Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (39 page)

Althea smiled at the fat man. “Ornry likes you ‘cause you give life to the town.” She worked her fingernails through the dog’s fur, making his day.

“Bah.” He slurped the meat sauce from his fingers.

“It’s true.” She gave him an earnest look. “You send water to the fields and make food grow. That is life.”

“Fancy way puttin’ it. I just water the damn garden.” He grumbled, searching for his drink. “G’won now, git on outta here. Place is startin’ ta stink of kid.”

Seeing the water man grimace as he shifted to grab the cup of water, she stood and approached him. Ornry convulsed on the floor, trying to stay close enough to receive skritches while lying on his back.

“Are you hurt?” She weaved through his effort to not look at her.

“Bah. Jes’ me old leg wound, acts up now and then.” He scooted the chair back, rotating away.

Ornry whined.

She stooped to rub his belly again. “It must hurt a lot if you never walk.”

He glanced back at her with an imperious lifted eyebrow. “What makes ya think I don’ walk?”

She blinked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “’Cause you’re so big.”

The innocence in her reply left him unable to be angry at the insult. He babbled for a moment before his brain assembled a line of words to push out of his mouth. “This job makes me sit all day long. It be important. All them wheels and valves don’t turn themselves. Gotta send just ‘nuff water here and there, not too much… not too little.” He bit a taco, murmuring while he chewed. “Check filters, change carbon, maintain pressure.”

Ornry whimpered as she crawled over to the man and knelt on the frigid metal, peeling the leg of his pants up. His hands slammed into the knobs, making little needles in their round windows shake. Sweat broke out on his face.

“Don’t touch it.” He gasped. “Damn it all, go away! I don’t need no children in here gummin’ up the works. Yer gonna touch somethin’ and it’s gonna break.” The pain in his voice made her determined to help. “Take me a week jes’ ta figger out what you broked.”

When he reached down to shoo her hands from his leg, she grabbed his oily fingers and concentrated. As she told his mind to stop accepting pain, a look of dumbfounded elation came over him and his continued grumbles about how annoying children were came to a woozy halt. She got the sense it had been quite a long time since he had been without it. Working the cloth up and away from the fester to which it adhered, Althea discovered the source of the other unpleasant smell―the leg was rotting.

She re-swallowed her lunch, and sat back with an arm across her face, looking up at a man lost in euphoria. Ornry protested the intensified stench, rolling away and putting a paw over his nose. Once acclimated to the smell, she touched the hot, sticky shin and focused on the forming shapes of his tainted essence. For minutes, she fought with the corruption, feeling him shudder and gasp. There was much to be corrected, poison in his blood and rot in his leg.

Ample fuel for her work lingered in his gut. At her urging, his body consumed stored fat reserves for energy to rebuild the muscles. Warm putrescent jelly slid through her fingers and down his leg, expelled by her effort. When the swelling receded enough, she wrenched his boot off and tossed it to the side. The smell unleashed caused her to dry heave twice. She gritted her teeth and commanded his body to rebuild pathways so the blood-shape could reach into his blackened toes. Over the next few minutes, the rot receded. The Water Man slumped in his chair, so lost in the absence of his perpetual agony he scarcely noticed what she did.

Ornry ran from the reeking boot; a moment later, his nose peered out from under a shelf of boxes.

A jagged shard remained within the shifting red presence. She found a bit of metal stuck in his leg a half inch below the knee, a fragment of an old spearhead lurking under the skin. It lodged in the bone and she could not move it, either with psionics or her fingertips.

“Water Man?” She opened her eyes.

He had swooned into the valves and knobs, lost in the throes of relief. Her voice nudged him and he let her guide his fingers onto the strip of aluminum at the center of a glistening red crater.

She patted his hand. “You are stronger than me. Can you pull it out?”

He picked at it, wiggled it, and tugged. Half aware of what it was, he managed to get it to move a little. “Pliers.” He pointed at a shelf.

“What?”

“Get the pliers.” He gasped, waving a swollen hand in the direction of a bucket of strange things.

She crawled to it, holding up a screwdriver. “This?”

“No. Pliers, ya little clown.”

Dropping it, she grabbed a wrench.

“No, that’s a wrench. Two thingees to the left. No, that’s a damn hammer, ya lil’ fool.”

Her hand moved from item to item at random until he yelled, “That’s it!”

Althea scurried to his side and handed him the tool. The water man stuck one end into his leg and clamped it around the shard. He grunted and twisted it, rocking the pliers back and forth a few times before the shard pulled free with a faint squish. Thick, dark blood oozed out of the hole; she put her hand over it as fast as she could react. He let the pliers clatter to the ground, looking away from the sight of her arms soaked in his blood. She used the rest of his drink to wipe the leg clean. The poison was out of him, the rot gone from his leg, and he smiled.

Ornry came back, tail wagging, and rested his chin on the water man’s knee. She gathered the remnants of the sick and took it outside to bury. When she returned, he was flexing his toes, aghast at the sight.

“How d’ya do that?”

The effort left her fatigue visible, but she smiled nonetheless. “I see life inside people. I know where the sick is hiding and kick it out.” She leaned against the desk. “Why didn’t you go see Doctor Ruiz?”

“Bah, doctors. He’d just give me an aspirin.”

Althea blinked. “It was in your leg, not your ass.”

The water man stared at her. When he realized she was serious, he bellowed with laughter, pulling her face-first into the undulating sea of flesh that was his chest. Patting her on the back twice, he let her drop to her feet. “I haven’t had a laugh like that in a long time.”

She bit her lower lip and shrugged at the dog.

“I knew Ornry liked ya for a reason.” He patted the dog. “What kinda dog did you say you had?”

“A really big one. Nice, but kinda dumb.” She grinned.

“Mmm. Ornry here’s smart as a… um…” He searched the room for a metaphor. “Aw hell, he’s real smart.”

The dog nosed at the unworn boot, whimpering and snorting.

“Yah, should prob’ly clean tha damn thing.” He picked it up, cringing away from the odor. “Worse’n I thought.”

“Small hurts left to rot are as bad as big ones.”

“Yeah…” He gazed at the innocence in her eyes. “Spose’n yer right about that.”

ridescent wisps of auburn fire shimmered through gaps in the dying wreckage of old Querq. Althea leaned on the broom and squinted at the sight. Tall buildings had always made her wonder what kind of mystics could raise such things from the ground. The waning light brought with it the anticipation of Karina returning home. Smiling, she resumed her sweeping trek across the front porch, shooing the dirt out of the realm of man and back to the Earth.

She felt it in the boards first, a vibration that made the tiny particles of sand haze up into a blur above the brown-painted wood. Then came the sound, a heavy thrumming rumble not of this world. At last, she saw it. A behemoth of metal and chrome came around the corner at the far end of the street. A metal beast like the one the slave-catcher had, only larger. The front glowed with unnatural light, and a strip of the same ran above a window she could not see through.

The abandoned broom hit the porch with a sharp
clack
as she fell over herself in search of the safety of the house. Without conscious thought, she ran to the kitchen and crawled under the sink, shaking with her head tucked between her knees. The evil sound ebbed to nothing, but she remained breathless. They would be on foot now, looking for her. She would not be taken; she would not make a sound. Not even the uncomfortable clump of skirt beneath her backside would make her move to ease it.

Perhaps an hour passed in dread silence until creaks in the floor hinted at the approach of a stealthy kidnapper. Althea closed her eyes lest their light give her away. Breaths, warm down her leg, felt thunderous and had to stop. The worst part about having a home was how it changed her world. Being kidnapped used to be just another day; now it was dread incarnate. She remembered the gas station, the dog, and called out with her mind for Father.

The approaching weight ceased. Althea glanced at the gap between the cabinet doors, at a shape blocking the light, and braced for the worst.

“I thought I’d find you here.” Karina’s voice came from just outside the door. “You dropped the broom.”

Shifting her weight off the tangle of leather, Althea pushed with trembling fingers at the panel of wood. Light split the darkness in which she cowered, tinged with the green glow of Karina’s dress. Althea tried to force the fear out of her face as her sister pulled the door the rest of the way open.

“Guess I’m still feral.” A hesitant smile broke through her terror for an instant.

Karina sat on the floor, coaxing her from the cabinet to an embrace, staying with her and patting her on the back until the trembles ceased. “It’s okay, Thea.”

When calm arrived, she looked up. “There was a monster in the road.”

Karina smiled and ran a hand through Althea’s hair. “It is a truck.”

“A driving machine?”

“Yes. Outsiders have come to trade. They aren’t looking for you. They bring supplies.”

“Karina? Althea?” Father entered the front room with his rifle poised, his voice touched by worry.

“In here,” Karina shouted as they stood and went to him, holding hands.

The rifle slung over his shoulder, he caught them both in an embrace. “Is everything all right? I had this feeling something was very wrong.”

“We are fine.” Karina smiled. “The truck spooked her.”

“I’m sorry.” Althea looked down. “I was so scared, I called for you.”

Father muttered and glanced around, confusion obvious in his eyes. He dismissed his unease at seeing them safe. “It’s just Harold and his boys come to trade. Got some new blood with him… Black girl, I think.”

Althea looked back and forth between them.

“Did they bring what the council wanted?” Karina seemed happy.

“Yeah.” Father slung his rifle over his shoulder. “I need to get back out there. You girls are welcome to come along.”

Althea leaned towards the kitchen.

Karina smiled at Father. “She’s still a little scared; I’ll stay with her.”

“Can I finish the porch after they leave?” Althea clung to her sister.

“They’ll probably spend the night, maybe a day or two, but it’s okay.” Karina grinned. “I don’t think Dad will notice.”

Half an hour later, Althea was elbow deep in tortilla dough, making it herself this time with Karina hovering nearby. The pleasant normality of cooking dinner exorcised her fears. She learned faster than Karina expected; this, after all, involved hands making a mess and had nothing whatsoever to do with forks. Perhaps it made sense.