Armageddon's Children Page 7

“You will do much more than that,” the big man said. “Because there is something else to be won or lost, something of which I have not told you. What is it that you want most in all the world?”

  He frowned, a darkness clouding his features. “You know the answer to that. It hasn’t changed.”

  “I need for you to tell me.”

  “I want to find the demon that led the assault against the compound where my parents and brother and sister were killed.”

  “If you are successful in your efforts to find and protect the child,” Two Bears said softly, “you will have your wish.”

  He rose and held out his hand. “We are done here, and I must go. Others need me, too.”

  Logan was staring into space, coming to terms with the promise he had just been given. To find the demon that had killed his family had been his goal since Michael had saved him. It was what he lived for.

  Aware suddenly of the hand being offered, he rose and gripped it. “When will I see you again?”

  The Sinnissippi shook his head. “You won’t in this life. My time is almost over. I will pass with the old world into memory. The new world belongs to others.”

  Logan wanted to ask if it belonged in any way to him, but he was afraid to hear the answer. “Good-bye, then, O’olish Amaneh,” he said instead.

  “Good-bye, Logan Tom.”

  Logan released the other’s hand and turned away, walking back toward the Lightning. When he had reached the edge of the circle of firelight, he paused and glanced back. The last of the Sinnissippi had vanished, disappeared as if he had never been. Even the old knapsack was gone.

  Logan Tom stared at the clearing with its empty picnic table and burning metal grill, then turned and kept walking.

  H AWK WOKE EARLY the next morning, restless with anticipation. That night he would meet with Tessa, and meetings with Tessa always made him run hot and cold. He lay quietly on his mattress, staying warm beneath his blanket, thinking of her. As he did so, he listened to the boys sleeping around him, Bear snoring like some great machine while Panther, Chalk, and Fixit added harmonic wheezing sounds. He envisioned the same scene playing out in the other bedrooms, the girls sleeping in the one farthest away, Owl in the middle room with Squirrel, keeping the little boy close until he got better. Cheney would be curled up somewhere out by the entry door, a fly wing’s rustle away from coming awake to protect them.

  He sat up slowly and stared off through the darkness to where the faint glow of the night candle lit the common room. He liked waking before the others and listening to them, knowing they were all safely together. They were his family and this was their home. He was the one who had discovered it. Had discovered the whole underground city, in fact. Not before the Freaks, but before the other tribes, the Cats and the Gulls and the Wolves. He had found it five years earlier while exploring the ruins of Pioneer Square after arriving in Seattle and quickly deciding he was not going to live in the compounds. Not that any of them would have taken him in anyway, another orphan, another castoff. Tessa might have persuaded them at Safeco, but he had known early on that life in a compound wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t say why, even now. In part, it was his abhorrence of the idea of confinement in a walled fortress, a claustrophobic existence for someone who had always run free. In part, it was his need to be responsible for his fate and to not give that responsibility over to anyone else. He had always been independent, always self-sufficient, always a loner. He knew that, even though the particulars of his past were hazy and difficult to remember. Even the faces of his parents were vague and indistinct memories that came and went and sometimes seemed to change entirely.

  It didn’t matter, though. The past was of no significance to him; the future was what mattered. All of the tribes accepted this, but the Ghosts especially. Their greeting to others said as much: We haunt the ruins. It was a constant reminder of the state of their existence. The past belonged to the grown-ups who had destroyed it. The future belonged to the kids of the tribes. Those in the compounds did not understand this, nor would they have accepted it if they had understood. They believed themselves to be the future. But they were wrong. They were just another part of the problem. Hawk knew this. He had seen the future in his vision, and the future was promised only to those who would keep it safe.

  His thoughts wavered and broke, and he was left alone with the darkness and the sounds of the sleepers around him. He sat motionless for a moment longer, then rose and pulled on yesterday’s jeans and sweatshirt. Tonight was his turn to bathe, and tomorrow he would get a fresh change of clothes. Owl kept them all on a strict schedule; sickness and disease were enemies against which they had few defenses.

  Dressed, he walked out into the common room to sit where the candle burned and he could read. But Owl was there ahead of him, curled up under a blanket on the couch, an open book in her lap. She looked up as he entered and smiled.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  “I don’t sleep much anyway.” She patted the couch next to her, and he sat. “Squirrel’s fever broke. He should be up and about by tomorrow. Maybe even yet today, if I let him.” She shook her head, her sleep-tousled hair falling into her face. “I think he was lucky.”

  “We’re all lucky. Otherwise we would be dead. Like that Lizard. Like maybe Persia will be if I don’t get the pleneten from Tessa.” He paused. “Think she’ll give it to me?”

  He watched Owl’s soft face tighten and worry lines appear across her forehead as she considered. He liked her face, liked the way you could always tell what she was thinking. There was nothing complicated about Owl; what you saw was what you got. Maybe that was what made her so good with the others. It made him like her all the more.

  “She loves you,” Owl said. She let the words hang in the air. “So I think she will get you the medicine if she can.” She pursed her lips. “But it is dangerous for her to do so. You know what might happen if she’s caught.”

  He knew. Thieves were thrown from the walls. But he didn’t believe such a punishment would be visited on Tessa. Her parents were powerful figures in the compound hierarchy, and she was their only child. They would protect her from any real harm. She might be exiled from the compound, though, if her transgression was severe enough. He would like that, he thought. Then she could come live with him.

  “Persia is dying,” he said finally. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “A child is always dying somewhere.” She brushed back the unruly strands of hair from her forehead. “But I believe we must do what we can to stop it from happening—all of us, including Tessa or anyone else who has a chance to help, inside the compounds or not. Just be careful.”

  She put the book aside, careful to mark her place with a scrap of paper, drawing her withered legs farther up under the blanket as if to find deeper warmth. He glanced over at the dark shape of Cheney sprawled in the corner by the door, thinking that he didn’t need to be told to be careful; he was careful all the time anyway.

  But he let it pass, his mind on something else. “Why did you tell that story last night?”

  “About the boy and the evil King?”

  “About the boy leading the children to the Promised Land. What were you doing?”

  “Reminding them of your vision. Candle knew that right away. She told me so afterward. Maybe some of the others knew it, too. What difference does it make?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the way you told it. You changed things. You made things up. It felt like you were stealing.”

  She stared at him, genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told it the way I did. But it needs to be told, Hawk, and last night telling it just felt right. I wanted to reassure everyone that we have a goal in our lives and the goal is to find a better, safer place to live. That is your vision, isn’t it? To take us to a better place?”

  “You know it is. I’ve said so often enough. I’ve dreamed it.”

 
She reached out and placed her hand over his. “Your dream is an old one, Hawk. Guiding others to safety, finding the Promised Land. As old as time, I imagine. It has been dreamed and told hundreds of times over the years in one form or another. I don’t pretend to know all the particulars of your vision. You haven’t shared them with anyone, have you? Not even Tessa. So how can I steal them from you? Besides, I would never do such a thing.”

  “I know.” He flushed, embarrassed by his accusation. “But hearing that story made me uneasy. Maybe its because I don’t know enough about what’s supposed to happen. I don’t know how we’ll know when it’s time to leave. I don’t know how we’ll know where we’re supposed to go. I keep waiting to find out, waiting for someone to tell me. But my dreams don’t. They only tell me that it will happen.”

  “If your dreams tell you that much, then you have to believe that they will eventually tell you the rest.” She patted his hand. “I won’t tell the story again. Not until you tell me to. Not until you know something more yourself.”

  He nodded, realizing he was being petty, but at the same time feeling a need to be protective, too. The dream was all he had. It was the bedrock of his leadership, the reason he was able to hold the Ghosts together. Without the dream, he was just another street kid, orphaned and abandoned, living out his life in a postapocalyptic world where everything had gone mad. Without the dream, he had nothing to give to those who relied on him.

  “You’ll dream the rest one day soon,” Owl reassured him, as if reading his mind. “You will, Hawk.”

  “I know that,” he replied quickly.

  But, in truth, he didn’t.

  IT IS TESSA who brings Owl to him when he is still new to the city and living alone in the underground. He is just fourteen years old, and Owl, who is called Margaret then, is an infinitely older and more mature eighteen. Hawk has gone to meet Tessa for one of their nighttime assignations, and she surprises him by bringing along a small, plain, quiet girl in a wheelchair.

  They are standing in the lee of the last wall of an otherwise collapsed building, not a hundred yards from Safeco, when Tessa tells him what the older girl is doing there.

  “Margaret can’t live in the compound any longer,” she says. “She needs a different home.”

  Hawk looks at the girl, at the chair, and at the outline of her withered legs beneath a blanket. “It’s safer in the compounds,” he says.

  Margaret meets his gaze and holds it. “I’m dying in there.”

  “You’re sick?”

  “Sick at heart. I need air and space and freedom.”

  He understands her right away, but cannot believe she will be better off with him. “What about your parents?”

  “Dead nine years. I have no family. Tessa is my only real friend.” She keeps looking at him. “I can take care of myself. I can help take care of you, too. I know a lot about sickness and medicines. I can teach you.”

  “She is the one you are looking for,” Tessa says suddenly.

  She cannot walk, Hawk almost says, but keeps the words from slipping out, realizing just in time what sort of judgment he will be passing.

  “Tell her what it is you want to do,” Tessa presses. “Let her tell you what she thinks.”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “If you don’t, I will.”

  Hawk flushes at the rebuke. “All right.” He speaks without looking at Margaret. “I want to start a family. I don’t have a family, and I want one.”

  “Tell her the rest.”

  She wants him to speak of his dream. She is determined about this, he sees. She is like that, Tessa.

  His gaze shifts back to the older girl. “I want to gather together kids like myself, and then I want to take them away from here to a place where they will be safe.” He feels like a small boy as he speaks. The words sound foolish. He has to tell her something more. He takes a deep breath. “I saw that I would do this in a dream,” he finishes.

  Margaret doesn’t laugh at him. Her expression does not change at all, but there is a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “You will be the father, and I will be the mother.”

  He hesitates. “You believe me?”

  “Why shouldn’t your dream be as real as anyone else’s? Why shouldn’t you do what you say you will? Tessa says you’re special. I know what she means. I can tell by looking at you. By listening to you. I don’t have dreams anymore. I don’t even have hope. I want both again. If I come with you, I think I will find them.”

  He shakes his head. “It is dangerous in the ruins, outside the compound walls. You know what’s out there, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t be with you all the time. I might not be there to protect you when you need it.”

  “Or I you,” she replies without blinking. “Life is a risk. Life is precious. But life has to be lived in a way that matters. Even now.” She reaches out her hand. “Take me with you. Give me a chance. I don’t ask for anything else. If you decide it isn’t working out, you can bring me back or leave me. You are not bound to me. You owe me nothing.”

  He does not believe this for a moment, knowing that if he agrees to take her with him, he is accepting responsibility for her on some level. But the force of her plea moves him. The intensity of her eyes captivates him. He sees strength in her that he has not often found, and he believes it would be a mistake to underestimate it.

  “She does not belong in the compounds,” Tessa says quietly.

  “Nor do you.”

  But in the end it is Margaret who goes with him and Tessa who stays behind.

  IT WAS MIDMORNING when he departed with Cheney for the waterfront. The day was overcast, but not rainy, the air thick with the taste of chemicals and the smell of putrefaction. The wind was blowing off the water, the ocean waste spills making their presence known. It was like this on the coastlines when the wind was blowing the wrong way. The spills, which had taken place even before the start of the wars, had all but overpowered the natural cleansing ability of the oceans and left millions of square miles fouled. Their poisons were dissipating, but the detritus washed back up regularly through the estuaries and inland passages to clog the shorelines and remind the humans that the damage they had done was mostly irreparable. Some of those poisons were carried onshore by the wind, which was what Hawk could taste on the air. He closed his mouth, put a cloth over his face, and tried not to breathe.

  A futile effort, he knew. The poisons were everywhere. In the air, the water, and the land, and the things that lived in or on all of it. There was no escaping what had been done. Not for the humans alive now. Maybe for those who would be born a hundred years down the road, but Hawk would never know.

  He had waited with Owl until the others awoke, eaten breakfast—a meal consisting of oatmeal, condensed milk, and sugar, all of it salvaged from packaging that time and the weather had not eroded—then called the others together to give them their marching orders. Panther was to take Sparrow, Candle, and Fixit and try to retrieve the stash of bottled water that the latter had discovered with Chalk on the previous day. Bear was to take Chalk up on the roof and retrieve the water storage cylinders, which would have absorbed their purification tablets by now. River was to stay with Owl to help look after Squirrel. He had given strict warning that no one was to go outside alone or to become separated from the others if out in a group. Until they found out what had done such terrible damage to the Lizard they had stumbled across yesterday, they would assume that everyone was at risk.

  “So that changes things how?” Panther had sniffed dismissively as he headed out the door.

  Hawk had waited until Panther’s group was gone and Bear and Chalk had departed for the roof, then warned Owl again to keep the door barred until she was sure who was on the other side. Just to be certain, he had waited on the other side of the metal barrier until he heard the heavy latch click into place.

  Now he stood outside in the street, waiting while Cheney relieved himself, thinking
of the dead Lizard, still bothered by the mystery behind the damage it had incurred and determined to find out what had caused it. To do that, he needed to visit the Weatherman. The sky had turned darker and more threatening, as if rain were on the way. And it might be, but it was unlikely. Days like this one came and went all the time, gray and misty and sterile. Rain used to fall regularly in this city, but that wasn’t true anymore. Nevertheless, he wore his rain jacket, the one Candle had found for him. In one pocket, he carried a flashlight; in the other, two of the viper-pricks. It was always best to be prepared.

  He looked around for a moment, seeking out any signs of movement, found none, and headed downhill for the waterfront, Cheney leading. The bristle-haired dog padded along with his big head lowered and swinging from side to side, his strange walk familiar to the boy by now. It might seem as if Cheney weren’t entirely sure where he was going, but the look was deceptive. Cheney always knew where he was going and what was in the way. He was just keeping watch. Cheney knew more than any of them about staying alive.

  He had found the big dog when he was a burly puppy, foraging for food in the remains of a collapsed building in the midtown, half starved and unapproachable. The puppy growled at him boldly, warning him off. Intrigued, Hawk knelt and held out a scrap of dried meat he was carrying, then waited for the dog to approach. He watched him for a very long time without doing anything, gray eyes baleful and hard and suspicious. Hawk waited, meeting the other’s dark gaze. Something passed between them, an understanding or recognition, perhaps—Hawk was never sure. Eventually, the puppy came a bit closer, but not close enough to be touched. Hawk waited until he was bored, then threw him the meat, turned, and started off. He had other things to do and no place in his life for a dog, in any case. He had only just brought Sparrow and Fixit into the underground to join Owl and himself, the start of his little family, and finding food for the four of them was a big enough problem without adding a dog to the mix.

  But when he had looked back again, the puppy was following him, staying out of reach but keeping close enough so that he would not lose sight of him. Three blocks later, he was still there. He tried to shoo him away, but he refused to leave. In the end, his persistence won him over. He had stayed with him all the way back to the entrance to the underground, but refused to come inside. Finding him still there the following morning, he had fed him again. This had gone on for weeks until one day, without warning, he had decided to go down with him. On reaching their home, he had looked around carefully, sniffed all the corners and studied all four kids, then picked out a corner, curled into a ball, and gone to sleep.