The city is falling apart. Everyone in the Fringe knows it, but you cant think about that. No use in worrying about what you cant change.
What I was worried about, more than anything, was avoiding the vamps, not getting caught, and getting enough to eat to survive one more day.
Sometimes, like today, that called for drastic measures. What I was about to do was risky and dangerous as hell, but if I was worried about risk, I wouldnt be Unregistered, would I?
The Fringe was divided into several sections, sectors as they called them, all neatly fenced off to control the flow of food and people. Another device built for our protection. Call it what you want; a cage is still a cage. As far as I knew, there were five or six sectors in a loose semicircle around the Inner City. We were Sector 4. If I had a tattoo that could be scanned, it would read something like: Allison Sekemoto, resident number 7229, Sector 4, New Covington. Property of Prince Salazar. Technically, the Prince owned every human in the city, but his officers had harems and thrallsbloodslavesof their own, as well. Fringers, on the other handRegistered Fringers anywaywere communal property. Which meant any vampire could do anything they wanted to them.
No one in the Fringe seemed bothered by their tattoo. Nate, one of the assistants at Hurleys trading post, was constantly trying to get me to Register, saying the tattooing didnt hurt very much and the whole giving blood part wasnt so bad once you got used to it. He couldnt understand why I was being so stubborn. I told him it wasnt the scanning or the giving blood that I hated the most.
It was the whole Property of bit that bothered me. I was no ones property. If the damn bloodsuckers wanted me, theyd have to catch me first. And I wasnt going to make it easy for them.
The barrier between sectors was simple: chain-link topped with barbed wire. The steel curtains ran for miles and werent well patrolled. There were guards at the iron gates in each sector that let the food trucks in and out of the Inner City, but nowhere else. Really, the vamps didnt particularly care if some of their cattle slipped back and forth between sectors. The majority of the deadly, lethal force was dedicated to protecting the Outer Wall every night.
You had to admit, the Outer Wall was pretty impressive. Thirty feet high, six feet thick, the ugly monstrosity of iron, steel and concrete loomed over the perimeter of the Fringe, surrounding the entire city. There was only one gate to the outside, two doors of solid iron, barred from the inside with heavy steel girders that took three men to remove. It wasnt in my sector, but Id seen it open once, while scavenging far from home. Spotlights had been placed along the Wall every fifty yards, scanning the ground like enormous eyes. Beyond the Wall was the kill zone, a razed strip of ground littered with barbed-wire coils, trenches, spiked pits and mines, all designed to do one thing: keep rabids away from the Wall.
The Outer Wall was feared and hated throughout New Covington, reminding us that we were trapped here, like penned-in sheep, but it was greatly revered, as well. No one could survive the ruins beyond the city, especially when darkness fell. Even the vamps disliked going into the ruins. Beyond the Wall, the night belonged to the rabids. No sane person went over the Wall, and those who tried were either gunned down or blown to bits in the kill zone.
Which was why I planned to go beneath.
I PUSHED MY WAY THROUGH the waist-high weeds that filled the ditch, keeping one hand on the cement wall as I maneuvered puddles and shattered glass. I hadnt been here in a while, and the weeds had covered all traces of previous passing. Circling the rock pile, ignoring the suspicious-looking bones scattered about the base, I counted a dozen steps from the edge of the rubble, stopped and knelt down in the grass.
I brushed away the weeds, careful not to disturb the surroundings too much. I didnt want anyone knowing this was here. If word got outif the vampires heard rumors that there was a possible exit out of their city, they would have every square inch of the Fringe searched until it was found and sealed tighter than a pets hold on the food warehouse key. Not that they were terribly concerned about people getting out; there was nothing beyond the Outer Wall except ruins, wilderness and rabids. But exits were also entrances, and every few years, a rabid would find its way into the city via the tunnels that ran beneath. And there would be chaos and panic and death until the rabid was killed and the entryway found and blocked off. But they always missed this one.
The weeds parted, revealing a circle of black metal sunk into the ground. It was insanely heavy, but I kept a piece of rebar nearby to pry it up. Letting the cover thump into the grass, I gazed into a long, narrow hole. Rusty metal bars were set into the cement tube beneath the cover, leading down into the darkness.
I glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then started down the ladder. It always worried me, leaving the tunnel entrance wide open, but the cover was too heavy for me to slide back once inside the tube. But it was well hidden in the long grass, and no one had discovered it yet, not in all the years of me sneaking out of the city.
Still, I couldnt dawdle.
Dropping to the cement floor, I gazed around, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Putting a hand in my coat pocket, I closed it around my two most prized possessions: a lighter, still half full of fluid, and my pocket knife. The lighter Id found on my previous trip into the ruins, and the knife Id had for years. Both were extremely valuable, and I never went anywhere without them.
As usual, the tunnels beneath the city reeked. The old-timers, the ones who had been kids in the time before the plague, said that all of the citys waste was once carried away through the pipes under the streets, instead of in buckets emptied into covered holes. If that was true, then it certainly explained the smell. About a foot from where I stood, the ledge dropped away into sludgy black water, trickling lazily down the tunnel. A huge rat, nearly the size of some of the alley cats I glimpsed topside, scurried off into the shadows, reminding me why I was here.
With one last glance through the hole at the skystill sunny and brightI headed into the darkness.
PEOPLE USED TO THINK rabids lurked underground, in caves or abandoned tunnels, where they slept during the daylight hours and came out at night. Actually, most everyone still thought that, but Id never seen a rabid down here, not once. Not even a sleeping one. That didnt mean anything, however. No one topside had ever seen a mole man, but everyone knew the rumors of diseased, light-shy humans living beneath the city, who would grab your ankles from storm drains and drag you down to eat you. I hadnt seen a mole man, either, but there were hundreds, maybe thousands of tunnels Id never explored and didnt plan to. My goal, whenever I ventured into this dark, eerie world, was to get past the Wall and back up to the sunlight as quickly as possible.
Luckily, I knew this stretch of tunnel, and it wasnt completely lightless. Sunlight filtered in from grates and storm drains, little bars of color in an otherwise gray world. There were places where it was pitch-black, and I had to use my lighter to continue, but the spaces were familiar, and I knew where I was going, so it wasnt terrible.
Eventually, I wiggled my way out of a large cement tube that emptied into a weed-choked ditch, almost sliding on my stomach to get through the pipe. Sometimes there were perks to being very skinny. Wringing nasty warm water from my clothes, I stood up and gazed around.
Luckily, I knew this stretch of tunnel, and it wasnt completely lightless. Sunlight filtered in from grates and storm drains, little bars of color in an otherwise gray world. There were places where it was pitch-black, and I had to use my lighter to continue, but the spaces were familiar, and I knew where I was going, so it wasnt terrible.
Eventually, I wiggled my way out of a large cement tube that emptied into a weed-choked ditch, almost sliding on my stomach to get through the pipe. Sometimes there were perks to being very skinny. Wringing nasty warm water from my clothes, I stood up and gazed around.
Over the rows of dilapidated roofs, past the barren, razed field of the kill zone, I could see the Outer Wall rising up in its dark, deadly glory. For some reason, it always looked strange from this side. The sun hovered between the towers in the center of the city, gleaming off their mirrored walls. There were still a few good hours left to hunt, but I needed to work fast.
Past the kill zone, sprawled out like a gray-green, suburban carpet, the remains of the old suburbs waited for me in the fading afternoon light. I vaulted up the bank and slipped into the ruins of a dead civilization.
Scavenging the ruins was tricky. They say there used to be massive stores that had rows and rows of food, clothes and all kinds of other things. They were enormous and easily identified by their wide, sprawling parking lots. But you didnt want to look there, because they were the first to be picked clean when everything went bad. Nearly sixty years after the plague, the only things left behind were gutted-out walls and empty shelves. The same was true of smaller food marts and gas stations. Nothing was left. Id wasted many hours searching through those buildings to come up empty-handed every time, so now I didnt bother.
But the normal residences, the rows of rotting, dilapidated houses along the crumbling streets, were a different story. Because heres something interesting Ive learned about the human race: we like to hoard. Call it stockpiling, call it paranoia, call it preparing for the worstthe houses were far more likely to have food stashed away in cellars or buried deep in closets. You just had to ferret it out.
The floorboards creaked as I eased through the door of my fifth or sixth hopefula two-story house surrounded by a warped chain-link fence and nearly swallowed up by ivy, windows broken, porch strangled under vines and weeds. The roof and part of the upper floor had fallen in, and faint rays of light filtered through the rotten beams. The air was thick with the smell of mold, dust and vegetation, and the house seemed to hold its breath as I stepped inside.
I searched the kitchen first, rummaging through cupboards, opening drawers, even checking the ancient refrigerator in the corner. Nothing. A few rusty forks, an empty tin can, a broken mug. All stuff Id seen before. In one bedroom, the closets were empty, the dresser overturned, a large oval mirror shattered on the floor. The blankets and sheets had been stripped from the bed, and a suspicious dark blot stained one side of the mattress. I didnt wonder what it might be. You dont wonder about things like that. You just move on.
In the second bedroom, which was not quite as ravaged as the first, an old crib stood in the corner, filmy and covered in cobwebs. I eased around it, deliberately not looking inside the peeling bars, to the once-white shelves on the wall. A shattered lamp stood on one shelf, but beneath it, I saw a familiar, dust-covered rectangle.
Picking it up, I wiped away the film and cobwebs, scanning the title at the top. Goodnight, Moon, it read, and I smiled ruefully. I wasnt here for books, and I needed to remember that. If I brought this home instead of say, food, Lucas would be furious, and wed probably fight about it, again.
Maybe I was being too hard on him. It wasnt that he was stupid, just practical. He was more concerned with survival than learning a skill that was useless in his eyes. But I couldnt give up just because he was being stubborn. If I could get him to read, maybe we could start teaching other Fringers, kids like us. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to start something. I didnt know what, but there had to be something better than just survival.
Id tucked the book under my arm, filled with a new resolve, when a soft clink made me freeze. Something was in the house with me, moving around just outside the bedroom door.
Very carefully, I laid the book back on the shelf without disturbing the dust. Id come back for it later, if I survived whatever was coming.
Slipping my hand into my pocket, I gripped my knife and slowly turned. Shadows moved through the sickly light coming from the living room, and the faint, tapping steps echoed just outside the doorway. I flipped the knife blade open and stepped backward, pressing myself against the wall and the dresser, my heart thudding against my ribs. As a dark shape paused just outside the door, I heard slow, labored panting, and held my breath.
A deer stepped into the frame.
My gut and throat unclenched, though I didnt immediately relax. Wildlife was common enough in the city ruins, though why a deer would be wandering around a human house, I didnt know. Straightening, I blew out a slow breath, causing the doe to jerk her head up, peering in my direction, as if she couldnt quite see what was there.
My stomach growled, and for a moment, I had visions of sidling up to the deer and plunging the blade into her neck. You almost never saw meat of any kind in the Fringe. Rat and mouse were highly prized, and Ive seen nasty, bloody fights over a dead pigeon. There were a few stray dogs and cats running around the Fringe, but they were wild, vicious creatures that, unless you wanted to risk an infected bite, were best left alone. The guards also had leave to shoot any animal found wandering about the streets, and usually did, so meat of any kind was extremely scarce.
A whole deer carcass, cut into strips and dried, would feed me and my crew for a month. Or I could trade cuts for meal tickets, blankets, new clothes, whatever I wanted. Just thinking about it made my stomach growl again, and I shifted my weight to one leg, ready to ease forward. As soon as I moved, the deer would probably bolt out the door, but I had to try.
But then, the doe looked right at me, and I saw the thin streams of blood oozing from her eyes, spotting the floor. My blood ran cold. No wonder she wasnt afraid. No wonder she had followed me here and was watching me with the flat, glazed stare of a predator. She had been bitten by a rabid. And the disease had driven her mad.
I took a quiet breath to slow my heartbeat, trying not to panic. This was bad. The doe was blocking the door, so there was no way I could go through her without risking an attack. Her eyes hadnt turned completely white yet, so the sickness was still in its beginning stages. Hopefully if I kept calm, I could get out of here without being trampled to death.
The doe snorted and tossed her head, the jerky movement causing her to stumble into the door frame. Another effect of the sickness; diseased animals seemed confused and uncoordinated one moment but could switch to hyper-aggressive fury in the blink of an eye. I gripped my knife and eased to the side, toward the broken window along the wall.
The doe raised her head, rolling her eyes, and gave a raspy growl unlike anything Id ever heard from a deer. I saw her muscles bunching up to charge, and I bolted for the window.
The deer lunged into the room, snorting, hooves flailing in deadly arcs. One of them caught my thigh as I darted past, a glancing blow, but it felt like someone had hit it with a hammer. The doe crashed into the far wall, overturning a shelf, and I threw myself out the window.