The Deserter Read online

  He shot to his feet. The humming sound was louder down here, the noise a constant throbbing, almost painful. He’d fallen down between two cages. Each could have held a hundred men standing straight, but instead beds filled them, such as the one he’d woken up on when he’d been held prisoner in the white room. The middle of the round space was a mess of heavy metal objects tangled in wires, some of which hissed and sparked. Big pools of shadow lay everywhere. Any one of them might have held an opponent, especially when he had no idea what manner of enemy faced him.

  He picked among the bones, looking for a makeshift weapon to replace the one he’d dropped during the fall. Most of them had been gnawed, smashed open right to the marrow, but he found one that had been missed: a long shaft with a heavy lump at the end.

  ‘Hiresh?’ he called. No point in hiding now – he’d already made too much noise during his fall. He got no answer. Maybe his only friend in this place had already been killed.

  He edged around the room, trying to keep the wall to his back as much as possible. Usually cages got in his way, and once he almost stepped into a hole that some stream of slime had cut into the floor. Nor did he like the look of those sparking wires – they were like living things, spitting and angry. Instinct kept him away from them.

  Halfway round the room he spotted a shadowy figure in one of the cages. It loomed so large that for a moment he mistook it for one of the huge lumps of metal that littered the middle of the round space. But then it moved, its skin glittering in the pale light.

  Stopmouth stood frozen to the spot. The creature seemed too huge to be real. Three men could not have filled out that bulk. He saw its silhouette turn. A hand-sized, flexible nose curved delicately into the air before snaking in his direction and stopping there like an accusing finger. Then the whole massive body marched out of the cage and strode towards him. Stopmouth could only stare, frozen to the spot. Bones cracked and splintered where the beast walked. How had it got down the stairs that had collapsed under Stopmouth’s weight? He couldn’t figure it out. As it came closer, he could see more of its features – tiny eyes, little finger-sized ears perched atop its flat head, and beneath the questing nose, a set of heavy jaws, as massive as the rest of its frame. The creature could crush Stopmouth’s skull in a single bite.

  One great arm swung back behind its head.

  Move! Stopmouth thought. And finally his body obeyed. He dropped the pathetic bone he’d been carrying, spun round and ran, ignoring the cuts to his feet from the bone splinters that lay everywhere.

  Something whistled past his face and shattered against a nearby wall. The creature had strength to match its bulk. He ran halfway round the circular room and then paused, his breathing loud in his ears despite all the other sounds.

  It had stopped moving, perhaps hoping he was stupid enough to make a full circuit, all the way into its waiting arms.

  Stopmouth crept back in the direction he’d come. He could see no way as yet of defeating such a strong opponent. Study might help. It was one thing his brother had given him, the same brother who’d taken everything else.

  He peeked round the great metal objects that dominated the centre of the room and saw the creature standing like a guard before the cage from which it had originally emerged. The hunter cursed, but at least now he could guess where Hiresh was. And the monster knew how to find him too, for its nose still pointed unerringly in his direction.

  How could he win? How? With the fire-spitting ropes, perhaps? He didn’t know enough about them, and this was not the time to experiment.

  He wondered if such a massive beast might also be slow-moving. If so, he could lead it far enough from the cage to determine if his friend still lived. And yet, when it could throw missiles like the one that had just missed him, such a strategy would be pointless. He looked around for more ideas and found nothing.

  Stopmouth sighed. He knew he couldn’t risk dying here, not with Indrani so close and his tribe only days from destruction. Anyway, Hiresh was already dead. He had to be.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my friend,’ he whispered. It felt terribly wrong. Nevertheless, his eyes were already looking for a way out. ‘It’s for the tribe …’

  He sneaked backwards again, knowing himself to be disloyal and dirty. He returned to the staircase that had collapsed under his weight. A rivulet of slime ran over the lip of the upper platform and beneath where the steps had been. If they couldn’t take Stopmouth’s weight, the creature certainly couldn’t have been using them either. So there had to be another set of steps in the room, without any weakening slime.

  He heard a crunching sound behind him. He flung himself to the side – just in time: a large chunk of metal struck the ruins of the staircase right where his head had been. The hunter picked himself up to see the beast charging, lumbering towards him, its massive feet kicking up splinters, smashing skulls. In one hand it held a long metal pipe.

  He darted away, feeling the whistle of the pipe swinging just behind him. The creature was not so slow after all, and it only needed to run into him to cause him an injury. He yelped and stumbled; ran two steps on all fours before his feet took control again and shot him ahead of his enemy.

  Stopmouth fled over jagged splinters while the beast pounded after him. It roared, and any second now, the hunter knew, he’d stumble again, never to rise.

  A gap appeared amongst the metal objects in the centre of the room. Stopmouth dived for it. His sweaty body slid between two giant, humming boxes. The pipe followed him in, questing and smashing. He managed to turn and grab the end of it. A stupid move – he didn’t stand a chance. The beast yanked the weapon backwards so quickly it nearly pulled him out of his burrow altogether. Only hitting his head saved him, for he released the pipe and fell back, dazed.

  ‘Help me, ancestors! Help m—’

  The creature attacked again, its blows coming hard enough to knock dents in the walls around Stopmouth. Soon one of its random strikes was bound to catch his skull. He waited for the pipe to appear once more. The moment it withdrew, he leaped from scarred feet to grab the lip of one of the boxes above his head. He howled once when his enemy’s weapon clipped him, deadening a trailing leg. Still, he managed to pull himself up while the beast redoubled its efforts below.

  He breathed hard, holding in his whimpers of pain and hoping the hum that pervaded the room would mask them further. Slowly, feeling came back into his leg.

  I have to get out of here.

  He wondered if he was strong enough to jump onto the roof of one of the cages. From there, maybe, he might be able to reach up to the edge of the platform … But even at his peak, such a jump would have been stupid. So instead, Stopmouth used his height advantage to peer around the room until he saw another set of stairs, intact this time – and near the cage where poor Hiresh was probably lying dead.

  He crawled slowly in that direction, trying to keep quiet. At every push, his hands encountered shards of metal that must have fallen from the ceiling, rotted by slime but still heavy. He shoved a few of them into a pocket of his robes and moved on.

  Something had changed. He couldn’t figure out what it was. The room still hummed and sparked and dripped. What could it be? The pipe! It was no longer rattling into Stopmouth’s former hiding place. Either the beast had tired of its sport and was waiting for him to emerge, or else …

  The box he was crawling over shuddered. Then it began to rock. It must have weighed more than ten men, but Stopmouth could hear the grunts of the beast pushing it over and back. He got to his hands and knees and spun round. He could see mighty, glittering muscles below him straining against the weight. The top of the box sloped enough now that shards of metal were sliding off the end with every swing. He grabbed some more of them with one hand, while the other kept him from spilling onto the floor. Then he pelted the creature’s head with heavy little missiles. They skidded off its bony skull, but it roared, nose pointing upwards, and redoubled its efforts.

  A final mighty heave knocked th
e box backwards to lean against another. The hunter slid towards the second box, and managed to pull himself up onto it before he tumbled to the floor. He didn’t wait for his enemy to knock this one down too, but leaped off and rolled when he hit the ground. The stairs were just ahead of him.

  He heard the bone-crunching noise of the beast thundering round towards him. He would make it to the steps – just.

  He was passing the cage when he heard a voice: ‘Shtop-mau! Shtop-mau!’ Hiresh?

  A moment’s distraction; a turn of the head was all it took. Then his weary, torn feet missed a step and turned over on top of some old leg bone. He tumbled end over end, and by the time he’d got up again, the creature had put itself between him and the steps.

  It walked towards Stopmouth as he scrambled backwards, heart racing. Amidst the panic a coherent thought emerged – It isn’t charging. It’s breathing harder than I am.

  The creature was being careful. Now that it had won the day, it wanted to be sure of its kill. Slaver dripped from the great jaws as if they already tasted Stopmouth’s marrow.

  He called out, ‘C-can you m-move, Hiresh?’ His voice echoed harshly across the room. The monster took no notice – it might not even be able to hear human speech.

  ‘Can you g-get behind the beast and t-trip it up?’

  Of course, Hiresh wouldn’t understand him either without the Roof’s help, but surely he’d figure it out.

  However, the only movement now was the first swing of the pipe, driving the hunter further from the steps and keeping him away from the central metal boxes that had saved his life before.

  The swings became more frequent and got closer as the hunter tired. Somewhere behind him, a wall waited. He could hear the murmur of slime running down it. Once there, he’d be trapped. Nobody would ever know about his death in this dark place. There was some comfort in the fact that his flesh would be consumed – better than the fate of most Roofdwellers. But the thought of Indrani never hearing about it made him grit his teeth in anger at himself. He screamed at his tormentor and began picking up old pieces of bone to fling in its direction. Then he remembered the metal shards in his robes. They’d bounce uselessly off the creature’s hide. Yet it must have a weakness somewhere, and Stopmouth suddenly realized what that must be.

  He ran back a few steps to clear a bit of room for himself, even though it brought him closer to the wall. Then he turned and took aim at the waving nose. Stopmouth had always been a good shot with knife and spear and sling: most of his people were. His first few throws missed, due to the irregularity of the metal. The third scored a line of blood down the beast’s face and earned a roar that seemed to shake the entire room. He threw more, missing every one. It didn’t matter. The metal pipe swung madly, blindly, in Stopmouth’s direction, pushing him towards the wall. In heartbeats he had his back to it. A pace to his left stood a cage, the bars too narrow to crawl through. Five paces to his right, a heavy stream of slime with another cage just beyond it.

  The creature was charging at him now, exhausted but clearly enraged too. The pipe swung for his head, but the great body coming on behind it would do the final damage, trapping him and crushing him against the wall.

  Stopmouth saw one final chance to turn the creature’s own strength against it and save himself. With the last of his energy he dived to the right, rolled through the pool of slime and fell against the cage there. The beast rebounded from the wall where he’d been, but recovered quickly to come for the helpless human again.

  It never reached him. The rotted floor – where the slime met metal – gave way beneath its great weight. One leg disappeared up as far as the groin; the other snapped loud enough to echo around the chamber. The pipe dropped and the creature’s bloody snout waved and twitched in agony.

  Stopmouth watched it from a safe distance, not daring to move. However, his stomach was already rumbling. Proper food at last, he thought.

  The beast howled its pain while black blood puddled around it, darkening the stream of slime. He wanted to put it out of its misery, but dared not risk it. Instead, he shut his ears to its suffering as best he could and limped back to the cage where he’d first seen the creature’s massive bulk.

  ‘Hiresh?’ he called. No reply came. He couldn’t see his friend anywhere. Stopmouth had an awful feeling that a creature that large might have been able to swallow the boy down in one gulp, much as the Yellowmaws did. But if it ate like that, why did it have such heavy jaws?

  There were more bones in the cage than he’d seen elsewhere; piles large enough to hide any number of human bodies. All of them had been cracked open. And they had something else in common too: in spite of their fragmented nature, his expert eyes told him that they’d all belonged to the same species as the creature that had attacked him.

  Stopmouth had a horrible vision of the creature waking up in a strange metal place with no food. Except for its own friends and family, of course. What choice would they have had but to fall on each other until only the strongest remained, maddened by loneliness and hunger?

  And yet there was a choice of other food – it had tried eating the sleepers, one from each species: a little bite before giving up. Why had it stopped?

  The hunter shook his head. Another mystery he didn’t have time for.

  He dug amongst the remains until he found his friend’s body. The boy still breathed.

  Thank the ancestors! thought Stopmouth. One of his friend’s arms – the one without the strange lump on it – appeared to have been broken. Not necessarily fatal in a world where people ate ‘protein’ and nobody had to be traded for meat.

  But the sight of the scars that puckered Hiresh’s limbs and chest disturbed the hunter. Seeing them all together like this brought back the memory of the tattoos that covered the bodies of his friend’s parents. At the time, he hadn’t even thought to wonder that the boy had no tattoos of his own. Now he knew: one finger-length at a time, with discipline, patience and tremendous suffering, a knife had cut them away. And Stopmouth knew instinctively who had wielded the weapon.

  ‘I don’t know why you’d waste tattoos like that, Hiresh,’ he whispered. ‘But you’re no coward.’

  Hiresh opened his eyes. ‘Shtop-mau,’ he said. ‘Shtopmau …’ His good hand took one of the hunter’s and tried to move it towards the strange lump on his arm. Then he uttered a stream of urgent and desperate gibberish.

  ‘I’ll get you out of here,’ said Stopmouth, keeping his voice gentle and reassuring. ‘First I need to … to collect something. I’ll only be a few heartbeats.’

  His enemy’s death cries had ceased. It was time to feed.

  10. THE VOLUNTEER

  HIRESH WOKE INTO jolting agony. Stopmouth was carrying him up some stairs, the hunter’s breath exploding in clouds around them. He tried to log on. ‘Where are we?’ he asked. No answer came. The Roof wouldn’t speak to him, but he was in too much pain to let that terrify him. Cold, cold air bit at the exposed skin of his face, and every step the hunter took felt like spikes ground into his arm.

  Hiresh had something important to say. What was it? What was it? He lost consciousness.

  The next time he woke, he saw a doorway. The old woman – her name was Jaga something … Jagadamba – was pressing her left hand against it. She must have had some kind of implant like him, for the door swung open at her touch. Beyond, Hiresh caught a glimpse of the Upstairs – it had to be the Upstairs, because it was so cold.

  At first he could see no difference between it and the lower floors where everybody lived now. There would be districts divided into sectors, of course – some for recreation, all parkland or water. And residential areas too: great squares and architectural marvels. There was even said to be a re-creation of the Arctic up here somewhere …

  But all he saw from the hunter’s back was a short corridor with only the night lighting switched on. As his eyes adjusted, other things came to his attention: strange shapes on some of the floors; the walls bare of media. Hiresh could
n’t stop shivering, even if the continuous movement generated ever more agony for him. The whole place was like the Arctic now.

  Jagadamba grunted in satisfaction. She waved her left hand at Stopmouth, making biting gestures and smacking her lips. She cackled at her own joke before leading them into the corridor.

  Hiresh could see the shapes more clearly now: bodies, human bodies, huddled as near to the exit as they could get. They must have lain there for years, preserved by the cold, their terror never ending. Why these ones had failed to escape he couldn’t say. Almost all were Religious. They lay atop each other, their bodies tangled, all their resentments forgotten. Papa would have raged at the sight, claiming the Commission had deliberately locked them up here to die.

  ‘The Secular refugees got all the spare accommodation! All of it!’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Hiresh had countered. ‘The Commission wouldn’t do that!’

  ‘This is the last straw, the last straw!’

  The old woman beckoned Stopmouth onwards. He hesitated and said a few words that included Hiresh’s name. The boy felt warm at the thought. Stopmouth had saved his life – he’d taken on an alien that was surely too powerful even for him. He’d risked the only chance he had of being reunited with his wife.

  For me. For his friend.

  The boy felt tears running down his face, but he knew Stopmouth wouldn’t mock him for it. Savages lived in an awful world and they cried all the time. No doubt the hunter would weep when his woman was taken away from him for good …

  ‘Let me down!’ shouted Hiresh, startling the other two. ‘You’ve got to stay away from me! Let me down! Let me down!’

  Without the Roof, his companions couldn’t understand a word. They hushed him, Jagadamba looking angry. They ignored his protests and moved off along the corridor. After a few hundred metres of frozen corpses, the emergency lighting came to an abrupt end. Beyond them, an even colder draught of air blew in from some large open space, a plaza perhaps, or a shuttle station. Jagadamba produced a power torch from under her robes. It lit only a small area around them, but she led them boldly onwards. It produced heat too, warming his face.