9
MERCY OF ANGELS
THE AMPHITHEATER REMINDED Darwin of pictures he’d seen of World War Two refugee camps. People crowded the area, dressed in whatever they had on their backs when they’d run. They sat or stood in small groups, looking lost and confused, speaking in hushed tones. Occasionally the din of hundreds of people was shattered by shouts or screams. Darwin carried the boy through the ring of Threaders protecting the space and stood in the mass of humanity.
He looked down at the frail figure in his arms, the dirty face looking almost peaceful in sleep, or passed out, his chest rising and falling in a ragged rhythm. The arm resting across his chest still lay at an awkward angle, but the boy seemed beyond caring about it. Darwin brushed the boy’s dirty face with his thumb, wiping away the tears that hadn’t had a chance to dry.
He stepped further into the crowd, trying to find a path to the stage. From where he stood, he could see people lying on it and being tended to by others. The natural acoustics of the amphitheater made every sound clear, even over the noise of the crowd: the soft consoling voices of the caregivers, punctuated by the sharp cries of those hurt.
He spotted Wally through the crowd and pushed his way over. Sullen faces turned to look at him, until they saw the young boy in his arms, and then they separated, giving him room to move.
“Wally,” Darwin yelled, trying to raise his voice above the crowd’s.
Wally spun around, scanning the faces in front of him. He passed over Darwin and looked like he was going to turn away before he spotted the boy Darwin carried. Darwin watched as Wally moved easily through the crowd, people separating just before he reached them, and closing back together shortly after he passed. Instinctively, Darwin tried to watch the Threads. It felt like he’d had a fresh batch of inhibitor put in him; what he saw was faint and few. When Wally reached them, he looked down at the boy.
“He’s hurt,” Darwin said.
“I can see that. The healers are on the stage. Follow me.” Wally turned and moved away, the crowd opening for him again. Darwin rushed to follow before the gap behind Wally closed.
The stage was a quiet zone compared to the confusion of the people on the slopes. Patients lay on the floor in orderly rows, some staring at the stars in the night sky, others with their eyes closed. As new people were brought in, the less injured were quietly moved off the stage to make room. Through all of this, several men and women walked, helping those who required it before moving on to the next person. One of them stopped in front of Darwin and Wally.
“Just the boy?”
Darwin nodded. He was bruised and the burn on his arm hurt, but it was nothing compared to the injuries already here. At the other end of the stage he watched as a blanket was pulled over the face of a young man who looked like he should have been going to high school.
Once he saw that, others filled his view, scattered amongst the living. Bodies with their faces covered were being moved from where they lay to the far end of the stage. From there, a group of men and women carried them farther down the slope.
He felt the weight of the boy being lifted from his arms, and his attention focused back on the healer in front of him. A woman. He noticed the blood on her clothes and, in the back of his mind, wondered if it was hers or someone else’s. He turned, following Wally off the stage.
“What were those things?”
Wally pivoted and looked Darwin in the eyes. Whatever he was looking for, he apparently found it. “Skends.”
Darwin’s blank look must have prompted him to continue.
“We call them Skends. We first saw them last year on the east coast, fighting for the Qabal. We lost some good teams before we figured out how to defeat them. We think they were human once, just like you and me. But they’ve been . . . modified.” Wally used his fingers to put quotation marks around the word “modified.” “We have no idea how, or what has been done to them, but whatever it is, it’s not a good thing. They’re taller and stronger than most men, and we don’t think they feel pain. Everything they touch is scorched—metal, wood, people.”
“Don’t think?”
“We don’t know. We’ve never managed to capture one alive.” He shuddered. “I’m not sure we want to.” He glanced at Darwin’s burned shirt and arm. “One of them touched you?”
Darwin nodded.
“You won’t be able to use Threads for a while. Skends have the ability to dampen what you can See. Makes them a bitch to fight.”
“How did they get in?”
“Past the defenses? I wish I knew. None of the alarms went off, and we always have five or six scouts monitoring them, plus another crew watching the Threads. A group of Skends and their handlers holing into the area shouldn’t have been tough to See . . . unless they were brought in one by one over a long period. Something on the order of months. And then they would have to be walked in from pretty far away.” Wally stopped talking and rubbed a hand over his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. “That’s a scary thought. There could be even more out there. I’ve got to find Enton and let him know, though he’s probably already thought of it.”
Before Wally could turn to leave, Darwin asked one more question. He thought he already knew the answer, and it filled him with a cold dread.
“If they’ve been here for months, then why? Why now?”
Wally looked Darwin in the eyes again. “You, Darwin. You are the reason. The Qabal want you, and if what they’ve done—what they’re doing—is any indication, they want you dead. Enton seems to think you’re worth all of this.” Wally sighed and waved his hands around him before turning, leaving Darwin standing alone in the crowd.
The world slowed to a crawl. People moved around and past him, fading into the background. The noises dimmed in his ears, even though he saw them talking.
His fault.
All of the people hurt. All of the people dead. All of it was because of him. The shock hit him full force, like a car crashing into a concrete wall. A feeling he barely remembered but that still came to him at night when he slept. He felt the skin on his face tighten, and his insides clenched into a ball. His breath came in short gasps, lungs refusing to expand to take in more air. The world blurred and his legs felt like rubber. His knees slammed into the ground. His stomach heaved, but nothing came out. It heaved again and bile filled his mouth, dripping onto the dirt.
His fault.
A pair of hands reached under his arms and lifted him slowly to his feet. The look of concern on the stranger’s face drove his guilt deeper, and he pushed away, stumbling downhill into the crowd, sure that they could see the regret and shame written all over his face. Bodies pressed against him, and the stale air clung to him. Every breath taken by the people packed into the small space seemed to suck another one out of his lungs. He had to get out. He had to have space to breathe again. He pressed against the stage, squeezing along its perimeter until he stumbled into the shadows behind it.
He leaned his head against a tree in the darkness of the night and sucked in lungfuls of the cooling air. The rough bark scraped against his forehead as he turned to his side and looked up. The night sky over SafeHaven glowed orange against the smoke that rose to the north. He tried to take some consolation from knowing only a part of the community had been hit. It could have been so much worse.
It didn’t work.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the area behind the tree came into focus. Dozens of white sheets filled the open space, each one draped over a body. How many people had died tonight? How many children had lost a mother or father? How many parents had lost a child? How many girls would never dance again? The thoughts and questions raced through his brain like the fire that had raced through the streets.
His fault.
He had to get out. There was no point in him being here. What if the Qabal tried to attack again? Would everyone turn on him, point to him as the outsider, the reason they had lost family and friends? Homes?
Hell, he shouldn’t be here at all, he should be sitting in a classroom starting his last year of university, the loner who just showed up and got his work done. He should be preregistering for his master’s next year, for the next phase of his education.
It was all fucked up anyway. Here or there.
He walked past the bodies, refusing to look at them, his arms pressed against his roiling stomach, and shuffled down the hill behind the stage, following the gully in the dark, not caring where he was going.
Time blurred and faded. Minutes stretched into hours as Darwin struggled through the dark and rugged terrain. The light from SafeHaven’s fires had long since disappeared behind the hills he had climbed. The waning moon barely gave off enough glow to see his own hand before his face, yet he continued on. Guilt lodged deep in his gut with talons as sharp as steel, refusing to let go. Wally’s words echoed in his head, driving his guilt deeper into his soul.
By the time he realized he was lost, it was too late to backtrack . . . not that he would have been able to. Instead he pushed on, trying to keep heading in the same direction by looking at the stars near the horizon. He had no idea if he was looking at a constellation or just a random grouping, but it didn’t matter. As long as the same pattern was in front of him, he was pretty sure he was heading in a straight line. The stars and the cold were his only company. In his mad rush from his room, he’d left the jacket Enton had given him draped over a chair.
Yet he was far from alone. Besides the sounds of him forcing his way through thick underbrush and tripping over exposed rocks, he could hear the rustle of animals in the tall grasses. Occasionally, something louder echoed in the night and he’d freeze midstride, holding his breath until whatever it was had moved off. He didn’t notice when the wilderness turned into an overgrown gravel road, or that he’d stopped following the stars and turned to follow the barely visible path.
Shortly after, the gravel ended at a cracked concrete ribbon just wide enough for a single vehicle. The morning sun rose at his back, casting a long shadow in front of him. The heat of it warmed him until his shirt stuck to his skin with a slick layer of sweat. It wasn’t that late in the day, but the intensity from the low-lying sun hinted at the heat the day would bring. A little over an hour after finding the narrow road, he climbed a small hill to a twinned highway. Keeping the rising sun to his back, he turned west, leaving SafeHaven behind him.
Houses with broken windows and wide-open doors sat on top of the small hills on either side of the road, their paint long gone, and the exposed wood faded. Exhausted from hiking most of the night, he turned and, leaving the road, forced his way through the overgrown hedges and grass, sometimes crawling to make it through. He walked into the cooler interior of the first house in his path.
“Hello?”
His voice bounced through the empty structure. To his right, a staircase led to the second floor. He hesitated before climbing the steps, knowing it would be hotter, but hoping it would be safer than the main floor. His mind made up, he trudged his way up the stairs and collapsed on the floor of the first room he found.
He woke to the bright sun pouring through the windows into his eyes. Rolling away from the light, he used the door to help him stand, the hallway a black chasm in front of him. His lips felt dry and the back of his throat was sore from the arid air. Already knowing what the result would be, he followed the walls into the bathroom and turned the taps. Nothing came out. Even the back of the toilet had been opened and drained of water.
He went down the stairs, looking for the basement door. Michael had gotten water from the hot water tank; maybe there was some left here. He stumbled down the basement stairs, catching himself on the wall, and maneuvered through the dim space by the light shining through small windows. All he found was an on-demand system with no tank.
The other five houses he tried were the same, whether they had a tank or not. Each one as dry as the previous. He could feel his lips starting to crack.
He stumbled from the last house and fought his way back through the brush to the road. Turning to face the setting sun, he continued to walk away from SafeHaven. Heat rose from the crumbling concrete, enveloping him in a stifling cocoon. Someone had told him it was unusually warm; he couldn’t remember who. The thought disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Occasionally, a small breeze would wick away his outer layer of sweat, and for just a moment he would feel cool again. He had no idea what time it was, but even his muddled mind knew he’d been gone for most of the day plus at least half a night. It had to have been at least eighteen hours since he’d had anything to drink. With the hard hiking last night and the heat of the sun during the day, he knew he was in trouble.
His memory became a smear of concrete roads and intersections, the dead stop lights and street signs casting longer and longer shadows. Cramps shot through his legs, forcing him to sit until they passed and he could continue on. Hours later, dusk found him shambling along yet another long stretch of road, surrounded by the empty shells of strip malls. He crawled through the broken window of a market looking for water, for anything he could drink. He had stopped sweating long ago.
Shards of glass cut into his palms and knees, but he crawled on, not feeling the pain, not caring. A strip of metal that once held the glass in place jutted out from the wall. It sliced through his jeans and cut into his thigh. He sat numbly inside the store, watching the blood seep from the cut. One part of his brain told him he needed to do something about it, but he had no idea what. Thirst cut through his stupor again, and he rolled back to his knees. The shelves were like the houses, empty. Nothing was left. He needed something, anything. Wet. Water. He lay on the cool tile floor. Just a few minutes, he thought. I just need a bit of a rest.
Darwin bolted upright, remnants of a nightmare burning into the back of his eyes. He ran his tongue over his lips, feeling the crusty splits in them. They didn’t hurt. The only thing that really did was the burn mark on his arm. It radiated heat that coursed through his body in waves. Through the thick fog in his head, a single thought forced its way through. He was going to die here. Die in a dead city. Darwin chuckled and it turned into a dry rasping hack. He didn’t even know where he was.
He forced himself to stand, using the empty shelves as temporary stops along the way. His legs trembled, threatening to drop him back to the floor in a heap of quivering flesh and bone. He took another shaky breath, leaning against an empty cash register for balance before shuffling out into the cool, dark night. The still air caressed his skin, removing some of the feverish heat.
At some point he found himself back on his hands and knees in the middle of the road. He couldn’t remember if he had fallen, or just decided to rest a bit. Or if it even mattered. How long had he been here? His tongue felt dry and swollen in his mouth. He tried to swallow, but there was nothing left.
Concrete rushed up to meet him as his arms gave out.
Sounds cut through the murkiness surrounding Darwin, pushing cobwebs from his brain. Voices. Soft and quiet. He struggled to pull himself awake, reaching through the gauze-like layers of sleep, and opened his eyes to nothing but darkness. Two hands pushed him gently back down by his shoulders and he felt a cold wet cloth touch his forehead. The world faded again.
When he next woke up, his eyes opened in a dimly lit room. He rubbed away the dry mucus that clung to his eyelids like glue and looked around without lifting his head. Curtains hung from a window at the foot of his bed, blocking the light from outside, filtering it to a pale yellow. He turned his head. The rough pillow scraped his cheek, feeling like it took a couple of layers of skin with it.
Pillow? Bed? His eyes focused on a doorway in the far wall as his mind struggled to work through how he had gotten here. He remembered leaving SafeHaven, walking most of the night and the next day, crawling through scrub brush and weeds to get to a house. And then . . . nothing. He was sure some time had passed, but it was all a blank.
The memory of SafeHaven brought with it the sudden rush of fear. The Skends! They had found him there. Would they find him here? Were there mothers and fathers and children who would be hurt because he had been brought here? He had to leave.
The doorway was covered with a curtain matching the one in the window, red flowers on a yellow cloth faded almost to white. It swayed in a gentle breeze coming from the other room. He could hear quiet murmurs through the curtain as he raised himself on his elbows.
He felt like he had been run over by a truck, and then the driver had decided to back up and do it all over again. He let out a soft moan as he fell back to the bed. It didn’t matter how much he wanted to leave; he wasn’t going anywhere.
The curtain across the door pushed open and a young woman walked in. Darwin breathed deep to smother the pain, but only succeeded in starting it anew as his rib cage expanded to hold the air. He let it out slowly and gazed, unfocused, at the ceiling.
“Shh. Lay back and rest.”
The woman lifted a glass of water from the side table and put a hand behind his head, lifting gently.
“Drink some of this. You put your body through hell out there. I did what I could, but now it needs water and rest.”
“Where—” The sound was more of a croak.
“Questions later, water first.” She held the cup to his mouth and poured slowly.
It was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted. Before he’d had his fill, she lowered his head to the pillow and put the half-empty cup back on the side table. His eyes were already closing before the glass reached the tabletop.
His dreams exploded with dark images. Skends strode through streets running thick with darkened blood. The broken bodies of children lay stacked in the gutters. Rebecca rode on a Skend’s shoulders, laughing as her horde gathered more kids and drained the lifeblood from them. He tried to run, tried to reach the children to pull them out of her way, but his feet refused to obey his commands and he stared wide-eyed as the carnage continued. As she passed him, her laugh turned into a snarl and her face morphed into his mother’s, full of hate and anger and blame as she glared into his eyes. Her body twisted and broke, mimicking what he had seen of her after the accident. A silent scream tore from his soul. He wanted to close his eyes, close his mind, to dispel the images before him, but they too refused to listen.
Just before he woke, an angel with dark hair and soft brown eyes walked down the streets touching the broken bodies, her feet leaving no trace of her passage in the drying blood. At each touch, the child’s eyes opened and they smiled before their bodies disappeared in a swirl of soft white Threads. One, a young boy no older than two, with his arm bent grotesquely around his torso, ran up to Darwin, wrapping a thin arm and legs around him. Tears flowed down his cheeks, staining Darwin’s shirt.
He woke up in a cold sweat. Damp sheets grabbed at him and he struggled out of them as he dug himself from the nightmare. A jug of warm water and a glass sat on the side table, and he drained half of it, gasping for breath between chugs. The image of his mother remained.
A faint rectangle of light showed where the window was in the darkened room, the curtains faded into a translucent white by the pale moonlight. He stood, leaning briefly against the bed before his legs stabilized under him. His clothes had been removed and he shivered as the sweat cooled on his bare skin. He stepped to the window, moving the curtain aside, and stared onto the moonlit street, half expecting to see fire and Skends. A lamppost stood sentry by the curb, its lamp holding no light. Across the four lanes of pristine asphalt stood more houses, their unbroken windows reflecting the glow from the moon. Though the night looked peaceful, he couldn’t shake the images of SafeHaven out of his head. He had no idea where he was, but that didn’t stop the Skends from attacking before. What if they could find him? What if they were already on their way here?
Leaving the window behind, he grabbed the damp sheet from the bed and wrapped it around himself before heading for the doorway. His clothes had to be somewhere around here. He pushed aside the curtain and stood in the entry, listening for sounds from the quiet house before moving into the next room. A couch and chair lined one wall, facing a small fireplace painted white. To his left was a dining room, though it was difficult to see in the dim, filtered light. The windows here had thicker curtains, and the moonlight barely pushed through the material. A single shaft of light cut across the floor, created where the curtains failed to meet.
He turned and shuffled back to bed, suddenly exhausted from his foray into the house. He barely had the strength to make it back, never mind getting dressed and walking through the night. He still had no clue where he was, but the people who lived here had taken the time to nurse him back to health. He didn’t think they would do that if they had any plans to hurt him, or if they thought he’d bring the Qabal down on them. He lay down and was asleep almost before his head touched the pillow.
No dreams interrupted his sleep.
Darwin woke to sunlight streaming in through the window, the curtains pushed back. All he could see out of it was a patch of pale blue. Beside the filled water jug on the side table, a pile of clothes lay neatly folded. He could see they weren’t his, but it was obvious they were meant for him.
Closing his eyes, he let the Threads come into view, mentally kicking himself for not trying to use them last night. The only excuse he had was he must have been more tired than he had thought. It took him a moment to realize he could use them again. Apparently the Skend’s touch was only temporary.
Threads drifted through the room, soft and white. He had Seen Threads like this before but couldn’t remember where. They moved through the wall and doorway into the living room he had seen yesterday, and he followed them with his Sight.
As the Threads moved through the living room, the muted sounds of whispering voices stopped. Darwin pulled back and pushed himself to a sitting position in bed, waiting for his visitor.
A gentle knock came from the doorway, and she walked in. This was the angel from his nightmares last night. She couldn’t have been much older than he was, and as in his dreams, her long dark hair hung freely, framing her face in a halo of backlight from the window. As she walked closer, he could see her eyes were a deep brown, almost black, and filled with understanding and compassion and strength. He suddenly felt naked and exposed, and he pulled the bed sheet higher up his chest.
“You are looking better this afternoon,” she said.
Afternoon? Darwin glanced out the window again. The sunlight was bright and harsh.
“You have been asleep for quite some time.”
“How long?” Darwin’s voice came out hoarse and scratchy. He cleared his throat and tried again. “How long?”
“Just over three days. If we had found you a couple of hours later than we did, I think it would have been too late. Walking around during the day with no water isn’t a very wise thing to do, even at this time of the year. Throw in this weird heat wave we’re getting, and it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Darwin noted her voice, though still soft, held a bit of an edge to it as she chided him. “I hadn’t planned to be walking around,” he said.
“I could see that.” The edge had left her voice and a hint of laughter could be heard in it. “There is fresh water in the pitcher. Drink as much of it as you can, then get dressed and meet me in the living room. You are a bit late for lunch, but I think I can warm up some leftovers and get some food into you.”
The thought of food made his stomach rumble, and he realized that he was starving. His angel laughed at the sound, a gentle laugh that lit up her whole face, and turned to leave.
“By the sounds of it, I’d better hurry with the lunch,” she said.
By the time he had finished a few glasses of water and gotten dressed, he could smell the food coming from behind the curtained doorway. The clothes didn’t fit too badly. The jeans, though the same size as his old ones, felt loose and baggy. The shirt, black with a faded and pixelated image of the Enterprise from the old Star Trek TV show on it, fit perfectly. When he stepped into the living room, he saw the table had been set with a single place setting, just a plate and a spoon, tortillas, a bowl of steaming beans, and what looked like chicken in another bowl. Beside it was a large pitcher filled with water. His angel—he’d have to find out her name—sat across from the food. He fell into the chair, and the smell of the beans made his stomach rumble again. He reached for a tortilla and a soft touch on his arm stopped him.
“More to drink first, then a little bit of food. Your body is still feeling the effects of severe dehydration and will for a couple more days. Put on some extra salt as well, you need it. After that,” she tilted her head toward the bedroom door, “back to bed.”
Darwin dutifully poured a glass of water and took two gulps before reaching for the food again. He wrapped the soft tortilla around the chicken and beans and took a giant bite, grabbing for his water before he had a chance to swallow. The cracks in his lips were on fire, and his tongue felt like he’d laid it on a red-hot stove. The water did little to hold the fire at bay.
“Jesus, that’s hot,” he gasped.
His statement was met with another gentle laugh. “I didn’t think you were from around here,” she said. “It is the beans. That’s as mild as we make it, unless you want baby mash.” She pushed the pitcher closer to him. “I suggest you just suck it up and drink more water.”
Darwin unrolled his tortilla and scraped most of the beans onto the plate, replacing them with another chunk of chicken. Either the second bite was better, or he had burnt away so many of his taste buds it just didn’t matter anymore. He made his second tortilla with just the chicken. The gnawing hunger subsided halfway through to a dull pang, and he started asking questions.
“Where am I?”
“San Diego, near the old Chollas Reservoir.”
She tilted her head, focusing her beautiful eyes on him. It felt as though she was looking into his soul, if he believed in stuff like that.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
“New Jersey.”
“That’s quite a walk. Did you do the whole thing without food or water?”
“No, I . . .” He stopped, realizing she was joking with him again. “No. It’s a long story.”
“I’m sure it is. I may even know some of it. You had a burn on your arm, in the shape of fingers. There aren’t too many things in this world that can do that kind of damage.”
Darwin’s hand went automatically to his arm where the Skend had touched him.
“There’s only one place I know of where Skends have been recently. My mom and brother are there now, helping the survivors. If one got close enough to you to do that, you’re one lucky guy.” She paused. “A lot of people left SafeHaven that day.”
The image of the eyeless and mouthless face rose unbidden into his mind, and he shuddered, putting the rest of the tortilla on the plate. Suddenly, he was more tired than hungry.
She placed her hand on his arm, the warmth of her fingers spreading through him. “We can talk again later. Why don’t you get back to bed and get some more rest?” Her fingers slipped from his arm and he immediately missed her touch.
He stood without answering, picking up his plate to bring to the kitchen.
“Just leave it, I’ll take care of it.”
He put the plate down and stumbled back to his room, stopping as he reached the curtained doorway. He turned back and leaned against the doorframe.
“I didn’t get your name.”
“Teresa,” she said, without looking up from the table. She said her name with a slight rolling of the “r” and as if it had an “a” after it instead of an “e.”
“Thank you, Teresa.”
“Go to bed, rest.” The corners of her mouth rose in a slight smile.
He turned to walk into his room before changing his mind. All of the water he’d drunk had brought on another need. “Is there a bathroom I could use first?”