Monster Planet(93)

'Please stop,' she whispered.

'I died and then I locked myself away with this freak of nature,' he told her, gesturing at Gary, 'to make the world safer for you. Don't you dare make me throw all that away by getting yourself killed now. Not for some pointless idea of camaraderie with a dead woman. Not after all I've suffered to protect you.'

'Stop,' Sarah said. And surprisingly enough he did. He'd said his piece.

Her turn.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember how she'd felt earlier when she'd looked at him and seen nothing but decay. It gave her a little strength. 'To protect me?' she asked. 'You came here to protect me? How did you protect me, when did you protect me when I was eleven years old and hungry and the Somali government collapsed and we had to run and the ghouls were after us and most of us didn't make it, huh? How were you protecting me when we finally ran out of food, when for three weeks we had nothing whatsoever to eat? We made little cakes out of clay, Dad. We ate clay because it expanded in your stomach and made you feel full. Clay, Dad, I ate dirt I was so hungry.'

He winced visibly but she refused to stop there.

'Where were you, where was your protection, when the women came for me and said it was time I got circumcised? They wanted to infibulate me, do you know what that means? No, probably not, because you weren't there. You were too busy over here, trying to protect me. If Ayaan hadn't been there I would have been sewn up, they would have sewn up my vagina with yarn, leaving me just a little hole to pee and bleed out of. So I would be pure for my future f*cking husband. You weren't there!'

'Sarah,' he said, his voice completely altered.

She refused to let him speak. Instead she screamed at him. 'Listen, you maggoty old wound, I guess you can come along for the ride if you want to protect me now. It'll be handy to have somebody who can heal bullet wounds. But I'm in charge. I'm in f*cking charge! If you can't accept that I'll pick you up and carry you out of here myself.'

'You have no idea what my existence is like. Don't you dare say that to me!' he howled.

'I already did.' She turned around and started walking away.

'Wait a moment,' Osman said. 'I did not say dead things could come!'

'Yeah, well, you're not in charge either,' she told the pilot. She wondered how he was going to feel about the soldiers she'd recruited. She walked back out into the sunlight to wait for Ptolemy.





Monster Planet





Chapter Eight


'You've been here before,' Ayaan said. It wasn't a question.

Nilla turned around to look at her but the pale face under all that blonde hair gave away nothing. 'I've been to lots of places,' she replied.

Ayaan nodded and smiled to herself. Her radio crackled and spat white noise at her but she ignored it for the time being. The two of them stood at the front of the flatbed. Ahead of them Erasmus guided the giant hot rod over a road surface that had been washed away by a dozen winters. Little but a scoured-out track in the side of the mountain remained.

They were getting close. Even Ayaan could feel it, a deep thrumming in her bones. An almost musical feeling that something big and powerful and wonderful was right over the next rise. Of course she'd been feeling that for days, since long before they'd reached the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

It had been a long and arduous journey. The Tsarevich had given them little encouragement but the zealots had never so much as threatened to rebel. Dozens of them had died: dehydration and the meager traveling rations had taken some while others were accidentally crushed by the drivers of the transport vehicles. A few had succumbed to violent fevers or terrible infections. It didn't matter. Moments after their eyes fluttered shut their bodies rose and they simply entered their next phase of service to their master. It was something they looked forward to.

Almost all of the vehicles had broken down eventually and it became harder and harder to replace them. The dead and the living together took to walking along after the flatbed, taking turns at the ropes when they hauled it over rises, heaving with all their strength to pull it out of muddy ditches.

After the first week they came across larger and larger breaks in the tree cover and then the world seemed to open up wide and the sky got big as the forest ended and the prairie began but little changed. They had weathered brutal sun and punishing rain. The column had never stopped. The rain gave way to days so dry and dusty Ayaan had to wear a cloth around her face and sunglasses to protect her eyes. The ghouls were oblivious to the dust that scrubbed their skin right off and burned their faces an angry red. The living made do as best they could.