Slavemakers (17 page)

STILL AFRAID.

Or, rather:
Afraid again.

Jason and Chloe stood on the roof of the fort and watched the thief swarm rise into the still, damp evening air. But not in the usual flight of dominance, of power, the one they'd taken nearly every single evening since establishing the slave camp.

No, this was the behavior they'd first demonstrated only weeks ago, and three times since, tonight most of all. Evidence of disturbance. Disquiet. Fear.

Once again, something was scaring them. And worse tonight than ever before.

Even as he watched, Jason still had trouble believing—comprehending—it. Often enough over the years, he'd witnessed individual thieves in the last moments before their deaths. He'd seen them trapped in the thick unyielding webs of the button spiders—Africa's version of the
black widow—that infested the fort's shadowy nooks and rotted doorways. Snapped up by big, brown praying mantises, another insect that seemed to shrug off the thieves' venom. Held by a pouched rat that, in the madness of captivity or the agony of its last stage as a host, had made a sudden, suicidal grab with its agile claws.

In each case, the thief had died. In each case, Jason had thought it had known it was going to die, or at least had recognized the danger it was in. Even as the trapped wasps tried to escape, they showed nothing but determination and calculation and strength.

And then, at the last moment before falling, before the killing bite, a kind of acceptance. Watching, Jason had thought that was the moment they'd been abandoned by the hive mind. The mind cutting its losses, shifting its focus to the millions—billions?—of thieves with more useful information to impart.

But this was different. Again and again, the wasps' spinning cloud shredded and re-formed. The choirlike sound of their wings increased in volume and pitch, sometimes accompanied by a chattering sound Jason hadn't heard before. A sound of increased distress.

And as this all happened, the ridden and host slaves always seemed unmoored, cut off from their masters. Empty shells. No, empty packages of meat and bone, so vulnerable in their stillness that Jason thought he could kill all of them—or, at least, as many as he needed to—with only a single sharp machete.

And he knew where to find the machete, in a storeroom on the roof, not far from the ovens. Machetes and hoes and shovels and other farming tools that he and
Chloe and a few others had gathered during the first days of the slave camp's existence. When they realized how crucial it was to prove to the mind that they were worthy of being allowed to stay alive. And, so much more importantly, to remain human.

The lesson that Chloe had learned from her father: If you proved you had skills that would help keep the ones in power alive, they would do the same for you. That was why she'd begun organizing the terrified, shell-shocked, infinitely vulnerable human survivors not into a rebel force but a working community able to feed and clothe itself, and to serve its masters.

And Jason, an automaton, overcome with grief, had followed her lead. Proven his worth as a slave, having forfeited it forever as a human being.

*   *   *

STANDING NEARBY, THE
ridden slave that had accompanied him to the roof stood still. Looking at it, Jason was possessed by an almost unstoppable desire to retrieve the machete and wield it.

Two decades' worth of stifled rage, expunged in just a few moments.

Again Chloe read his thoughts. She put a hand on his arm, and said merely, “Jase, no.”

He knew. Everything they'd been planning would be destroyed if he allowed his rage to possess him. No matter how powerful his bloodlust—and it was almost overwhelming—he couldn't give in to it. Not now. Not today.

So he didn't. Somehow he didn't. Instead, he let his
analytic brain take over from his animal one. He found himself wondering for the first time how much effort the hive mind expended to control its slaves. And what kind of a threat would force it to abandon them.

He couldn't even guess. But he knew it must be something big. He even allowed himself to imagine it might be the assault force he'd dreamed of for so long.

But speculating about it made little sense. All that mattered was that the mind be distracted enough for long enough for him and Chloe to escape. To give them enough time to reach the vine, the vaccine—if it even still existed—and protect themselves at last from the thieves.

And if any slaves in human form, born, ridden, or willing, chose to pursue him . . . well, then he might finally get the chance to use that blade.

*   *   *

HE AND CHLOE
stood on the roof and watched the wasps rise into the high blue sky. A moment later, a few, then more and more, hundreds, thousands, split off from the cloud and began to stream southward. Flying fast, but not in any kind of formation, just a ragged swarm heading over Lamu Town and out of sight.

Something new once again. A new level of distress. Beside him, he saw Chloe reach a decision. She put her hand on his arm. “The next time this happens,” she said, barely above a whisper, “we'll go.”

Jason nodded and opened his mouth to say something. But before he could speak, Kenny and two other human slaves, two other betrayers, came around from behind the ovens. Before Jason could even move, the two had grabbed
Chloe, one on each arm, and were pulling her away toward the steps. The steps that led down to the cells.

Shouting, spitting with rage, she fought them, but they were so much stronger than she was. Jason knew what was going to come next: One of the two slaves let go of her, but only to club her on the back of the neck with a fist. Jason saw her eyes roll up, and she went as limp as death.

Finally, Jason moved. But he'd taken only two steps before Kenny stood there in front of him. Jason saw a glint of humor in his eyes, even of joy, as he said, “So much for running off, huh?”

Jason tried to shove him out of the way. But Kenny, not wasting time in argument, hit him with a straight right to the chest. The punch so hard that at first Jason thought his heart had stopped. Before he even realized what had happened, he was lying on the ground, flat on his back, looking up at the sky.

Failing again. That was the only thing clear in his clouded mind: Once again, he was failing someone he loved.

He was never sure how much of what he saw next was a dream, and how much a reality. But lying there, breathless, no strength in his limbs, he watched the whirlwind of thieves pause in flight, then come plunging down toward him.

In his half dream, he saw himself covered in them, a thousand thieves stinging him in unison. Imagining the agony he'd so long awaited, and wondering how long it would last.

But the wasps weren't coming for him. As he watched, he saw the swarm fracture into small groups, then into
individuals. They hurtled through open doorways, landed on the walls, and crawled into cracks in the crumbling mortar, sheltered under the fort's cornices and at the base of the walls.

In just a few seconds, every one of them had vanished from his sight. And so had all the slaves, save for Kenny.

Kenny was still there, standing beside the low coral wall that overlooked the channel. His arms were limp at his sides, and there was an expression of absolute amazement on his face.

Jason got to his knees, then, with the help of the wall, to his feet. He'd intended immediately to go after Chloe, but the expression on Kenny's face compelled him to follow his gaze.

And that's when Jason saw the sails in the middle of the channel, a whitish glimmer in the low-angled sunlight.

The sails. The ship.

Too far off for Jason to see anyone on board, to see any real detail. But he could see enough. It was like something out of the storybooks he'd read and dreamed over as a child: a wooden ship whose three tall masts were hung with canvas. A ship from the Age of Sail, battling an unhelpful wind, but still coming toward them.

Jason had scanned the channel nearly every day for twenty years to see a sight such as this. But now that his fantasies had become real, he realized it was all wrong. This was not the armada of his imagination. It was just one small vessel, sailing forward into a trap.

For the first time, Jason wished for a hive mind of his own, one that would allow him to project his thoughts to the captain, the crew. To tell them to turn around,
to ride the wind and the current out of the channel and back to the open sea.

To abandon all hope of rescue and save themselves.

In his mind, his feeble, individual human mind, Jason shouted the warning.

But the ship came on anyway, and he could only watch.

*   *   *

AND THEN NOT
even watch. As if waking from a dream himself, Kenny turned away from the sight, the apparition. For a moment it seemed like he'd forgotten Jason was there, but then he focused, and his wide-eyed gaze narrowed.

His hand grasped Jason's arm like a handcuff. “Come with me,” he said. “Now.”

Jason didn't move. “Where's Chloe?”

“Locked away safe.”

“You going to do that to me, too?”

Kenny shook his head. “Why bother? You're not going anyplace without her.”

Glancing again at the oncoming ship, visibly closer already, he yanked at Jason's arm, and said, “We need to get out of sight.”

A tone in his voice that Jason didn't recognize at first. Then he did. It was fear. Kenny was afraid.

“You come,” he said, “or I'll kill you right here and feed you to the oven.”

Fear could have deadly consequences. Jason followed him down the stairs.

Down on the main plaza, the slaves were heading to the sleeping quarters. There were no thieves in sight. Soon, the fort would seem deserted to any outside eyes . . .
but for the smoke from the ovens, which undoubtedly had already caught the attention of the ship's crew.

They knew that there were people here, which meant they would come ashore and walk directly into an ambush.

Jason was no seer, but he could see the future with perfect clarity.

*   *   *

AS HE WAS
herded into the sleeping chamber, he caught one more glimpse of the ship. It was much closer now though, in the last light, merely a brownish smear against the gray of the channel. Then the dusk fell and took it from his view.

AFTER ALL THOSE
years where nothing had ever changed, where the deadliest threats—disease, hunger, even death by thief—had grown stale through familiarity, Ross McKay had begun to feel bulletproof.

Not immortal. Not quite. At fifty-four, Ross could feel the years sliding past, steady, inexorable. He was also well aware that the belief—so widespread in the Last World—that you were being cheated if you didn't make it to eighty-five or ninety had vanished. Gone the way of most other arrogant human assumptions, leaving him grateful to have lived as long as he already had.

And still . . . and yet. Whatever had sent the rest of the crew on the
Trey Gilliard
's first voyage, Ross had volunteered largely to remind himself that the world contained marvels—and perils—beyond those that might kill you within walking distance of Refugia.

The expedition thus far had shown him a few. A very
few. The lions and other predators they'd encountered on their occasional explorations had been more a danger in theory than in reality. They'd been interested in these strange new visitors to their kingdoms but neither frightened nor especially threatening.

Plus, as humans had done for centuries, if not millennia, the
Trey Gilliard
's explorers had brought superior weaponry with them. Enough to make sure that any lion considering making a meal of them would instead have thrashed and bled in the dirt.

So perhaps Ross
had
felt immortal. Once. Until he'd seen what the world truly looked like. The still-tainted world with its empty places, its piles of bones, its wreckage.

For him, the issue was no longer about immortality. It was: Having seen what he'd seen, having understood the truth at last, how badly did he want to die?

*   *   *

THEY'D MOORED IN
the channel a few hundred yards off the ruins of Lamu Town the evening before, just as the sun was setting. The fort was seemingly deserted save for the thin thread of smoke still tracing upward in the last light.

What followed was a strange night, unlike any since the expedition had set off. Lots of quiet conversation, lots of questions with no answers, no small amount of fear. Some arguing that they should haul anchor and get out of there, but others determined to see what the empty fort actually contained.

Malcolm, his eyes a little wild in his gaunt face, put an end to the discussion. “At first light tomorrow, I'm
heading over there,” he said. “You want to come with me, that's fine, but I'll go alone if I have to.”

“So why are they all so quiet?” someone asked. “Why hasn't anyone come down to the beach and shouted and jumped around?”

No one, not even Malcolm, had an answer to that. Or, rather, anything other than the obvious answer: Whoever was there wouldn't be welcoming them but setting a trap.

Aboard the
Resolution
, someone else pointed out, Captain Cook found himself treated almost as a god by some islanders he encountered and murdered in the Pacific shallows by others.

It was a long night.

*   *   *

IN THE END,
five of them went: Shapiro, Malcolm, and the twins, Darby and Brett Callahan. And Ross. Five of them on the dew-slick deck, waiting to clamber down the ladder to the waiting dinghy.

Dylan Connell was staying behind, to helm the ship if it needed to depart in a hurry . . . even if that meant leaving behind those who were onshore. And Kait was staying put, too. Ross had expected her to raise a ruckus, but she'd accepted the decision without argument. She hadn't even attended the meeting in the darkened galley the night before.

Nearly the entire crew—only Kait was still missing—had assembled on deck in the milky morning light. Now they stood quietly, cold and glum as they watched the five volunteers gather.

All five of them armed, Ross with his Mossberg shotgun, Malcolm also with a shotgun, whose barrel he'd shortened, Shapiro with a .223 Bushmaster rifle, and—because the corrosive months at sea had left them short of firearms—the twins carrying knives.

Too much weaponry, or not enough? It was impossible to know.

Shapiro, following Ross's gaze and his train of thought, said, “Welcome us as we expect to be welcomed, or we'll kill you.”

Malcolm didn't seem to be listening. Instead, he was standing by the rail, looking over the calm blue-gray water at the rocky shore, the decrepit ruins of the old wharves, the looming stone fort, which looked as bleak and lifeless in the morning light as it had the evening before.

Even the fire that had called to them the day before had died down or been damped since they'd dropped anchor. Overnight, they'd seen its red glow gradually dim, and now, instead of a column of gray smoke, only the slightest shimmer, heat waves rising in the chill morning air, revealed that there had ever been a fire there at all.

“Where the hell are you all hiding?” Malcolm said under his breath.

And why,
Ross thought.

“And why?” Malcolm said.

*   *   *

BRETT CALLAHAN ROWED
them in, under a sky that turned from pink to the palest blue as the shore drew closer.
The first boat in years to make this transit, the dinghy startled schools of flying fish, which skipped and soared for dozens of yards on flat black-and-red wings ahead of the bow before disappearing under the ripples again.

Ross spotted some dark shapes moving beneath the boat. Leaning over to look more closely, he saw they were bonito, at least four of them, each three or more feet long, shining blue and silver in the early light.

And all the while, the shore, and the dark fort just inland, drew closer, and still there was no sign of life. No bird, no animal, no human. No thief.

In the bow, Malcolm was whistling a tuneless song through his teeth. But Ross saw that his eyes were as unblinking, as intent as a hunting falcon's, that his left hand was already wrapped around the stock of his snub-nosed shotgun, and the fingers of his right were always near the trigger.

*   *   *

THEY STEPPED ASHORE
on what had once been a stone-and-steel wharf but was now a skeletal ruin of rusty metal spikes and chunks of crumbled concrete. Straight ahead, past what had once been small cement-block stores or offices, the fort stood like a gigantic, silent monolith marking . . . what?

Looking at the massive coral walls, up close a strange orange-brown, Ross found himself marveling at the time and hard labor that had been put into building this one enormous structure. And how many others like it were there across the world? So much wasted energy!

“Let's go,” Malcolm said.

Ross, bringing his attention back, found he was having trouble catching his breath.

*   *   *

THEY WALKED UP
past the waterfront ruins and into what had once been an open courtyard at the base of the fort. Even now, the twisted-trunked old trees that had bracketed the fort's entrance still stood, as sturdy as the fort itself amid the rubble.

“There was a market here,” Malcolm said in a low voice. “People would sleep in the shade of those trees.”

Then he shook his head and led the way toward the steps leading up into the fort. There were about twenty steps, discolored and, in places, broken into fragments, but still navigable with care and at a deliberate pace.

Here, Malcolm stopped. “These lead to the central plaza,” he said. “I'll go first.”

Shapiro made a sound deep in her throat, and Ross understood why. This was nobody's concept of an ideal approach, these crumbling stairs up to a plaza they wouldn't be able to see until they neared—or even reached—the top.

When no one else spoke, however, Malcolm did. “I know,” he said. “They could roll a boulder on us and knock us down like bowling pins. But unless someone has a helicopter to drop us on the roof, there's no other choice.”

No one spoke. Nor did they speak when, a moment later, the wind—which had been blowing at their backs—shifted, carrying down the steps the stink of thief.

*   *   *

PICKING THEIR WAY
carefully around the sliding chunks of stone, they ascended, step by careful step. Above, a vulture, then more, rose above the fort's ramparts.

At the front, Malcolm alone seemed to know where to put his feet without even looking. His gaze was everywhere, seeming to see everything, and as they drew closer to the top, his expression grew even grimmer.

A step behind him, Shapiro looked . . . different than usual. There was a kind of joy in her. The scientist's joy in being on the verge of a fascinating new discovery. Or the fighter's joy at being at the onset of a battle.

Maybe those two things weren't so far apart.

Ross turned his head to glance at the twins. As always, those two narrow faces, with their nearly identical broad foreheads, deep-set eyes, and strong jaws, were expressionless. But they seemed nothing but resolute, determined, and the glint in Darby's eyes when she met his gaze showed something more: a reflection of Shapiro's joy.

After two decades in Refugia, she and her brother were finally in their element here, in the midst of the unknown.

Darby faced front again, leaving Ross all alone.

*   *   *

THEY WERE ABOUT
halfway up when the whirlwind rose before them.

For the past twenty years, the presence or absence of thieves had merely been data. Information to be noted,
recorded, but nothing more, and the data never showed great numbers.

The storm of wasps that rose around them was more than anyone in the party had seen since the end of the Last World. Thousands in twisting skeins, black and bloodred against the blue sky. Rising high in the air and pausing, hovering, all oriented to look down at the paltry group of humans clustered below them.

Looking up, squinting, Ross had one rational thought,
Where did they find enough hosts?

But then that portion of his brain—the coolly scientific part—was unexpectedly overwhelmed by another, more primitive one. Ross looked up at the thieves, but for a moment all he could see were the lemur bones they'd seen back on Madagascar. The countless skulls scattered across the blasted plain.

In a sudden, seething, overwhelming anger, he swung his shotgun up and pulled the trigger. He saw the pellets tear a hole in the cloud of hovering thieves, but in an instant the hole was filled, an unstoppable tide in flood.

And then, a tsunami, the wasps came sweeping down and were among them. A great onrush of wings, the bitter odor everywhere, smears of flickering movement everywhere in the air before their eyes like a migraine's aura, the onset of blindness.

Ross fired the second meaningless barrel, tore apart the sweeping wave, watched it re-form.

By the time he refocused on the steps above, the humans had appeared. Or were they human? He couldn't tell. All he saw before they were upon him were their
bodies, half-naked, scarred, and battered. But they moved so fast, like something out of a dream, like the savages in the adventure books he'd read as a child, when he'd dreamed of taking expeditions like this one.

Ross didn't even have the chance to pump new shells into his shotgun before the vanguard of the attacking force was upon him. But he knew he might not have done it, anyway.

He'd never killed a primate in his life.

*   *   *

IN HIS LAST
moments, Ross McKay saw—

He saw last-stage hosts, their contorted faces lacking any remnant of humanity. Others, nearly as feral, who had thieves riding the backs of their necks. And still others who seemed to be human. Fully human.

He saw Malcolm, as always quicker and more decisive than the rest of them, let loose with blasts from both barrels of his shotgun, cutting two of the attackers nearly in half.

He saw Shapiro, ten feet away, aim more carefully and pick off two, then three others around Malcolm—two with riders, one without. But he knew—and he could tell she did, too—that it was hopeless. More attackers were already pouring down the stairs toward them.

Ross saw the twins move past him to enter the fight. Too late, and overmatched even before they began.

Or maybe it had always been too late, and the weaponry didn't matter.

He saw, bizarrely, a human, a man, one of
them
, come
leaping down the steps toward them. The man was carrying a . . . panga, a machete.

Even then, even in these last horrendous seconds, Ross found himself wondering who this man was.

But, as so often happened in science, he never got an answer to his question. For at that instant, a body slammed into his, sending him over backward. He glimpsed a face just inches from his own. And, beside it, the face of the thief attached to the man's neck.

As he fell, his attacker on top of him, Ross felt the back of his neck hit the sharp edge of one of the stone steps and heard as much as felt the crack of bone, his cervical spine fracturing.

This was a blessing, this injury. A blessing, because although Ross was witness to what happened next—for a little while longer—at least his body was free from pain.