Mad World Bandby Danielle L. Parker |
Chapter 8, part 2 appears in this issue. |
| Chapter 9, part 1 of 2 |
Tessa Rinchus was still not used to light. She had spent ten of her eighteen years in the tunnels and natural caverns that hid their small and motley band from the war and terror above. In those years they had crept out, like mice in the darkness to gather supplies and food from the ruined city, and, where they dared, unguarded Army caches. She was more familiar with the moon than the sun from those excursions. The clear bright light of their new home still pained eyes long used to the intense darkness of those caves.
But she could see it was already doing the children a lot of good. Some of those pasty faces had a flush of color, and Tessa herself could see pinkness in her cheeks in the small mirror she stood before now. She had never had a mirror before either, and it was almost a shock to see that face and know it was hers. She understood the changes in her body and had become used to them, eased by her father’s blunt and matter-of-fact explanations, but she had still not known her own face, or realized that her rough shirts were stretching in a new way across her chest. She turned away with a wry shake of the head.
The old hospital had been a sickly and weeping pale green when they moved in, but the widow Mary Blake had organized the children and a few willing men, and the corridors gleamed with new paint now, a terracotta color between pink and orange. It was almost as cheery as that bright globe outside. They were all housed in the same ground-level wing, and although the rooms that had once held the sick were not large, perhaps, they were luxury compared to the stone lean-tos most of them had lived in so long. And some of them had slept on real beds for the first time in their lives.
Tessa had her own room, with her father’s beside her, and somehow that freedom and new personal privacy was strangely liberating. For now at least, this small square was her very own. Yesterday she had impulsively plucked a few flowers out of the overgrown yard and put them in a cracked vase, and now she stood looking at those cheery orange poppies with a smile. The sunlight poured in through the window behind her, and Tessa felt, as she turned from that last glance, an emotion she could not quite name, so poignant it hurt her chest.
She found David waiting for her in the corridor, his glistening silver eyes patiently fixed on her door. She had become used to those eyes, though never to his bared arms, which could sometimes look like true human appendages but always held that disconcerting shimmer of energy. But there was at least no longer any leap of fear as she beheld that countenance, and the tall slim figure that looked otherwise like any young man’s.
She said quietly, “Good morning, David. Has my father gone down to breakfast already?”
“Good morning, Tessa,” her companion replied. There was more expression and emotion in David than she had ever heard from any bio-construct soldier, at least before it went AWOL, but that voice was always a little too even. “He has. I will go down with you.” He paused. “We have something to discuss.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope,” she said with a slight frown as she walked beside him. She knew that she could not consider this a permanent home, but to move so soon would hurt all their desperate new hope. And the children had worked so hard painting those walls. “Not already,” she added softly, looking down. She had long schooled herself to the desperate necessities of her life, but somehow, after that strange emotion she had felt looking at her new room this morning, the thought of removal so soon had a knifelike pang.
“News,” he answered, after one of those disconcerting pauses he sometimes made. Their newest fellow refugee could still tap into the military communications of his former comrades in arms without detection, it seemed. Tessa knew that her father relied on that very ability to give them necessary warning in their more exposed situation. “We will speak of it when we join your father.”
It was a reply that could not but spoil Tessa’s early morning peace, but her pale face did not show much outward reaction. She had learned to be a person whom neither hope nor despair affected overmuch. David opened the door for her after they had walked silently down the corridor, and they went into the small canteen together.
It had taken three days of work for David, old Jennings, who had once been an engineer, and Tessa to repair and restart the antique generators the old hospital still had, but they did not use those for much. The fuel those old machines required was precious and very hard to find.
Cooking was done instead on a makeshift iron stove that one of the scavenging teams had found and hauled back, but even that pioneering appliance had greatly improved their diet and life. Mary Blake was showing her own particular genius in managing their improved domestic situation. Right now she presided over her efforts with the flush of heat in her thin cheeks, and Tessa’s father, already filling his own plate from the pots on that stove, turned from his banter with the widow to greet them.
“How do you like that sound,” he rumbled with satisfaction. Around him was the chatter and squeal of rambunctious children and the lower and much more controlled murmur of the adults. “Morning, Tessa, David.”
Spike, at sixteen finally taller than Tessa, hung at her father’s elbow in his perpetual attitude of doglike devotion. He nodded shyly, though as usual somewhat truculently, to Tessa. Spike almost never spoke. He had joined the troupe two years ago, and no one had ever learned why and what had happened to him before. With his almost constant fierce scowl, overhanging black eyebrows and sudden, though now rare, outbreaks of killing black temper, no one bothered to question him much. But Tessa also knew that he was fanatically devoted to her father and to herself, so Spike’s expressions did not disturb her.
She picked up her plate and smiled at Mary Blake. “Morning, father, Mrs. Blake, Spike,” she said politely. It looked as though porridge was on the menu today. She saw her father look at her with a faint drawing of the brows as she served herself from the pot. She was aware that he too had a little of that sense they had neither of them ever quite named; it was one of their bonds, that unspoken communication. Her saddened mood had already been noted. Her father looked from her to David in silent speculation.
“Let’s sit down then,” he said quietly.
Dolph Rinchus led the way to a table and chairs at the end of the room, and for a moment, as the quartet bowed their heads in a silent expression of thanks, no one spoke. When the big man picked up his spoon, however, he said, “I think you have something to tell us, David.”
There was no real expression on that face. “Yes,” the bio-construct said. “California has fallen, Mr. Rinchus.” He looked up, his eyes shining like mercury. “It is in the hands of the Sinoasians. They have moved a little east of us. They will not be here immediately: they have little interest in a city that has been long ruined. There was something that very much interested them in Death Valley. But they will be back to pick out the survivors here, I think within a week or so.”
Dolph Rinchus stopped eating. Still, Tessa was proud of him: his blunt face showed little change, even though she knew he had taken those words like a blow to the stomach.
“I saw the planes go over yesterday,” he said at last. “They were too high to see their markings easily, but I thought they were not ours.” He picked up his spoon again, forcing himself, as Tessa saw, to eat calmly.
“From what you tell me, David, we never did hide successfully from the Army; they just decided to tolerate the last pitiful rats in Los Angeles. We won’t be able to hide from the Sinoasians either, not even underground again, and they have no reason to spare us.”
Tessa could not eat. She put down her spoon and gripped her hands together under the table. They were shaking. It was not even the news, or her father’s words, that frightened her so much; it was what she felt in his emotions, a terrible cold understanding. She saw that Spike was looking between them in wild confusion, and the boy’s desperate need for reassurance stiffened her own spine. Spike could not endure seeing fear or uncertainty in his two idols.
“We saw the sun again, though, father,” she said quietly. “Let’s talk about this. David may have an idea.”
Dolph Rinchus looked at the almost immobile countenance of their newest member. He had gained a lot of respect for the bio-construct; whatever had caused David to go AWOL, it was clearly not the usual degradation of his neural re-programming.
Dolph pushed his half-empty bowl away; his stomach was too clenched at the moment for food, though he had forced himself to eat with a semblance of normality. “Well, David?” he prompted quietly.
“We have only desperate chances now, Mr. Rinchus,” the bio-construct replied flatly. “You understand that, I hope. If we wait until the Sinoasians turn their attention back to Los Angeles, all of us will die. We can’t hide from them.”
Dolph Rinchus nodded. David, finishing his own meal, set the bowl aside neatly. He said, “There was a secret project of some kind underway in Death Valley. It was important enough, whatever its purpose, to divert the Sinoasians. Something very strange happened there immediately before the Sinoasian attack.”
Copyright © 2006 by Danielle L. Parker
