Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (28 page)

“Oh! Yes,” she said suddenly, remembering herself. “That would be me.”

Tora shot her a worried look, but the man didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m Denton. Everyone around here knows me as the Tin Man.” He lifted his hat briefly, long enough for London to see how the hair was patted down around his skull in damp waves, and put out a hand.

As before, London gave it a firm shake and offered him their empty chair. “Good to know you,” she added with a sideways glance at Kim and Tora. “These are my friends, Jet and—”

“Alice,” Tora interrupted, shaking Denton’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

London squinted at Tora but the Seer pretended not to see.

“You all from Pillar City?” Denton asked, settling into the curved back of his chair.

“Yes, sir,” London said before Tora could pipe up. “We skipped out on our assignments. I hate the plants,” she said wrinkling her nose for effect.

Denton nodded. “Understandable. I’ve always been more fond of the
original
, I guess you could say. Course, gotta be careful these days. Even a statement like that could land you in the back of a quarantine truck. Am I right?” Denton raised his glass at this last statement and London smiled and copied the gesture, completely unsure what he was talking about.

Kim, picking up on Denton’s words, leaned over the table a little, very serious, and asked, “Have there been many then? Here in Mesa City?”

London admired his skill. He didn’t know what Denton was talking about anymore than she did, but he knew how to find out.

Denton looked around before answering. “More than we care to admit. But even one truck is enough to make anyone a little jumpy, know what I mean?”

Kim nodded. “Sure, sure. We thought, well, with Mesa City being so remote and all…”

Denton seemed to understand this. He rubbed at his chin. “We did too, but they say it makes no difference. The sleeping sickness is popping up in every walled city from here to Mulva and beyond. I heard Pillar’s been hit hard.”

Kim nodded grimly, letting his eyes go all watery and sad. “My own cousin contracted it. She was only ten-years-old. I had to get out of there before…before it spread.”

London’s mouth dropped open and Tora kicked Kim under the table, but he was shameless.

Denton patted Kim’s arm sympathetically. “I tell ya’, it’s rough all around, Jet. How’d you know she had it? Was she up nights, moaning and talking in her sleep? Or did she babble on like a loony about the night pictures during the day?”

“B—both,” Kim said resolutely. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Tin Man, we’ve been on the road a while, but are there any new symptoms being reported with the sleeping sickness, or is it just the night pictures?”

London was frozen to her chair, watching Kim operate this exchange like a pro. The little bugger was as good a liar as he was a thief.

“A few,” Denton said with a shrug. “I mean, there’s the night pictures themselves, and then there’s the
other stuff
.” He whispered these last two words with a wink and a nod.

“Other stuff?” London asked, not believing her ears. There were dreamers behind the walls now, just like in the camps. Only, they were calling it the sleeping sickness instead of what it really was, the Astral return.

Denton shrugged. “Sure. I mean, right now it’s mostly rumor, a few genuine reports. They caught that little girl up in Reilly City drawing all those pictures. Carted her off right quick! And then, uh, someone said there was a man over in Raymond and another one in Lee, both caught writing stories. Just makin’ ‘em up plain and putting ‘em down in their netbooks, like there wasn’t nothin’ to it.”

London feigned shock. “Really? Writing?” Her heart instantly reached out to Zen, but she quickly pushed his memory aside to focus on what Denton was telling them.

“Can’t say for certain about those last two. But the Reilly girl is fact, that I know.” Denton took a long draught of his beer. “I mean, it’s not like they don’t know better,” he said now, his tongue loosening with the alcohol. He leaned into the table and said low, “We all think it from time to time, right? Well, Scrappers anyway. We love the hunt, the genuine article. Know what I mean? But even we know better than go getting involved with
New.
Even if you wanted to, even if you could, who would choose to do such a thing?”

London shook her head slowly. “Maybe they couldn’t help it,” she suggested.

Denton leaned back, toying with one of the beads on his shirt near his navel. “That’s the word on the street. It’s compulsion, driven by the sleeping sickness. Course, that ain’t official. The Tycoons don’t say much, nor the presidential compound. Just that it’s contagious and they’re working as fast as they can on an immunization. Likely isn’t hope for those who already got it.”

“Immunization?” Tora repeated, tucking and re-tucking the hair behind her ears.

Denton nodded, his hat brim dancing up and down. “That’s where the trucks take ‘em all, you see? I mean, to quarantine ‘em and stop the spread of it, sure. But you gotta know they’re using the ones that already have it to test the serums on, until they get a vaccine that actually works to protect the rest of us.”

“Of course,” London agreed with a tight smile, her mind running over and over something Pauly had said to her the day she played her song for him,
Used to happen all the time. In all the walled cities. They’d send ‘em to get reprocessed
. “And thank goodness for it,” she added, draining the last swill of her beer. She hated drinking, anything alcohol, but fortunately this was more water than booze. No doubt barman Linus was looking to store up rations for his scrap collection.

“That’s why Linus sent me over here,” Denton went on. “You’re lucky you got this far without being picked up. New word out of the compound is everyone has to be inside at nightfall. They don’t want any sickos wandering around spreading it.”

“Sure,” Kim said. “We noticed how empty the streets were.”

Denton shrugged a shoulder. “Well, Scrappers have never been good about following the rules. We got our own hours to keep, and a few establishments like
The Front Porch
are good enough to stay open and keep quiet about it, so long as we stay off the main streets when we come and go. But frankly, it’s getting a little too late even for me. We should probably move on. I can put you up for a night or two until we find something more permanent.”

He rose from his chair and drained his glass. “When we get somewhere safe, you can show me what’s in that pack and we’ll work out a deal for the upkeep.”

London nodded, too afraid to argue. They owed him something for everything he’d already given them.

“Stick close,” he said. “Right behind me. The night watch will be out to check for curfew breakers. One of you gets caught, and it’s in the first quarantine truck you go, understand?”

They all swallowed hard and nodded as Denton led them toward a back door out of the tavern. London took one last look in Linus’s direction before following the Tin Man into the night.

THE ALLEYWAYS WERE dark as pitch, where multistoried buildings rose up on either side to block out the light of the streetlamps and the stars. London kept right behind Denton, sticking to the Tin Man like tape, in order not to get lost, Kim and Tora at her back. Mesa City was laid out completely different than Capital City and they had no feel for it yet, but true to his word and like any good Scrapper, Denton knew every brick and every bend as well as a rat in a familiar maze.

They approached the end of the third alleyway and Denton peeked around the corner, gesturing for them to stay back. It opened into a wide main street, the yellow glare of tall lamps overhead spilling out into broad circles on the pavement below. In the distance, a low rumble could be heard. One London found unmistakable. An engine.

Denton spun back around. “This stretch is tricky. I’m gonna take ya’ one at a time. Come back for the next one after I have the first tucked safely around the corner up ahead.”

London looked nervously at Kim and Tora in the cast off light that reached them at the edge of the alley. Splitting up for even a second was out of the question. Yet, what choice did they have? “Um, okay?” she said amiably.

Kim reached out and squeezed her arm, but London shook him off. The rumble of the engine in the distance was drawing nearer. A truck—that was certain—moving at a slow pace. They needed Denton to get to cover.

“When one goes, the rest of you stay back, understand? Here in the shadows. Don’t turn that corner into the light without me to lead ya’. Got it?”

“Yeah,” London agreed and Tora and Kim nodded reluctantly.

“You first,” Denton said with a nod at London. She swallowed and nodded back, squeezing Tora’s hand reassuringly before letting go and following Denton around the corner.

In the light, she felt naked as a newborn, but they moved quickly through the first circle, entering shadow and leaving it again as they skittered into the second circle. She could plainly hear the engine rumbling far down the street and see, with rising alarm, the sweep of headlamps and flashlights in the distance, coming this way. She was just about to tap Denton on the shoulder and point them out when he rounded on her, wrapping a strong hand about her throat and shoving her back hard into the brick wall, its coarse surface digging through her shirt into her skin. She was pinned beneath his weight in the light.

“Are you crazy?” she blurted, her eyes watering with the effort to breathe through his tightening grip.

“Not crazy enough,” he snarled. “These days, only a crazy person would pick up three runaways out of a bar and take them home, no questions asked. You didn’t really think I got to be the Tin Man by acting that stupid, did ya’?”

London shook her head, wishing like hell she hadn’t been naive enough to follow him around here alone. To her right, she could still see the corner they’d come from, where Kim and Tora were waiting patiently in the dark. To her left, her peripheral could just make out the next corner where they were presumably headed.

Denton pressed against her and kept his voice low, his breath like hot beer against her neck. “Now pay attention, you scream and I’ll clamp your windpipe off so fast you won’t be able to squeak like a church mouse, understand me?”

London nodded.

“Alright. See those lights down there? That’s the night guard. And here you are like a fly under glass. In two shakes of a rat’s tail they’ll be down here and you’ll be off to a Tycoon laboratory to get pinned and prodded like a science experiment. So you better cooperate,” he growled in her ear.

The lights were moving slow, but not nearly slow enough. In no time they’d be able to make her out against the wall, but they’d see the Tin Man, too. “What about you?” she squeezed out.

Denton grinned. “Think you’re smart? Let’s just say I got an arrangement with the night guard, kind of like Linus. In fact, I’ve got an arrangement with just about everybody in Mesa City. But one word from me, and you,
and
your friends, will be looking at the inside of that quarantine truck.”

London nodded. “Okay,” she muttered. “Please. What do you want?”

“I want to know where you’re really from and what you’re really doing here. What kind of fool kid turns up after dark these days? You tell me true, do you got the sleeping sickness? Do ya’?”

London shook her head briskly. “No, no.”

“How about them?” he asked, gesturing toward the corner where Kim and Tora were waiting out of sight.

“No, none of us. I swear,” London was pleading with her eyes. Denton was dangerous, but they were still better off with him than without him. He may just be the most well-connected Scrapper in town.

He appeared to be thinking. “I don’t know. Something’s not right about you three. I can smell it.”

London swallowed against his hand. “It’s the girl. She’s—she’s not really from Pillar like my friend and I are. We found her along the way. She’s an Outroader.”

“I figured as much,” Denton whispered as London eyed the approaching lights of the night guard. She could already hear the faint voices of the men on foot.

“Listen,” she dared, biting her lip and staring at Denton. “I promise we’re not lying, not about anything else. It’s just the girl. I got something in this pack you’ll really want…and I know where to get more. If—if you help us I can tell you, but if you don’t, you’ll never know where to find the rest.”

Denton’s eyes were so close to hers she could finally make out the dull blue of the irises and the pink bloodshot veins all around. They bulged with eagerness at her words. If she knew one thing about Scrappers, they couldn’t resist the lure of the hunt. He might just be willing to give them a chance if he thought she was telling the truth. And she was. She could tell him where Elias’s hoard of books and honey was. Whether or not Ash and his camp had picked it over by now was another story.

Denton hesitated and one of the guards swung a flashlight in their direction. “Tin Man? That you?”

London licked her lips and whispered to him, “Trust me.”

He leaned into her, making it almost impossible for her to breathe, and then suddenly he let up, gripping her arm tight enough to cause bruising and dragging her down the wall and around the next corner just before the night guard caught up with them. He pushed her behind him and flung an arm back to hold her there in the shadows.

The guard took a step their way, shining his light. “Tin Man?”

Denton tipped his hat. “Evening, Carl.” His voice dripped with politeness.

“Late night at
The Front Porch
?” Carl asked.

“You can say that,” Denton answered him.

London pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades and tried not to breathe. She didn’t want the guard to see her, even if she was a guest of the Tin Man. For all she knew, they’d been given a detailed description of her and the rest of the Otherborn.

“Hey, how’d your wife like that pin?” Denton asked jovially and Carl let his flashlight swing down.

“Oh man, she loved it! She’s the envy of every woman on the block. And it got me out of the doghouse. I owe ya’ one!” Carl replied.