammering, every beat booming in his ears. He knew the approximate direction Steve had gone, and he followed in his footsteps, trying to look everywhere at once in case there was a sniper on a roof or something. Who had fired the shot? Had it been Steve, or had somebody gotten to him first?

Rigel managed to get to cover without incident and went around the back of the building where he had last seen Steve. There was a door in there, rusty and heavily scratched. Rigel tried it, but it was shut tight and did not budge. Rigel didn’t have the strength to pull on it any harder, and so he abandoned it, walking around the corner and into what looked like an encampment of some sort.

He walked among the tents and vehicles, breathing quickly, trying to keep the gun at the ready and wishing he knew how to shoot. He doubted he would be able to get anyone at a distance. If somebody came out now, it would not be like Jared, who had been looking the other way, less than two steps away at point-blank range. Rigel was almost sure he would miss, and if they had gotten Steve, then what chance did he have?

He moved as quickly as he could manage among the tents, inspecting the inside of all three vans. He felt very scared, but the greater part of his fear was focused on Steve. If something had happened to him…. But no. He had to focus. Somebody had fired the gun, and Rigel had to find that person. The place wasn’t that big, so they had to be around somewhere. Perhaps in one of the buildings, since the encampment was completely empty.

Rigel walked all the way down the eastward side of the first building without finding a single door that would open. The buildings were all linked, so getting into one would allow Rigel access to the entire place, hopefully. He walked around looking for a broken window or a door that stood ajar, but all the walls were in a remarkable state of conservation, and there were no easy ways in that he could see.

Rigel walked over to the second building, the one that stood almost at the lip of the mesa. This area had been the most heavily damaged, although the rubble that lay strewn around on the rock appeared to have belonged to a separate structure from the building itself. Large broken slabs of concrete lay haphazardly on the ground along with twisted and corroded bits of metal that looked very ancient. There was a large, neat burn mark on one of the walls of the building that ran from side to side in a straight line. Dust lay thick over everything, and Rigel had to pick his way carefully to avoid tripping on the debris. He managed to reach the wall on the side that was closest to the edge of the mesa, a mere couple of steps from a deadly drop straight down, now that the fence that had bordered the edge was nothing but scrap. Rigel stepped extra carefully over that part since he had spotted an open door on that side, where one of the larger chunks of concrete had fallen against it. He edged closer, gun in one hand and the other gripping whatever he could to ensure that he did not lose his balance.

He made it right up to the door before he saw the severed leg.

It was so unexpected that at first Rigel did not know what he was looking at. When he realized that there was a neatly cut leg lying in a pool of rust-colored blood right outside the door, he let out a yell and scrabbled backward out of instinct, stumbled awkwardly the way he had come, and tripped over a rock that gave way under his foot.

He fell down. His butt and legs hit rock, but the rest of him hit only air.

Rigel panicked, letting go of his gun and throwing his arms to either side of him to grab on to something, anything at all. His right hand found a grip, and he held on for dear life. A stab of pain shot up his wrist at the effort, but he did not care. He pulled himself forward slowly, trembling all over. When he was securely on solid ground, he looked back.

He had almost fallen clear over the edge of the mesa. If he had not found something to hold onto, his own weight would have sent him tumbling backward to his death. And all because of….

The leg. Rigel looked in the direction where he knew it lay, and a shiver of dread passed over him. He stood up shakily and examined it from afar, relieved that it was obviously not Steve’s leg. It was wearing a different kind of fabric, and the boot was different. It looked like it had been cut off with an impossibly sharp knife. As Rigel approached again slowly, he saw that there was a burn mark on the ground next to the leg in another perfect straight line. It looked like something a laser would have made.

Rigel made himself get closer. He edged around the awful amputated thing, and only when he had his hand pressed against the metal door did Rigel realize the leg was remarkably well-preserved, with no signs of having been there under the sun for very long.

Whatever had done that, it couldn’t have been that long ago.

Going through that door was one of the hardest things Rigel had ever done. He did not want to go in there; he feared what he would find, and he was terrified of Steve being inside the place and of the unseen dangers that might be waiting for him as well. But he had to do it. He gathered up his courage and gave the door a hard shove, finding resistance of some sort. He pushed again, throwing his entire weight at the door, and the resistance squished further in a horrible way. There was the sound of liquid spurting out, and Rigel almost lost his nerve. He had to get in, though. He threw himself at the door a third time, and this time something behind snapped, and the door jolted open wide enough for him to squeeze through. Rigel did not hesitate any more but went right in.

Plants.

That was the first thing Rigel noticed when he got inside, and the shock of seeing so many of them growing all around was enough to keep him staring for a few long moments. He took a couple of steps farther in, looking up at the ceiling where a large crack he had not seen before let in a bright beam of sunlight, straight through the otherwise gloomy, cool interior of the building. And growing all around the crack, green tendrils and leaves fanning out everywhere, were plants.

The air was full of dust, the many suspended particles outlining clearly the contours of the sunbeams streaming in. It smelled earthy in there, of growing things, and the temperature was so different from that outside that Rigel could not think of any explanation for it other than the air-conditioning still worked. Which was impossible, of course. Along with the fact that plants were growing in the middle of the desert, lush vegetation that shouldn’t be able to survive.

The plants looked like creepers of some sort, and apparently they had been growing long enough that their stems were as thick as slender tree trunks, burrowing through the rubble and covering the concrete with brown and green. It appeared the entire place was choked with the growth, but Rigel noticed that a small path had been hacked through the greenery very recently. It was littered with shredded leaves, and there were clear imprints of boots in two places.

People had been inside here not long ago, then. And the boot prints led right back to the door….

Rigel turned around and looked at what had been obstructing the door from the inside. It was clearly visible even in the shadows. The corpse was twisted, facedown, and the pool of blood around it was much larger than the one outside where the man’s leg had been. Rigel could not tear his eyes away. Something had killed this man, and it had not been Steve. Whatever it was, it was still inside this ancient tomb that Rigel desperately wished to get far away from.

A sudden small, furtive rustling in the leaves.

Rigel spun around instantly, his hand reaching for a gun that was no longer there. He opened his eyes as wide as he could, searching, searching.

There. Something was moving underneath the green cover. It came out partially and startled Rigel so badly that he cried out. The noise scared the creature, and it slithered away quickly, out of sight.

Rigel swallowed, but his throat felt paper-dry. At first he had thought the thing was a snake, but the long and sinuous body he had glimpsed had been hard and shiny, with many legs, as if belonging to a gigantic bug. Thankfully, the creature seemed to have been as scared of him as Rigel had been of it. And now Rigel knew that he did not want to stay in this awful building any longer than he had to.

He made his way along the path that cut straight through the greenery, not really running but almost doing so. This building appeared to be a single big empty space that had been taken over by the plants, and the path he followed was a long but straight line that led all the way across it without interruptions. Rigel had almost crossed it when he heard more rustling behind him. He lost his nerve and sprinted away as fast as he could, straight for the door that he could now see. He slammed against it, not caring if it opened out or in. He was lucky. It opened out, and it burst open under the impact. Rigel stumbled past it, quickly regained his footing, and slammed it shut behind him.

His shoulder hurt, but he barely even felt it. He was now inside the first building, the one outside of which he had last seen Steve. There weren’t any plants growing in here, but he saw….

Carnage.

He tried to cry out, but it caught in his throat. His hand gripped behind him convulsively, trying to find the handle of the door he had just shut. As bad as the other building had been, now Rigel wanted nothing more than to go back in there so he would not have to see. He shut his eyes tight and turned around, opening them only when he was sure he would be looking at the door. He almost left.

Instead he made himself turn around and called, “Steve?”

His voice was lost in the lifeless space of the new building. Rigel walked forward carefully, as quietly as he could manage, even though he knew just from looking at them that every single one of the people he could see was already dead.

They were all wearing the same uniform, the one the guy in the previous building had been wearing. They had cleared out the entire central space of the building, which had no divisions and no inner walls of any kind. It was just another rectangular empty space, two stories high and ringed on the upper floor by a walkway that reminded Rigel a lot of prison walkways, meant to give access to cells built into the walls and leaving a wide empty courtyard in the middle. Whatever the building’s function had been, it had long since been stripped of any ancient furniture or machinery it might have contained. The piles of broken electronics and various assorted weaponry Rigel could see were all new. The uniformed people had probably brought them in with them before… before something had killed them all.

“Steve, are you here?”

The floor was an unholy mixture of dirt and gore. There was blood on the walls. Light was coming in from outside, but some of the windows were spattered with blood, and the sunlight looked as if it shifted into the red, making everything look more menacing. A wide space near the center was dented as if something had exploded on it, the black burn mark on the floor devoid of the many bits and pieces of broken things that littered the place everywhere else. There were bullet holes all over, and there was a strong smell of sickly sweet corruption and death that hung about everything, making Rigel retch twice.