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  This was a more dangerous world than she’d ever imagined. The pirate attack on the steamboat had opened her eyes to that grim reality. In this godforsaken part of the world, she was less a human being, than some sort of living contraband for a man’s indulgence, not unlike a walking bottle of whiskey. She glanced back over her shoulder to find the guard on the platform still gawking after her. He seemed to be studying her every subtle movement. She could feel his gaze creeping over every suggestion of curvature beneath the rubber bulk of her hazmat suit. He knew what she was, or at least, he’d already decided. Her sexuality, mostly an asset in her ordinary dealings with men, felt like a deadly liability. As she followed Malcolm up the walkway, past the guards who loitered at every station, over the wranglers at the loading bay, who wrestled the rubber bridles of their crazed animals, she knew without a doubt that there were more than a few men aboard this very train. Men who would just as soon kill her as allow her go on breathing, if only to have their rough way with her for a few minutes in some unlit corner. She was priceless, yet worthless, and that was unsettling.

  Beyond the livestock bay, a human assembly line hefted sandbags and heavy components up onto the roof from a system of scaffolds. These items were passed hand-to-hand up the moving train toward a location atop the second car from the engine, where a machine gun nest was under construction. Soldiers fitted components and stacked sandbags atop what appeared to have originally been a giant cylinder of liquefied gas.

  One soldier standing guard at the construction site saw them coming. He stepped forward to halt them with an outstretched left hand. His right hand went right to the grip of his pistol. “Stay right where you are. Identify yourself.”

  “We’re with the IDC. I’m Captain Malcolm Gann, escorting this VIP to Hays, under the authority of General Cobb.”

  “What’s your business in Hays?”

  “Classified. Here’s our papers.”

  Cecile watched as Malcom retrieved the bloodstained envelope from his hip pocket. General Cobb had sealed it, and handed it over to Malcolm just before they left his trailer. The soldier seemed satisfied with whatever was scrawled upon the letter, and he handed it back over to Malcolm.

  “This is your passenger car,” he said, pointing to the giant gas cylinder beneath his feet. “It’s not completely converted, so you’ll need to keep your masks on at all times. Understand? There’s rations in back, if you need them. You know how to use an R-15 canister?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “There’s a bucket up front for a latrine. Please use that, and not the passenger car floor. Got it?”

  “Aye-aye,” Malcolm replied.

  “Manway is on the forward side of the pillbox. We’ll notify you once we’ve reached your destination. Settle in, and have yourselves a relaxing trip.”

  Cecile jumped when the steam engine released a deafening hiss. A pale geyser billowed from the chimney. Malcolm stooped as he walked through the swirling cloud, and dropped to his knees before a circular hatchway. The interior was ill lit, but as Malcolm descended into the cylinder, Cecile could just make out the rungs of a steel ladder. She followed him down into the gloom. Halfway down the ladder, the soldiers slammed the overhead hatch shut, and latched it from the outside with the slap of a bolt. She’d never been claustrophobic in her life, but when they sealed her inside the capsule, her whole body stiffened in a moment of sheer terror. She clung to the ladder rungs, unsure of whether to climb down or to climb back up and begin beating on the hatch.

  “You hungry?”

  She glanced down over her shoulder in the direction of Malcom’s voice. The concave floor was leveled with sheets of plywood. A string of LED lights swung pendulously from one end of the car to the other. As the soldier had described, there was a plastic bucket full of sawdust at the forward end, and a single crate at the rear. Beneath the glittering string of lights, it looked like the back patio of some seedy bar. Gradually, she relaxed her grip on the ladder, and continued climbing down. She was hungry and thirsty. They hadn’t eaten or drunk a drop since they’d departed St. Louis. The plywood bowed beneath her weight, giving extra bounce to her step, as she made her way toward Malcolm’s hunkered form in the back of the car.

  “You want to give those lights a few cranks?”

  Her eyes followed the shielded cable to the rear anchor point, where the usual hand-crank friction generator with a vacuum tube dangled. She captured the swinging box with both hands, and cranked the lights back up to a more usable level of illumination. Now, she could see that on either side of the passenger car, round portholes had been installed. They were paned with what appeared to be Plexiglas, sloppily caulked into the frame. The cylindrical vessel had the distinct appearance of being a very low-budget submarine. She watched distant pockets of flame flickering throughout downtown Kansas City inch past their circular windows. Gobbets of fire dropped rhythmically from the girders of a bridge. Malcolm was hunkered, digging through a crate of what looked like black cans of spray paint. “What are those?” she asked.

  “Dinner.” Malcolm rose, holding a canister in each hand. “Ever had one of these?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Compressed MREs, developed right along with these masks during Desert Storm, just in case the enemy decided to hit us with chemical weapons. Only ones ever made it to the battlefield wound up in the officer’s quarters. I doubt they were ever used, except as a novelty. They’re all we ever ate for six months in Germany, after Z-Day.” He held a canister up to the light, and turned it in his hand. “Good for another hundred years.”

  “How’re you supposed to eat or drink anything with a mask on?”

  “I’d be delighted to show you.” Malcolm twisted off the cap, revealing a short rubber hose with a plastic valve at the base. “You’re in for quite a treat.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Everything a growing body needs. You’ve got your protein, water and minerals, all blended to exactly one liter of fluid and three-thousand calories, in every can. You can live for months on just one of these things per day.” Malcolm held out the can, and he smacked the top of the rubber valve repeatedly, until a dull pop came, followed by an internal fizzing. He shook the can gently from side to side. “It warms and pressurizes itself, once you break the inner seal. Stick out your tongue.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stick out your tongue. Lower your chin, like this, and feel around the bottom of your mask with the tip of your tongue. You should feel a little groove down there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a little hatch. Stick your tongue down in there, and flip it up.”

  “Oh!” Cecile reeled backwards, clutching the snout of her mask. “Something hit me in the lip!”

  Bubbles surged through Malcolm’s K-cartridges. “You’ll have to learn to catch that thing in your mouth when it pops out. That’s your feeding tube. Once you’re done eating, you use your tongue again to tuck it back down inside that little hatch until it clicks, and then close the little lid back over it. It’s spring loaded.”

  “No shit.”

  “Alright, get the bulb of your feeding tube inside your mouth. Got it?”

  Cecile nodded. He seemed almost too eager to be accommodating when he’d rarely been this helpful before.

  “Hang on a second.” Malcolm raised the can beneath her chin, and fitted his end of the rubber tubing over what must have been some sort of a little nipple, under her mask. “Alright, now, you need to bite down gently on that rubber bulb. Gent-ly. That opens your end of the feeding tube. Got it?”

  “Nnn-hnn.”

  “Now, once I open the valve on this can, you just start swallowing. Swallow it down until it’s all gone, or it’ll fill the whole front of your mask. Ready? Dinner is served.” Malcolm flipped open the valve on the can.

  Cecile’s eyes bulged as a surge of what felt and tasted like warm, wet dog food filled her cheeks. She managed to gulp down the extruding mass just as her cheeks were filli
ng up again. For a minute, she was afraid she might choke or drown. By the streams of bubbles coursing through Malcolm’s cartridges, he appeared to be greatly amused. He was doubled over, but still holding the can, as she gulped down each mouthful until the pressure decreased.

  Malcolm could barely speak. “I know, its awful stuff. The first time I did it, I puked inside my mask. Want some water to wash it down?”

  “Yes,” she replied, breathing hard after the last swallow. The stuff was disgusting. It was thick and gritty, yet it left a greasy residue all over her tongue and teeth.

  “It’s the same situation with the water,” he said, swapping out one can for the second, “comes at you hard and fast, at first, but at least you know that it’s just water. Trust me, this gets easier. After a few meals like this, it’ll all become second nature. Ready?” he asked, after fitting the second hose beneath her chin.

  She nodded, clutching his wrist with both hands. He was already chuckling again, as he flipped the valve, sending a rush of tepid water into her mouth. It wasn’t so bad, now that she knew what to expect. The initial pressurized rush only lasted a few seconds. Each can basically contained four, huge gulps, followed by a series of more reasonably-sized swallows. Despite all that it left to be desired, the system was pretty ingenious.

  “Before you tuck that feeding tube back in, you’ll want to blow all the crap out onto the floor, or else your mask will start to stink. Lean forward a bit, so it doesn’t shoot all down the front of you, and blow. Wouldn’t want to make a clean streak on that uniform, would we?”

  As she bent to blow out the feeding tube, the train lurched forward. Malcolm caught her in his arms before she toppled. Horses screamed through the metal walls of their cells. Rhythmic blasts of steam accompanied each surge of movement. The string of lights swung crazily overhead, flickering on and off like strobes in some Halloween spook house.

  “Feels like we’re taking off.” Malcolm relaxed his hold on her. They both eased down to the jouncing plywood floorboards, where they sat cross-legged under the blinking lights, facing each other, for lack of anything else to look at. There were the portholes, of course, but with the surging motion of the train, it would’ve been an exercise in futility to attempt to peer through them without being thrown to the ground.

  She stared at Malcolm’s masked face. His mask stared back. It was the face of an insect, comprised of hard interlocking panels and unblinking eyes. Devoid of any trace of emotion, it was impossible to discern the nature of the sentience behind it. Was the mind behind the mask awake, asleep, or entertaining dark designs to do something terrible? No way to tell. The lights flickered off, then on, then back off again. They stayed off, enveloping them in absolute blackness. It was a dizzying sensation. It reminded her of the feeling of weightlessness when she left her physical body behind, and passed over into the Land of Nod. She thought of her Nana Hess, and missed her terribly. She could feel them, all around her. The dead. Always knuckling, clawing, and scraping bony fingertips on the other side of that door.

  “We’re pretty lucky to have made it this far alive, you know?”

  Cecile nodded at the voice in the darkness. She knew.

  Chapter Nine

  When the string of lights flickered back on, he was standing over her, cranking up the static generator. LEDs pulsed back to life. Malcolm sat down on the plywood floor next to her. Their hazmat uniforms looked like inverted hides, a couple of strange creatures that had been flipped inside out. The rubber surface was grotesque with the dried blood of vaporized pirates. Every fold remained tacky with the physical essence of fallen men who existed only in the shared nightmare of their last intended victims. She opened and closed the fingers of her gloves, both fascinated and repulsed by the stickiness.

  “When we stop in Hays, we’ll take ourselves a dust bath.” Malcolm stared at her. “If you pat the stuff down with dust, it helps.”

  Cecile clenched her hands into fists, and then opened them slowly. She glanced at her new partner. “Have you killed a lot of people, Malcolm?”

  “That’s a hell of a question to ask.”

  “Hunters, I mean.”

  Malcolm shrugged.

  “What do you think they are? They’re just people, aren’t they?”

  “Used to be.” Malcolm placed the tips of his fingers together in his lap, and then pulled them apart. “They all have names, birth certificates, mothers and fathers. At one time, they all had jobs, homes, families, and children. They were all living pretty normal lives, just like the rest of us, and I don’t think they were faking.”

  “What happened to them, on Z-Day?”

  “All we can do is to speculate, based on the small amount of evidence that we have.” Malcom pressed his fingertips together, and cleared his throat. “Their blood,” Malcolm said, pulling his sticky fingertips apart, “is different from ours. That much we know for a fact. They’re all hyperglycemic. Extremely hyperglycemic. So full of sugar that their organs should be shutting down, but they don’t. That’s how they’re able to breathe cyanide.”

  Cecile shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s all biochemistry. So long as you have an extraordinarily high level of hyperglycemia, and a set of organs adapted to tolerate it, then you can survive without a mask in this atmosphere.”

  “Why do they kill?”

  “That’s the real mystery. All we can do is look closely at the facts. What do these people have in common? One trait that seems to be common is their race. Every Hunter I’ve ever encountered has been at least partly Hispanic.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You tell me, but it’s a fact. Feel free to draw your own conclusions, just like I’ve drawn mine.”

  “What conclusions have you drawn from the fact that some of the—”

  “All.”

  “—from the fact that all of the Hunters have hyperglycemic, Hispanic blood?”

  “I haven’t finished.” Malcolm cocked his bug-like head and stared at her. “Their Latin heritage is Brazilian, to be precise. Brazilian, Bolivian, Peruvian … all from right there in that nexus of those three South American states.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because lots of them are still carrying around their identification.” Malcolm chuckled. “It’s almost like, on Z-Day, they all just dropped whatever they happened to be doing, and set right off on their little missions, still carrying their keys, wallets, sometimes still wearing their work uniforms. Their missions were varied, but they’re all invariably counterproductive to the survival of the human race. They drained accounts, crashed computer systems, sabotaged every level of our worldwide defense networks.” Malcolm looked back down at his hands. “Of course, some of them simply started killing anyone who didn’t fit their profile. Some slaughter indiscriminately, while others seem to have very specific targets.”

  “Why? Why would any of that happen at that exact moment?”

  “Well, there is obviously some sort of a coordinated effort to cripple civilization and ensure the extinction of humankind. We’ve seen too much for too long to try to deny that anymore, but the real question is, are they a separate threat from the dragons, or are they cooperating with them to ensure a common goal?”

  “You said that you’d drawn your own conclusions, but I haven’t heard any yet.”

  Malcolm placed his palms flatly upon his knees, and rotated them back and forth. “The most intriguing piece of the puzzle—and it’s a piece of the puzzle that very few people even know about—is that the level of hyperglycemia found amongst the Hunters is almost identical to the levels that we’re seeing in the blood of the dragons.” He turned to her. “There’s a relationship between them.”

  Cecile rocked back on her haunches, staring at Malcolm down the snout of her mask.

  “We obviously don’t have the capabilities to conduct more extensive tests, but the field tests that we do have clearly show that the levels of hyperglycemia between the
two species are almost exactly the same.”

  “You’re saying these people have dragon blood in their veins?”

  “Not exactly. What I think, and I don’t think it too loudly, is that at some point, probably thousands of years ago, a population of ancient Brazilians had some sort of a fluid exchange with the dragons—or, at least, with the original dragon. I like to believe that in the beginning, there was one, the fountainhead of this whole disaster that first came into contact with humans down in the jungles of Brazil. Something happened at that meeting, like a moment of religious significance. Whatever took place, I believe that the Hunters are the descendants of those people who encountered the first dragon, and that all of their strange adaptations could be explained by having fragments of alien DNA in their bodies.”

  “Alien DNA. You think the dragons are from—up there?” Cecile pointed a finger at the ceiling. “Not just an undiscovered creature that had been living deep down in the earth all these years?”

  “No way,” Malcolm grunted, shaking his head. “If you look at the dragons, really look at them, you can’t deny that their bodies are perfect for space travel. Hyperglycemia isn’t just a cyanide oxidizer. It’s also an antifreeze. Then, you’ve got their internal power generator to consider. What the hell is it? Well, it’s a weapon, it’s an engine, and it’s an electrical generator, all rolled up into one totally bizarre organ that produces a powerful enough current to convert pure elements into gas, plasma and light, and that conversion is what enables these creatures to propel themselves with bursts of pressurized gas. As an earthly flight mechanism that’s just crazy. It’s a wildly inefficient and roundabout way to fly. Why go through all the trouble of evolving in that difficult direction unless you’re designed for interstellar travel? Lastly, you’ve got the thick carapace, the high tolerance to temperature and pressure extremes, the thick layer of blubber … everything a creature would need for protection against the extreme cold of space, and the extreme heat of reentry.”