Gunlaw

Gunlaw 12

Aska knew the thing was following them, the insect. The knowledge of its pursuit would be enough to make her crawl, she couldn't walk though, her body had started to die by inches, baked in the desert sun. She didn't want Sykes to put her down, but couldn't understand why he kept carrying her. He acted like a mother in her cave-month, as if Aska were as precious as a cub in its first weeks. But it wasn't that. You could smell it on a hunska, when she'd had her young. You knew she would kill anything that came near her – it pulsed in her blood, bled from her skin. Sykes had a different kind of madness, a battle in his head, the sane warring with the insane. He wanted to run, to drop her and hope the insect would be satisfied. But he wouldn't, couldn't.

"The hell?" His words sounded dry now. She tried to look where he looked. Through dim eyes she saw something out among the dunes, riding above them like a stick in a stream. Buildings?

"Ruins," Sykes said. "Must've been bigger than the Woolworth Building. Much bigger."

Aska could see the ruins better as they descended the dune. Immense pieces of stone, shattered pillars thicker than the thickest tree, angled as if sinking. The house the gods must have lived in before they left.

                                                                                        ***

Issac found a strength he hadn't known was left to him. His last strength. He broke into a half run. The guns bounced on his hips. He didn't know why he was still carrying them.

There would be shade. Water maybe, deep in those foundations. Places to hide. Almost more important than the water . . . there would be places to hide. An image of the insect hurried across his mind, black legs thrashing, driving it up the foot of the previous dune as they reached the crest. The horror of it crawled over him, through him. Just the sight of thing made him hate it – some ancient enmity set in the core of his bones, needing no reasons. Worse than he hated the insect he hated the way it unmanned him, made him ready to drop everything decent and just run. Made him ready to drop the girl, to climb over his own mother to get to safety.

"Damnation!" He had to stop and crane his neck as they got closer still. The size of those pillars. He'd never felt so small. Not even the desert vastness had made him feel so insignificant.

He found a gap between two towering blocks of stone and clambered over the rubble wedged between them. Shade! Hot breathless shade, but better than the sun's fist. The rubble made for tough going, its sharp edges undulled by desert winds, more like glass than stone. It would be easier without the girl. The words drifted into his mind as if spoken by someone else. Issac shook his head and pushed the hair from his eyes. Dry hair – he had stopped sweating. Not a good sign.

Something tripped him on the down slope and he almost pitched head first onto jagged stone. He limped on, bleeding from his ankle. The six shooters banged against his hips as he walked. His legs felt sore from it. If his fingers had any cleverness left in them he'd take the damn belt off and leave it. A left turn, a narrow gap where he bent double to follow a sandy tunnel, Lilly's nails biting at his back . . . another long passage between huge blocks with the sky a thin blue line above them. Issac stumbled into the opening without looking and it took him by surprise. It felt as though they stood at the bottom of the deepest well, a square shaft formed in the gap between some titan's building blocks, with only the crack they followed to enter or leave by. A dead end.

"No water." Issac let his back slide against the stone behind him and slumped to the ground, Lilly in his lap. "Need to rest my legs a moment." He drew in a breath of hot dry air and let it rattle in his lungs. The girl's eyes were slitted, almost closed, a faint glitter as if she watched him. Somewhere along the line she'd lost the bonnet and skirt. Her skin looked dark in places, her ears oddly pointed.