Across the Dark Water Read online

  The thief went back to the guide and helped him to his feet. Once the man was upright, he jerked away and ran his hands over his arms and face. “Did it bite me?” he said. Then shouted, “Did it bite me? I don’t have antivenom.”

  The thief looked him over. The alpha’s blood was splattered on the guide’s face and ran down his arms, but he didn’t see any puncture wounds. The guide relaxed a little and used his sleeve to wipe blood from his face.

  “Good job with the breach. Bring it to me.”

  The guide’s pack had been shredded in the attack and he was trying to patch it back together with a sealing foam when one of the other Jadghunds broke free. The men had to scramble onto the fire escape and down to the street. The climbing cord, small boxes, and tools tumbled from the guide’s torn pack as they went. They gathered up what they could when they reached the ground, but a ragged crowd was forming nearby, attracted by the sounds of the fight. Some of the gawkers held pipes and heavy clubs. The guide pulled a pistol and aimed it at them. It wasn’t necessary. The last of the Jadghunds had freed themselves, stumbled down the fire escape, and leapt the last two floors onto the street. The panicked crowd scattered and the pack ran for them as the thief and guide hid, then slipped quietly away.

  * * *

  The guide set up the dome again, this time in a parking garage just off the main street. The sounds of growls and screams had long since faded. Before they bedded down, the thief pointed to some ghuls outside. The mad, clear-skinned kind in business suits and expensive dresses. Inside the dome, the guide used several packets of antiseptic wipes to clean the last of the blood off himself.

  “I lost my pack back there,” said the thief.

  “Lost most of mine too,” the guide said, laying out the shredded pack’s remaining contents. It wasn’t much. Some ammunition. A change of clothes. A single square of jerky. A collapsible machete. But the Maker seemed to be intact. He kissed it. “We’ll be okay with this. There will be food and water to keep going.”

  The thief felt a little better and was surprised when the guide put out his hand.

  “You saved my ass back there,” said the big man.

  The thief reached out his hand and they shook.

  As the guide rummaged through the pack’s side pockets he said, “Keep your gold for the pills. I owe you that much.”

  “Thank you.” Then, “Fuck.”

  “What? You get bit?”

  “No. I lost my immunosuppressants back there.”

  “No matter,” said the guide. “The Turk will have all that when you get there.”

  “Something else to pay for.”

  The guide threw the torn pack to the side of the dome.

  “There’s always something else. That and death are the only two things you can count on.”

  After the run across the roofs and the fight, the effects of the pill were wearing off. The thief checked his pockets hoping for a protein bar, but came up with nothing.

  “I’m hungry too,” said the guide. “You know how to set up a Maker?”

  “Of course.”

  “Get it fired up. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  The guide unfolded the machete and went into the street. The thief prepared the Maker and wondered what the guide would return with. Weeds? A rat? As long as it was organic, he didn’t really care. He just needed something in his belly and nourishment enough to keep moving. It amazed him when he thought about how, in just a few days, he’d moved so far from his old life. He was a thief and a good one, the opposite of a man of action like the guide. When he did his job well, there was no action at all. A concentrated calm, then in and out and back home. There was none of that left now. No subtlety and certainly no home. He rubbed his aching shoulder, wondering if he’d torn something in the fight with the hound.

  The guide soon returned with something wrapped in blue fabric. He set it on the dome floor and said, “Is the Maker ready?”

  The thief nodded.

  “What is that?”

  “About five pounds of protein. We can go for a week on this.”

  The thief looked at him.

  “It’s going to take another week to get there?”

  The guide unfolded the fabric and said, “Relax. It’s just an expression. We’re nearly there.”

  With the fabric unfolded, the thief saw a bloody lump of fresh meat. Several pounds of it at least. He wondered for a moment if the guide had gone back and taken a leg from the dead hound. But the thief looked more closely and recognized the fabric as blue pinstripe. He backed away from it all the way across the dome.

  “You cut that off one of the ghuls.”

  The guide took out a bowie knife and sliced the meat into pieces small enough to fit inside the Maker. “He won’t miss it,” he said.

  “Did you kill him?”

  The guide sighed. When he spoke he sounded weary.

  “What do you want the Maker to cook up? You don’t like Maker meat. So, what? Those shitty bars you choke down?”

  “I’m not eating that,” said the thief.

  “That’s right. You’re not. Molecules are molecules. When the Maker is done you’ll forget all about where they came from.”

  “No.”

  The guide put the meat in the Maker and started it.

  “Suit yourself, but you’re not going to make it to the Turk if you don’t eat. Especially after tonight. You think I don’t see you favoring that shoulder? You need protein for that to heal.”

  “I can’t.”

  The guide looked hard at him.

  “You can and you will if I have to shove it down your throat.”

  “Why do you care so much if I eat?”

  “Because you think you’re better than me. People like you come to me all the time. Take me home. Take me somewhere better. Save me. But when they see the true cost of travel, they turn their back on the people who saved them. No, you’re going to eat. And tomorrow you’re going to walk. And that’s all there is to it.”

  The thief lay down with his back to the guide until an hour later the Maker beeped. He listened as the guide slipped the tray of warm food from the device and set it down. To the thief’s horror, it smelled delicious.

  “Dinner’s ready,” said the guide.

  The thief didn’t reply.

  After a moment, the guide said. “I know you can smell it and I know you’re hungry because I am. Let’s do this the simple way and you come over here because if I have to come over there it won’t be simple.”

  The thief listened as the guide ate and it tormented him how much he wanted to eat too. Finally he sat up, hurting his injured shoulder in the process. He said, “I know that smell.”

  “I made it just for you, princess. It smells and tastes just like corn bread,” said the guide. Then, mockingly, “Don’t worry. There’s no bones and it’s all protein.” He slid a slice of the loaf across the dome on a piece of the blue pinstripe fabric.

  The thief knew the fabric was there so he wouldn’t forget the origin of the molecules. He sniffed the slice. His stomach knotted and he knew what was going to happen next. He reached out and pinched off a tiny corner of the slice between his thumb and forefinger. It tasted exactly like corn bread, though the texture was a little gummy.

  “Good, huh?” said the guide.

  The thief stared at the slice.

  “It’s too late. You ate some and you want more,” the guide said. “You’re a monster like me. Now finish it.”

  The thief knew that the guide’s threat to force the food on him wasn’t an idle one. And he was starving. He broke off another piece from the slice and put it in his mouth. Then another. And began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” said the guide.

  “My wife used to make corn bread. Back when you could get things like corn meal.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Very.”

  “Does this remind you of home?”

  The thief laughed again.

  “No
t in the slightest.”

  The guide shoook his head.

  “Me neither.”

  They ate in quiet until the guide said, “Did you kill her?”

  The thief looked up from his food.

  “My wife? Of course not.”

  The guide cut another slice from the loaf and handed it to the thief, who accepted it.

  “I was just curious. You seemed so hot to get out of town and I can’t help but notice you’re traveling alone.”

  The thief picked at the food.

  “She’s gone now. It hurts to stay.”

  The guide leaned back a little.

  “An optimist and a romantic. You’re a funny thief.”

  “And you’re a chatty cop.”

  The guide thought about it.

  “I suppose I am. But I lost my cards so I can’t take your gold playing poker.”

  “Good,” said the thief. “I cheat at cards and you’d just get mad.”

  The guide wrapped the rest of the loaf in the pinstripe material and put it in the remains of his pack.

  “Did you love her?” he said.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “The way you talk about her, though. She didn’t die. She left you.”

  “So?”

  “So, you loved her, but she didn’t love you.”

  “She did. In her way.”

  “But she still ran off,” said the guide. “Maybe with someone who didn’t fuck corpses?”

  “I didn’t always steal from the dead. It’s just that I want to leave the living alone these days.”

  “And now you ate one. How does that feel?”

  The thief didn’t reply.

  The guide lay back on the floor and said, “The Turk isn’t going to sell you anything. He’s going to take your shit and pluck your arms and legs like the wings off a fly. And don’t tell me that it’s okay because if it is, I’ll leave you right here and go home.”

  “No,” said the thief. “Getting murdered by the Turk isn’t any better than dying from your poison medicine. But I have nowhere else to go for the papers.”

  “Good luck. I’m not going in with you.”

  “You said that.”

  “Just so you understand.”

  “Right.”

  They went to sleep then. The thief didn’t dream, or if he did, he didn’t remember it and that was just as good.

  * * *

  The thief awoke, not quite sure where he was at first. The guide was outside, eating in the open air of the parking garage. The thief went and joined him, but refused more of the Maker loaf. It had snowed during the night and the streets were covered in two or more inches of a flat whiteness. When the guide saw him, he tossed the thief a small sealed pack. The thief opened it and shook out a sort of dull Mylar shawl with a hood.

  “We’ll be easy drone targets in these dark clothes,” said the guide. “The hoodies will reflect the snow and make us harder to spot.”

  They packed up the dome and their meager supplies in the guide’s crudely repaired pack and headed out as soon as the sun was gone. The thief was glad that he’d bought the gloves. They weren’t very thick, but they helped a little with the cold. After last night, he could no longer tell how many days they’d been camping.

  “How much longer to the Turk’s?” he said.

  “I’ll tell you later,” said the guide.

  “Why later?”

  “Because I said so. And because I want to get the lay of the land.”

  “We’re not lost, are we?”

  “Don’t insult me. It’s just that the snow changes things. I need all my eyes—the ones in my head and readings from the spysat. I can’t process it all with you chattering away.”

  “All right, then. But tell me when you can.”

  “Quiet.”

  They walked west for several hours, sometimes on the thoroughfare and sometimes on the side streets, stumbling over bricks made slippery with ice. Once, the thief tripped over a body in the snow and almost fell. The guide kept walking and the thief had to trot a distance to catch up.

  The road became stranger as they left the business district behind. What appeared to be people huddled together in a group was a collection of robotic and hologram greeters from local shops and hotels. Each lit up or gave them a mechanical smile as they passed. Some spoke to them in cheerful tones.

  “Bonjour.”

  “Hello.”

  “Nǐ hǎo.”

  “Zdravstvuj.”

  Later, there was a charred apartment building festooned with torn biohazard tape, as if decorated for a party.

  An hour on, a street sculpture of two people kissing that had been constructed from bricks and broken glass.

  Then, a children’s playground full of naked mannequins.

  At the very edge of the district were a dozen wooden poles with a human skull mounted on top of each. The guide took out the pistol, but if anyone was there, they didn’t show themselves.

  Eventually, the thief and the guide came to a long suspension bridge covered in snow. The lights on top of the support towers shone, but the near end of the bridge had been blown up sometime during the pandemic to keep anyone from crossing. The thief’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of the dead end. The guide pointed out over the dark water.

  “See that black hump on the hill on other side of the bridge? That’s the Turk’s bunker.”

  “But how do we get there?”

  “If things work out like tonight, we’ll be there by morning.”

  “Do you have a boat?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  They turned north and went along the road facing the water. There was no sound except for their footfalls crunching in the dry snow. The breeze blowing in from the river was icy. The thief shivered, but didn’t feel bad about it because the guide shivered too.

  “I don’t suppose you have any of those pills left?” said the thief.

  The guide blew into his hands.

  “Nope. Lost them all to the dogs.”

  “Too bad. I would have paid a lot for one.”

  “Me too.”

  The thief looked back over the water.

  “The Turk’s building looks odd.”

  “It used to be a military bunker. Command and control. Fire center. Bang bang. Supposed to be roomy inside. A place to retreat to if things get too hot for the local powers that be.”

  “Are they all in there with the Turk?”

  “Maybe. But no one’s in there that the Turk doesn’t want.”

  “Whoever’s there, it will be good to reach it soon,” said the thief.

  “Just so you know, this is going to be the hardest part of the trip.”

  “Why? How?”

  “You don’t just stroll up to the Turk’s bunker. You’d get blown away by the cops, the national guard, or the Turk himself. There’s an old AI that runs the bunker. The Turk has most of the old systems online. Scout drones. Mines. Jadghunds. Romper Stompers.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Spooky perimeter mechs that almost look like people. You spot one, think you’re safe, then it takes your head off and skull-fucks you.”

  “I’d rather not die this close to the end.”

  “Smart man. That’s why we’re taking the safe route.”

  The thief looked over at the guide.

  “You’ve lost all your supplies. How will you make it back to the fairgrounds?”

  “I’ve been in worse shape and even shittier situations. I’ll get back. I have your gold to spend and those cards to cash in.”

  “What will you do with it? You have money now. Why don’t you ask the Turk for papers too?”

  The guide gave him a dim smile.

  “What’s out there for me? I’m at home here. With what you paid me, soon I’ll be a king.”

  “You want to die in this city?”

  “Why not? It’s as good as anywhere. But I won’t be doing it for a good long time.”

  “Not
according to the old man.”

  “Fuck the old man.”

  “Now who’s the optimist?”

  As they went, the guide took out some of the Maker loaf. This time, in the cold, the thief ate with him.

  The guide said, “Endings always make me happy. Don’t they make you happy?”

  “It depends on the ending.”

  “That’s your problem. You want things. People who want things are never happy.”

  “If you don’t want anything, how about giving me my cards and gold back?”

  The guide waved a finger at him.

  “There’s a difference between wanting things and needing things. I need plenty. Your shit is going to get it for me.”

  “What is it you need?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Worry about getting in through that bunker without the Turk ripping out your organs to use for himself.”

  “Is that why you’re afraid of the Turk?”

  “I didn’t say I was afraid.”

  The guide led them east, away from the water and back into the city. They walked for two blocks before the guide stopped.

  The thief said, “How many times have you seen the Turk?”

  “Who says I’ve seen him?”

  “I just get the feeling that you went to see him and that something happened.”

  The guide spit into the snow.

  “I saw him once. And came out a rich man.”

  “Was this before or after you peddled poison?”

  “Before. I was still on the force. I quit after I’d made my fortune.”

  “Money?”

  “Plenty of it. More than on all your cards.”

  “What happened to it?”

  The guide looked away.

  “Things didn’t work out.”

  “What happened to the money? Did you lose it or did someone take it?”

  The guide turned and gave him a sharp look.

  “I’m not a cuck like you. No one takes from me.”

  “So you lost it and sold snake oil.”

  The guide got down on his knees in the street and wiped snow off a manhole cover.

  “Forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for you,” said the thief.