Arise: A Dystopian Novel (The Ravenmaster Chronicles Book 1) Read online

Pointing, I direct his attention toward the arcology, looming dark and sinister in the distance. “Maybe things will get better as we get closer.”

  “The ground might get better,” Brohn agrees. “But why do I have a feeling everything else is going to get a lot worse?”

  “I hope that’s just paranoia,” I mutter. “And not prophecy.”

  For another fifteen minutes, we plod our way in silence toward what looks like a spread-out city of single-story steel and chrome building blocks.

  “What are they?” I ask as we get closer.

  “Mini apartments? Small warehouses, maybe?”

  “Let’s go found out.”

  Panting and with our eyes watering from the putrid green fog, it takes us another half hour of slogging our way through the muck—which thankfully starts to dry up and even out as we go—before we reach a clearing about a hundred yards away from the expanse of structures.

  By the time we get close enough to inspect them, our boots are thankfully dry, and we take a second to kick off the caky scales of dried sludge.

  A chain-link fence surrounds the area, but it’s got several sections missing, and most of what remains is slanted low enough for us to climb if we need to.

  A wooden sign—whitewashed with bold red text—reads, “COMMUNITY SELF-STORAGE: C-BLOCK.”

  Inching our way forward, we approach one of the sheds closest to us. About the same dimensions as a standard railcar, it’s basically a corrugated steel box with a flat, orange roof. And there are hundreds more just like it lined up and disappearing into the distance with wide, pitted roadways and smaller alleys running back and forth and left to right through the huge space.

  Brohn takes a chance and steps forward, planting a hand on the steel wall of the container. He leans in close like he’s checking its breathing. “Maybe there’s stuff stored in there? Weapons? Supplies?”

  “Could be.”

  Fluttering down out of the night sky, Render lands with a metallic click of his talons on the edge of the shed’s roof.

  Where’ve you been?

  ~ Gathering more intel. And eating.

  I hated running away back there.

  ~ You did the right thing. The only thing.

  Did…did Zephora make it?

  Render doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t matter. Even though I pretend I don’t know the answer, I do.

  Flooded with feelings of sadness for Zephora, shame for not saving her, and fury with Render for being so callously right, I snap off our bond and return my attention to Brohn.

  Pointing to the thin threads of light leaking out of the seams of one of the larger sheds down the row, I tell him I think these were storage sheds. “Right now, though, I think people might be living in them.”

  Brohn freezes in place, his eyes locked onto mine. “Friend or foe?”

  “There’s only way to find out.”

  “Actually, there are plenty of ways to find out. Maybe this time, knocking on the front door and asking, ‘Are you friend or foe?’ isn’t the best course of action.”

  As I start walking, Render flutters down from the shed roof, and I brush my hair back and tilt my head to the side to make room for him on my shoulder.

  I’m still not happy with him, but I can’t ignore him or leave him behind any more than I could ignore or leave behind my own mind, heart, body, or soul.

  “Come on,” I urge, waving Brohn on. “The arcology is still a ways off, and we need food and water.”

  “We have our protein and hydration packs,” he reminds me.

  “They won’t last forever. And some more intel about that arcology and its security protocols wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I’m not worried about how much the intel will hurt,” Brohn grins. “It’s who’s going to be giving it to us that worries me.”

  The voice that says, “No worries allowed here” a second later doesn’t belong to me. And Render doesn’t speak English.

  Whipping around in a startled tandem, Brohn and I wind up face to face with a cherubic, balding, slightly stocky man with glittering blue eyes and a wary but gentle smile.

  Dressed in faded jeans and a plaid, short-sleeved dress shirt, the man puts his hands up and opens his eyes wide as Brohn and I instinctively reach for our weapons.

  “This is the Comfort Commune,” the man says, as if that explains everything. “No one hurts anyone or gets hurt by anyone in here.” A glossy white bracelet on his wrist catches glints of the weak light as he holds up his index finger. “That’s rule number one.”

  Brohn and I both say, “Ouch” at the same time and smack our open palms to the backs of our necks.

  “We live without a lot of quality resources and right next to a swamp of raw sewage,” the man apologizes with a meek smile. “That means mosquitoes. Lots of them. Staying indoors is the best way to avoid malaria,” he adds, holding his fingers up in a “V.” “That’s rule number two.”

  Turning away from the swirling black clouds of buzzing insects around the few lights scattered throughout the expansive lot, the man waves us forward, asking if we’ve ever had it before.

  “Had what?” I ask.

  “Malaria.”

  Brohn and I shake our heads and tell him we don’t think so.

  The man squints and gags, his tongue lolling out, his eyes bulging in exaggerated horror. “It’s unpleasant stuff. Not as bad as Cyst Plague, mind you. But it’ll make you feel like your whole body is going from a solid to a liquid. If you ever wanted to know what a hunk of bacon fat feels like over an open flame…”

  Brohn holds up a finger. “I think we get the picture.”

  Great. We’ve got a handful of dangers behind us, probably a few dozen ahead, and we’re going to liquify in a malaria-filled storage lot.

  “Next time I suggest a recon mission,” I whisper to Brohn, “how about if we just stay in bed, instead?”

  “Yeah,” he jokes with a light elbow to my arm. “Who would’ve thought saving the world from an armed confederation of violent dictators would be so dangerous?”

  Hand in hand, we follow the man down one of the narrow laneways and into a winding maze of darkness.

  5

  Hosted

  In my head, I’m just debating the sanity of following this man into such a gloomy, unknown situation when the laneway opens up, and the man brings us to a stop in front of one of the larger storage sheds.

  “It’s okay,” he assures us with a deep and happy exhalation. “We’re safe here. It’s only out on the edges of the Commune that we have to worry. Bugs, drones, radioactive run-off, gung-ho Devoted who feel like using us for target practice—” He cuts himself off and waves his hand. “You don’t want to hear about all that, and I’m being a terrible host!” He blushes and says, “Lamus.” He extends his hand to us, the ivory-white bracelet on his wrist catching the light. “That’s me. Rhymes with famous.” When we stare without responding, he leans in and says from behind his hand, “I’m not, you know.”

  “Not what?” Brohn asks.

  “Famous.”

  Mustering as much eloquence as I can manage, I say, “Oh.”

  His hand flat on his chest, Brohn says, “I’m Brohn. This is Kress.”

  Leaning back and nodding at the sleepy raven on my shoulder, Lamus ignores us and gives Render a good, long stare before turning back to me. “That’s quite the accessory you have there.”

  “This is Render,” I say, brushing the backs of my fingertips along Render’s feathered chest.

  “He’s a crow?”

  “A raven.”

  Lamus scrunches up his face and draws his head back like he’s encountered an offensive odor.

  “You don’t have a problem with ravens, do you?” Brohn asks, a thread of a threat in his voice.

  His voice low and distressed, Lamus snaps his attention to Brohn. “Most of the ravens I’ve ever seen have been pecking at the dead bodies of people I knew.”

  “They’re scavengers,” I explain in Render’s defens
e.

  “I get that,” Lamus says with an apologetic wave of his hands and a grim smile. He shakes his head and says it’s no big deal. “Just caught me by surprise,” he explains.

  “We know the feeling,” Brohn grumbles back. Hoping to avoid too many questions, his voice is quick and clipped. “We weren’t expecting to find people here. We’re really just looking for food and water.”

  And any intel we can squeeze out of you about that arcology, I add in my head.

  Lamus makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, taking in the rows and columns of storage sheds stretched out for as far as we can see under the halo of the dark red moon. “Of course, of course! We never say, “No,’ to guests. We believe in hospitality above all else.”

  Brohn offers up a skeptical, “Uh, huh.”

  “It’s true. There are two communes here. Our Comfort Commune and the Industry Commune. There used to be dozens of communities like ours in here. Maybe hundreds. But over the years, we’ve condensed and consolidated.” Lamus beckons for us to keep following him as he heads toward the door of the rust and silver sided box. “We’re hoping to unify the two remaining communes into a single cooperative, but that takes time and patience, right?” With his back to us and his hand on the door latch, he shakes his head and chuckles, “You know how bitchy those guys over in Industry can be,” before he realizes we’re not following him.

  Turning back to us as he pushes open the squeaky door, he promises we’re safe. “I won’t tell you not to worry,” he smiles. “A good dose of worry in a strange, new situation can be beneficial to one’s health.” Scanning us up and down, he points out, his smile gentle and calm, that we’re armed and he’s not. “You’re also about twice my size,” he adds, his round face glistening as he beams up at Brohn. “My guess is that your biggest dilemma would be whether to shoot me with that crossbow on your back or else snap me in half with your bare hands.”

  “I’m sure I won’t need to do either,” Brohn assures Lamus, much to the man’s clear delight. “And technically, it’s an arbalest, not a crossbow.”

  “I’m sure he’s not interested in weapons terminology,” I tell Brohn with a shoulder nudge.

  “No, no!” Lamus laughs. “Always happy to learn something new.” His eyes dart back and forth between us, and he pauses as if he’s trying to figure out just how dumb it might be to open his residence up to two sweaty, smelly strangers and a raven. “Let’s go inside,” he nods to himself. “Get some rest. We don’t have a lot of food and water, but what we have, we’re happy to share. You can tell me all about yourselves, and you can stay for as little or as long as you like.”

  Brohn and I exchange a look of confirmation, and Render, flexing and unflexing his curved talons, wriggles sleepily on my arm. “Okay,” I tell Lamus. “We’ll take you up on your offer.”

  “And if there’s anything we can do for you in return—,” Brohn begins, but Lamus cuts him off with a vigorous head shake and a litany of “No, no, no!”

  “Hospitality is not a commodity,” he insists. “We don’t trade one kindness for another here. We give it freely, and, when it’s given to us, we accept it. But never as a transaction or an obligation.”

  “Then we gratefully accept your hospitality,” Brohn says grandly. “And we hope we will be the kind of guests who deserve it.”

  “Spoken like a true Communer!” Lamus beams.

  Holding the door open for us, he ushers us inside, his eyes on the night sky before he follows us in.

  “Can’t be too careful,” he explains. “The Patrol Drones don’t come around often. But when they do…”

  “We know about Patrol Drones,” Brohn assures our host. “And their various deadly cousins.”

  Nodding his understanding, Lamus steps through a small vestibule and through a second doorway, and Brohn and I follow.

  The interior of the steel-walled box is open and enormous—bigger than it looked from the outside. Steel arches and I-beams crisscross the space overhead and give the ceiling the feel of a futuristic church.

  Unfortunately, that’s about the only impressive thing about it.

  Dented plastic crates line one of the walls from floor to ceiling. Another wall has an assortment of old sports equipment—stringless tennis rackets, splintered baseball bats, cracked hockey sticks, old football helmets, and dozens of mismatched soccer cleats—nailed up and in every state of random, useless disrepair.

  The floor underfoot is cold poured concrete and is lined with weed-filled cracks and crevices.

  Packed with junk, there’s barely enough space to walk without knocking over one tower of clutter or another, but Lamus leads us through a maze of waist-high shelves and stacks of broken, upside-down office chairs to the middle of the room, which is occupied by a cluster of mushroom-colored couches and armchairs, also in terrible condition. Along with four wooden-framed chairs with scraps of wicker webbing in their backs and seats, the furniture is clumped together and not nearly as inviting as Lamus has been.

  Indicating the dust-covered love seat, he invites us to sit. We do, and the apparent lack of springs under the shredded brown cushions causes me and Brohn to fall against each other and then sink halfway down into the creaking piece of furniture.

  Lamus doesn’t seem too embarrassed or distressed, so I’m guessing this is as comfortable as it gets around here.

  I’m not about to complain. As far as I’m concerned, every new breath we take is an absolute miracle. Besides, we’ve been through worse, so a moderately uncomfortable seat from a pleasant host is hardly worth fretting about.

  Lamus sits in one of the wooden chairs, which, frankly, I’m surprised can hold him. Not that he’s a very big guy. He’s not. But given the splintered, rickety state of the chair, I’m amazed it can hold anything much bigger than a mid-sized squirrel.

  Leaning to one side, Lamus stretches out and tugs on a string hanging from a two-foot-high metal stand riveted to the floor.

  “Just signaling Estragon,” Lamus tells us. “He’ll fetch food and water for you.”

  Almost immediately, a door of corrugated steel set in the back wall of the container creaks open on at thick set of rusty hinges. A young man—long-haired and dressed in flip-flops, baggy swimming shorts, and a tank top with faded yellow happy face on it—steps into the room.

  If he’s surprised to see Lamus chatting it up with two strangers and a raven in what I think is supposed to be a living room, he doesn’t show it. His voice as sleepy as his half-closed eyes, he drawls out, “Food and water?”

  “Yes, please,” Lamus answers. “That’d be great.”

  Estragon points at Render and asks, “What about the bird?”

  Lamus catches my eye, but I wave off the offer. “It’s okay. He’s sleeping.”

  “For just us humans, then,” Lamus laughs.

  Estragon gives a frown and a feeble thumbs up and disappears as the door squeaks closed behind him and then seals with a metallic thunk.

  “You were saying about the drones…,” Brohn reminds our host. “They monitor you way out here?”

  It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the arcology and the immediate area around it are heavily monitored and guarded by Patrol Drones. Brohn and I are expecting that. And we’ve seen the construction drones from outside the city. But the arcology has got to be ten miles from here. I can’t imagine the Devoted would waste their resources keeping tabs on this place.

  “We shouldn’t be a threat to the Devoted,” Lamus confirms. “They have all the guns. They have all the resources.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Why do they care what happens here? Good question. We don’t have anything. Which means we have nothing to lose. Which makes us the biggest threat possible in the eyes of the Wealthies, who have everything to lose. I’d tell you to ask the Holy Commune of E-Block if you don’t believe me. But there aren’t any of them left.”

  “Holy Commune?” I ask.

  “One of the original twelve communes to settl
e here in the Community Storage Blocks after the Atomic Wars.”

  “What happened to them?” I ask.

  “At first, nothing. They thought they could appeal to the humanity of the Wealthies. They sent an envoy, a team of ambassadors, to the arcology. This is a couple of years ago, mind you, back when that beast of a tower was only maybe half as big as it is now. It grows, you know. Every year…another wing, another tower, another layer and then another one on top of that. Higher and higher and higher…until they get to God.” Lamus laughs. “Not that the Wealthies give a frack about God. They’d rather be God than believe in Him. You see, the arcology isn’t just a really big building. It’s an organism, a manmade tree. It isn’t built. It evolves. Someday in the far distant future, somebody is going to come along and cut that monstrosity in half and know our entire history like rings in a tree trunk. Anyway, the Holy beseeched the Wealthies and were turned away. And not politely. But at least they weren’t murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “When the Devoted took over, a few months ago, the Holy tried again. They figured, a new administrator would maybe include a new set of open minds who’d hear them out, maybe even help them.”

  “And that didn’t happen?”

  “The Devoted weren’t as polite as the Governors—those are the guys who ran the Wealthies before the Devoted took over. The Devoted killed the new envoy. And then, just to make sure the rest of them got the message, they stormed into the Community Blocks right here, found the zone the Holy were living in—it’s just a few hundred yards from here—and killed the rest of them. Shot every one of them dead. In the middle of the day, too. They weren’t sneaky or anything. It was an execution.” Lamus rolls his eyes and makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “They said they were carrying out a ‘legal sentence.’ A pretty neat trick considering there were no charges, no trial, and no judgement. And no one here in the Blocks has guns, so it wasn’t exactly a fair fight. Anyway, the rest of us got the message, so we stopped trying. When putting your hand out gets it chopped off, you tend to stop asking for things.”