The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (13 page)

“Lordy master, if you don’t want it, I’ll keep it,” Shelly said. “I can’t decide which one of these boys is cuter.”

“Ew,” Cali said, wrinkling her nose. “They’re bloodsuckers, they can’t be cute. Now stop looking at them like that, it’s gross.” She made a grab for the picture, but he held it away.

“Not until you admit they’re cute.”

“Shelly, that’s gross.”

“Uh-uh, girl. If you didn’t know these two were bloodsuckers, tell me you wouldn’t think they were cute. Especially this one with the short hair.”

“Fine,” she said. “If they were people they’d be cute. Now give me my picture.” He laughed and surrendered at last. “Besides, if one of them was cute, it would be the one with curly hair,” she muttered, flattening the picture.

“Well, if you change your mind and don’t want it, you can give it to me,” he said. “I don’t care what it’s for. I’ll just look at it. Don’t pretend that’s not what you do with it, too. Keeping it in your drawers. My goodness, girl. You are bad.”

“I am not,”
Cali
said, laughing. She opened the drawer in the counter and put the picture inside next to the two bent spoons, four thick plastic bowls, and two plates with chipping edges. “See, it’s nothing, I don’t even care,” she said. “Look at it all you want.”

She closed the drawer. She hoped Shelly wouldn’t take the worn picture though, or look at it too often. She didn’t want him looking at some silly picture of a
Superior
she’d known in her last life, the one she’d lived before she knew Shelly. He was supposed to be her mate. If he looked at anyone, it should be her, not some dumb
Superior
he’d never see except in a bent-up wrinkly old picture. 

Chapter 21

Draven had much time to lie on the floor, feeling himself freeze, the agonizing pain of frozen flesh adding to the pain of his injuries. He tried not to move. Only his mind moved. Terrified of moving forward, it moved backwards instead. Back over the hundred and twenty-something years he’d lived, over his human life with all its misery and determination and exhilaration and horror. Over his
Superior
life, the happy period with the woman he’d loved, the years he’d spent with his one close friend. And over his many jobs, his brief pairings with women, the meaningless nights all blending together into a dull blur. So much time wasted. So many women who meant nothing, jobs that left no mark, so many humans he’d hurt. But he hadn’t hurt them the way they now hurt him.

His mind moved over the spooling of years, coming inevitably to the last year, the year he’d worked towards
Cali
. Finally he’d had something to work for, to want, to drive him. Not the approval of some woman or friend he wanted to impress. He’d come so close to getting her. Then Byron had bought her, and he’d still not given up. At last he’d refused to give up, refused to bow to the order of things, to accept his lousy lot in life.

When he’d left the city and gone north, he’d known a possible outcome of his journey was failure. But this wasn’t failure. This was much worse. After coming all this way, he’d come to nothing. It had taken him too long, anyhow. Byron would have settled in by now. Perhaps Cali would be happy. After so long, she might not even remember him.

As if the cold and snow hadn’t slowed him enough, he had run into predators. He’d tried to remember what he knew about animals and plants from his days as a human, and found that being in the wilderness brought back more than he’d realized he retained. He’d been fairly certain that bears slept all winter in some parts of the country. When he had run into trouble, it had come in the form of wolves. And then the more dangerous enemy, the vigilante humans.

But he didn’t want to think of them now, while he tried to heal and his blood froze to the floor beneath him. He would rather think of the journey that had led him there. He’d just begun to learn about himself, to learn about nature again.

After the encounter with wolves, he’d learned that he was more adept at climbing than he would have guessed. He hadn’t climbed a tree in over a hundred years, but he’d found it much easier than he remembered. He’d stayed in a tree half of one night, waiting for the wolves to bore of their treed prey. They had stayed longer than he’d expected, but after a long while, they’d gone. He hadn’t liked climbing trees—more potential for inadvertently impaling himself—but it had seemed better than the alternative. He’d finished the last cans of sap after a week of walking and found his load pleasantly lightened.

The second night the wolves had slunk up, he’d almost missed their approach. Their footsteps had fallen silent in the blanket of snow. He’d smelled them first, then seen their eyes glowing faintly in the moonlight reflecting off the snow. They’d come much closer than they should have. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. He’d struggled up a nearby tree, dropping one of his packs on the way. The wolves had pulled everything out and left it strewn in the snow.

Draven had held onto the pack with the food, much to his relief. The wolves had dragged out the clothes from the other pack, and he’d cursed at them as one began gnawing on a shoe he’d bought for Cali. After a bit, the wolves had set up a circle around the tree and howled their long, lonesome cries. It had given Draven an eerie feeling. He’d watched them watching him, the hairs all over his body standing on end.

Eventually the wolves had settled down to wait, and Draven had made himself as comfortable as possible in the tree. A wolf had lain beneath the tree, shredding Cali’s shoe. A poor shoe, anyhow. Walking had proved nearly impossible in the hiking boots Draven had bought. If a Superior found it difficult, a human couldn’t do it at all. He’d needed snowshoes. He’d thought about this, about snowshoes and what he knew of them, a picture somewhere in his mind. One time in the course of his reading life, he’d seen a pair in a book, and he’d thought about them for a while before he began cutting away at the slimmer branches around him. He hadn’t known if he could make them with the supplies he had, but he’d had plenty of bendable wood and plenty of time.

He had begun making a pair of rudimentary snowshoes that night. Improving upon them every morning before he settled down to sleep had occupied that restless space between waking and sleep. After a week of trial and error, he’d made a pair of functional—if unattractive—snowshoes.

Sleeping had proved his other major problem. He’d made better time and his bags had lightened as his sap supply dwindled. But he’d had plenty of water all around him in the snow, and he’d begun moving faster. During the day, he hadn’t wanted to sleep exposed on top of the snow, so he’d come up with the system of burying himself for the day.

Back then, he’d thought wolves and cold presented the greatest threat. He had read about the dangers of freezing. His whole body could freeze, and he wouldn’t die, but he wouldn’t be alive either. He would lie frozen until the thaw came, and if his body hadn’t thawed when the snow uncovered it, an animal might eat him while he lay frozen but conscious in the snow. The thought had terrified him, worse than being caught unawares and torn to shreds by a pack of wolves. At least that would happen quickly.

Sometimes he’d woken to find his hands and feet throbbing with a terrible pain that permeated his flesh and ate at him. He’d imagined that having his frozen body gnawed away by wolves and mountain lions would hurt that way. His hands and feet had felt as if ice chewed them away little by little, and it had been all he could do not to scream in agony. Little parts of him had frozen during his journey, and now he had the same torture with the added tortures of his captors.

He’d had to work very carefully when his extremities froze. They could snap off, and they refused to obey him, so even lighting a fire had proved nearly impossible. Now he had little control over whether he froze or even lived. But at the time he’d frozen in the woods, he’d had enough motion in his arms to push the button on the fire-starter. Once his fire had thawed his frozen parts, he’d stayed a bit longer, hoping to gather enough warmth to wrap inside his clothes and keep him going through the night. The snow in the area was dry, and he’d found dry sticks and leaves to burn without too much difficulty by digging under the snow. Now nothing warmed him. He had no relief from the agony.

The snow had made the days unbearably bright even when the sun hadn’t shone. The nights had become easier, though. They’d turned bright and beautiful, and put Draven in a better mood despite his slow progress. For a few weeks he’d encountered no new snow. He’d walked on top of the layer of soft powder, sliding down hills and slopes, exhilarated and terrified of crashing into a tree. He’d stood on the tops of small mountains and looked up at the millions and millions of stars in the clear cold sky, and he’d found peace, felt more alive than he had since he’d had human life. He’d allowed himself these moments to enjoy the immensity of the universe, and then he’d moved on.

Soon enough, his universe had become quite small, and now he lay cherishing those moments, wishing he could go back to them in body as well as memory. He’d thought one night that he had become accustomed to the forest, no longer frightened of the trees. But a lingering unease had stirred within, one that he’d attributed to his fear that Byron wouldn’t part with his sap.

The next morning, Draven had come upon the house.

Chapter 22

Byron spent days going through the files. They weren’t cross-referenced as they should be, and it took more time than he’d anticipated. He found after much searching that
Milton
hadn’t given him a complete assessment of the situation. Sixteen saps had gone missing in the last five years. Sixteen who hadn’t been recovered.

Saps often got it into their heads that they could escape. They ought to consider themselves lucky to have masters who took such good care of them, but of course no one could explain that in a way that a simple sapien mind could comprehend. So it never surprised Byron when a couple saps slipped away. A lot of Superiors gave their livestock far too much leniency, trusting sapiens to stay with their owners simply because they belonged to them. Saps didn’t care about things like loyalty.

Some Superiors didn’t even punish saps who ran away. No wonder they were always making a break for it. Half the time they came back on their own once they realized they couldn’t live without their masters, or didn’t want to. Superiors provided them with an easy life, food and shelter and a warm place to stay, and the lousy saps only had to offer up a drink now and then, or maybe do a few simple chores. Their minds weren’t equipped to deal with complex issues, but they could perform simple physical tasks with some success.

Byron scrolled through the list of runaways he had compiled. Some of the data hadn’t been entered correctly. No one had updated the older records for over a year. Some of the saps had probably not even run away, but had simply wandered off and gotten lost. Byron sighed and transferred the list to his pod before standing to leave. He’d have to make a few calls on his way home.

He stopped off at a few places to talk to owners of runaway saps. The last place he stopped looked very similar to his own. The Superior who lived on the ground-floor apartment had lost a sapien two years before. Byron waited at the door, holding up his cards to the camera while the owner checked his identity. When the Superior opened the door, Byron found the owner wasn’t a man at all, but a boy. He looked young, but not as young as Byron’s children. Byron had long ago lost the ability to determine age with any accuracy.

“Oh, hello. Are you Meyer Kidd?” Byron asked in surprise.

“Yes, Enforcer. Come in, please,” the boy said, stepping aside. He spoke in an accent, obviously the product of some long-vanished country in Belarus.

“Is that your real name?”

“Of course it is. Isn’t Byron Kingsley yours?”

“Yes, of course. My apologies for being so forward.”

“Please. It’s understandable. People are often surprised to see someone so young living independently. I’m quite capable of caring for myself, I assure you.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Don’t worry, you haven’t done any such thing. Please, sit down. Can I offer you a beverage?”

“I’m only here for a few minutes, to ask you some questions about your sapien that escaped.”

“Oh, has there been some news?” Meyer looked more interested now.

“Not yet. But I’ve been assigned to the case of the missing persons and also tracking the missing sapiens, if it’s related. I’m just connecting the dots at this point.”

“Are you the only one working on it?”

“No, there are three of us. And local authorities, of course.”

“Of course. Well, I’ll tell you what I know and remember. Is there anything in particular you’re interested in?”

“Do you live here all year, by yourself?”

“Oh, no,” the boy said, smiling. “Please. This is just a winter place where I ski a bit. My main homes are in the great city of Texas, and in Moines. But this is where I was when I lost Herman.”

“You lost Herman? Is that your sapien?”

“Yes, of course. Are you sure I can’t get you something while you’re here? I hate to see a guest not at his most comfortable. Please. I have every new flavor available. Coca-Cola sap?”