Part III Into the Fire Chapter 33
Beauty is that Medusa's head
Which men go armed to seek and sever.
It is most deadly when most dead,
And dead will stare and sting forever.
- Archibald MacLeish, "Beauty"
Chapter 33
Invasion
Tally turned from the window and saw nothing but empty beds. She was alone in the bunkhouse.
She shook her head, foggy from sleep and disbelief. The ground rumbled beneath her bare feet, and the bunkhouse shuddered around her. Suddenly, the plastic in one of the windows shattered, and the muffled cacophony from outside rushed in to batter her ears. The entire building shook as if it would collapse.
Where was everyone? Had they already fled the Smoke, leaving her there to face this invasion alone?
Tally ran for the door and threw it open. Before her, a hovercar was landing, blinding her for a moment with a face full of dust. She recognized the machine's cruel lines from the Special Circumstances car that had first taken her to see Dr. Cable. But this one was equipped with four shimmering blades - one each where the wheels of a groundcar would be - a cross between a normal hovercar and the rangers'
helicopter.
It could travel anywhere, Tally realized, inside a city or out in the wild. She remembered Dr. Cable's words:We'll be there in a few hours. Tally forced the thought from her head. This attack couldn't have anything to do with her.
The hovercar struck the dusty ground with a thud. This was no time to stand there wondering. She turned and ran.
The camp was a chaos of smoke and running figures. Cooking fires had been blown from their pits, and scattered embers burned everywhere. Two of the encampment's big buildings were ablaze. Chickens and rabbits scampered underfoot, dust and ashes coiled in rampant whirlwinds. Dozens of Smokies ran about, some trying to put out the fires, some trying to escape, some simply panicking.
Through everything else, the forms of cruel pretties moved. Their gray uniforms passed like fleeting shadows through the confusion. Graceful and unhurried, as if unaware of the chaos around them, they set about subduing the panicking Smokies. They moved in a blur, without any weapons that Tally could see, leaving everyone in their wake lying on the ground, bound and dazed.
They were superhumanly fast and strong. The Special operation had given them more than just terrible faces.
Near the mess hall, about two dozen Smokies were making a stand, holding off a handful of Specials with axes and makeshift clubs. Tally made her way toward the fight, and the incongruous smells of breakfast reached her through the choking haze of smoke. Her stomach growled.
Tally realized that she had slept through the breakfast call, too exhausted to wake up with everyone else.
The Specials must have waited until most of the Smokies were gathered in the mess hall before launching their invasion.
Of course. They wanted to capture as many Smokies as possible in a single stroke.
The Specials weren't attacking the large group at the mess hall. They waited patiently in a ring around the building while their numbers increased, more hovercars landing every minute. If anyone tried to get past the cordon, they reacted swiftly, disarming and incapacitating whoever dared to run. But most of the Smokies were too shocked to resist, paralyzed by the terrible faces of their opponents. Even here, most people had never seen a cruel pretty.
Tally pinned herself against a building, trying to disappear next to a stack of firewood. She shielded her eyes from the dust storm, searching for an escape route. There was no way to get into the center of the Smoke, where her hoverboard lay on the broad roof of the trading post, charging in the sun. The forest was the only way out.
A stretch of uncleared trees lay at the closest edge of town, only a twenty-second dash away. But a Special stood between her and the border of dense trees and brush, waiting to intercept any stray Smokies. The woman's eyes scanned the approach to the forest, her head moving from side to side in a weirdly regular motion, like someone watching a slow-motion tennis match without much interest.
Tally crept closer, staying pressed against the building. A hovercar passed overhead, blowing a maelstrom of dust and loose wood chips into her eyes.
When she could see again, Tally found an aging ugly crouching next to her, against the wall.
"Hey!" he hissed.
She recognized the sagging features, the bitter expression.
It was the Boss.
"Young lady, we have a problem. " His harsh voice cut through the cacophony of the attack.
She glanced in the direction of the waiting Special. "Yeah, I know. "
Another hovercar roared over them, and he pulled her around the corner of the building and down behind a drum that collected rainwater from the gutters.
"You noticed her too?" He grinned, showing a missing tooth. "Maybe if we both run at once, one of us might make it. If the other puts up a fight. "
Tally swallowed. "I guess. " She peered out at the Special, who stood as calmly as a crumbly waiting for a pleasure ferry. "But they're pretty fast. "
"That depends. " He dropped the duffel bag from his shoulder. "There're two things I keep ready for emergencies. "
The Boss unzipped the bag and pulled out a plastic container big enough for a sandwich. "This is one. "
He popped open one corner of the top, and a puff of dust rose up. A second later, a wave of fire rushed into Tally's head. She covered her face, eyes watering, and tried to cough up the finger of flame that had crawled down her throat.
"Not bad, eh?" the Boss chuckled. "That's pure habanero pepper, dried and ground down to dust. Not too bad in beans, but hell in your eyes. "
Tally blinked away her tears and managed to speak. "Are you nuts?"
"The other thing is this bag, which contains a representative sample of two hundred years of Rusty-era visual culture. Priceless and irreplaceable artifacts. So which do you want?"
"Huh?"
"Do you want the habanero pepper or the bag of magazines? Do you want to get caught while taking out our Special friend? Or save a precious piece of human heritage from these barbarians?"
Tally coughed once more. "I guess. . . I want to escape. "
The Boss smiled. "Good. I'm sick of running. Sick of losing my hair too, and being short-sighted. I've done my bit, and you look pretty fast. "
He handed her the duffel bag. It was heavy, but Tally had grown stronger since she'd come to the Smoke. Magazines were nothing compared with scrap metal.
She thought of the first day she had arrived there, seeing a magazine for the first time in the library, realizing with horror what humanity had once looked like. The pictures had made her sick that first day, and now here she was ready to save them.
"Here's the plan," the Boss said. "I'll go first, and when that Special grabs me, I'll give her a face full of pepper. You run straight and fast and don't look back. Got that?"
"Yeah. "
"With any luck, we both might make it. Though I wouldn't mind a face-lift. Ready?"
Tally pulled the bag farther up on her shoulder. "Let's go. "
"One. . . two. . . " The Boss paused. "Oh, dear. There's a problem, young lady. "
"What?"
"You haven't got any shoes. "
Tally looked down. In her confusion, she had stumbled barefoot out of the bunkhouse. The packed dirt of the Smoke compound was easy enough to walk on, but in the forest. . .
"You won't make it ten meters, kid. "
The Boss pulled the duffel bag away from her and handed her the plastic container. "Now get going. "
"But I. . . ," Tally said. "I don't want to go back to the city. "
"Yes, young lady, and I wouldn't mind getting some decent dental work. But we all have to make sacrifices. Startingnow !" On the last word, he shoved her out from behind the drum.
Tally stumbled forward, utte
rly exposed in the middle of the street. The roar of a hovercar seemed to pass right over her head, and she instinctively ducked, dashing toward the cover of the forest.
The Special cocked her head toward Tally, calmly folded her arms, and frowned like a teacher spotting littlies playing where they shouldn't.
Tally wondered if the pepper would do anything to the woman. If it affected the Special like it had Tally, she might still make it into the forest. Even if she was supposed to be the bait. Even if she had no shoes.
Even if it turned out David had already been caught and she'd never see him again. . .
The thought unleashed a sudden torrent of anger inside her, and she ran straight at the woman, the container clenched in both hands.
A smile broke out on the Special's cruel features.
A split second before they collided, the Special seemed to disappear, slipping out of sight like a coin in a magician's hand. In her next stride Tally felt something hard connect with her shin, and pain shot up her leg. Her body tumbled forward, hands reaching out to break her fall, the container slipping from her grasp.
She hit the ground hard, skidding on her palms. As she rolled through the dirt, Tally glimpsed the Special crouching behind her. The woman had simply ducked, invisibly fast, and Tally had tripped over her like some awkward littlie in a brawl.
Shaking her head and spitting the dirt out of her mouth, Tally spotted the container just out of reach. She scrambled toward it, but a staggering weight crashed down on her, driving her face-first into the ground.
She felt her wrists pulled back and bound, hard plastic cuffs cutting into her flesh.
She struggled, but couldn't move.
Then the awful weight lifted, and a nudge from a boot flipped her over effortlessly. The Special stood over her, smiling coldly, holding the container. "Now, now, ugly," the cruel pretty said. "You just calm down. We don't want to hurt you. But we will if we have to. "
Tally started to speak, but her jaw clenched with pain. It had plowed into the ground when she'd fallen.
"What's so important about this?" the Special asked, shaking the container and trying to peer through its translucent plastic.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tally saw the Boss making his way toward the forest. His run was slow and tortured, the duffel bag too heavy for him.
"Open it and see," Tally spat painfully.
"I will," she said, still smiling. "But first things first. " She turned her attention toward the Boss, and her posture suddenly transformed into something animal, crouched and coiled like a cat ready to spring.
Tally rolled back onto her shoulders, thrashing out wildly with both feet. Her kick connected with the container, and it popped open, a puff of brownish-green dust spraying out over the Special.
For a second, a disbelieving expression spread over the woman's face. She made a gagging noise, her whole body shuddering. Then her eyes and fists clamped shut, and she screamed.
The sound wasn't human. It cut into Tally's ears like a vibrasaw striking metal, and every muscle in her body fought to get free of the handcuffs, her instincts demanding that she cover her ears. With another wild kick, she rolled herself over and stumbled to her feet, staggering in the direction of the forest.
A tickle grew in Tally's throat as the pepper dust dispersed on the wind. She coughed as she ran, eyes watering and stinging until she was half-blind. With her hands tied behind her, Tally lurched into the brush off-balance, tumbling to the ground as her bare feet caught on something in the dense vegetation.
She struggled forward, trying to drag herself out of sight.
Blinking away tears, she saw that the Special's inhuman scream had been some kind of alarm. Three more of the cruel pretties had responded. One led the pepper-covered Special away at arm's length, and the others approached the forest.
Tally froze, the brush barely concealing her.
Then she felt a tickle in her throat, a slowly growing irritation. Tally held her breath, closing her eyes. But her chest began to shudder, her body twitching, demanding to expel traces of the pepper from her lungs.
Shehad to cough.
Tally swallowed again and again, hoping spit could put out the fire in her throat. Her lungs demanded oxygen, but she didn't dare breathe. One of the Specials was only a stone's throw away, scanning the forest with slow back-and-forth sweeps of his head, his eyes searching the dense trees relentlessly.
Gradually, painfully, the flames seemed to expire in Tally's chest, the cough dying a quiet death inside her. She relaxed, finally letting out her breath.
Over the thunder of hovercars and crackle of burning buildings and sounds of battle, the Special somehow heard her soft exhalation. His head turned swiftly, eyes narrowing, and in what seemed like a single motion he was by her side, a hand on the back of her neck. "You're a tricky one," he said.
She tried to answer, but wound up coughing savagely instead, and he forced her face down in the dirt before she could manage another breath.