Mutant Rising Read online

  Anya landed on the ground beside Flea, morphing back into her human shape as soon as her feet touched the ground. She was wary of staying in any other form for too long – she’d become ‘trapped’ on occasions in the past, and although Jax was trying to help her find ways to overcome this she was still nervous. As always, she felt the physical toll of reinhabiting her body: a dull ache that permeated deep into her bones. Ignoring it as best she could, she turned her attention to the driver, who was gawping out of his cab at the white-skinned figure before him.

  ‘My name is Jax,’ the albino said with a slight nod of his head. ‘My friends and I are hijacking you. Would you be so kind as to step outside?’

  ‘Hijacking?’

  ‘I believe that’s the correct term. We’re rather new to all this.’

  Stubbs – that was the name embroidered on to the pocket of his shirt – shifted his eyes from the albino to the area immediately around the door, as if he was expecting something to suddenly appear again. Jax nodded sympathetically. ‘If you’re worried about the hideous creature that appeared at your window? You don’t need to – she’s gone now. She wouldn’t have hurt you anyway; she was merely a distraction.’

  The description stung Anya. A distraction? Hah! She’d terrified the guy. He’d been fit to pee his pants when she’d looked in the window at him. And now Jax was belittling her contribution – yet again – by describing her as a ‘distraction’!

  ‘Come down,’ the boy – Jax – said. ‘I promise you you’re quite safe as long as you do as we say.’

  Reluctantly, not sure what else he could do, Stubbs slowly climbed across the seats and got down out of his vehicle. He glanced across at Anya, his eyes flitting from her to Flea – who jangled his keys at him – and back again. The man clearly had no idea it had been her up there on top of his vehicle. She morphed, only for a second, back into the multi-eyed creature and gave him a wave, almost laughing out loud when, for the second time that day, she saw the colour drain out of his face. She liked the feeling of power it gave her.

  ‘Anya. Enough.’ Jax shook his head at her.

  ‘Who are you people?’ Stubbs asked. ‘What’s g–’

  The sound of someone calling out, as if to a pet, made him spin to see the figure of a mutant boy hurrying down the rutted, uneven road towards them. Anya followed the man’s gaze and tried hard not to blush when Rush gave her a nod. Instead she returned the gesture, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. Her heart beat a little faster.

  Not for the first time, she asked herself why he had this effect on her and why she had feelings for him. Especially when it was obvious he didn’t feel the same way about her.

  He was tall for his age. Tall and handsome. Kicking a stone out of his way, he did that thing with his head, a little flick that sent his long locks out of his face, and called again for the beast accompanying him to catch up.

  Anya forced herself to look at the driver again. The man’s attention was fully on Rush’s pet now. The weird mutated chimera – part dog, part lizard and part something completely unidentifiable – huffed and hurghed as it padded along on short legs to catch up with the fifteen-year-old boy who was coiling a leather sling about his hand.

  Noting the man’s growing unease, she stepped forward. ‘It’s a rogwan,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The creature. It’s a rogwan.’

  ‘Does it bite?’

  Jax smiled at the driver. ‘She, like the rest of us, doesn’t want to hurt you in any way.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘First we need you to talk to your friend,’ the albino said, nodding in the direction of the other vehicle. In his panicked state, it was clear Stubbs had almost completely forgotten about Horst. ‘Tell her to cut her engine, please. Our friend Brick must be getting a little tired of holding that thing up like that.’

  The wheels of the transporter were still rotating wildly in the air. The giant Mute, however, hardly appeared to be struggling under the immense weight. On unsteady legs, Stubbs walked over so Horst could see him clearly through the windscreen. He waved his arms about to get her attention and gave her a nod, swiping the air in a signal for her to stop.

  When the wheels came to a halt, the big guy in front of the vehicle slowly lowered it to the ground, glancing momentarily at the bloody gouges on the palms of his hands where the transporter undercarriage had cut through the flesh. His friends knew the wounds would already be starting to heal, and that pretty soon they’d be gone altogether.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rush called across to the man-mountain.

  ‘Brick!’ the big guy answered in a loud voice. He gave the others a broad grin and a thumbs-up before strolling over to the edge of the road, where he sat cross-legged and started to pet the rogwan.

  ‘Signal for your friend to come out, please,’ Rush said to Stubbs.

  It took a few moments, but eventually the female driver left her vehicle and joined them.

  ‘What’s in the back of the transporter?’ Rush asked her.

  ‘Supplies,’ Stubbs answered, when the woman refused to speak. Anya noted the bemused look on the driver’s face as he tried to work out why the younger Mute had taken over the questioning, and why the albino, now standing silent by his side, had his eyes closed.

  ‘What type of supplies?’

  ‘Foodstuffs and clothing for the ARM.’

  ‘Why does food and clothing need an armed escort vehicle to accompany it? That never normally happens.’ It was a question the mutant children had pondered when they’d seen the vehicles coming.

  Stubbs couldn’t hide the sarcasm from his voice. ‘Well, apparently there have been cases of Mutes ambushing vehicles bound between the cities lately. Maybe that could be it, eh?’

  Anya stepped forward. Both she and Rush stared at the albino, Jax. ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ Jax said. ‘At least, he’s telling us what he knows.’ His eyes were still shut. ‘The woman, however, is an ARM operative, and she knows a whole lot more. For instance, she knows there’s a hidden section in the transporter …’ He paused, his white eyebrows beetling together for a moment. ‘She doesn’t know what’s in it, only that it’s extremely important to President Melk. It’s destined for … the Bio-Gen labs at City Four.’

  ‘How the hell did you … ?’ Stubbs looked from the Mutes to his colleague. ‘Is it true?’ He took her silence for an admission. ‘An ARM operative? Just what is going on here, Horst?’ Then, to the mutant children: ‘I don’t know this woman. I’ve never worked with her before. She was assigned to me.’

  ‘Tell us about that hidden compartment,’ Rush said to Horst.

  Instead of answering, the woman made a grab for a gun concealed in the waistband of her trousers. Anya morphed, but she knew she would never get there in time. She didn’t need to. Rush, raising his hand, flicked his fingers to the right and the gun flew out of her grasp. His other hand, palm out, shot forward and Horst flew back off her feet, landing in an unconscious heap a short distance away. The gun, turning end over end, never got a chance to hit the ground. It seemed to disappear in mid-air, and although none of them saw the little redhead move, she reappeared in front of Stubbs, gun in hand, the barrel pointing straight at his chest.

  ‘Whoa!’ he said, arms raised. ‘Don’t shoot! I had no idea she was carrying a gun. Hell, like I told you, I had no idea she was with the Agency.’

  ‘Rush? Anya?’ Jax said, gesturing for them to join him before addressing Stubbs. ‘We’re going to take a look inside that transporter. If you move, little Flea here will shoot you, won’t you, Flea?’

  The freckle-faced kid nodded, the gun held unwaveringly out before her.

  ‘I ain’t moving,’ the support driver responded, his eyes glued to the weapon as the other three strode across to the back of the transporter and opened it up.

  Ignoring the large metal cages crammed with supplies on either side, Anya and Rush followed Jax up the c
entral aisle towards the wall at the back of the hold area. A perfectly smooth, brushed metal surface greeted them. Jax rapped at it with his knuckles.

  ‘No obvious way to open it,’ Anya said, examining the wall and the area all surrounding it.

  ‘The other guy, Stubbs, genuinely had no idea about this?’ Rush asked.

  ‘Not a clue. When I dipped into his mind, he was as surprised as we were to find out Horst was an agent.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We take this thing, find a way to open it up and discover what’s behind here. If it’s important enough to have a secret agent transporting it, maybe it’ll be useful to us.’

  ‘OK,’ the Mute called Rush said, smiling at Stubbs, who was standing in the exact same spot they’d left him. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. We will be taking this vehicle.’ He indicated the transporter. ‘You are free to leave in the other one. We’ve already disabled the robot gun turret of your escort vehicle, so don’t bother trying to open fire on us as we drive off.’

  Stubbs frowned as if expecting the boy to say something else. ‘That’s it? I’m free to go?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘What did you think? That we’d stake you out on the dust and leave you for the scavengers? That we’d kill you?’ The boy gave a sad shake of his head. ‘Despite what your leaders tell you, the mutant people are not your enemies, Stubbs. And we are not like your trigger-happy ARM friend over there.’

  ‘She’s not my friend,’ Stubbs said, looking across at Horst as she let out a little groan, slowly regaining consciousness. ‘What about her?’

  ‘That’s up to you. You want her, take her. If you don’t, leave her behind. Whatever you decide, you wait here for an hour, then you go to wherever you want to go, as long as it’s not in the same direction we’re heading.’

  ‘The windscreen on that escort is broken.’

  ‘Improvise. I’m sure you’ll manage somehow. Oh, and you’ve still got some rocks to clear out of your way.’ He nodded at the little redhead, the one called Flea. She threw the keys back at Stubbs, who caught them despite the tremors in his hands.

  Without another word, the Mutes jumped into the other vehicle, some in the cab, the others in the back, and drove off, leaving the two drivers behind.

  Stubbs watched them go before wandering over to help Horst sit up. She was bleeding a little from a small cut at the back of her head, but she didn’t seem too bad. When she asked him where the transporter was, she followed the line of his finger, squinting into the distance as the thing slowly disappeared.

  ‘This is not good,’ she said, her voice more than a little shaky.

  ‘You should have told me you were an agent. You endangered my life, dammit!’

  ‘Stop your whining and help me up.’

  ‘Do you think they’re the Mutes who attacked C4 and killed the president’s son?’ he asked once she was able to stand on her own two feet again.

  ‘If they’re not, there are two groups of mutants with special powers wandering around out here on Scorched Earth.’ She moved her head from side to side, testing her neck for any pain. ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. I need to make a report to my commanders.’

  Melk

  The screen that had been positioned in front of the south-facing section of the Wall – lowered into place by two huge cranes from inside City Four – was vast. Despite its size, the vis-display was dwarfed by the colossal metal-and-concrete curved bulwark reaching up into the air behind it. The landscape immediately in front of this section of the Wall, beyond a heavily fortified and guarded no-man’s-land, was dominated by the sprawling slums of Muteville. The live presidential address that was shortly to appear on the screen was directed at the inhabitants of that place, but it would be watched by everyone on either side of the Wall. Giant white numbers were ticking slowly downwards on the vis-display: a countdown that had been going on since the thing had been put in place.

  As the numbers switched to indicate three minutes remaining, a klaxon sounded, the harsh, jarring noise pumped from the speakers mounted on the sentry points all around the no-man’s-land. Like the countdown, the klaxon had accompanied the arrival of the screen. It would be followed by the announcement – the announcement that by now everyone in Muteville could probably recite word for word. At first the klaxon had sounded every hour on the hour, the noise penetrating deep into the inner wards of Muteville and waking everybody in the thin-walled hovels and shacks that made up the vast majority of the dwellings there. Every hour. When one mutant unfortunate enough to live close to the fences had tried to disable a speaker by throwing rocks at it, he’d been shot, his body left close to the razor-wire-topped barrier as a warning.

  When an hour remained, the intervals between the braying alarm and its accompanying message had started to be repeated every ten minutes. When only fifteen minutes were left, it was every five. Now it was every sixty seconds.

  The deafening noise of the klaxon – specifically designed by scientists to jar and set teeth on edge – stopped, and was replaced by a flat and emotionless female voice:

  ‘Inhabitants of Muteville, your attention. The leader of the Principia, President Melk, will address you from this screen at the end of this countdown. It is in the interest of every mutant to hear what the President of the Six Cities has to say. Ensure your fellow mutants are aware of this. That is all.’

  There was a brief squeal of feedback, and the announcement stopped.

  The countdown and proclamation had had the desired effect. Most of Muteville appeared to be gathered before the razor-wire fences now that the countdown was almost at an end, anger and fear in equal measure on their faces as they stared up at the screen, wondering what this was all about. Some held young children, but others, wary of the armed guards in the sentry towers and their habit of opening fire on any mutant getting too close to the fences, had opted to leave their offspring at home.

  Most of the Mutes weren’t obviously deformed or disfigured. Minor abnormalities abounded: an extra finger or toe; asymmetrical facial features; lumps or growths under the flesh. But the more obvious defects – those that were far more common in those unfortunates born topside immediately after the Last War – weren’t so prevalent now. Regardless of this, most of those inside the walls viewed their neighbours with disdain and revulsion.

  Sixty seconds turned into thirty, into ten, five …

  The screen blinked, the harsh white numerals replaced by the stern face of perhaps the most famous man on Scorched Earth. Up on that enormous screen he seemed to loom over his audience, as if at any moment he might reach out and swat them away or squash them. Although only his head and shoulders filled the picture, it was clear he was sitting in an office of some kind. In the background, hanging on the wall, was a huge metal plaque; scratched and battered, a large number four could clearly be made out on its surface.

  The man looked straight into the camera, the intensity of his stare making some people in the crowd shift nervously.

  ‘You know who I am. If you didn’t before, I guess our little countdown message must have put you straight, but I’ll introduce myself anyway. We are, after all, neighbours.’ He drew this last word out. ‘My name is Melk, and I am the president of the Six Cities – cities that were built by the Children of the Arks – the door to one of which is hanging on the wall behind me.’ His eyes shifted for a moment, as if somebody behind the camera had said something to him, before he continued. ‘This, however, is not a history lesson. Far from it. Scorched Earth needs to look forward, not back.’ He paused, staring straight into the lens again as if to emphasise this point. A small child, picking up on the tension in the crowd, began to cry, but otherwise there was silence. ‘Ghettos similar to the one you are watching this broadcast from exist close to each of the Six Cities. Yours, however, like the metropolis whose shadow you inhabit, is the largest. Despite the huge wall that separates us, the growth of your … comm
unity has not gone unnoticed. You Mutes seem to crave our company.’ The corners of his mouth twitched, but whether it was a smile or a grimace was impossible to tell. ‘We, on the other hand, do not crave yours.’

  The picture on the screen crackled with static for a moment, but quickly returned. If Melk was aware of this, he didn’t show it.

  ‘It is common knowledge that City Four, the place I’m talking to you from, was recently attacked. Mutant terrorists found a way inside our walls – something I swore would never happen – and bombed us. My own son was killed as a result of this attack.’ Another pause as he let this sink in. ‘Now, some of you out there might be feeling good about that. Some of you may think we had it coming. That we deserved it. The more intelligent among you will understand that an act like this could easily be seen as a declaration of war, giving us the right to punish you in the most extreme ways imaginable.’

  A nervous babble swept through the crowd, many eyes turned instinctively towards the armed men in the towers as the President’s voice boomed on.

  ‘But what would that prove, hmm? That we’re superior to you? We already know that.’ His brow furrowed. ‘So I have thought long and hard about how to respond to this attack. And today I am going to share my conclusions with you.

  ‘As you are no doubt aware, I’m a man known for his hard-line policies. Indeed, the old me would almost certainly have reacted in the way I’ve just described: by lashing out at the entire mutant community in retribution for what a few of your members have done. But then it occurred to me that there might be another way.’ He paused for a moment before continuing.

  ‘My late son, Zander, believed a possible solution for the mutants of Scorched Earth might be to give you your own space in which to live – settlements designated as mutant land. He’d looked into this in some detail and had started to set up reservations for Mutes to inhabit. Places where you could build houses, where you could grow crops and raise livestock. Where you could begin again, out of the shadows of the cities. I’m ashamed to say I poured scorn on these ideas.’