Vanishing Rain (Blue Spectrum Chronicles Book 2) (11 page)

Chapter 25

Subway

It was quiet for the longest time, and the pup seemed to know to be still.  I didn’t know if the shooters had left or if they were trying to lure me out.  At some point I think I dozed off, which was really stupid of me.  I jerked my head up off of my chin trying to catch my bearings.  It was pitch black outside, but I had no idea what time it was.  Out of habit, I glanced at my arm to check the time, but my tracker-timer was long gone.

The door. Shit, it was still open.  How stupid could I have been?  My joints ached from lying on the concrete and my mouth felt like someone had stuffed a dirty rag in it. Just then the pup licked my arm, whining quietly.  It pawed at me, as if it was trying to tell me something. I rubbed behind its ears and swallowed hard, knowing what I had to do next.  I had to shut the door.  

Carefully, slowly, I peeked my head out of the doorway, remembering where the handle was and just waiting for someone to take a shot at me, ready to duck myself back down into the tunnel if I had to.

Nothing.  Only stillness.

Quickly, feeling rather than seeing, I found the handle and gave it a firm yank.  I felt the weight of it on my arm and it closed with a loud clank.  The silence in the subway tunnel was somehow louder than anything I had heard in my life.  I strained for sounds, anything to give me a clue as to what was in the tunnel, but I heard nothing, not even the dog. 

Panic seized me as my eyes tried to focus in the blackness. Were the renegade shooters actually gone, or were they waiting for me around the bend?  I was afraid to use my light flasher.  I had been shot at long enough and wasn’t going to give them an edge. At that point, I knew darkness was my friend. 

I picked up my knives, grappling blindly in the darkness.  One by one I tucked them back into my belt and picked up the lapcase.

One step.  That was all I had to do was take one step and I would be on my way.  Whether the renegades were around the bend or not, I knew I couldn’t stay forever on the concrete platform.   Placing my foot out, I found a step.  I forced my other foot to follow.  I could feel the pup beside me, its tail wagging against the back of my legs.

There, I told myself.  That wasn’t so hard.  I sucked in a deep, musty breath, moving my head around in the darkness. 

It was eerily quiet and the dirty air entered my lungs angrily. I coughed in retaliation as the air spewed from me, a wind of resignation, a magnet that attracted only dust and dirt and contaminated particles that returned back into me with dirty, undignified fury when I sucked in another breath.

I realized at that petrifying moment that I was nothing more than moldy remnants of a sad, pathetic and very pregnant human being. 

I was alone, and the thought of it made me want to cry. I stopped, not sure if I could go on. But the pup was wagging its tail, and somehow that brought comfort to me.  For some stupid reason, it had chosen me, and I guessed that was worth something.

Gods, I thought once again, what had my life come to?  Avoiding gunshots from renegades.  Falling asleep in an abandoned subway tunnel.  A dog my only friend.

Even worse, I wondered what was in store for us next.

Chapter 26

Troll

Sighing, resigned to my subway tunnel fate, I shed the robe quickly then felt around in the dark in an attempt to open the briefcase.  It was jammed shut.  “Shit,” I muttered to myself.

Just then a noise came out of the darkness, sounding something like a laugh. The pup growled and I shot my head up. Rapidly, I reached for a knife on my belt.  Was it one of the renegades?  I brandished the knife before me with an unsteady hand, wishing I had a gun to shoot.

The laugh became louder.  “You gonna get me with that knife or just stand there like a fucking idiot?”  It was a man’s voice, or maybe just a boy’s.  I couldn’t tell.  The pup snarled, and without thinking I patted its head, calming it.

“Who…who are you?” I asked, still wielding the knife.  My heart was thudding in my chest and I hoped whoever it was didn’t notice that my hands were trembling like miniature earthquakes.

“That’s a question I might have for you.”  Just then the tunnel lit up, and my eyes were blinded by a golden light.  I blinked them repeatedly, my heart racing out of control.  I couldn’t aim at someone I couldn’t even see.

I remembered what Pan had been told me.  I had to be tough, so I pretended to be Ivy.  She was the toughest person I had ever met. “Name is Vanish.” I curtly told him, tossing my head like she always did.  The pup growled again, deeper and more ferociously.

“Vanish. Hmmm.”  The light dimmed a bit, and I could distinguish the frame of the boy before me.  He was of medium height, a little taller than me and quite wiry.  His hair was dark              brown and shaggy, looking as if he hadn’t washed it in months.  I thought that his eyes might be blue or green, but it was difficult to tell with the light in my eyes.

He cocked his head to the side, studying me for a moment. “You gonna disappear or what?”

He was smart, picking up on my name like that.  I told myself to be careful. “Maybe,” I answered in a snarky voice. “Was that you shooting at me?” I pressed.

He snorted. “I ask the questions here.  Not you.”  Then he paused, narrowing his eyes at me. “What’s your business here, Vanish?” he queried, accentuating my name as if it was a bug he wanted to squash with his boot. “And what’s with the god damn dog?”
I figured honesty was the best route to go.  I had to be Vanish, not Rain. “On my way to the Asters.  What’s it to you?”  I liked that last part that I added. 

He laughed at me again.  “I’m the keeper of the gate.” 

I tossed my head again, my bangs sweeping across my head as I switched from imitating ivy to mimicking Blush.  “So…what gate are you keeping?”

He laughed again.
“Shit. You gotta be kidding me.”  A grunt or something like it escaped his lips, echoing in the small dank area.  “I decide who stays or who goes.”

“How did you get that job?”

“I earned it.”

I paused, not knowing what to do.  The pup was snarling, which I figured might help with my tough act.  “How do I get past you, gate keeper?”

“By killing me.”

I remembered the warnings from Pan and Garment.  Could I really kill this person just so I could get through to the Asters?  The thought of it didn’t seem too appealing, yet turning around and facing the renegades didn’t seem pleasant, either.  Even if I made my way back through the renegades, I would have to face the Administration, and that meant losing the baby.

I could almost feel the life inside of me.  Two lives.  We were two and this fool of a man boy in front of me was just one. Not to mention the pup.  That made three of us and one of him.  I took a deep breath again, the stagnant air scorching my chest. 

“Okay.  I can do that.”  In one swift movement, I pulled the knife back in my hand, aimed at the outline before me and let the knife fly, just as the light flickered out.

I heard an impact.  Good.  I must have hit him.  Then a slur of words wafted their way to me. “God damn it.  I wasn’t serious.  Jesus Christ, you could have killed me.” 

The light switched back on, and the boy was holding his left arm with his other hand, his light flasher tucked into his belt.  His brow was wrinkled, blue eyes glaring furiously at me.  Then he turned his attention to his arm, studying it with a shocked expression on his face as blood leaked out onto his hand. “You nicked me.”

I wasted no time. “You told me I had to kill you.”  I was beyond irritated with this boy.  Garment and Pan had told me there were people in the tunnels who would help me, and here I was with this stupid boy wasting my time. I toughened my voice before I spoke. “It’s a good thing for you that the light went out.”  I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to appear threatening.  The pup let out a huge serious of barks that thundered against the subway walls.

The boy gawked at me with cat like eyes, an odd expression on his face.  I reached for another knife, holding it so fiercely I thought my hand might explode.  My chest was heaving, and I wondered if I could really kill this boy.

“Put your knife down,” he ordered.  “I like you.”  A thin smile erupted on his lips.

That didn’t make sense to me. “What difference does that make?” I prodded.

He sighed, blowing out a huff of air that swam toward me, a fish without gills. “I’ll take you to the Asters.”

“How can I trust you?” I gulped in some dank tunnel air.  “And how can I be sure you know the way to the Asters?”

“Shit, you ask some stupid questions.”  He was still holding his bleeding arm, and I continued to aim my knife at him, as the pup snarled menacingly by my side.  I was beginning to really like that dog.

“There’s only one place this tunnel leads to.  The Asters.”  He was breathing heavily by then and more blood was dripping from his arm, pooling onto the floor. “You can’t trust anybody.  And if you’re going to the Asters, you’d better figure that out real fast.”  He stopped for a second.  “Vanish.”  He said my name as if it were a snake slithering out of his mouth.

I pasted on my tough face again.  Gods, was I going to have to use it for the rest of my life? “Okay. Got it,” I brusquely told him.  For a brief moment we just stared at each other.  Then, I asked him, “What’s your name, gate keeper?” 

“Troll.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“You’re getting on my nerves,” he snipped.  He tore a piece of his grubby shirt off with one swift movement, as if he had done it a thousand times before.  He wrapped his arm tightly, holding a piece of the tattered cloth with his teeth while he tied it in a knot.  I could make out faint traces of blood that seeped onto his make shift bandage.  When he finished, an awkward silence ensued. 

I watched him, knife still in hand.

“Put the knife down.  I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“How do I know that?”

“Because I just told you.  Shit.”

I sized him up.  Even if I put my knife away, I guessed that I could take him down with hand-to-hand combat. Maybe the pup would help, but I couldn’t be sure of that. Besides, Pan had trained me enough so this skinny kid wouldn’t be too much of a problem.  I still eyed him warily, but I decided to change my tactic. “Hey, Troll, can you help me open this case so I can get my pack out of it?”

He eyed me warily. “If you let me keep that robe you just took off.”

“You can have it,” I answered quickly, wanting rid of the pretentious robe that was a constant reminder of my mother.  “What would I want with it?” I asked in a snarky voice.

“You’d be surprised.”  He knelt down and picked up the robe, fondling it in his hands as if it were real gold.  “Yeah, I’ll help you.”  Wrapping the robe around his waist, Troll ambled closer to me, to the briefcase. The pup let out a serious of growls, but I patted its head, and it settled down. I studied Troll, not sure what he would do.  I kept one hand on my knife belt just to be sure.

“Shit,” Troll muttered under his breath.  “If I wanted to kill you I already would have.”  He lifted his eyes up, a rich, dark ocean blue.  So much like Orion’s that I wanted to break down and cry, fall to the floor and become a blubbering idiot. But I swallowed it back.  Thinking of Orion at that moment would not help me in the least.

I chewed nervously on the inside of my cheek as Troll knelt down and fiddled with the hinges on the briefcase. His hands were large for his size, and I noticed that his knuckles were thick and calloused.  He worked on the hinges, his tongue peeking out from his lips, and in a few minutes the briefcase busted open and my precious pack was displayed, begging for me to take it out of its prison. Quickly, I placed it over my shoulders.

“Okay, Troll, which way do I go?”

He laughed again, a throaty deep laugh.  “There’s only one way to go.” 

Without further comment, he started off at a jog and I scurried to where he was once standing and picked up my knife from the dingy floor.  Placing it in my belt, I launched into a slow run right behind Troll.

The pup trotted along happily at my side.

Chapter 27

Beast

I was glad for all of the running that Pan forced me to do, because I was barely winded by the time Troll stopped.  When I caught up with him, he was knelt over with his hands on his knees, panting laboriously.  I sidled up next to him without even a stitch in my side, pregnant and all. 

He turned his head toward me, gasping for breath. “Half way point...Station 5.”

I opened my pack and took out a bottle of water, careful to take a measured sip of it.  I put the lid back on the bottle and then I realized that Troll had nothing.  “You don’t have any water?” I asked him.

After drawing in a deep breath, he chortled, that same irritating laugh he used when I first stepped into the subway tunnel. But his voice changed to a slur as he answered. “I got water.”  He stood up and tapped on a blank space on the dingy wall.  Old drawings in large numbers and letters, odd designs covered the walls.  I hadn’t noticed them before.  I sucked the dirty air into my lungs and then my jaw dropped as a door opened, swinging wide with several bottles of water in it and something else I couldn’t quite decipher.  Troll took out a bottle of water, tipped his head back and guzzled the entire thing.

“Put the rest in your pack.”  He ordered, swiping his arm over his mouth.  “We’ll need them.”  He reached back into the box and picked out a bunch of stiff brown globs, placing them delicately in his shirt sleeve.  Then he plopped down on the floor. He cast his eyes up toward me, slurring his words again, as if he had been drinking or gone without sleep for days.  “I need to rest.” 

Quickly, before he changed his mind, I scooped up the bottles of water and shoved them into my pack.  Pan had told me that water was the most important thing and I didn’t want to take any chances.

The pup was looking up at me, its tongue lolling out of its mouth like a flat red balloon.  I dug around in my back pack and found a plastic container so much like the toddlers’ sippy cups that for an instant my chest seized.  Their cherubic faces filled my memory bank and I fought to send them away, knowing it would only hurt to keep them there.  I filled the container with water and set it on the ground.  The pup drank greedily, wagging its tail as drops of water trickled off its pink lips.

Questions flew around in my head, crazy out of control bird thoughts.  I was exhausted and I settled down beside Troll, carefully placing my pack away from him.  The pup laid next to me, falling instantly asleep with its head between its paws.

Troll didn’t even bother looking at me but stared straight ahead. “I’m not going to take your shit.”

I twisted away from him, speaking in an irritated voice.  “Right.”  My stomach was rumbling but I didn’t want to get any of the rations I had out of my pack and have to share them with Troll.   As if reading my mind, he reached into his shirt pocket and grabbed something out of it.  He took a bite, chewing it slowly, the process obviously difficult.  He then passed it to me.  “Want a bite?”

“What is it?”

“Jerky.”

“What’s that?”  I had never heard of a food called jerky.  He laughed again.  At least he thought I was funny.  Or he was just incredibly happy all the time.  I couldn’t imagine being happy stuck

in that dreary tunnel.

“You know, dried meat.  Pretty sure it’s alligator.”

“Ewwww, that sounds disgusting.”  I scrunched up my face at the thought.

“You’ll eat a lot worse if you’re going to make it in the Asters.”  I thought about the abandoned sewer routes and people having to eat rats in order to survive.  Alligator seemed a definite step above that.

Figuring my best bet was to get as much information from Troll that I could, I pressed on.

“Hey, where would you get alligators in the Asters?” I asked him earnestly.  After being told the asteroid that destroyed Province K had killed everything in its path, animals included, I was hesitant to believe him.  “And what about water?  I thought it was a desert.”

“Oh, there’s water there alright.  Swamps.  Full of alligators.”  He held out the jerky again, and this time I took it from him, not even thinking about diseases he might have or if alligator jerky was even safe to eat.  Intrinsically, I knew I had to adjust to their food sources if I was to survive in the Asters. 

I took a generous bite of the jerky, chewing the tough, leathery meat.  It rolled around in my mouth like stiff cardboard but actually had a decent flavor, spicy and salty.  I handed it back to him.

His mouth was full, but he managed to answer, “Keep it.” 

Just then the pup whined.  I looked at the poor starving thing and tossed the rest of my jerky to it, watching intently as it gobbled the meat up. 

“Hey, Troll,” I started, embarrassed at what I was about to ask him.

“Hmmm,” he answered with an extremely full mouth.

I hesitated, unsure of how to phrase my question.  “Uh…can you tell if this dog is a male or a female?”

That sent Troll into a series of guffaws and chortles that might have offended me had I not wanted to know the answer to my question so badly.  Troll launched himself upward in a swift movement and turned the pup over on its back, still chewing like a small motor was in his mouth.  He examined the dog intensely, swallowed deeply, and announced, “It’s a girl.”  Immediately, the pup rolled back over, glaring offensively at Troll.

“A girl?” I asked.  For some reason I was surprised at that.  I had just assumed it was a male dog, probably because of the size of her wide jowls and huge paws.

I wanted to ask Troll how he knew such things, then decided against it, sure that he would give me some puzzling answer that only caused more questions in my mind. He plopped back down onto the floor and lounged his back against the wall, closing his eyes as if he had no cares in the world.  I sighed, envying him that quality.  I was fighting to settle down after all that had happened, watching the pup finish the jerky.  She appreciatively wagged her tail against the dirty floor with repeated thumps and cast her eyes up at me with adoration.  I patted her on the head, tossing some names around in my mind for her.  I was leaning toward Star. 

“She sure does like you.”

I jumped at the words, thinking that Troll was asleep.  His blue eyes were blazing at me, and something about them pulled me in.  I smiled.  A Rain smile, which probably was a mistake.

“Yeah, but I don’t know why,” I replied, finally calming down.

“I do,” he started, but his words were drowned out by loud barking. The pup had jumped up on all four legs and was furiously yelping and snarling, the hair on her back standing up on end. 

I twisted toward Troll, who stood up in the fastest movement I had ever seen.  “God damn it,” he cursed under his breath, then pulled back his arm. It appeared that he was throwing something, a knife perhaps.  I followed the arc of it with my eyes, my breath catching in my throat.

My heart started beating so fast I thought it would shatter.  Barreling toward us at a fast pace was a huge, grey, hairy beast.  I was paralyzed as Troll reached for a knife and the pup barked furiously.

The beast was enormous with huge feet and fur covering most of its body.   Its snarls washed out the pup’s barking as it careened toward us, standing upright with bared teeth.  A ferocious growl spewed out of its blue lips and it let out a roar that beat across the tunnel walls, hitting them repeatedly and rocketing back and forth, lessening with every echo.  But each time it lessened, a new roar was there to replace it.

I wanted to run, to get out of the tunnel as fast as I could, but as the pup barked and Troll cursed, I realized it was futile. 

The beast was so big, there was no way I could get past it.  Holy shit, I thought, there’s no way any of us could get past it.