Armageddon’s Children

THREE

CHENEY WAS CURLED up in one corner of the big common room between the old leather couch and the game table, his massive form most closely resembling a giant fur ball, when Owl rolled her wheelchair through the kitchen door and crossed to the bedroom to check on Squirrel. She was aware of one pale gray eye opening as she passed, registering her presence before closing again. Cheney saw everything. She had found the wolfish, hulking guard dog unnerving when Hawk first brought him home, but eventually she got used to having him around. All of them had by this time, even the little ones, all but Panther, who really didn't like Cheney. It was something in Panther's past, she believed, but he wasn't saying what that something was.

In any case, Cheney was important enough to their safety that it didn't matter what Panther thought. Hawk had realized that from the beginning. Nothing got close to their underground hideout without Cheney knowing. He could hear or smell anything approaching when it was still five minutes away. Even the Freaks had learned to stay clear. Although the Ghosts had come to accept him, they were wary of him, too. Cheney was just too big and scary with all that bristling hair and those strange patchwork markings. A junkyard dog made out of thrown–away parts. But a very large junkyard dog. Only Hawk was completely unafraid of him, the two of them so close that sometimes she thought they were extensions of each other. Hawk had taken Cheney's name from one of Owl's history books. The name had belonged to some long–dead politician who'd been around when the seeds for the Great Wars had been planted. Owl's book described him as a bulldog spoiling for a fight. Hawk had liked the image.

She rolled the wheelchair up the ramp Fixit had built for her and eased herself into the mostly darkened bedroom. Squirrel lay tangled in his blankets on his mattress, but he was sleeping. She glanced at Sparrow, who was reading by candlelight in the far corner, keeping watch over the little boy. Sparrow looked up from her book, blue eyes peeking out from under a mop of straw–colored hair.

"I think he's doing better," she said quietly.

Owl wheeled over to where she could reach down and feel the boy's forehead. Warm, but no longer hot. The fever was burning itself out. She exhaled softly, relief washing through her. She had been worried about him. Two days ago, the thermometer had registered his temperature at 106, dangerous for a ten–year–old. They had so few medicines to treat anything and so little knowledge of how to use them. The plagues struck without warning, and any one of them could be fatal if you lacked the necessary medicines. There were vaccines to protect against contracting most of the plagues, and Hawk had gotten a few from Tessa, but mostly the street kids had to rely on luck and strength of constitution to stay healthy.

The danger of sickness or poisoning was the primary reason that people lived in the compounds. In the compounds, you could minimize the risk of infection and exposure. But the compounds held their own dangers, as Owl had found out firsthand. In her mind, if not in Tessa's, the dangers of living inside the compounds clearly outweighed the dangers of living outside.

Which was why she had decided five years ago to take her chances with the Ghosts.

Before that, she had been living in the Safeco Field compound along with two thousand other people. When the Great Wars had escalated to a point where half the cities in the nation had been wiped out and the remainder were under siege from terrorist attacks and plagues and chemical poisonings of all sorts, much of the population began to occupy the compounds. Most were established within existing structures like Safeco, which had been a baseball park decades ago. Sports complexes offered several advantages. First, their walls were thick and strong, and provided good protection, once the entrances were properly fortified. Second, they could hold thousands of people and provide adequate storage space for supplies and equipment. Third, all contained a playing surface, which could be converted to gardens for growing food and raising livestock.

At first, the strategy worked well. The measure of protection the compounds offered was undeniable. There was safety in numbers. A form of government could be established and order restored within their walls. Food and water could be better foraged for and more equitably distributed. A larger number of people meant more diversity of skills. When one compound filled up, those turned away established another, usually in a second sports complex. If there was none available, a convention center or even an office tower was substituted, although none of these ever worked quite as well.

The biggest problem with the compounds began to manifest after the first decade, when the once–men started to appear. No one seemed certain of their origin, although there were rumors of "demons" creating them from the soulless shells of misguided humans who had been subverted. Urban legends, these stories could never be confirmed. Some claimed to have seen these demons, though no one

Owl had ever met. But there was no denying the existence of the once–men. Formed up into vast armies, they roamed the countryside, attacking and destroying the compounds, laying siege until resistance was either overcome or the compound surrendered in the false hope that mercy would be shown. When word spread of the slave pens and the uses to which the once–men were putting the captured humans, resistance stiffened.

But the compounds were not fortresses in the sense that medieval castles had been. Once besieged, they turned into death traps from which the defenders could not escape. The once–men outnumbered the humans. They did not require clean water or good food. They did not fear plague or poisoning. Time and patience favored the attackers. One by one, the compounds fell.

This might have discouraged those hiding in the compounds if there had been anyplace else for them to go. But the mind–set of the compound occupants was such that the idea of surviving anywhere else was inconceivable. Outside the walls you risked death from a thousand different enemies. There were the Freaks.

There were the feral humans living in the rubble of the old civilization. There were the armies of the once–men, prowling the countryside. There were things no one could describe, crawled up out of Hell and the mire. There was anarchy and wildness. The humans in the compounds could not imagine contending with these.

Even the risk of an attack and siege by the once–men was preferable to attempting life on the outside where an entire world had gone mad.

Owl was one of the people who believed like this. She had been born in the

Safeco Field compound, and for the first eight years of her life it was all she knew. She never went outside its walls, not even once. In part, it was because she was crippled at birth, deprived of the use of her legs for reasons that probably had something to do with the poor quality of the air or food or water her mother ingested during pregnancy. After her parents died from a strain of plague that swept the compound when she was nine, she was left orphaned and alone. A quiet and reclusive child, in part because of her disability, in part because of her nature, she had never had many friends. She began living with a family who needed someone to care for their baby. But then the baby died, and she was dismissed and left without a family once more.

She began working in the kitchens of the compound and sleeping in a back room on a cot. It was a dreary, unrewarding existence, but her choices were limited. In the compounds, everyone over the age of ten worked if they wanted to remain. If you did not contribute, you were put out. So she worked. But she was unhappy, and she began to question whether the life she was living was the best she could hope for. She began spending time on the walls, looking at the city, wondering what was out there.

Which was how, five years ago, she had met Hawk.

A growl sounded from the common room. Cheney, head lowered, ears flat, and hair bristling, faced the iron–plated door that opened onto the outer corridors of the underground city. He didn't look like a fur ball now; he looked like a monster. His muzzle was drawn back to expose his huge teeth, and the sleepy eyes of a moment earlier had turned baleful. Owl rotated away from Squirrel and moved her chair back down the ramp and into the common room, where lamps powered by solar cells gave off a stronger light. Sparrow was already there, standing next to Cheney, gripping one of the prods. Sparrow was small, and the big dog, even crouched, stood shoulder–high to her. Owl maneuvered over to the door and waited, listening. Moments later, she had heard the rapping sound–one sharp, one soft, two sharp. She waited until it was repeated, then reached up and released the locking bars and unlatched the door.

Fixit and Chalk pushed through, soaked to the skin and looking like drowned rats. Cheney quit growling and took himself out of his crouch. Sparrow lowered the prod.

"He fell in the storm sewer," Chalk announced, gesturing at Fixit.

"Then he fell in trying to help me out," Fixit finished.

"You were supposed to be on the roof," Sparrow pointed out, her blue eyes intense. "The roof is up, not down, last I heard."

"Yeah, yeah." Fixit brushed the water from his curly red hair and shook himself like a dog. Both Cheney and Sparrow backed up. "You can't do much with solar cells when it's raining. We switched out the collectors from the catchment system, threw in the purification tablets, and were done. Then we decided to forage for stores. Found a big stash of bottled water two blocks south. Too much to haul without help."

"It'll take all of us and the wagon," Chalk added. "But a good find, right, Owl?"

"Better than good," Owl agreed.

He grinned, then looked around. "Where are the others, anyway? Aren't they back yet?"

Owl shook her head. "Soon, I expect. You better get out of those clothes and dry off or you'll end up like Squirrel."

"I'd have to be pretty stupid to end up like Squirrel," Chalk declared, and Fixit laughed.

"It's not funny," Sparrow snapped. She crossed to confront them, not as big as they were but a whole lot more unpredictable. "You think it's funny that he's sick?"

"Stop it, Sparrow," Chalk said, turning away from her. "I didn't mean anything. I want him to get well as much as you do. I was just teasing about how it happened."

"Well, tease about something else," Owl suggested gently. "What happened to Squirrel was an accident."

Which was true, so far as it went. It had been an accident that he had cut himself on a piece of sharp metal and that the cut had become badly infected.

But he had brought it on himself by trying to salvage a box of metal toy soldiers that Hawk had told him not to touch.

"Besides which, where do you get off calling anyone stupid?" Sparrow demanded.

Chalk was so fair with his pale skin and white–blond hair that he almost wasn't there. Now he flushed with the rebuke and spun angrily back on Sparrow.

"Let it alone, Chalk," Owl said, intervening quickly. "Just go change your clothes. You, too, Fixit. Sparrow, you go back into the bedroom and sit with Squirrel. Let me know if he needs anything."

There were a few more pointed looks and some grumbling, but everyone did as asked. Owl was the mother, and you don't argue with your mother. She hadn't asked for the position, but there was no one else to fill it, and as the oldest female member of the tribe she was the logical choice. Most of them could barely remember their real mothers, but they knew what mothers were and wanted one.

Hawk provided leadership and authority, but Owl gave them stability and reassurance. In a world where kids believed that adults had failed them in every important way, other kids were the best they could hope for.

Owl wheeled toward the kitchen, beginning to think about dinner. Cheney was back in place between the leather couch and the game table, eyes closed, flanks rising and fall slowly beneath the thick mass of his patchwork coat. Owl watched him for a moment, wondering if he was dreaming and if so what he dreamed about. Then she angled herself into the makeshift work space that served as the food preparation area and began rolling out prepackaged dough. Tonight she would serve them a special treat. Hawk would be bringing back apples, and she would make pie. They lacked electricity, but could generate sufficient heat to bake from the woodstove Fixit had built for her.

She thought about the boy for a minute. An enigma, he defied easy categorization. He was a talented craftsman and mechanic; he could build or repair almost anything. He had constructed the makeshift appliances in the kitchen and the generators and solar units that powered them. He had rebuilt her wheelchair to make it easier to maneuver and laid down the ramps that allowed her to reach all the rooms. The catchment systems on the roof were his. Using scrap and ingenuity, he had constructed all of the heavy security doors and reinforced window shutters that kept them safe. He claimed to have learned his skills from his father, who was a metalworker, but he never talked about his parents otherwise. He had come to them early, when he was not yet ten, but already knew more than they did about making things.

Now, at fourteen, he was old and capable enough to be given responsibilities reserved for the older members of the tribe, but he had a problem. As he had proved repeatedly, he was unreliable. He was fine when he was working under someone's supervision, but terrible when left on his own–prone to forget, to procrastinate, even to ignore. Sending him out by himself was impossible. The last time they had done so, he hadn't come back for two days. An old broken–down machine had distracted him, and he had been trying to find a way to make it run again. He didn't even know what it did, but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that it was interesting.

His closest friend was Chalk, which made a sort of sense because they were polar opposites. Chalk was easygoing and incurious, uninterested in why anything worked, only that it did. He liked to draw and was very good at it–hence his name. But he was not a dreamer, as so many artists tended to be. He was practical and grounded in his life; his art was just another job. Fixit was something of a mystery to him, a boy of similar age and temperament who could make everything run smoothly but himself.

Inseparable, those two, Owl thought. Probably a good thing, since each boy had a steadying effect on the other and neither was much good alone.

She was midway through the piecrust assembly when Cheney scrambled to his feet and stood facing the iron–plated door once again. This time he did not growl, and his posture was alert and un–threatening. That meant Hawk was coming.

Her hands covered with pieces of dough, she called to Sparrow to open the door. Moments later Hawk and the others surged into the room, laughing and joking as they hauled in the boxes of apples and plums and deposited them in the kitchen where some could be separated out and the rest put into cold storage.

Chalk and Fixit reemerged, Sparrow wandered out, and soon all of them were gathered in the common room exchanging information on the day's events. Owl listened from the work space as she finished with the crust and began cutting up apples, watching the expressions on their faces, the excited gestures they made, and the repeated looks they exchanged, taking pleasure in their easy camaraderie.

This was her family, she thought, smiling. The best family she could imagine.

But when Panther started talking about the dead Lizard, the good feelings evaporated and she was reminded anew that she lived in a world where having a family primarily meant having safety in numbers and protection from evil. The word family was just a euphemism. The Ghosts, after all, were a tribe, and the tribe was always under siege.

She finished with the pie, adding cinnamon, sugar, and butter substitute, stuck the pie in the baking oven, and started making their dinner. Forty minutes later, she gathered them around the work space on their collection of chairs and stools and sat them down to eat. They did what she asked, she their surrogate mother, and they her surrogate children. So very different from her days in the compound, where she had been merely tolerated after her parents died.

Here, she believed, she was loved.

When dinner was over, Bear and River cleared the table, and Sparrow helped her with the dishes. They used a little water from the catchment system, just enough to get the job done. They were lucky they lived in a part of the world where there was still a reasonable amount of rainfall. In most places, there was no water at all. But you couldn't be sure it wouldn't be like that here one day.

You really couldn't be sure of anything now.

She had just finished cleaning up when Hawk wandered over to stand next to her. "Tiger says that Persia has the red spot," he said quietly. His dark eyes held her own, troubled and conflicted. "He wants me to get him a few packs of pleneten. I agreed. I had to. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made the trade for the fruit."

"She must be pretty sick. He needs the trade as badly as we do." She folded her hands in her lap. "Will you try to get the pleneten from Tessa?"

He shrugged. "Where else would I get it?"

"We have some. We could give him that."

"We need what we have."

She exhaled softly. "Tessa may not be able to help. She puts herself in danger by doing so."

"I know that."

"When do you see her again?"

"Tomorrow night. I'll ask, see what she can do."

She nodded, studying his young face, thinking he was growing up, that his features were changed even from just six months ago. "We will help Persia even if Tessa can't," she said. "She's only eleven."

Hawk smiled suddenly, a wry twist of his mouth that reflected his amusement with what she had just said. "As opposed to fourteen or sixteen or eighteen, which is so much older?"

She smiled back. "You know what I mean."

"I know you make good apple pie."

"How many other apple pies have you tried besides mine?"

"Zero." He paused. "Can we have our story now?"

She put away the dishes and rolled her wheelchair into the common room.

Her appearance from the kitchen was their signal that story time was about to begin. The talking stopped at once, and everyone quickly gathered around. For all of them, it was the best time of the day, a chance to experience a magic ride to another place and time, to live in a world to which they had never been and someday secretly hoped to go. Each night, Owl told them a story of this world, inventing and reinventing its history and its lore. Sometimes she read from books, too. But she didn't have many of those, and the children liked her made–up stories better anyway.

She leaned back in the wheelchair and looked from face to face, seeing herself in their eyes, a young woman just a little older in years, but infinitely older in experience and wisdom, with brown hair and eyes and ordinary features, not very pretty, but smart and capable and genuinely fond of them.

That they cared for her as much as they did never ceased to amaze her. When she thought of it, after her years alone in the compound, she wanted to cry.

"Tell us about the snakes and the frogs and the plague that the boy visited on the evil King and his soldiers," Panther suggested, leaning forward, black eyes intense.

"No, tell us about the giant and the boy and how the boy killed the giant!" Chalk said.

Sparrow waved her hands for attention. "I want to hear about the girl who found the boy on the river and hid him from the evil King."

They were all variations on the stories she had been told as a child, stories that she remembered imperfectly and embellished to demonstrate the life lessons she thought they should know. Her parents had told her these stories, reading them from a book that had long since disappeared. She thought she might find the book again one day, but so far she hadn't.

Owl put a finger to her lips. "I will tell you a different story tonight, a new one. I will tell you the story of how the boy saved the children from the evil King and his soldiers and led them to the Promised Land."

She had been saving this one, because it was the resolution of so many of the others involving the boy and the evil King. But something made her want to tell it tonight. Perhaps it was the way she Was feeling. Perhaps it was simply that she had kept it to herself long enough. The stories lent strength and promise to their lives when everything around them was so bleak. The gloom weighed heavily on her this night. Persia's sickness and the dead Lizard were just today's darkness; there would be a fresh darkness tomorrow. The stories brought light into that darkness. The stories gave them hope.

She could feel the children edge closer to her as she prepared to speak, could sense the anticipation as they waited. She loved this moment. This was when she felt closest to them, when they were connected to her by their love of words and the stories made from them. The connection was visceral and alive and empowering.

"The evil King had forbidden the boy and his children from leaving their homes for many years," she began, "even after he had suffered over and over again for his stubbornness. No one could reason with him, even after the snakes and the frogs and the deaths of all the firstborn of his people. But one day the

King awoke and decided he had endured enough punishment for his refusal and ordered the boy and his children to leave forever and not return. Why should he refuse them permission? What did he hope to accomplish? If they wanted to leave, then they should be allowed to do so. His Kingdom would be better off once they were gone."

"Took him long enough to catch on," Panther declared.

"Bet he changes his mind," said Sparrow.

"He did change his mind," Owl continued. "But not until the boy and his children had packed their few belongings and set out on the road that would lead them to the Promised Land. They walked and they walked, stopping only to eat and sleep. They traveled as swiftly as they could because they were anxious to reach their new home, but they did not have even an old cycle to ride on or any kind of car. So even though they had been gone for a week, they really hadn't gotten very far."

"This was when the evil King changed his mind about letting them go. He had thought about it a lot since they left. He didn't miss them or anything, he just felt like they should have been made to stay where they were. He felt he had been weak in letting them go. Thinking about it made him furious, and so he called his soldiers together and went after them. He had war machines and carriers in which to travel. Nobody walked; everybody rode. The King and his soldiers traveled very fast, and they caught up with the boy and his children in only two days."

She paused, forcing herself not to look at Hawk, not to let him see in her eyes what she was thinking. "The evil King did not know about the boy's vision of the Promised Land. He did not know about the promise the boy had made to his children that he would lead them there and they would live happily ever after.

Only the children knew this, and they believed in the vision. They believed in the Promised Land and in the happiness that waited there."

"Like us," Candle said softly. "We believe in Hawk's vision."

Everyone looked suddenly at Hawk, and Owl said quickly, "That's right, we do believe in Hawk's vision. Just as the children in this story believed in the vision of the boy. But the evil King did not believe in visions. He only believed in what he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands. He did not believe in tomorrow. He only believed in today."

"What happened next?" Bear asked.

"The boy and his children reached a river that was too wide and deep for them to cross. Before they could find a way to get around it, the evil King and his soldiers appeared behind them in their war machines and carriers. The boy and his children were trapped. There was no place for them to go, and they knew they would be taken back to their prisons or killed."

"They should fight!" Panther shouted excitedly.

"They should try to swim!" exclaimed Bear.

Owl shook her head. "There were too few of them to fight and the river was too fast for them to try to swim. But just when it seemed that all was lost, that there was no hope for them, the boy held up his arms and the waters of the river parted in front of them, pulling back on either side to form a path across."

"How did it do that?" Fixit asked doubtfully.

"It did it because the river knew of the boy's vision," Owl said. "Rivers are deep in knowledge and hold many secrets. This one knew the secret of the boy's vision. So it let the boy and his children cross over to the other side where they would be safe."

"What about the King? Didn't he try to follow?" Panther was still looking for a fight to take place.

"He did. He took all of his army in their war machines and carriers and went down the same path the boy and his children had taken, determined to catch them and bring them back. But the boy lifted his arms a second time and the waters collapsed on the evil King and his soldiers and drowned them all, every last one."

There was a momentary silence as the children digested this. She gave them that moment, then said, "So the boy led his children away from the river and after two more days, they reached the Promised Land."

"What was it like there?" River asked, huddled on the floor next to

Candle, her knees pulled up to her chest.

Owl leaned back in her wheelchair. "That story must wait for another night. It's time to go to bed now." She looked around at the disappointed faces.

"Practice your reading until you get sleepy, then blow out your candles.

Sweet dreams."

She rolled her chair down forward, stirring them to action. They climbed to their feet grudgingly, some asking for another story, some saying they weren't sleepy, but no one really arguing. Hawk was moving around the room, turning off the lamps, one by one, all but the tiny one that illuminated the heavy entry door. In the old days, one of them would have stood watch all night.

Cheney took care of that now.

As the others trudged off to the bedrooms they shared, Owl paused to watch

Hawk reach down and ruffle Cheney's thick coat around the neck and ears. The big dog lay quietly, letting the boy pet him. Owl always found herself waiting for the day Cheney would take off his arm.

Candle stopped by her chair and looked her in the eye. "That was our story, wasn't it, Owl?" she asked quietly. "The boy's vision was Hawk's vision."

She didn't miss much, this one, Owl thought. "Yes, it was," she said. "But it happened to the boy and his children, too."

Candle nodded. "Except that the vision in the story isn't real, but Hawk's vision is. I know it is. I have seen it."

She turned and walked toward her bedroom, not looking back. Owl felt her throat tighten and tears spring to her eyes.

I have seen it.

Candle, who saw what was not entirely clear to the rest of them, had seen this.

Alone in the common room, Owl sat quietly in her wheelchair, staring into space and thinking, and did not move again until the rest of them were in bed and fast asleep.