Monster Planet(62)

They had stopped in a region halfway between housing developments and farmland. The concrete lip of the road stood at a slight angle, with a twisted mass of green and rusted signage hanging over them on steel pylons. One half-obscured sign read:

WELCO.... TO ..........YLVANIA Popu.ation 12,281,054

Beyond lay a grassy depression in the earth, a mile-wide bowl of land half-filled with weather-beaten, falling down houses, giant concrete blocks with crumbling faces, subsidiary roads only recognizable now because they were less overgrown than the surrounding land. A thin mist hovered in the bowl, a last shred of vapor as yet not burned off by the rising sun, protected by pine trees.

With a flurry of motion from one of the concrete blocks a bird launched itself into the air and threw itself in a long curving course over the hollow. Erasmus looked up at the green phantom on the roof of the truck and one of the corpses in the flatbed twitched to life. It spilled out into the depression like a top jerking away from its string.

Ayaan frowned and did some deep knee bends, some toe-touches. She could feel where her muscles had started to seize up and cramp. She wasn't expecting it when a few minutes later the accelerated ghoul returned and knelt down before her. It had the bird, the same bird she'd watch wing through the late-morning mist, impaled on one ulna.

The bird was still alive. It kept trying to tuck its wing under its breast but the spar of bone got in the way. Its blood splashed on the asphalt. Ayaan saw very little of that. What she saw was its energy, its tremulous golden energy, already flickering away. It was precious, that energy, that life. She reached out and freed the bird. She brought it closer, brought it toward her body.

She bit right through its feathers and its tiny hollow bones. It wasn't something she thought about doing. The blood ran down her throat and she expected to gag, to choke. She didn't.

Swallowing she felt the rush of the bird's life pulse through her, burst inside of her. Her head cleared, her body softened and relaxed. She looked up. There were people'living people'watching her.

She hadn't heard them coming, hadn't seen any sign of them until they were right up behind her. They were survivors, true survivors, and they knew how to stay safe. They must have only approached once the truck stopped, convinced that they'd been spotted.

Ayaan clutched the carcass of the bird to her chest and turned away. She crouched down in the shadow of the truck and tried not to look at them. It was hard.

'Surviving' might have been putting it too strongly. They were mostly naked, and they had very little hair. Their skin was discolored and raw in places, red and irritated. Their eyes were crusty slits in their faces and they had perhaps a handful of teeth between the five of them. Yet their energy was gold and bright.

One of them was obviously the leader'he wore a shirt, a green polo shirt with a ragged hem. He stood in front of a female who held a tiny baby tight against her breasts. She couldn't be more than four and half feet tall. Occasionally she shook the baby a little, rocked it vigorously. The baby made no sound at all.

The shirted one grabbed an emaciated boy and shoved him forward. His eyes never left the pavement. The boy took a few steps towards Erasmus and then stopped, his head bowed. He said something in English but in an accent so thick Ayaan couldn't understand. One word sounded like 'sack-erf-eyes.'. Sack of eyes? Even Ayaan's stomach turned.

No. He had meant something else. Sacrifice. He was offering up his own flesh in exchange for the safety of his family. Ayaan felt a low, hot burn of recognition, of sympathy, flushing through her chest.

'Look at dead-enders,' the green phantom said to her, in surprisingly bad Russian. 'To clutch at life so much. They hide, you know. Hide in bad places, toxic wildernesses so bad not even ghouls will follow in.' He switched to English as if his tongue had grown tired. 'They don't realize it yet but this is the best day of their little lives.'

Erasmus put one clawed hand on the sacrificial boy's shoulder and lifted the other in a sweeping gesture. He gave them a grand speech, all about what the Tsarevich would do for them. Food. Clean water. Rudimentary health care.

Despite herself Ayaan realized he was telling the truth'as had the green phantom. These starving, sick people were barely holding on to life by their fingernails. Their lives would be ruled by constant fear and constant death. They were literally living like animals. Ayaan knew about refugees, from her life before the Epidemic. She knew about famine and war and pestilence. It looked like America was learning from the African primer. If this tiny tribe joined up with the Tsarevich they would be slaves'but still their lives would improve dramatically. She remember the Turkish prisoners she'd seen on Cyprus, the one who watched one of their own be drowned and then return from the dead. She thought of Dekalb, her old, long-lost friend, who had made a similarly horrible bargain. He had turned his only daughter over to a tribe of anarchic woman warriors. That must have seemed like a horror at the time, but it worked out for Sarah.