The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 11

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Chapter 11

My broken right finger was bent awry. I grasped it in my left hand and wrenched it back into position, grunting in pain. I’d need to splint it soon or hang up my ambidextrous markswomanship for good.

“You okay?” Thursday asked.

“Busted a digit. It’ll be fine. You?” I replied, dusting myself off.

“Other than this, you bet.” He gazed at the piece of wood sticking out from his lower torso. “No major organs, good news. Still, I’d rather do without it.” He grabbed the end of the stick and pulled it out, yelping. “Woof,” he said, as too much blood oozed out of the wound. He reached into the folds of his duster and brought out a handkerchief, wadding it up and applying pressure.

“You’re something else. Nobody will believe we lived through that.” I said.

“Wasn’t me. It was us,” he said. “And it wasn’t just our boosted contego fields that saved us. We, ah…we are more resilient than I’d guessed.”

I turned toward the direction of the causeway. A skein of black smoke rose from the engine wreckage. Plumes of dust cloud smoldered from the assorted areas where the derailed box cars had landed. We’d rolled near sixty or seventy yards out into the desert.

“Hold up a second,” I said to Thursday. I took off my pack and reached within, finding my med kit. I knelt down on the sand and removed its contents. A small splint apparatus was there. I gingerly taped two short pieces of steel around my little finger. Then I found a tube of antibiotic gel. I looked up at Thursday, embarrassed. “Um…yeah. Maybe…you know.” I said, motioning for him to turn around.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” he replied, and turned away so I could peel my pants down and apply the gel to the pulse burn. Then I hiked my pants back up.

“Come here,” I said to Thursday. “This will sterilize and cork it at the same time.” He pulled up his shirt. The puncture on his right side below his rib cage wasn’t too bad, a little deep, but not wide. I tore off a section of gauze from a roll and dabbed at the blood, cleaning it as best I could, then squeezed some of the gel from the tube and applied it generously across the area. He winced, but held his tongue. The medicinal jelly hardened and sealed the open wound.

“Tough guy,” I snickered, smiling.

“Don’t you forget it,” he said. “And you, too. After our fields fritzed, that tumble should’ve snapped every bone in our bodies.”

“I guess the mad scientist who cooked us up in his lab added extra ingredients,” I replied. I collected the medical supplies, returned them to the kit, and put it back in my pack. “Let’s head back to the road. We can follow it all the way to House Arroyo borders if, and it’s a big if, we can make it through the badlands. We’ll probably be hoofing the rest of the way, unless some good Samaritan with room in their transport takes pity on us.”

“Is that likely?” Thursday asked.

“Out here in the barrens? Maybe. Closer to your home turf, less so. Through the badlands? Not a chance, until House Arroyo sends search teams.”

“Ever the optimist,” he remarked.

“I do what I can.”

We shouldered our bags and set out toward the wreckage.

“I have questions,” I said.

“Me first,” he replied. “Where the heck did Jack go?”

“He ‘ported out,” I said.

“I thought he wasn’t arcane capable?”

“I don’t think he is. Someone else snatched him. Don’t you remember? He spoke to someone remotely, through a transmitter in his armor.”

“A lot happened in those few seconds. How do you know it was teleportation? Don’t tell me you’ve wrangled the know-how on the most desired spell in all of arcana?”

“Of course not. Would I be schlepping hub to hub in a beat-up bug if I could blink from one place to another? Whatever took him, wasn’t a conjuration. It’s as quiet as a lamb, when it happens, or at least, the brand I’ve witnessed. Whatever happened in the rail car was more abrasive.”

“I remember. Like nails on chalkboard. I thought Washoe was the only game in town when it came to teleportation? Do you think Washoe’s a part of this?”

“I don’t think we can rule anything out. And how did you manage issuing the darkspell without your eyes going nova?”

“Practice. In New Angeles, it pays to circumvent the optics tests when you’re a kid who’s got sage craft in his veins. With time and patience, the stimulation can be repressed. Anonymity is a handy trait in the dome. But my brain doesn’t always cooperate. The effort only works for lower tier arcana, and even then, it’s a slipshod, unreliable thing. Truth be told, I was shocked that it worked. My adrenaline was running high. Maybe that helped.”

We reached the crash site, clambered up the short bank to the causeway, and took in the devastation. To the north, about a quarter click back, black contrails floated up into the sky from the front half of the engine car. The wreck was embedded in the macadam. Its back half was on fire, in the midst of a burning glen of mutie yucca trees, emitting a cloud of green vapors. To the south, the gutted remnants of the rest of the train were strewn about the desert. I groaned as it became clear the derailment had occurred near a homesteader community. Though the handful of tumbledown shacks had been situated a good distance from the track, the residuum of boxcars had torn through the place like a shotgun blast. Splintered wood, shredded yucca trees, and fragments of silvered fuselage lay scattered across what little remained of the village.

“Oh my,” said Thursday, looking upon the ruin.

We followed the road near the settlement. A single woman stood in the center of a former drinking establishment. Broken stills, bottles, and splintered barrel casks lay about her feet. She was clad in tattered rad gear, breathing through a rusty respirator. Her head was bloodied. She saw us, spit out her filter, and began screaming.

“Wiped us out, like we’s nothin’ but afterthoughts, you an’ your speed beast! Always wakin’ us up, shakin’ our babies, now you’ve done us in at last, taken my Eddie an’ my wits an’ never-gods knows what else!” she bellowed.

Thursday opened his mouth to respond. I shushed him. We kept walking, enduring her jeers. She continued at full volume, long after we’d left her locality, one click, then two, yet we could still hear her howling on the wind. Haunted sunlight beat dreary upon us.

“What could we do?” he asked aloud, more to himself than me.

“Not much. Bigger fish wait to be fried, if this goose chase is founded.”

“Yeah. It sucks anyway,” he groused.

“You’re going to find a lot of things suck, out here in the wastes,” I said.

“Where do you think we are, exactly?” Thursday asked after a while. Near as I could tell, the bullet had traveled anywhere from 90 to 120 clicks or so since leaving China Lake, which would put us near the junction border between New Angeles to the east and the Ditch to the west, just north of the badlands. He looked around and squinted his eyes. “It’s all the same drab to me, I’m afraid. I’m not a very good tracker.”

“Tonight, you’ll see the glow from your city on the eastern horizon,” I said.

“We’re that close? I never came over this way, so near the bullet road.”

“We’re not going to get any rides until Cabo or Maddy send out people to determine what happened to the train. I can convince one of House Arroyo’s patrols to take us into Tiwan, but we’ll have to make it through the northern expanse of the badlands first. Regular hovercraft at standard speed won’t make up track or down track anytime soon. The badlands are no place for foot traffic. Even New Gen kiddies like us will have to use respirators, if the weather kicks up. And there’s Lieutenant Crackers to consider. He might send jackboots to ensure the job is finished. We’ll follow the rail road, but off a way, so we can cubby what’s coming before arrival.”

“How long?” he asked.

“Ten days. Maybe twelve. If we ration our supplies, if I get lucky hunting varmints. Water is the main problem. If House Arroyo doesn’t come along soon, we’ll have to detour to the mountains to find clean hydro.”

We made it a few more clicks, and soon realized our tanks were empty. We camped not long after. Our combined contego juice had taken a toll, and our pinball excursions bouncing around the desert had soaked into our bones but good. We were bruised and battered. I wasn’t crazy about making a fire in those parts, but it was bitter cold. Thursday collected wood and I assembled a dugout cairn of rocks. He brought back an armful of aged dogwood and manzanita, arranged a pyramid, then issued a minor ignis charm, pointing at the wood with a forefinger. Flames leapt up around the cairn.

“Versed in the infernal college, then?” I noted.

He nodded. “One of my strengths? You?”

“Among the four elements, only earth responds to me.”

We rolled out our sleeping bags. While we warmed up, dim stars overhead tried to break through the murk of an overcast evening. I took stock of our supplies. Thursday’s pack held little more than spare clothes and the MRE rations we’d taken from the Citadel (aluminum tubes of varying nutritional pastes), plus his canteen and a spare. My pack held the same, and the med kit, two bandoliers of yellowcake slugs, a pouch of spares, and ten clips of 9mm ammo. Thursday sucked on a tube of paste as I cleaned the pistol. Then I took the twinkie from its sheath and did the same, as was my ritual each night before retiring. He watched me as I unloaded and disassembled it, and began swiping the chambers and barrels with padded cloth and gun grease. Firelight danced in the reddish sheen of the gunmetal as I tended to the chore, meticulous. A poorer gunfighter neglected the proper care of her tools. After thirty minutes, I reassembled and reloaded the gun, put it aside on top of my gear, and wiped its holster down with mineral oil.

“Can I see it?” Thursday asked.

“Don’t hurt yourself, please.” I said, flicking the safety on for good measure and handing it to him. He took the gun carefully and considered it. He cracked the barrel, took out both slugs, and peered inside.

“This special plate…that’s why Jack couldn’t crush it?”

“I think so,” I replied.

“What is it?”

“It’s some kind of custom sealant Bard whipped up.”

“Having its own measure of arcana, it seems,” he said.

“Maybe. If so, he didn’t mention it. I’ve yet to see any special attributes other than its inherent toughness.”

He reloaded both chambers and handed it back to me. “What’s he like? How did you meet?”

I prodded the fire. Its coals glowed dusky and red.

“Maddy’s crews administered the magicks test to me when I was a year tenured in the Del’s factory lines. I knew I had some juice in me. I dinked around with it as a kid in the slums. I never talked about it to anyone. When I blew their red flag, she sequestered me into a different department. Not long after, Bard showed up. Maddy called him in. He was different than the other oldsters I’d come across. Gentle, but firm. He’s a smarty-pants, but sometimes he’s a little naive about outlanders, in my opinion. He’s a contradiction, I ‘spose. He told me when I grew up a little more, he’d come school me in the craft. He convinced Maddy to fast track me to the Citadel direct, so I skipped the waiting list and began courier training two years earlier than most.”

“Took you under wing,” Thursday said.

“From afar. He entrusted most oversight to Maddy. I only came to know him better after I started couriering and spent time at the saloon with him. He’s a crusader for the lost. But he’s rooted boots on ground, unlike most outland geezers, most of whom pine for an era they never knew.”

“A powerful mage, then,” Thursday mused.

“It’s hard to rank that kind of stuff, isn’t it? I’ve only known two others like me. You’re the second one of them, and we only just met a couple weeks ago. But yeah, he knows his way around the sorcery ‘scape.”

“Nobody knows he’s a wizard?” Thursday asked.

“Most folks think he’s just another necro-trader. He’s definitely never cast any spells in front of his customers at the bar.”

“I look forward to meeting him. I wish I’d had a patron like that in the dome. Exploring arcana without a guide is like finding your way through a tunnel without a torch.”

“I’d say even with a guide, it’s still like fumbling in the dark, for the most part.”

“How did you meet Lord Diaz?” he asked.

I smiled, thinking of the Lionheart. “Once Maddy revealed to him she’d found a kid with arcane sensitivity, he requested a face-to-face. He came all the way up to the ‘Del from Tiwan, on his own, in his spicy, high-end speedster. He rented out the dignitary penthouse next to Maddy’s and summoned me up to chat with him. I was about nine then. We hit it off straight away. I liked his lack of pretenses. He spoke from the hip. After I began couriering, he often hired me for private duty to caravan his lieutenants across the outlands. And he taught me some ways of the warrioress, more…um…demonstrative…techniques, than Bard’s zen-style combat.”

“I see. No less than two heads of state took notice of the aspiring gunfighter girl, fated to be the outlands’ savior,” Thursday teased.

“Shut up! I ain’t no Judas!”

“I think you mean Jesus,” he laughed.

“Whatevs!”

“I’m just saying, maybe that’s more than coincidence. Arcana works a wide spectrum.”

“Tell me about dome life.”

He lied back on his bag, stretching out, putting his hands behind his head and staring up at the night sky above.  “Aw, you don’t wanna hear about that. It’s a laboratory, compared to your outland skies. A petri dish. A cage.”

“New Angeles doesn’t have big wide-open skies above that glass ceiling?”

“It’s not the same,” he replied.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “Everywhere else, people talk about the militant order of House Gammon like it’s a cult or something. Nobody gets invited to New Angeles other than couriers and merchant wagons, maybe a few middle management bozos from the other houses. I’ve never seen the common areas, or those hydroponic fields of fame. My visits were limited to the accounts receivable department, the visitor commissary, and the motor pool lot, and that’s it.”

“It seems an oasis, doesn’t it,” Thursday muttered.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” I admitted. “Your house troops are monkey-brained idiots out in the wild, but New Angeles and San Francisco seem safer than near anywhere else.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“Don’t I know it. Come on. We’ve shared blood, sweat, and water. Enlighten me on your humble beginnings.”

‘Since you put in that way, seeing as how you were kind enough to tour me around your homeland, I suppose I’m obligated.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Well…”