The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) (29 page)

Three...short...months. She would not tell him that she was also training him as an unknowing weapon for the Others.

* * *

The elevator stopping, jarred her back from her trip to the past—those three months that now defined her life.

“We are here, Chloe.” David whispered as they stepped from the elevator. “The Wicca’s clean up squad will be on the next elevator down. They will not kill you quickly.”

“I will be fine.” She almost managed a smile, but not quite. “How much time will you need?” She knew she had asked that question many times during his careful training, but she could not seem to remember how long she would have to bait them away from the elevator.

“Delay them a minute or two. That will be enough. Make them follow you down that long hallway. I cannot tell you how we will leave this place. Remember your sacrifice will mean the beginning of our small army.”

He turned to leave, walking away along the opposite hall.

She followed her training and worked part way down the hall. With only a step or two until the turn that would take her out of sight, she heard David call her.

“Chloe.”

She turned back at the sound of his voice.

“Everyone will remember you.”

He disappeared around the corner. There was nothing left to do but wait.

As the Wicca clean up squad poured from the elevator, she ran. She managed to turn the corner and make it the short way to the next turn. As she planted her foot to make the sharp corner, she stumbled. Righting herself, she turned back to them and laughed. A single spear pinned her to the wall. She stared back at them as they whooped in triumph—a Queen and two female Hunters having fun. There was another spear, jabs with swords, blood dripping down from her hair.

Chloe managed to spit. The Queen’s face dripped blood and spittle. When they reached her, she had their undivided attention. They took a long time tormenting her.

At the opposite end of the hall, doors opened, soldiers moved, and disappeared into elevators. In a few short hours, they would make a stand in front of the Wicca government, in Number 5 Building.

Chapter 12. Bug Juice

Jutes knew her job as Assistant Head Librarian, in the only library the Builders still maintained, was better than she could have ever hoped to have. She also knew it was courtesy of her lover’s position as Superior in this Number 5 Building, their seat of government. But sometimes the job bored her to distraction. Like now, when the computer was automatically spitting orders to the inter-office mail system that handled all the requisitions for information from the Library Archives. This required her to watch the screen only, in case there were problems. That never happened.

So she gave up trying to concentrate and let her dainty hands play with her spiked hair. She titled the monitor up so her reflection would not stare back at her.

The boredom with each long day in front of the screen was so acute, she was contemplating taking on another lover. A male. He would be her first male lover. Jutes felt the fear she had lived with for the past two weeks while she made up her mind to be with David or not. Not an easy decision when the young man was a Crosser—a big mucky muck Crosser—and the penalty for being with...

She screamed when the computer alarm went off in her ear. God, it had heard her thinking, and she did not know to how to stop the machine. Stop it from spitting a word transcript of her battle with infidelity to every one of the five buildings.

No, wait, the screen was flashing around a Digital Information Request that involved trouble of some type. It did not say what the trouble was so she would have to take the time to read it. Finally, she had a goal even if it was just reading. She remembered the shutdown sequence then, hit the speaker mute button on the keyboard and turned off the alarm. A simple command typed into the drop down menu and the flashing stopped.

Blinking her blue eyes to prepare them, she began to read.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Digital Scan Copy Request: 2 of 2

Return to:
Library pickup requested. ID #213

Date: Month
07
Day
10
Year
050 A.B.

Original request dated 013 A.B.,

unfilled due to political unrest.

Number 5 Building Library Archives.

Restricted Entry

Attached: excerpt from THE NEW OUTSIDERS—author unknown.

Request #: one query only.

Volume #: One Volume found.

Published Date 0010 A. B. ***

Search Criteria:...
first few days...

Search mode: Microsoft Cloud 4, with Office.
Site is unavailable.

Search mode II: Interoffice network connection.

Hardware: 2021 AD, Hylex Computer @ station 241.

Requested Printer #: Request is for digital information only.

PRESS
NEXT
TO CONTINUE

This is a Testimonial from Sockeye, street vendor.

The...
first few days.
..were not so bad. You know, there was food and stuff. Then things turned nasty. The clouds came, poisoned air settled into the subways. It was savage in the streets with everybody trying to kill the other guys. The homeless, druggies and us alcoholics divided into separate, armed camps. Finally, there was no more stuff to feed any of our habits. Even the food and clean water were long gone.

Only the vicious would survive on the pickings: all but the druggies; they got desperate; tried to dry their neighbor. You know, grind them up and sniff the powder for the drugs they took before. It was okay though, when it did not work, they wound up in our cooking pot. My grandma always said “waste not, want not.”

We all ate our fair share. You know, we tried and tried but the parts we could not eat would not turn into booze. We sobered up, not liking it much. Some guys in the bunch took charge and we built us our own community. Even the homeless joined. All but the Ergots, they probably figured we would eat them too.

You know what? Other folks was living in the buildings all around us. They helped us by showing us where to steal things. In the old days, some of these guys had been the cops and most had been the service people. When things got tough, they had just pulled in their buildings and protected their own.

They left us out on the streets to rot. Most likely, we will get even.

One day, Bradley grabbed a bunch of us and took us to this high-rise. There were women in that building; we had not seen many of these. Bradley helped us decide to take what women we wanted even when they was armed. We was too, we got a bunch a guns from a collector’s apartment. The ammo looked funny, green and white stuff all over it. Bradley would watch our backs the next night when we went to get us some women.

Imagine, all the way to the second floor we got. Our guns would not always shoot. Finally, the number of women was too much for us. They just kept coming with them sharpened pipes they used as spears. We hauled ass. I kind of helped Bradley stumble. You should have heard him squeal when them sharp pipes stuck him.

You know something else? That Miss Ann was leading them. She used to buy my gum and stuff most every day: no tip.

PRESS
SAVE
or PRESS
DELETE

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Interesting,
Jutes thought, but what was she going to do with a request that was over thirty years old? No one picked it up when requested, so that was why the alarm went off when the print scroll reached its location on the hard drive. There were only two things the Librarian would allow, send the request on—hard to do without an address—or delete it. She deliberated with herself for only a moment before pushing the print key, then quickly the delete key, and took an extra few seconds to wipe any trace of the document from the files. She would give the copy to her David; he would know what to do.

* * *

Bradley knew it was a mistake to kick that old broad, that Mistress Ann. Hurt that big toe again just when he thought it might be getting better. Not to mention that his reason for the kick was her setting him up to get stuck by them sharp pipes all them years ago.

Sometimes you are dumb Bradley.

“Well, she laughed at me just because in all the excitement I could not get it up. That was not all of it. Could not even screw proper, she said.”

Dumb!
“Oh, shut up. One more word and you get stomped dead like that Sockeye.” Bradley remembered that Sockeye, he had tripped him so them broads could stick their pipes in him. Took a long time, but I almost got even with that Ann from the old building cause she was the first one there with her pipe.

Dumber!
“I said shut up; I ain’t done with her yet.”

He was stumbling down the first set of steps after locking the door on those fools who thought they could take on part of a Builder’s Battle group. Now that was dumb.

Your dumb order!

“Yeah, so...”

Bradley did not see the panicked looks from the man who was half carrying him.

Couple of more days in “stay put” he could live with, it was a good way station. Now, it was getting near a week they been there.
I am feeling damn poorly, sweating and barking chunks of half-chewed food all over the place.

And that toe was jabbing real pain right behind his eyes.

They had left a stash of BJ on the last landing. Would he get there first or black out first?

Made it down the steps and sucked up some of that BJ, his favorite alcohol beverage. Then stumbled out the building ran smack into a wall of rubble and stubbed that toe again. He belched fire. Not the best BJ he ever made.

Like I said, dumb!
“Stick it,” Bradley said

“Come over here dummy and hold me up,” Bradley ordered his courier. “Soon as we get back, you go get that kid Princely, see if he can fix this toe.”

Practically running with the Boss, his currier headed to “stay put” He wanted to be rid of the man real quick, before whatever was inside the man decided to take a chunk out ‘a him.

* * *

Young Princely Bosch forced himself to forage with all the rest of the losers surrounding him. He had to slow himself down of course. Because once he started, he was like a whirlwind.

When it came to the amount of food and utensils he added to the communal pantry, he fought hard to stay in the lower half of producers. After all, he did not need more to sustain himself, being their caregiver he received additional rations for the comfort he provided.

Those extra rations always contained extra buzz-juice, BJ, the alcohol he loved more than life—to trade, not to drink. The items he traded for were scraps of paper with words. He had taken time to hand-make little pouches his wasted patients could wear round their necks, they always had something inside at the end of a day of forage. Most days there were few scraps. A day or two here and there these scraps filled their pouch’s to the size of a book.

He made up his mind not to appear better or worse that any of his patients. The only concession he made was wearing the best clothes. Since he wore size small, he got first pick of new stuff offered for trade. Was not much to trade anymore but he managed to look presentable when the others looked like vagrants. He had picked that word, “vagrant,” up from a book about New York City and the loosers sitting around in the streets.

Soon answers would come. The answer to how his Outsiders come to this sorry state was almost his. Each fact painstakingly assembled from scraps littered in and around the rubble. In his heart, he already knew. Most of them were decedents of people who had always lived in the streets because of a thousand different reasons.

When his collections first started, he traded his meager supply of BJ to get what he could. He quickly weeded out the con men, those who grabbed any paper. Anything just to get the extra little buzz from the half thimble of fiery liquid he used as a reward.

During a full moon, when he first started collecting, a group of three beat him badly and took every drop. Foolishly, they drank his whole horde before first light and wound up in a stupor. Boss, da’ man, hated theft and punished accordingly, hated it unless he was doing the stealing.

All of them got a reward, a seven-day “stay put” in this dilapidated former apartment building, just like all the others they used as way stations. The top floor became off limits after all the losers stripped every bathtub and lugged them up that endless staircase to the top. After that, there was a whole bunch of rustling up there and it smelled like the ocean every day.

Plenty of BJ after that—never did see them three again.

The Boss was gone a couple of days with a bunch of the half-sober men. Had something to do he said. He bragged too, said he was going to bring back a bunch of women. The man went on and on about one in particular. One he was not going to bring back. He said he was going to kill Mistress Ann and feed her to the Ergots.