The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (30 page)

She climbed on the garden bed, and he reached down and took hold of her forearm. For a minute she struggled and flailed in the air and thought she wouldn’t be able to pull herself up. But the man kept hold of the bars with one arm, and together they managed to drag her through the narrow opening, although her backside got stuck for a second. She had a flash of what would happen if she got stuck there while he had to remove another bar. Probably, she’d die of embarrassment before Master had a chance to come out and kill her. But she wriggled around and slipped through without too much difficulty, and the man started screwing the bar back down.

“You’re a shorty,” he said. “Harder lifting you up than a taller person who’s bigger. Well, get on down the rope, I don’t got all day.”

“Yeah of course, thanks, sorry,” Cali said, and started down the rope before she’d had a chance to catch her breath. The rope was rough and about twice the size of one of her fingers. She slid a little, causing a burning pain to wrap around her hands, and caught herself on the edge of Martin’s garden. The rope ended there, so she stood holding onto the bars and waited for the man to descend.

Suddenly he started his descent, but not the way she had. He fell straight down from Cali’s garden.

Cali covered her mouth with one hand so she wouldn’t scream. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching him fall. But then he was swinging on the bottom of the rope, grinning up at her as he swung back and forth from the rope attached to a bar at her feet.

“Come on down now, princess,” he said, and started untying the rope from around his hips. He’d rigged himself into some kind of sling, and now he got out of it with Martin’s help. Cali wished she had some of the fingerless gloves the man had, but she didn’t spend much time thinking about it. When she started to climb onto the rope, the man stopped her, though.

“Hey, what you doing? You have to untie that and jump.”

“I have to jump?” Cali asked, staring down at the faces a good ten feet below.

“Yeah, we can’t leave the rope hanging there. Don’t worry, we’ll catch you.” Martin didn’t look so sure as the other man, but he nodded. Cali untied the rope and stood working up her nerve.

“Come on now, we don’t got all day,” the man said. “Longer we stand out here in the open, more likely we are to get caught. You’re little, you probably won’t break nothing. Just turn around and kinda let yourself fall backwards.”

That sounded terrifying, but Cali made herself do it. She didn’t have much choice, so she turned around and leaned back and let go. Her stomach gave a sickening lurch upwards, and the next second, she crashed into the two men below. They all stumbled and fell together in a great tangle. The blonde man got up first, grinning, and held out a hand to Cali. “That there is how it’s done,” he said, helping Martin to his feet after Cali. “Y’all okay?”

Martin frowned and rubbed his leg, and Cali noticed him limping a little as they made their way along the back of the building, the blond man in front. Terry held a baby in her bundle, and Cali thought it stupid to bring something that was guaranteed to make noise. But then she felt guilty for thinking something so cold. Of course Terry wouldn’t leave her baby. Besides, if it weren’t for Martin and Terry, Cali would never have escaped.

“Where are we going?” she whispered to Terry.

Terry shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s our link, and then we gotta meet with someone else, I guess.”

“You mean we’re going together?”

“Of course we are,” the man whispered back to them. “You think we just get you out and let you run off? Soon as you get caught, you’d rat me out. Now keep quiet.” They passed a small open space before entering a darker alleyway. It smelled like sewage, and Cali was pretty sure she saw some of it, too. She had assumed she’d get out and run like before. She hadn’t known she’d be expected to stick with her group. Somehow it seemed safer to go alone, though she hadn’t done so well on her own before. Maybe a group would be safer. It just seemed painfully obvious to see four humans out together.

When they reached the corner of a building, the man looked around the front onto the street before ducking back into the alley. He slipped through a side door of a shop and motioned for the others to follow. Cali almost tripped in her surprise, but then she ducked in after him, holding the door for Martin and Terry. The shop was quiet, since Superiors all went to bed right about this time every morning. A man with glasses stood behind the counter, ignoring them and wiping a case of bottles with a dirty cloth.

“Alright,” the blond man said. “This here’s how it goes. I didn’t know I’d be having so many of you, but I reckon we’ll make it work. I need the four of you to stay put while I go get the last one. Then I’ll be back, and we’ll get on outta here. We meet our connection in a few hours. If we all make it that far, we’ll probably make it to freedom. We stick together, unless someone gets caught, and then it’s each man for himself. So run like hell, is all I got to say. Now, this here man’ll take care of you.”

The blond man left, and the one behind the counter said, “You all go downstairs and wait.”

He left his counter to open a door, and they all went down into a dank basement. Cali noticed Martin limping more on the stairs, and she hoped he’d make it to wherever they were going. She felt bad for having injured him, but she didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t been on purpose, and she certainly hadn’t chosen to jump.

One bare bulb lit the basement room. All over the walls, hundreds of tiny pictures of babies and kids clustered to form a sort of mosaic. Cali looked at it for lack of anything else to do. Terry sat nursing the baby, and Martin rubbed at his knee, grimacing the whole time. After what seemed like three hours or so, Terry said, “Why don’t you go up and see if that man’s got any medicine. This is a sapien supply store. I’m sure they got painkillers.”

“I don’t need anything,” Martin said. “It’ll work itself out.”

“Martin, we’ll be walking for hours,” Terry said. “I don’t think this man will slow the pace much for you. You gotta make it.”

“Might hurt it worse to use it too much, if I can’t feel the pain.”

“You wanna go back? That’s your only choice. You can walk in pain or walk without.”

“Fine, I’ll go. Stubborn woman,” Martin muttered as he hobbled up the steps. He knocked on the inside of the door, and a minute later he went into the store and the door closed behind him. Cali had looked at all the babies on one wall and moved to the next. Some of the kids were older, and she noticed a picture of a group of kids holding books. She stared at it. She’d only held a book once in her whole life, at the apartment where she’d stayed with the Man with Soft Hair.

Cali had almost finished looking at the second wall when the blond man came downstairs, followed by a skinny girl with long brown hair. Cali smiled at her, but the girl looked away and hunched her shoulders.

“Alright, let’s go,” the man said, glancing around. He looked scared, too. “Here’s a bottle of water for each of y’all. That’s all you’ll be carrying, except you with the baby, so it will be easier to run. It’s a hot day out, and we got a long walk, so let’s get to walking before it gets any hotter.”

He turned and started up the stairs.

“What about Martin?” Terry asked.

The man stopped but didn’t turn. “We lost him.”

“What do you mean, we lost him? Where is he?” Terry asked, her voice high.

“He got caught. One of them bloodsuckers came in here late and caught him without a note from his ‘master.’ Now let’s go.”

“I can’t go without him,” Terry said, but she started up the stairs. “He’s my husband. I need him. I have to go back.”

“You can’t go back. Too much risk. We’ll get y’all settled and make sure your baby’s safe, and then we’ll get him next time.”

Terry’s crying made a sad and lonely feeling descend on the procession, and Cali’s former excitement turned gloomy. The sun shone brightly on their party as they made their way through the streets, past a few scattered buildings, and out onto an open road.

“I’m sorry, Terry,” Cali whispered, trying to put her arm on the woman. Terry shrugged her off and glared, and Cali knew the woman blamed her more than she blamed herself. Martin wouldn’t have gone into the store if Cali hadn’t landed on him wrong. Then again, any of them could have gotten stuck as the last unlucky one that had to jump.

Cali wouldn’t beg forgiveness for something that she couldn’t fix, so she went up to the front of the group and walked next to the blond man. “Where we going?” she asked.

“Can’t tell you just yet,” he said.

“Well, once we’re at our stopping point, we can split off, right?”

“Can you live out here yourself?” he asked. Cali looked around at the strange plants she had only seen from far away. Green exploded all around them, hanging towards the road from tall rough stems, every hue and shade of green imaginable, and some that weren’t.

“I don’t know,” Cali said. “What are these things?”

“What things?”

“Those.”

“Those trees? What, you never seen a tree before?”

“Well, from far away.”

“And you wanna go live on your own?”

“I don’t know. Where do you live?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Well, what’s your name then?”

“No names til we get to safety. And if you know someone else’s name here, you better forget it quick. Not safe.”

Despite the man’s resistance to answering questions, Cali liked him. She didn’t think it seemed too dangerous out here, either. Trees surrounded them in every direction for what looked like forever, until they came out and saw down the mountain to the city below, glittering silver in the sunlight.

“That there was your home,” the man said. “Say goodbye, ‘cause you’re never gonna see it again. And that’s a good thing if I ever heard one. This here is close to freedom. Couple more hours walking and we’ll get some rest. Now, you with the baby. Let me carry him for you. We’re gonna cut through this mountain pass instead of going around by the road. It’s hard walking but worth it to save another hour.”

They began scrambling their way up the steep mountain, pulling on trees and any plants they could grab on their way to keep from slipping back on the glittering grey scree. Cali radiated heat inside her wool suit, and soon sweat soaked through the fabric, which prickled her skin. She scratched and rubbed at the places where the rough fabric irritated her skin, but she didn’t complain. No one said anything. Talking wasted breath.

They slid and scrambled down the other side of the mountain, and after a while, they found the crumbling road again. They stopped and drank from their water bottles, and the blonde man returned the crying baby to Terry.

“Now, this here is a resting spot if any of y’all need to take a leak. You aren’t gonna take one from here on out, so I suggest you do it.”

“What if we need to go later?” Cali asked.

“Then you best learn to hold it. The bloodsuckers’ll be tracking us, you bet you pretty little ass. They can smell your piss and find you. So go on and go. Unless you can’t go in the woods, princess.”

Cali stomped off into the woods and pulled down the top of her jumpsuit. It was the dumbest garment ever invented, and obviously made by Superiors, who didn’t use the bathroom. She had to take her arms out of the sleeves and peel the whole garment down around her knees to squat. Her body had gotten so hot she thought it would steam when she took the thing off. Her skin had grown red from heat and irritation, and she wished she could just roll her jumpsuit down around her waist like Shelly did at home. She knew some women didn’t care, but it seemed strange to go around exposing herself here with these people she didn’t know, and who might be free soon.

She might be free.

She’d never made it so far before. Her excitement built all over again when she went back to the road and saw the group. Maybe they could all live together and help with the baby until Martin came. She wondered if the girl with long hair would be her friend where she went, if they’d build a garden and share secrets like she had with Shelly.

The leader of the group sat down in the middle of the road and gestured for the others to join. They all sat. Cali hoped they were going to eat. She was getting hungry. As if he’d read her mind, the man started handing out food. “Eat this bar,” he said. “Not gonna eat anything else all day. Except you can nurse your baby, of course,” he said to Terry. “And if you need a rest, you just let me know and I’ll carry him anytime. Don’t want to get held up. Anyone else here will carry him too, if we need. We’re all together in this. Alright, here’s the rules. We walk on the road. No touching anything. No giving out of names. Stay on the road at all times, unless I say get, and then you best get fast. No taking leaks or dumps. No lagging behind. We stay in a group, on the road.”

When they finished eating the dense food bars, the man gathered the wrappers and put them in a small plastic sack along with three of the empty water bottles, tied the top, and went to the ditch beside the road. He covered the bag with stones and gravel.

“They can track us up here, but no reason to make it easy on them,” he said, coming back. He removed a bag from his pocket, took out some sort of round bulb and started breaking off sections. “Now, I need you each to peel this and rub it on your feet. All over the bottoms of your feet real good, and up onto your legs, and your knees and hands, in case you fall. This here makes your scent die to the bloodsuckers. They can’t track us past here. So make sure you get your feet real good. We’ll stop and reapply later.”