5
THE DANCE AND THE SOURCE
Darwin and Teresa left the ocean-side roads, choosing instead to walk some of the smaller ones further inland. They discussed whether it was one of the predictable moves Paul had mentioned, but decided they had no choice. The number of variations in route choice was higher, and Paul couldn’t possibly cover them all. They also had a faint hope of finding some smaller towns or country homes that had not been completely ransacked. Surprising to them, they spent most of the first part of the day in a sprawling urban landscape that felt like it would never end. Despite that, everything they passed was devoid of human life, and the shops and homes had been completely cleaned out long ago. When they reached the first overgrown field and clump of forest, they breathed a sigh of relief.
Midway through the day, they finally came to a small town nestled between two hills. Smoke rose from a few chimneys, and the sound of cowbells echoed through the valley. They chose to approach on the main road, deciding it was best to look friendly and open. There were no marketplaces here, no shops or roadside stands. The community was too small to support anything like that.
Darwin and Teresa walked in expecting to see people, but the streets were deserted, as if everyone had gone home for lunch at the same time. The main street cut through the center of the town and narrowed, curbs defining its edge. No grass grew in the cracks and the buildings were obviously being taken care of. They turned into the parking lot of a convenience store attached to a gas station, peering through the clean and intact glass. The shelves, though thin on goods, did contain some things. Teresa pulled open the door and entered, followed by Darwin, his head low and the scars on his face covered by hair as best as he could.
No one stood behind the counter and the aisle ways were clear.
The shelves held what could only be called the basic essentials. There were spools of rope, obviously hand woven, alongside sacks of flour and dry goods. Small jars on the countertop held homemade candy. The shelf behind the counter contained packets of medicine behind locked glass. Darwin eyed the Advil with envy. Despite the steel shelves and wire racks, the entire place reminded him of an old country store. Something you would see in an old western.
They called out, their voices making the place feel even emptier. All they got in return was silence.
A door led to the back and the old service bays. Teresa pushed through it, disappearing for a few moments before coming back out shaking her head. A chill crept down Darwin’s back and he shivered, fighting the urge to run, to get away as fast as they could. They left the same way they’d come in and stood in the small parking lot by the gas pumps, staring down the street in both directions. There was no movement, no sign that anybody still lived here, only the continuing sound of cowbells in the distance. It was as if a giant hand had come down and swept away the people, leaving behind a shadow of a town.
Behind the convenience store a gate had been built into a wooden fence. It opened without a sound, leading to a path that opened on a small street containing six houses. They went to the first one and knocked on the door.
There was no answer.
Darwin went around the side and peered through the windows. Again, it was obvious that somebody lived here. The furniture looked worn but cozy, and he couldn’t see any dust on the surfaces. What had happened here? Where the heck could everyone be? They went to the next house, and the next, yet no one was there. At the fourth house, when Darwin knocked on the door, it swung open a couple of inches. He looked over a shoulder at Teresa. She gave a quick nod and he pushed open the door.
“Hello?”
The only answer was silence.
They both stepped inside. A small entryway opened up into a living room filled with overstuffed couches and chairs. Hanging pots filled with plants almost covered the window, giving the room a greenish tinge. Teresa stuck a finger into the soil.
“Still wet,” she said.
“Hello,” Darwin called. “Hello, is anybody here?”
They ignored the narrow, carpeted stairs heading up to the second floor and entered the small kitchen at the back of the house. Plates still sat on the table, dirty cutlery laid across them. What looked like tea filled the mugs. A teapot lay shattered on the floor surrounded by more of the dark liquid, the only physical sign that something wasn’t right. Darwin felt the outside of the cups. They were ice cold. It looked like someone had finished breakfast here, and then mysteriously disappeared.
Teresa left the kitchen. He could hear footsteps climbing the stairs.
Darwin opened the cupboards over the sink, finding more dishes and mugs. He went to the next one. Home-canned foods filled the top shelf and the bottom contained dry goods.
A bang rang down the stairs and Teresa called out, her voice wavering and on the edge of panic.
He ran from the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs, taking two and three steps at a time. Teresa stood just inside the doorway of the first room. Beyond her, he could see an unmade bed. She wasn’t looking at that, though. Her eyes were on the wall beside the door. He pushed past her and followed her gaze. A handprint was burned into the wallpaper, larger than any man’s, the fingers elongated and the palm easily twice as wide as his.
Skends.
He had first seen a Skend back in SafeHaven, the night he’d decided he couldn’t stay there. The creatures were man-made from something that had once been human, but were now mindless creatures that destroyed everything they touched. War machines created by unscrupulous people. Back in SafeHaven, it had been the Qabal that had manipulated their DNA. Now it was Salem. Different people with the same intent.
The monsters stood well over six feet tall. Their skin had been stretched thin and was the color of a fresh white sheet of paper. They had no eyes or mouth. In place of their eyes were pockets of skin. If you got close enough you could still see the orbs twitching under that thin layer. The skin over their mouths stretched as their jaws moved. Although they couldn’t speak, the sounds that emanated from them were filled with pain and fury. Their touch burned.
He reached for the side of his face. Felt the skin.
They set fire to anything that was remotely flammable. Their touch also removed the ability of a Threader to See and use Threads. Usually not permanently. He touched the side of his face again. But long enough for the Threader to become vulnerable and weak. Baila’s touch had broken whatever skills Darwin used to have. Even nine months later they hadn’t come back.
“What do we do?” Teresa whispered, her voice tight.
Darwin tore his gaze from handprint on the wall.
“We leave. Now.”
They walked down the stairs as quietly as they could, placing their feet near the walls, near the outside edges of the steps, to minimize any creaking. He could hear Teresa’s breathing in the silence. If the Skends were still here . . .
“We need food and water.” Teresa angled back toward the kitchen, and he fought the urge to grab her arm and drag her to the front door. She was right, but it didn’t make him feel any better. They were safe for now. If the Skends were still in the house, they would have known by now.
Darwin went to the side of the window facing the street, hiding behind the greenery and the curtains, and peered outside. The view remained as desolate as before. Now that they knew why, it made their previous door-to-door search feel brazen, stupid. It was obvious that Salem had been here and brought the Skends with them, the question was what had happened? Did the people that had once lived here have some advance warning? Did they run away, leaving everything they owned behind? Or had Salem taken them? If they had taken them, then why? To create more Skends, or to use them as slaves in their fields? Either way, the end result was the same.
No one lived here anymore.
Teresa came back with an old green backpack bulging and her water bottle clipped to the side, bouncing in time with her steps. In her hand she held another pack, equally full, Darwin’s water bottle clipped to the outside of that one.
“I found this by the back door and filled it.”
He shouldered it and pulled the front door open slowly, looking both ways down the street before taking a step outside. They left the town skulking alongside the buildings. When the houses ended they angled back toward the main street but stayed off the road, choosing instead to wade through the ditch and hide in the trees and the bushes that grew there.
Darwin’s heart was still racing. He kept looking over his shoulder and up and down the road. They were pretty far from Salem. The only reason he could think of Salem reaching out so far from their home base was because they had stripped the nearby communities of everything they had, and they had to reach further out to increase their numbers or to find people to create Skends. Their territory was expanding rapidly.
A few miles down the road, they once again walked on the overgrown and cracked concrete, continuing on their path back to San Diego. Neither of them spoke.
Darwin and Teresa walked for two days, constantly looking over their shoulders, without seeing any other signs of Salem or their Skends, before they finally felt they could relax their vigilance a little. There been no sign of Paul or his cronies either. Maybe the man had finally given up the chase. That would have been too good to be true.
The road they were on merged back with Highway 1—mostly following the ocean—and they found a secluded rocky beach to rest for the remainder of the day. Even after being on the road for nine months, they weren’t used to all the walking and carrying of the backpacks and Darwin’s feet and back ached. He missed his bike and the ease and distance they could travel in a day.
Warm sunshine beat down on them from almost directly overhead, baking the rocks in its heat. The two stripped down and dashed into the cold ocean, washing days of grime from their bodies in the salt water. They ran back out, shivering and laughing, feeling better than they had in weeks. They rinsed off using a little bit of their drinking water, deciding not to wash their clothes, knowing that the salt would make them crusty and hard. They lay on the pebbles near the waterline to let the sun dry their skin.
Teresa was the first one to bring up the Skends. “How fast do you think they’re growing?”
Darwin knew what she was talking about without asking. It was a topic that had been at the top of his mind since they had seen the handprint on the wall.
“I don’t know. I’m really worried that they’re building another army to gain control of the Source.”
“There’s not much we can do about that, except tell Darby or someone else from Forsythe. If we ever see them again. At the very least when we reach Chollas we can let them know.”
Darwin sighed and sat up, hugging his knees. “I just wish there was more I could do.”
Teresa put an arm around his shoulders and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “You’ve done more than enough. More than anybody has the right to ask.” Her voice was as soft and gentle as her touch.
He pulled away, lips pressed together in a white line, and stood, reaching for his clothes. “It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It never has. As long as there are Skends and people like Salem, there needs to be more that I can do. There has to be.”
“You’ve done enough,” Teresa repeated. “It’s time for you to relax.”
“Relax? Is that what we’re doing, traveling around the countryside trying to keep the fact of who I am hidden? Running away from people like Paul or any sign of Salem or Skends? Scraping by on your ability to heal?”
“You provide as well. When you dance, the things that you construct, the way the Threads respond to you . . . it’s better than I’d ever seen Baila or her troupe do.”
Darwin scoffed to hide the hollowness her words created in him. “That’s the curse, isn’t it, when you’re a dancer. You never get to see the true beauty that you create.”
“But you feel it. I know you do. We’ve both had enough conversations with Baila to understand where the dancer gets their material. Emotion and feelings don’t just start the dance, they carry it through. I’ve watched you when you dance, I’ve seen you cry and laugh and hate all in the span of a few minutes. I’ve seen those emotions echoed in the Threads, and seen you react to them. That’s a form of Sight, isn’t it?”
Darwin yanked on his pants and shirt, feeling the grit embedded in them scraping his skin, and pulled Teresa into a hug. “I know,” he said, his voice muffled against her neck. “It’s just sometimes I wonder if this is it, if this is our life—my life—from now on in. Sometimes, having had the Threads and losing them is more than I can take. And this constant moving around. It’s not sustainable. Can you see us traveling around on bicycles or by foot when we’re sixty or seventy?”
“That’s a long way away from now and I don’t think it’s something we have to be worrying about just yet.” She kissed him and pulled away. “Now, how about we get you back out of those clothes and really enjoy each other’s company for a little while?”
Two days later, Darwin and Teresa still hadn’t seen anybody from San Francisco. They’d passed a few small settlements, and Teresa had headed in to replenish their food and water alone, meeting back up with Darwin on the other side. She’d done her best to ask about Paul without seeming too obvious, and had come up empty. One larger city had given them both a bad feeling and they gave it a wide berth, heading deeper inland. Once again, the further from the Pacific Ocean they got, the more the devastation from the war became evident. Though there were no craters, no grass or shrubs grew in the barren land, and the few distant houses they did see were piles of rubble.
A haze filled the sky this morning, making the sun an orange globe that hung like a balloon caught in the clouds. The haze was created by smoke hovering in the morning air. The lack of people had slowed down the occurrences of forest fires, but when one was started by lightning or some other natural occurrence, there was no one to stop its progress. Humanity was a two-edged sword.
Darwin breathed in deep. Even with the thin haze, the air didn’t smell like smoke, placing the fire that created it far away from where they were. They topped a rise and the smoke thickened in the bowl before them, partially obscuring the sprawling city in the bottom of the bowl. They both stopped at the same time and scanned what they could see. Even from this distance, they should have seen some sign of life or occupation, but the entire city looked deserted. There was no smoke from an early breakfast fire attempting to add to the haze. There were none of the markets they had become accustomed to seeing on the outskirts of the larger cities. They would have been a hive of activity at this time of the morning.
“What do you think?” Darwin asked. “Go through it, or go around it?” Going around would add hours to their trip.
Teresa shrugged and ran her hand through her dark hair, fingers catching at the knots. “It doesn’t look like anybody lives there. As long as we’re careful, we should be able to go through.”
“I agree.”
They continued down the long slope leading into the city. As they got closer, they could see what was left of a market that had once been filled with the bustle of people buying and selling goods. A fire had torn through the makeshift town, burning the thin walls of the vendors’ tents and warping the shelves, leaving behind a ghost of its former self. Weather had gotten to what was left, slowly returning the place back to its natural state. Whoever had lived here had left a long time ago.
“Skends?” Teresa asked, as they wound their way through a relatively clear path.
“Who can tell? Then again, if this was started by a campfire or someone being careless, I think there would still be people here. Only Skends and the people from Salem could make it this empty.”
Darwin did a slow turn, examining the husk of this once-vibrant place for any sign of what could have caused this. Burned remnants of tents and tarps hung limply in the still air. All he saw was what had been.
Motion on the road they had just come down caught his eye. It looked like two people moving fast. Far too fast to be walking. He nudged Teresa’s shoulder and she turned to look as well.
“Bicycles,” she said.
Darwin nodded.
“Do you think it’s Paul?”
“That’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”
They both stepped off the path, keeping their movements slow until they were out of sight of the riders. Leaving the market behind, they entered the shadows of the dead city. The still air amplified the sound of their feet pounding against the pavement and they slowed again before stopping on the edge of downtown, both of them out of breath and leaning against an old brick building that had once been a bank. A car had been driven through its front window, leaving shattered glass on the floor.
“Do you think they saw us?” Teresa asked between breaths.
Darwin shrugged.
She pulled him through the empty window frame. “Let’s hide in here.” Over the years, dirt and seeds had blown in through the smashed windows, and grass—dried and brown—had grown in the corners and against the long front counter.
Darwin hesitated. “Do banks have back doors?”
“What?”
“I said, do banks have back doors? The last thing I want to do is be trapped inside a building with no way out.”
“I . . . I don’t know. We need to hide.”
They stepped out of the bank, not willing to risk being trapped. A shout rose behind them and they ducked instinctively. Darwin’s heart missed a beat as he turned to look. The two bike riders had found them. They were close enough that Darwin recognized Paul. They had made more than one mistake. If they’d stayed in the bank, the bikes would have ridden right past.
Darwin and Teresa fled to the next corner, taking a sharp left down the side street. Another shout echoed behind them. They both took another left into the alley behind the bank. A rusted blue dumpster sat against the back wall of the bank beside a similarly rusted steel door with no handle on it. They dove behind the container, peering through the crack of space between it and the building at the entrance to the alley. A single bike sped past. Darwin waited a bit longer before turning to Teresa and holding up one finger and then pointing in the direction the bike had gone. Holding up two fingers, he shrugged.
Teresa nodded that she understood. She grabbed his hand and pulled him back the way they had come, creeping along the edge of the building. When they reached the street, she kept her head low, peering in both directions before dashing across the empty street and into the alley on the other side. He followed her without hesitating.
Even though they’d caught their breath, he was finding it hard to breathe. The haze had thickened, and the smell of smoke filled the air.
Teresa continued to lead the way down the alley with Darwin walking backward behind her, one finger hooked through the belt loop of her jeans as he kept an eye on the other end of the alley. Years of dirt and grit crunched under their feet. He felt Teresa slow and faced forward again. They’d reached the end, and another wide street crossed their path. They checked to make sure the street was empty before they sprinted across.
“Do you think we lost them?”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Darwin said. “I don’t think Paul has any skills with the Threads, but we have no idea who the other bike rider is. For all we know, they know exactly where we are. They didn’t last time, so hopefully they don’t know. If they do, we’re in big trouble.”
“You think it’s only the two of them?”
“I hope so.”
A third shout rang out loud and clear, bouncing between the tall buildings lining the alley. Darwin and Teresa ducked instinctively, searching in the direction of the voice. A bicycle and its rider stood in stark contrast to the bright sunlight at the end of the alley. They bolted in the opposite direction, knowing they wouldn’t be able to outrun a bike, but hoping for the best. Another person popped into view ahead of them, blocking the only obvious means of escape. They both darted for the broken loading door across the alley at the same time. The complete blackness inside the structure enveloped them. They faltered to a stop, too scared to move forward and too scared to reenter the alley. As their eyes adjusted to the dark, Teresa tugged Darwin’s sleeve. He followed her blindly.
“I think I see light over there,” she whispered.
A gray slit opened wider in front of them as Teresa pushed open a door. They stepped through and she closed it behind her with a firm click. Anyone following them would have the same advantage. The light here was dim, cast from the distant windows near the front of the building. Darwin and Teresa pushed past empty racks that once held clothes. A mannequin dressed in dust-covered beige shorts and a terra-cotta t-shirt seemed to beckon them forward.
They kept low, creeping past a set of dead escalators leading to the second floor. A large patch of sunlight shone through a hole in the ceiling down on a pile of rubble, only ten feet from the broken display windows at the front of the store.
The sound of a door latch releasing resounded through the open space and they skittered deeper into the empty racks, still aiming for the front of the store. They crouched behind what was left of a perfume counter, the metal frame empty and the glass crunching beneath their feet.
Paul called out from behind them. “You’re not going to be able to get out of this one. Two of my people are already at the front waiting for you. Three more are only minutes away. All we have to do is keep you inside this building and you will come to us soon enough.”
Teresa leaned in close to and Darwin, her whisper soft in his ear. “Upstairs.”
Darwin shook his head. “We’ll be trapped.”
“There has to be an exit somewhere. If we can get them to follow us up, we can take the stairs down. Or at least make them think we did.”
Darwin closed his eyes. The escalators were behind them, and the store front was so close. Anyone on a bike would be able to catch them without even trying. He opened them and glanced up at the hole in the ceiling, a plan forming in his head. This had to end here.
The glass crunched under their feet again as they angled back toward the escalator. They heard footsteps running toward their position and froze, not even daring to breathe. Paul passed them on the other side of the perfume counter and they both stood and sprinted toward the escalator, not caring about being seen or making noise. They both wanted to be followed, but for different reasons. He chased Teresa up the steel steps, their feet thudding and echoing. Darwin stopped at the top and ducked behind the railing and some empty display boxes, letting Teresa continue on. Her steps faltered when she realized he wasn’t behind her anymore.
“What are you doing?” Her whisper was harsh.
He held up his hand to stop her from coming closer. She was about ten feet away from the escalator, the light from the windows showing her clearly to anyone coming up the escalator. That should be enough. She stopped and took two steps back, the look on her face changing as she realized what he was planning to do. She shook her head no. A trickle of sweat rolled down his back. He knew there was only one way out of this, and it wasn’t by running away.
Voices from the bottom of the escalator pulled his attention back. Paul wasn’t lying when he said there were three of them. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but at least one of them was a woman. He didn’t know if that would make what he was planning harder. Darwin kept his head low as he peeked down the escalator. Three silhouettes were outlined in the light from the front windows. The silhouettes separated and two of them crept up the stairs with tentative steps. Darwin waited, his body tense and his heart beating a million miles a second, ready to push up off his feet. He glanced to where Teresa had stood. She was gone. So much for drawing them up.
Two heads appeared above the level of the floor and stopped. Darwin held his breath. They were looking into the darker part of the building and through the thick glass of the escalators’ walls. The display cases off the escalators would hide him . . . as long as he stayed still. The two started moving again until Darwin could see their shoulders and then their waists. He forced himself to breathe in sync with their steps, his muscles tense, and lunged just as their knees came into view. He hit Paul mid-thigh. The man’s feet slid off the step and he toppled forward onto Darwin. The man behind him let out a soft oof when Paul’s feet hit him and he took a couple of steps down. Darwin scrambled out from underneath Paul and grabbed for the top of the escalator, realizing he should have hit them higher to make them fall down the stairs. He’d gained nothing. The woman ran up the escalator as he scrambled to his feet.
He stumbled into Teresa as he ran into the darkness at the back of the building.
“It’s so dark back there, I couldn’t find any stairs,” she said, slightly out of breath.
Darwin nodded even though she couldn’t see it. There was only one way out of here, and it was the escalator they’d used to come up. They would have to get through Paul and his group first. He dragged Teresa along the wall to the front windows, motioning for her to stand behind the gaping hole in the floor. Years of being exposed to the elements had rotted the wood until it had collapsed. Teresa moved along the edge by the empty windows where the beam still connected to the outside wall until she was behind the hole.
Darwin crawled to the edge of the hole, the floor spongy under his knees, and peered down. The pile of rubble was easily twelve feet below them. It was far enough that there wasn’t any guarantee of jumping and not breaking a leg. He wasn’t planning on using the hole himself anyway.
He backed away and began to dance just off to the side. He could feel the Threads pull toward him. The beam creaked beneath Teresa’s feet, and he latched onto her sudden surge of fear. He felt her back pressing into the brick between the windows as he layered his images across the floor in rippling sheets of light, until the entire floor became a mass of shimmering Threads hiding everything under it. His dance became more vigorous as he built a wall in front of the empty windows until Teresa’s form was hidden from view. The images settled into a whole as Paul’s voice floated out of the dark.
“You’re not as smart as I thought you were,” said Paul, looking at where Teresa hid as the floor creaked again. “You think building a fake wall to hide her would save her? I know exactly what you’re trying to do. Your stupid dancing is even hiding the hole in the floor. Did you really think your tricks would make us rush you so we would fall? Do you think we’re that stupid?”
Darwin let his wall thin out, making it translucent enough to see the outline of Teresa. He wasn’t by the hole in the floor, Teresa was. Paul had made his first mistake.
“There’s the girl. Let’s get her.”
Three sets of footsteps sounded running toward her, followed by two quick shouts and thuds as the bodies hit the rubble below. The third person, the woman, teetered at the edge of the hole fighting for her balance, regaining it only moments before the soft floor crumbled under her feet and she joined her partners below.
As Darwin stopped dancing, he felt the thrill of the Source flickering in his chest, but there was something else there as well. Something that made his blood run cold through his veins.
Ada.