2
Half a mile north of the clearing, Maggie hunkered down behind a tree trunk and listened for the whir of hoverboards, the whir that in just ten minutes she had come to fear and hate more than anything she had ever known.
Blood flowed from numerous small gashes on her arms and back. That’s what she got for underestimating Skippy and Oscar. She had assumed that the maziness of the woods would slow them down, that if they dared go too fast they would end up wrapped around a tree, but she had been wrong. Their reflexes were incredible, and if they hadn’t been sociopathic thugs who were trying to kill her, she would have applauded the grace with which they maneuvered among the trees and bushes.
Before she had run fifty feet, they were upon her, their knives out and ready for blood. If she weren’t so nimble herself, she would have been dead in no time. As it was, she hadn’t managed to avoid their blades entirely, but had merely turned killing blows into minor wounds by twisting away from their knives as they raced by.
That was how the next ten minutes had gone: They would zip past her, slashing at her as they went, and then circle back and do it all over again. Over and over and over again. Ten times. Twenty. Thirty.
Already she was out of breath and nearly out of strength. She doubted if she could keep this up much longer. Fortunately the last time they had sped toward her, she had dove into a thick stand of bushes, waited there until they zoomed past toward the far side of the bushes, and then run back out in the direction she had entered and hidden behind a tree. It wouldn’t fool them for long, but she hoped to come up with a plan during this momentary respite.
She took out her dagger and stared at it. She wasn’t sure she would be able to get in even a single blow, given their speed and maneuverability and especially their two-pronged assaults. Still, it was better than nothing.
Her eyes fell on a short, thick section of a tree branch that lay a few feet away. As quickly as she could, she shuffled over to it on her knees, grabbed it, and shuffled back behind the tree.
Great, now she had a dagger and a small club against two men with knives and the ability to travel ten times faster than she could. Lucky her.
She heard the approaching whir of the hoverboards and tensed up, trying to draw herself into as small an area as possible so that no part of her would be sticking out on either side of the tree. Branch and dagger clutched tight, she waited.
The whir stopped.
Maggie strained to hear the slightest sound. They couldn’t have stopped more than twenty feet from the tree. Had they seen her? Were they creeping up on her? They must be.
She heard a faint crackle from the other side of the tree, a crackle like a foot treading on a twig.
She waited another two seconds and then launched herself to her left and swept the dagger in a wide arc across the space to the side of the tree.
“Yowp!” cried Skippy as he leaped back out of the way of the blade. His hoverboard was tucked under his arm, and he held his knife out in front of his like a talisman. “She’s here!”
She flung the branch at his face. It hit him in the right eye. He shrieked, dropped his hoverboard, and clapped his now‑free hand over his face.
Maggie lunged forward, planning to grab the board and race away, but then heard footsteps thumping up fast behind her, so instead she let herself fall to the ground on top of the board. Even as she fell she heard the swish as Oscar’s knife sailed through the empty air where her back had been a millisecond earlier.
She somersaulted forward, somehow managing to grab Skippy’s board in the process. Clutching it close so she wouldn’t lose it, she shot to her feet and started to sprint away.
But Skippy, still with one hand covering his eye and with blood now seeping out between his fingers, grabbed the back of her shirt with his free hand.
“Gotcha now, you—”
She slashed backward with the dagger and felt it hit something thicker than air.
Skippy screamed. His hand released her shirt.
She raced away, no longer certain which direction she was going. North? East? She thought it might be one of those.
Behind her, Oscar said, “Oh, man! Skippy! That bitch!”
Got him, she thought.
But then Skippy said, “Forget about it. She’s got my fuckin’ board! We gotta get her!” His voice wavered a bit. He was clearly in a lot of pain. But still standing, damn it.
She ran faster than she had ever run in her life, ran until her legs felt like rubber and sweat flew off her face and her pulse banged in her ears, ran until she feared her lungs or heart or brain would burst.
And then she skidded to a halt. Before her stretched the lagoon of ooze, an impassable barrier, its oily green surface undulating languidly.
Now that she had stopped, her exhaustion settled upon her like a waterlogged cloak. She sagged against a tree trunk and gulped the lagoon’s reeking, polluted miasma into her lungs, thinking no air had ever tasted sweeter. A moment later she heard the whir of Oscar’s board approaching from the opposite side of the tree.
She clutched Skippy’s hoverboard with both hands, intending to use it as a club against Oscar. But which way would he go around the tree—left or right? If she picked wrong, she was dead; she didn’t have the strength to keep this up any longer.
It was best to pick for him, she realized.
When he was about eighty feet away, she hunched slightly and raised the hoverboard over her shoulder, assuming the posture of a baseball player ready to bat. Then she backed up until the tip of the board and her jeans-clad rump poked out from behind the tree just enough for Oscar to see them. After a moment she moved back out of sight, but slowly, as if she were simply shifting her weight. Once she was out of sight, she whirled around and crouched down, hoping that Oscar had seen her and had fallen for her ruse.
The whir grew louder, and Maggie smiled when she realized that the sound was approaching the side of the tree where she had shown herself. Oscar had taken the bait. He thought he was coming up behind her.
When she saw the first flash of movement as Oscar came around the side of the tree, she swung the hoverboard at his shins. He, meanwhile, thrust his knife at the spot where he thought her back would be. It swept through empty air. Her board didn’t. It slammed into his legs hard enough to knock him off the board and send him flipping ass-over-head toward the lagoon. His glasses flew off and snapped in half beneath him. His head struck a rock that protruded from the soil like a skull cap. One of his shoes slipped off and vanished into a bush. At the last possible moment before he tumbled into the ooze, he snagged a thick tree-root with one hand and brought himself to a halt, his feet—one shod, one unshod—in the squishy black mud on the very edge of the lagoon. His hoverboard wasn’t so lucky: It continued speeding away above the lagoon until it hit the trunk of a dead tree, at which point its motor stopped and it plopped into the ooze and sank out of sight.
Maggie ran forward, dagger drawn, and reached Oscar as he rolled onto his back with a groan. She dropped down with a knee on either side of his head and plunged the dagger hilt-deep into his chest.
Oscar stiffened. His hands rose toward the dagger as if to try to pluck it out, but then they stopped, quivered, and flopped to the ground at his sides.
His eyes met Maggie’s.
“Fuh—first rule…of hoverboarding,” he said. “Don’t lose…yer fuckin’ board.”
His head fell to one side. His eyes stared at nothing now.
Maggie tore the dagger from his chest, shook the blood off it, and got to her feet.
She had dropped the hoverboard after she hit Oscar with it. Now she staggered over to it and picked it up. As she did so, she heard footsteps approaching.
“Oscar!” called Skippy.
Maggie ducked behind a bush a moment before Skippy stumbled into view. He was drenched in sweat and gasping for breath and had one hand clutched to his side. His shirt below his hand was slick and shiny with blood. She had wounded him pretty badly after all.
Wh
en Skippy saw his partner’s body lying beside the lagoon, his eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open, his face taking on such a look of horror and grief that Maggie almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Oscar!” Skippy ran forward as well as he could—it was really more like speed-limping—and threw himself to his knees next to Oscar’s body. “Oscar!”
Maggie stepped out from behind the brush, raised her dagger, and crept toward Skippy.
She was almost there when Skippy shot to his feet, saying, “Where the fuck is that bitch?”
He started to turn in her direction, knife raised. There was no more time to be stealthy. She sprang forward and swatted his knife-hand with his own hoverboard. The knife pinwheeled away into the underbrush.
“Ow!” Skippy said. “You—” And then Maggie’s dagger plunged into his throat, cutting off his words.
He sank to his knees beside Oscar and goggled up at her, his mouth opening and closing as if he were trying to speak. Then his eyes glazed over, and he fell sideways onto Oscar.
Maggie leaned down and pulled her dagger from his throat. Blood gouted from the wound. It subsided after a moment, but it was enough to make Maggie turn away, her hand over her mouth, swallowing back the bile that had risen in her throat.
She hated killing people. She would do it if she had to, of course, and she had had to a number of times since the Cataclysm. But no matter how evil someone was, killing them always had the stink of failure about it. Though whether that failure was hers, the victim’s, or creation’s, she was never entirely sure.
She knew if she didn’t take a short rest to catch her breath she would collapse from exhaustion, so she sat down against a tree trunk and squirmed about until she found a comfortable position. She wanted to just close her eyes and sleep for a year, but she had to check on the others. They could be in danger, or dead. Or, of course, they could have defeated the Marauders they were fighting just as she had.
She listened intently, but heard nothing. How far away was the clearing? How far had she run? A mile? Two? More?
The thought of a two-mile walk back to the clearing made her feel like weeping. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t very well fly back, could she?
Wait…
She looked down at the hoverboard in her lap and smiled.