Armageddon's Children

  Panther was not impressed. “Nice words, but they don’t mean spit. We don’t live in the kind of world you keep talking about, River. Most of those creatures you want to help just want to see us dead! They’re nothing but frickin’ animals!”

  Bear leaned in, his blunt, pale face dripping rain. “I don’t think we should stand out here like this.”

  Hawk nodded and motioned them ahead once more. They spread out in the Wing-T without being told, disciplined enough to know what to do. Panther was still muttering to himself, but Hawk paid no attention, his mind on the dead Lizard. If there was something in the city that could take on and nearly kill a Lizard that size, then they needed to be extra careful. Up until now, there hadn’t been anything that dangerous to contend with, not counting Croaks. He wondered suddenly if maybe a pack of them had done this, but quickly dismissed the idea. Croaks didn’t inflict that kind of damage. No, this was something else—something that had either crawled up out of the deeper parts of the underground or come into the city from another place.

  He would ask Owl when they returned. Owl might be able to learn something from one of her books.

  They reached the Hammering Man and paused for a quick look, just as they always did. The Hammering Man stood frozen in place, a flat black metal giant with one arm raised and the other outstretched in front of it. The raised hand held a hammer; the outstretched hand held a small anvil. It was a piece of art, Owl said. The building behind it had once been a museum. None of the Ghosts had ever seen a museum except in pictures. This one had long since been looted and trashed, the interior set afire and the windows broken out. The Hammering Man was really all that was left.

  Hawk drew them away and turned them uphill toward the city center. The streets were slick with mud and damp. Climbing the sidewalks was slow and treacherous. Candle went down twice, and Bear once. Panther frowned at them and kept going, above such failings. He had worn his hiking boots for better traction. Panther always wore what was needed. He was always prepared.

  In another place and time, he might have been leader of the Ghosts. He was bigger and stronger than Hawk, and only two years younger. He was more daring, more willing to take on anything that threatened. But Hawk had the vision, and they all believed that without the vision, you were lost. Owl was wise, Candle blessed with infallible instincts, and Bear steady and strong. Panther was brave. Chalk was talented, Sparrow fierce, and Fixit inventive. All the Ghosts had something that Hawk didn’t, but Hawk had the one thing they all needed, so they followed him.

  Two streets up, they found the Cats waiting, ten strong, at the appointed meeting place at the intersection of University and Third. Their home was in one of the abandoned condo buildings somewhere on the north edge of the city, although Hawk was unsure which one. This was neutral territory, uninhabited by any of the other tribes, a gathering place for all wishing to do business. Trades were how they all lived, each bringing something to the bargaining that the others needed. The Cats had a source for apples and plums. Fresh food of any sort was rare, and the demand for all of it high. Where the Cats found such food was a mystery, although Owl said she thought they must have discovered a small rooftop garden with the apple and plum trees already in place and had simply taken advantage.

  Whatever the case, you needed fresh fruit to stay healthy. Owl had studied up on it and told them so. Much of what had once been the diet of their civilization was gone—nearly everything that had been grown on the farms. The compounds still grew their own food, but they were having only mixed success, given the soil and water they had to work with. Most of what the street kids ate was prepackaged and made edible by adding water and heating. There were certain canned foods you could still eat and bottled liquids you could drink, but these were fast disappearing. Stores of all kinds had long since been raided and cleaned out, and only a few useful ones remained, their locations carefully guarded secrets. The Ghosts had discovered one a couple of years back, and still carried out and stockpiled what they needed from time to time.

  What they had brought to trade at this meeting was as precious and as hard to come by as fresh food and was the sole reason the Cats might be willing to give up a portion of their own stash.

  “You’re late, Hawk,” called out Tiger, the Cats’ big, muscular leader.

  They weren’t, of course, but Hawk didn’t argue. This was just Tiger’s way of marking his territory. “Ready to deal?”

  Tiger was wearing his trademark orange-and-black-striped T-shirt beneath his slicker. All of the Cats wore some piece of clothing that was meant to suggest the kind of cat from which they had taken their names, although some of them were hard to decipher. One kid wore pants with vertical blue and red stripes. What was he supposed to be? Panther liked to make fun of them for working so hard at being something they clearly weren’t. Real cats were small and sleek and stealthy. The Cats were a jumble of sizes and shapes and might as well be called Elephants or Camels. He was a better cat than they were, he was fond of saying. They didn’t even have a “Panther” in their tribe. Besides, they had only started calling themselves Cats and taking cat names after they found out about the Ghosts.

  “Ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of copycats,” he would declare, sneering at the idea.

  Hawk met Tiger alone in the center of the intersection while the others on both sides stayed where they were. Trades were rituals, marked by protocol and tradition. The leaders met first, alone, talked through the details of the trade, came to an arrangement, and settled on a time and place to make the trade if it wasn’t to be done that day. This time both sides had come prepared to trade immediately, having done so often enough before for each to know what the other needed. The Cats would bring their apples and plums and the Ghosts would bring a valuable store to offer in exchange.

  “What have you got for us?” Tiger asked, anxious to get to the point of this meeting.

  Hawk didn’t like being rushed. He brushed back his ragged, short-cropped black hair and looked back down toward the water and the Hammering Man, thinking again of the dead Lizard. “Depends. How much you got for us?”

  “Two boxes. One of each. Ripe and ready to eat. Store them in a cool place and they’ll keep. You’ve done it before.” Tiger hunched his shoulders. “So?”

  “Four flashlights and solar cells to power them. The cells have a shelf life of thirty years. These are dated less than twenty years back.” He smiled. “Wasn’t easy finding them.”

  “They still make them twenty years ago?” the other asked suspiciously.

  Hawk shrugged. “It says what it says. They work. I tested them myself.”

  Tiger looked around, maybe searching, maybe killing time. “I need something else.”

  “Something else?” Hawk stiffened. “What are you talking about, man? That’s a fair trade I’m giving you.”

  Tiger looked uneasy. “I mean, something more. I need a couple of packs of pleneten.”

  Hawk stared. Pleneten was a heavy-duty drug, effective mostly against plague viruses. No one outside the compounds could get their hands on it unless they happened to stumble on a hidden store. Even then, it usually wasn’t any good because it had to be kept cold or it would break down and lose its curative powers. Unrefrigerated, its shelf life was about ten days. He hadn’t seen any pleneten in all the time he had been a Ghost.

  Except once, when Candle caught the red spot, and he’d had no choice but to ask Tessa.

  “It’s for Persia,” Tiger said quietly, looking down at his feet. “She has the splatters.”

  Red spot. Like Candle. Persia was Tiger’s little sister. The only family he had left. He wouldn’t be asking otherwise. Hawk could sense the surfacing of the other’s desperation, radiating off him like steam leaking through metal plates, white-hot and barely contained.

  Hawk glanced back at the other Ghosts. All expected an exchange to take place and would be disgruntled if it didn’t. The fruit was a treat they had been looking forward to. Some of them would understand,
some wouldn’t.

  “Make the trade,” Hawk told the other. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Tiger shook his head. “No. I want the pleneten first.”

  Hawk glared at him. “It will cost you a lot more if you don’t make the trade now. A lot more.”

  “I don’t care. I want Persia well again.”

  There was no reasoning with him. But Hawk would lose face if he gave in to what was essentially blackmail.

  “Make the trade now,” he said, “and you can have the pleneten for nothing.”

  Tiger stared at him. “You serious?”

  Hawk nodded, wondering at the same time if he had lost his mind.

  “You can get it? You give me your word on it?”

  “You know you got my word and you know it’s good. Make the trade or you can forget the whole thing. Find someone else to get you your pleneten.”

  Tiger studied him a moment longer, then nodded. “Deal.”

  They touched fists, and the deal was done. Both signaled to their followers to bring up the stores, the Cats the boxes of fruit, smaller than Hawk would have liked, but still sufficient, and Candle and River sacks containing the cells and flashlights. The stores were exchanged and their bearers retreated to their respective positions, leaving the leaders alone.

  Hawk looked up at the sky. The rain had passed and the clouds were breaking up. It would get hot before long. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at Tiger.

  “Came across a Lizard down past the Hammering Man on our way here,” he said. “A big one. It was all torn up. Dying. What do think could have done it?”

  Tiger shook his head. “A Lizard? I don’t know. What do you think did it?”

  “Something new, something we don’t know about. Something really dangerous. Better watch your back.”

  The bigger boy pulled back the edge of his slicker to reveal a short-barreled flechette hanging from his belt. “Found it a few weeks back. Let’s see anything get past that.”

  Hawk nodded. “I’d be careful anyway, if I was you.”

  “Just get me that pleneten,” the other growled, dropping the slicker back into place. “Tomorrow, same time, same place.”

  “I need three days.”

  Tiger glared at him. “Maybe Persia doesn’t have three days.”

  “Maybe that’s the best that I can do.”

  Tiger stared him down a moment longer, then wheeled away to join the other Cats. They slouched off up the street in a tight cluster and didn’t look back.

  Hawk watched them until they were out of sight, thinking about the bargain he had just made, wondering how he could justify asking Tessa to risk herself yet again when he knew the danger of doing so.

  C HENEY WAS CURLED up in one corner of the big common room between the old leather couch and the game table, his massive form most closely resembling a giant fur ball, when Owl rolled her wheelchair through the kitchen door and crossed to the bedroom to check on Squirrel. She was aware of one pale gray eye opening as she passed, registering her presence before closing again. Cheney saw everything. She had found the wolfish, hulking guard dog unnerving when Hawk first brought him home, but eventually she got used to having him around. All of them had by this time, even the little ones, all but Panther, who really didn’t like Cheney. It was something in Panther’s past, she believed, but he wasn’t saying what that something was.

  In any case, Cheney was important enough to their safety that it didn’t matter what Panther thought. Hawk had realized that from the beginning. Nothing got close to their underground hideout without Cheney knowing. He could hear or smell anything approaching when it was still five minutes away. Even the Freaks had learned to stay clear. Although the Ghosts had come to accept him, they were wary of him, too. Cheney was just too big and scary with all that bristling hair and those strange patchwork markings. A junkyard dog made out of thrown-away parts. But a very large junkyard dog. Only Hawk was completely unafraid of him, the two of them so close that sometimes she thought they were extensions of each other. Hawk had taken Cheney’s name from one of Owl’s history books. The name had belonged to some long-dead politician who’d been around when the seeds for the Great Wars had been planted. Owl’s book described him as a bulldog spoiling for a fight. Hawk had liked the image.

  She rolled the wheelchair up the ramp Fixit had built for her and eased herself into the mostly darkened bedroom. Squirrel lay tangled in his blankets on his mattress, but he was sleeping. She glanced at Sparrow, who was reading by candlelight in the far corner, keeping watch over the little boy. Sparrow looked up from her book, blue eyes peeking out from under a mop of straw-colored hair.

  “I think he’s doing better,” she said quietly.

  Owl wheeled over to where she could reach down and feel the boy’s forehead. Warm, but no longer hot. The fever was burning itself out. She exhaled softly, relief washing through her. She had been worried about him. Two days ago, the thermometer had registered his temperature at 106, dangerous for a ten-year-old. They had so few medicines to treat anything and so little knowledge of how to use them. The plagues struck without warning, and any one of them could be fatal if you lacked the necessary medicines. There were vaccines to protect against contracting most of the plagues, and Hawk had gotten a few from Tessa, but mostly the street kids had to rely on luck and strength of constitution to stay healthy.

  The danger of sickness or poisoning was the primary reason that people lived in the compounds. In the compounds, you could minimize the risk of infection and exposure. But the compounds held their own dangers, as Owl had found out firsthand. In her mind, if not in Tessa’s, the dangers of living inside the compounds clearly outweighed the dangers of living outside.

  Which was why she had decided five years ago to take her chances with the Ghosts.

  Before that, she had been living in the Safeco Field compound along with two thousand other people. When the Great Wars had escalated to a point where half the cities in the nation had been wiped out and the remainder were under siege from terrorist attacks and plagues and chemical poisonings of all sorts, much of the population began to occupy the compounds. Most were established within existing structures like Safeco, which had been a baseball park decades ago. Sports complexes offered several advantages. First, their walls were thick and strong and provided good protection, once the entrances were properly fortified. Second, they could hold thousands of people and provide adequate storage space for supplies and equipment. Third, all contained a playing surface, which could be converted to gardens for growing food and raising livestock.

  At first, the strategy worked well. The measure of protection the compounds offered was undeniable. There was safety in numbers. A form of government could be established and order restored within their walls. Food and water could be better foraged for and more equitably distributed. A larger number of people meant more diversity of skills. When one compound filled up, those turned away established another, usually in a second sports complex. If there was none available, a convention center or even an office tower was substituted, although none of these ever worked quite as well.

  The biggest problem with the compounds began to manifest after the first decade, when the once-men started to appear. No one seemed certain of their origin, although there were rumors of “demons” creating them from the soulless shells of misguided humans who had been subverted. Urban legends, these stories could never be confirmed. Some claimed to have seen these demons, though no one Owl had ever met. But there was no denying the existence of the once-men. Formed up into vast armies, they roamed the countryside, attacking and destroying the compounds, laying siege until resistance was either overcome or the compound surrendered in the false hope that mercy would be shown. When word spread of the slave pens and the uses to which the once-men were putting the captured humans, resistance stiffened. But the compounds were not fortresses in the sense that medieval castles had been. Once besieged, they turned into death traps from which the defenders coul
d not escape. The once-men outnumbered the humans. They did not require clean water or good food. They did not fear plague or poisoning. Time and patience favored the attackers. One by one, the compounds fell.

  This might have discouraged those hiding in the compounds if there had been anyplace else for them to go. But the mind-set of the compound occupants was such that the idea of surviving anywhere else was inconceivable. Outside the walls you risked death from a thousand different enemies. There were the Freaks. There were the feral humans living in the rubble of the old civilization. There were the armies of the once-men, prowling the countryside. There were things no one could describe, crawled up out of Hell and the mire. There was anarchy and wildness. The humans in the compounds could not imagine contending with these. Even the risk of an attack and siege by the once-men was preferable to attempting life on the outside where an entire world had gone mad.

  Owl was one of the people who believed like this. She had been born in the Safeco Field compound, and for the first eight years of her life it was all she knew. She never went outside its walls, not even once. In part, it was because she was crippled at birth, deprived of the use of her legs for reasons that probably had something to do with the poor quality of the air or food or water her mother ingested during pregnancy. After her parents died from a strain of plague that swept the compound when she was nine, she was left orphaned and alone. A quiet and reclusive child, in part because of her disability, in part because of her nature, she had never had many friends. She began living with a family who needed someone to care for their baby. But then the baby died, and she was dismissed and left without a family once more.

  She began working in the kitchens of the compound and sleeping in a back room on a cot. It was a dreary, unrewarding existence, but her choices were limited. In the compounds, everyone over the age of ten worked if they wanted to remain. If you did not contribute, you were put out. So she worked. But she was unhappy, and she began to question whether the life she was living was the best she could hope for. She began spending time on the walls, looking at the city, wondering what was out there.