Berserker (Messenger Book 2) Page 13

  Janice wasn't sure what terrified her more: the idea of an alien entity invading her thoughts, or the fact that part of her wanted to welcome it in with open arms.

  *

  Despite her fear and loneliness at being cursed with a malicious Voice, Janice kept her misgivings to herself. Vic likewise seemed to have said nothing to his companions, as none of them gave any indication that they suspected Janice's dark secret. They merely pressed doggedly onward through Chalice's hinterlands, every day drawing closer to the alleged SLIC contact point.

  Soon, the wet jungle gave way to rugged savanna. Although navigating the constant elevation changes of the hills made for arduous going, Janice found it easier than fighting through the thick undergrowth of the forest. Another day of travel brought the group into a vast prairie, graced with gently rolling hills and peculiar outcrops shaped like giant stone mushrooms. A gentle breeze carried the sweet fragrance of pollen and rustled grass splashed with prismatic carpets of wildflowers that glowed in the pale light of the distant sun. Janice found the vision so beautiful that for a brief moment she was almost able to forget that this desultory traveling was all that remained of her life.

  They soon discovered that scattered farms and villages dotted the idyllic prairie. Unlike the automated megafarms of the production regions, these were run by independent families who did much of their work by hand or with the aid of primitive machines. They stopped by one farm where Tinubu, claiming that they were citizens displaced by the chaos of the Theran invasion—which was half true—convinced the owner to give them lodging for the night and some food for the road by offering to help with the day's chores.

  Over dinner, Cena tried to press their hosts for information about the status of the Theran invasion, but there was nothing the farmers could tell them since the communication lines into the region had been cut. Being blind to the events of the outside world caused no great consternation for the local inhabitants, who were content to be left alone. When the eldest son recognized Janice and she agreed to give him her autograph, however, the mother favored them with some extra meat in their baskets.

  As they left the next morning, the warm glow of rural hospitality was ruined when Cena noticed a suspicious bulge in Young's jacket. After a moment of wrestling, Cena managed to extract the pocket's contents and discovered a pouch stuffed with silver bars.

  “What the hell is this?” she demanded.

  “It's silver,” Young replied. “What, don't they have any of this stuff in whatever cornfield you hatched from?”

  “That's not what I mean, smart ass.” Cena shook the pouch in Young's face. “Did you steal this from those folks?”

  Young clicked her tongue and stuck her hands in her pockets, refusing to meet Cena's gaze. “So what? They had it stuffed under a floorboard. It was so obvious a blind grunge rat could have found it.”

  Cena stared at Young in slack jawed amazement. “I can't believe this.”

  “Hey, don't go getting all self-righteous on me, hayseed.” Young pointed at Cena's backpack. “Unless you want me to believe a bunch of penniless vagabonds came by identical packs and gear legally.”

  “I won't say that stealing that gear was right,” Tinubu broke in. “But robbing from a department store in desperation is a hell of a lot less reprehensible than stealing the life savings of a family that just put you up and gave you food out of the goodness of their hearts.”

  Young rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the lecture, desert eagle.”

  “Oh, that's cute,” Tinubu said.

  “For Light's sake,” Cena snapped. “I'll go leave this in their barn with a note of apology, then we'd better hightail it out of here before word spreads of our thieving friend. And Young, if you ever do anything like this again, we're leaving your sticky fingered ass behind.”

  *

  With that incident behind them, the group pressed on deeper into the prairie. After another day of travel, they left all traces of human habitation behind and entered a region of increasing ruggedness, with stony ridges and ravines weaving cracks in web-like patterns through the otherwise green landscape. That night, they made camp at the top of a rocky hill, and the clear sky left the blue face of Saris starkly exposed within the starry canvas. Not for the first time, Janice spent long hours awake, staring with a mixture of longing and disgust into the planet's swirling eyes, before finally falling asleep shortly before dawn.

  She was awakened the next morning, as usual, by Cena's ringing wake-up call. She joined the others for the divvying up of decamping duties, trying in vain to rub the exhaustion out of her eyes. She could barely even pay attention as tasks were assigned until she heard Cena's favorite nickname for her.

  “Next up is checking the traps I set last evening,” Cena said. “Blondie, how about you take care of that.”

  “OK,” Janice agreed, stifling a yawn.

  Young raised her hand. “I can help with that. I ain't got nothing else to do, and I'm getting kind of tired of feeling like a fifth wheel around here.”

  Cena put a hand on her hip and regarded the smaller woman with suspicion. “I don't know about letting you wander around by yourself after the stunt you pulled the other day.”

  “Look, I'm sorry about that, all right?” Young replied. “It takes time to get out of a habit. Besides, there ain't nothing to steal around here.”

  “Why not let her do it?” Vic broke in. “She'll never be able to prove herself useful if we don't give her a chance.”

  “Well...” Cena scratched at the side of her head. “OK, I guess. Not much mischief she could get into out here in the middle of nowhere. Trap checking duty goes to Blondie and Sticky Fingers, then.”

  “Great.” Young waved at Vic. “Thanks for sticking up for me. If you feel like tagging along after you're done packing up the tents, I won't object.” Then she left.

  Cena smirked at Vic. “Little Sticky Fingers seems to have a thing for you.”

  Vic sighed. “I don't get the feeling I'm very unusual in that regard.”

  Janice pushed herself to her feet and started down the opposite side of the hill from Young, intending to follow Cena's trail from the other end and meet at the halfway point. She was so tired that she dragged her feet and stumbled over every rock and root in her way, but fortunately just checking traps didn't require a lot of concentration or brainpower.

  The first two traps she checked were empty. She gathered up the rope and thread and stuffed them in her pack so she could return them to Cena later. When she reached the next snare, she found a clabite hanging from the noose. Imported from Thera before Chalice's atmospheric composition was altered to block Saris' radiation, clabites were originally rabbits that had mutated to develop crystalline growths in their foreheads which shone when the creatures were excited. Now this clabite's jewel was dark, never to shine again.

  Janice knelt in front of the dead clabite and looked at it sadly. As she reached out to recover the corpse, its head jerked up and the jewel in its forehead gleamed. Janice squealed in surprise and stumbled back, meeting the creature's beady gaze in disbelief.

  Before her eyes, the world dissolved into indistinct shadows—all except the dead clabite, which underwent a hideous transformation. Its torso stretched until its flesh separated, exposing its ribcage; its limbs lengthened into skeletal stilts and grew extra joints; and finally its head separated from its body, bobbing at the end of torturously elongated vertebrae.

  “What in the—” Janice gasped.

  The monster cocked its head and regarded Janice with something like amusement. It pared back its lips, exposing teeth transformed into pointed fangs, and spoke in a barely intelligible, inhuman cadence.

  “A new world awaits you, chosen of the maggots,” it uttered. “You need only embrace the messages, and you can ascend to a higher plane of existence.”

  Janice continued backing away from the horrible vision. “This can't be happening,” she whimpered. “It can't be real.”

  “Nothing is r
eal in this fleeting existence,” the monstrous clabite responded. “The very world itself is an illusion. Only that which you experience is real. Including me.”

  Janice shook her head. “It's just a hallucination,” she assured herself. “A hallucination brought on by exhaustion.”

  “How unconvinced you sound,” the monster said. “It is fitting that you should be confused, for your primitive brain cannot even distinguish between fantasy and reality. But I believe you're beginning to understand that, for you, I am more real than anything else in this universe.”

  Although Janice told herself that the best way to banish the illusion would be to ignore it, something in its disdainful tone goaded her into confronting it.

  “You're nothing,” she snarled. “But even if you did exist, I would never embrace any 'new world' offered by such a freak.”

  “Is that so?” The monster cocked its head again. “Even if it meant that you could forever leave behind the humanity that despises you? The same humanity that infects your very being, even as you long to reject it?”

  A wall of jeering faces appeared around Janice, closing in on her, screaming obscenities. Their eyes burned with irrational hatred.

  “You're such a faker.”

  “You lied to everybody!”

  “Get out, you Theran whore.”

  “What a bitch.”

  “Go back to the scum pond you crawled out of, you talentless hack.”

  “Your filthy Theran parentage is showing.”

  “Shut up!” Janice clapped her hands over her ears, squeezed her eyes shut, and fell to her knees. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  Something hit her with great force, knocking her onto her side. She looked up and saw the leering face of a prison guard staring down at her. His hairy, simian hands reached down and grabbed her jacket, trying to tear it off.

  “Let's see what you've got, little rich bitch.”

  “Get off me, you sick bastard!”

  Janice tore herself free of his grasp and spun around only to run headfirst into a hulking shadow grasping a knife in its right hand. The shadow advanced on her and raised its knife to strike.

  Something snapped inside Janice. She sidestepped the shadow's thrust, caught it by the wrist, and threw herself backward while simultaneously pushing her assailant's knife hand upward. The opposing movements brought her assailant to his knees and impaled his throat on his own knife. Janice ripped the knife out of his dead hands, spun around, and slashed through the throat of the prison guard, causing him to crumple at her feet.

  “You see?” Suddenly the monstrous clabite's head was centimeters from Janice's face. “You've already surrendered to your rage once before. You're a slayer of your own kind. Embrace that impulse, and filth like this will never trouble you again. It's the only way you can be free.”

  “No!”

  Janice slashed through the clabite's elongated vertebrae. Its severed head fell to the ground, bounced, and rolled to a halt, still staring up at her.

  “You certainly are a violent one,” it chuckled. “Just like all the other maggots.”

  Janice threw her knife aside and ran as fast as she could away from the apparition. Even as she fled, Young's face loomed large in front of her, grinning with sadistic pleasure.

  “I tried to get you all killed, remember,” she said. “But all I had to do was turn on the waterworks, and you and your idiot friends were foolish enough to let me tag along. I'm just waiting for the opportunity to cut your throats and take everything you've got for myself. Too bad you're all too stupid to see that I'm just playing you for a bunch of saps.”

  Suddenly, someone took a firm grip on Janice's wrist, bringing her to a halt. She heard Young's voice again, not from an ethereal distance this time, but from directly behind her.

  “Watch out, Blondie!”

  All at once, the shadowy veil masking the world melted away. With a start, Janice realized she was standing at the edge of a rocky bluff that tumbled down into a patch of scraggly bushes at least twenty meters below. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Young grabbing her from behind, gaping at her in bewilderment.

  A familiar bolt of hatred flashed through Janice's mind, forcing her to act without thinking. She spun around, tore her wrist free of Young's grip, and tackled her would-be rescuer, clawing at her throat. Young thrashed in surprise at first, then quickly recovered and kicked out one leg, launching Janice over her head. Janice was momentarily stunned from the impact. Before she could recover, she found herself being flipped onto her stomach, with one arm pinned behind her back and her face being pressed into the dirt.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Young shouted. “Are you crazy?”

  Like water swirling down a drain, the irrational hatred receded from Janice's mind. Realizing what she had done, she felt tears welling up in her eyes and falling into the dirt. She shook with quiet sobs.

  “I'm sorry,” she whimpered. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

  Young seemed unnerved by this turn of events. “Damn. You are really screwed up.” She looked around in panic, then said, “Uh, hold on. I'm gonna go find the others,” and ran off.

  Janice pushed herself into a sitting position and wiped the tears from her eyes, struggling to compose herself. She glanced at her surroundings and saw the clabite corpse some distance away, still dangling from Cena's snare, with no traces of its hideous transformation.

  Vic had told Janice not to listen to the Voice. Only now did she realize the true significance of his advice. But how could she shut it out when it kept forcing its way into her mind? This was no gentle whisper in her ear, but a monstrous shriek that rattled in her thoughts no matter how she tried to reject it.

  Soon, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps punctuated by Young's pleading voice. “I didn't do nothing. That bitch has gone psycho. I think she was trying to kill herself or something. I stopped her running off a cliff and she flipped out, knocking me down and trying to strangle me. I had to hold her down and she started blubbering like a baby. I was totally freaked, so I came to get you guys. That's all, I swear.”

  Hector gave a single, barking laugh. “I told you our little model would get the crap kicked out of her if you left those two alone.”

  Janice turned and saw all of her companions approaching from the direction of the camp. Burning with shame, she turned away, unable to meet their concerned gazes as they gathered around her.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Runner?” Tinubu asked. “Did Young do anything to you?”

  Janice shook her head. “No. It was my fault.”

  “Is there something you want to talk about, hon?” Cena asked. “I know it can't be easy having your whole life fall apart around you, and there was that incident back in Morganna. You seemed OK, so maybe the rest of us were too quick to brush it off. Not many people can handle taking another life in stride, even if it is self-defense.”

  Again, Janice shook her head. “It's nothing. I'm just...” Her voice trembled. She almost laughed at the absurdity of what she was about to say next. “I'm just fatigued, that's all.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “We're all tired, hon,” Cena said. “But nobody else is trying to run off a cliff and then strangling the person who stops them.”

  “She's cracked,” Hector said. “I knew this was going to happen. Dammit, if there's one thing even worse than dead weight, it's a time bomb just waiting to go off.”

  “Captain,” Vic broke in. “Cena. Can I talk to you two for a second?”

  Janice watched Vic, Cena, and Tinubu step away from the others for a private conversation. She couldn't make out what they were saying, but Vic's expression was grave, and the others' faces expressed increasing shock as the conversation went on. When they concluded, they walked back to Janice, and Cena knelt at her side.

  “Vic just told us a little of what you're going through,” she whispered. “Once we've hooked up with our comrades in SLIC, we know someone who might be able to help you. In the m
eantime, it would probably be best if you stayed close to me, Vic, or Tinubu at all times. OK?”

  Janice nodded glumly. “OK.”

  “Good.” Cena stood up and helped Janice to her feet, then turned to address Hector and Young. “It's kind of hard to explain,” she said, “but we've got some idea of what Janice is going through. We've dealt with something like this before. It ain't her fault. I guess you could call it a disease, kind of.”

  “She's got some screws loose,” Hector said.

  “Not exactly,” Cena replied. “Anyway, we can give her some treatment once we rejoin our allies. Until then, you two should avoid being alone with her.”

  “Gladly,” Young said.

  “One more thing.” Cena walked up to Hector and pulled Young's sword out of his pack. “You saved Janice from throwing herself off a cliff, and even when she went off on you, you exercised restraint in subduing her, then immediately reported back to us. You showed good judgment.” She held out the sword to Young. “I think we can let you have this back now, Sticky Fingers. If you get any funny ideas, just remember the three of us have guns and Cyclops here can break this blade like a twig with his bare hands.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Young accepted the sword and tucked it into her belt. “I sure feel trusted now.”

  “We've been real forbearing considering you set up an ambush for us,” Cena said. “Trust is earned in stages. Aside from that slip-up at the farm, you done good so far. Keep it up and someday we'll forget the whole thing.”

  The group dispersed to resume breaking camp. Young couldn't distance herself from Janice fast enough, while Hector shot her a contemptuous leer. Even the others gave her only looks of infuriating pity mixed with trepidation. The Voice had erected an insurmountable wall between her and the only companions she had known since the collapse of her world.

  Never before in her life had Janice felt so alone.

  Eleventh Escalation