Rising by Patrick Sean Lee (sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt) 📖

millisecond passes as the soldier raises his gun, but he has made a fatal mistake. He lurches toward the road in order to get a better bead on the two filthy Blacks who’ve returned. Three steps into the guy’s last journey, I hear the Pop! Pop! Pop! of Sant’s gun. The doomed Polit reacts to the hits by releasing his gun, a shocked look in his eyes. He twists helplessly, and then hits his knees before collapsing in a heap into the dirt behind him.

Sant is on his feet again before his target goes totally limp. He’s with Mondra and me, breathing in gulps. I’m flashing my eyes from the dead soldier, over to Sant, back to the lifeless body.

I think back to Marcus’ walled compound on Folly—three short days ago when he and Demee scaled the stone rampart to unlock the gate. Demee was so quick that morning, using her fingers and toes to scale it deftly like a frightened lizard, but Sant’s ascent was nearly invisible. A blur. A shadow. Weeks before that, his movement through the branches of Catanar when I first arrived and he whisked me skyward toward that place of wonderment and beauty lying above the clouds, far beyond the reach of the cruel Jades. His true father must have been lightning, his mother an illusion locked in a body.

“Gods!”

I answer Mondra without words by pointing up. Forget the dead soldier. From the east at least a dozen gunships are bearing down on Black like angry bees. We’re exposed. It won’t be long before they swarm over the scene of the crime, blasting anything that moves. If that weren’t enough, I can hear the first rumbling of engines coming in from the north. We have maybe five seconds to disappear. Either that, or I open the second round of battle right here, and hope I can decimate the Polits on two fronts at once.

Sant is peering silently at me, his gun still in his grip as I run the odds through my head. Make the call, Alana!

“Quick!” And I’m off, leading the way along the narrow corridor between the Pistor’s house on our right, and Anast’s four feet away on the left. “Stay as close to Pistor’s as you can,” I yell back at them—to Mondra, anyway. I'm totally certain Sant will somehow become invisible.

The way ahead is worse than the refuse-strewn dump, littered with shredded and singed clothing, pieces of furniture smashed or blown apart by bursts of Helicere fire. The detritus of a short war. I don’t dare look behind us, though; lose speed, which is our only ally. I’m not worried so much about the troops lumbering into the town through the open gates. It’s the gunships that can cover a thousand miles to our one that scare me. Their instant communication with one another. Spotted three heading west…

Maybe I should stop? Get their undivided attention by incinerating the leaders of the vanguard? Stuff that thought, Alana.

Best to try evading them on mine and Mondra’s turf. Somehow get out of here in one piece, and then make our way to their home base. As my heart hammers, I'm thinking it was a great mistake to bring my sister and Sant along. If I lose them...

Three miles long, from the front gates to the beginning of the dump. Two miles wide, wall to wall. Before all this happened Black was a beehive; the beaten and cowed masses up before dawn every day. Off to the mines or the fields northwest of the slum, or into Polit to serve our slavemasters. Mothers towing children in threadbare clothes, making for one of the five wells, or to one of the innumerable troughs to wash garments. To one of the handful of dilapidated shops that sold simple hardware and precious foodstuffs. Trinkets for the youngest, if there was an extra coin to be had. We are three quarters of the way across the town, and there is no life today.

FIFTEEN

“Is it safe?” The only sounds I hear are the low hum of the engine, and the slow rat-tat-tat-tat of the tires on the cobbled roadway. I am beneath Sant, scrunched up like a smashed bug, but I see little curtains of light that illuminate the interior above me, and then fade away. Rise again, and then fade, over and over in a strangely ominous rhythm.

“Yes.” Mondra’s voice is breathy, like she’s been running. I wish our places in the cab had been…no I don’t. Much as I don’t want to, I ease my arms up and slowly push Sant’s chest. In a moment that passes too quickly, we are back in the passenger seat together. I stretch my arms and torso a little to work out the stiffness as I look outside. He has his arms wrapped around my stomach.

The view outside is dismal. Worse. If Jade with its crude stone walls and rickety-looking parapet walkways was frightening, this place is a nightmare. To the left, a wide, slickly paved surface runs perhaps twenty feet until it ends at the wire-topped wall. I can’t be certain what I see in that wall, but it’s scary. Thousands and thousands of tiny glimmers of moonlight reflection run the length and height of it.

I ask Logash what they are.

“You don’t want to try to scale those walls. Even with a rope, your feet would get impaled on the three inch-long needles. That’s not the worst of it, though. Should you slip, they would rip you open as you fell. If the tower guards didn’t shoot you first. That’s more likely anyway.”

“I wonder if anyone has ever escaped…” I am thinking this, more than asking a question I instinctively know the answer to. I glance back at Mondra, the moonlight illuminating her face. She has turned to look out, her teeth set tight in a silent remembrance. She squints, blinks twice, and pushes her brow hard downward, as though she is terrified and in a rage all at once.

“Get us to intake,” she says in a dark, angry tone.

“Duck down,” Logash replies. “Guard tower up ahead.”

Mondra disappears. I am on the floorboard once more, Sant atop me in a wink. I should stop this charade. Just get up, open the door, and start destroying everything around us. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of captives inside the wall to our right, though. I don’t want to bring the walls and roof down on their suffering heads. We’ll figure out how best to free them first—and I want to find a few select demons before any of this. Make them suffer.

Fifty feet farther on, Logash turns into a break in the wall, and we are carried downward along a narrow corridor leading to a dock ablaze with harsh lights. A stairway on the far right against the wall leads up to its surface, and over the pair of metal doors a single light glares red.

“This is it,” Logash says as he brakes and cuts the engine. “I’ve only been here once. It’s the food storage depository. I think only one guard inside. Just push the button on the wall next to the right door. Someone will answer. Tell him you’re here with steaks or beans or…anyway, that it’s your first delivery assignment. You’re fresh out of the academy. Like that.”

“What? You’re not going up there with us?” I say.

He stammers. “Um…no. I got you here, now I…I have to get back, or they’ll notice I’ve gone. Besides, I don’t want the guards here to see my face.”

Sant pushes me forward and goes for Logash. Mondra beats him. She leans over the seatback and yanks his face sideways to meet hers.

“Look at this face you little rat traitor. You are taking us up there to those doors. You are pushing that call button, and you’re going to tell whoever answers that you have a delivery, or I’ll break your skinny neck. Understand?”

That was pretty clear. Logash grimaces.

“I say we kill him now and take our chances at the door,” Sant says, grabbing him by the thick locks of his hair. “The second we leave him alone, he’ll sound the alarm.”

“No, we’re not killing him.” I try to coax Sant to let go of Logash. He’s scared to death, but Sant only digs his fingers deeper into the kid’s hair and shakes his head.

“Then let’s knock him out and tie him up,” Mondra offers all excited and ready to hurt Logash in some fashion, either by choking him or beating him unconscious. Honestly, I didn’t realize this sweet older sister possessed such a mean streak. Her torturers inside are one thing, but young Logash is simply frightened. I think Sant is right, though. I feel it in my bones. The minute we leave him alone, I'm afraid Logash will rip out of here and head for the main entrance screaming, They hijacked me. They’re trying to break in!

“He’s going with us.”

“What happens once we get inside with him?” Mondra asks.

“Bring the gun. If he does anything stupid, you can shoot him,” I answer. “Clear enough, Logash?”

He’s shaking, and his eyes are as big as an animal’s cornered in the forest. He nods slowly, reluctantly.

“Good. Now, get out.”

We pad up the steps, and then across the dock surface to the door. Logash stops and stands center of it; me on his left, Mondra and Sant on the other side of him—hopefully out of view. I gaze up at the overhanging ceiling looking for any of the watcher things Marcus put everywhere back in Jade. I don’t see any, but maybe they’re a little more sophisticated with their spying here? I take a deep breath and push my back to the cold wall.

“Push the button,” I whisper.

It takes a minute, but finally someone uncovers the tiny window inside. Logash takes a step backward. He seems to have buried his feelings of impending doom for the moment. Good boy, Logie. Mondra has the gun pointed at him. I would probably put on my best face, too, if I were him.

“Beezul Fagmire. District 7. Delivery,” he says into the box next to the door. Beezul Fagmire? Nice one, Logash.

There is a moment of silence. Then a raspy voice answers.

“I don’t see any deliveries scheduled for tonight. Who’d you say you were?”

I’m counting to ten. If Logash doesn’t get him to open the door, I’m going to blast it in on top of him. Logash is quick, though.

“Fagmire. Emergency. The Blacks have invaded the southern sector of the city. Major Sentily just said to get these guns over here as quick as I could. That’s all I know.”

“Invaded? The Blacks?” the guy says.

“That’s what I was told. C’mon, let me get this stuff in so I can get back to Headquarters.”

Five, six…

I don’t see any crates…”

“They’re in the Skirter! Sentily said you’d help unload. We’re short handed. Now, are you opening up, or do you want me to cart everything back and tell Sentily you wouldn’t let me in?”

Another pause. I’m at nine, ready to step away from the wall. I hear the bolt of the lock disengage, and I sigh, too loudly, I think. The heavy metal door swings inward. Mondra steps into the opening, shoving Logash out of the way as she