James Decker - The Burn Zone

I looked back through the balcony doorway Should I really take him with me out there? Or would he be okay until I got back?

“Vamp, I gotta go.”

I turned away from the crumbling bit of skyline and headed back in, canned air chilling the sweat on the back of my neck.

“Run the app.”

“I will. Bye.”

I hung up and stood there for a minute, not sure what to do first. It might be safer to leave Tānchi, but it was also against the law. I crossed back to the crib and reached down to get him ready to go out.

When the bolt on the front door snapped, I almost jumped out of my skin. The door flew open and I heard someone stumble into my gear, knocking the bucket over as heavy footsteps moved through the entryway. I turned, heart pounding, but it was just Dragan, back early. He stepped into the living room as the door swung shut back behind him with a thud.

“Hey,” I said, switching off the TV. He didn’t answer. He was still dressed in his military uniform, his pistol still strapped to his hip. His eyes were wide.

“D?”

Something was wrong. His cropped salt-and-pepper hair was spiky with sweat and grease, and the lines in his face looked deeper than usual. He was pale, making the wire-thin scar on his cheek stand out raw red, and the rims of his lower eyelids were the color of a bruise.

“Sam,” he said distantly. “Get your things.”

“What?”

He didn’t answer. He just stepped farther into the room, a kind of slow shuffle, and I noticed something, a stain of some kind, spattered on the front of his uniform.

“Is that blood?” I asked. He still wouldn’t look at me. He was just staring straight ahead like he didn’t know where he was, or who I was.

“What’s the matter? You’re freaking me out.”

“Is there any food left?” he asked.

“One ration.”

He nodded. “Get it.”

“Didn’t they pay you a new ration sheet?”

“It’s gone,” he said distantly.

“What?”

“It’s gone. Get the ration.”

I crossed over to him, and when I touched his arm he flinched.

“D, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” he said, and for just a second whatever else it was that was on his mind shifted to the background. For just a second, he looked at me the way he had that day he found me, and still did whenever he stopped thinking about himself and there was only me.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

My voice had turned hoarse all of a sudden, and my face began to get hot. Something was wrong. Really wrong.

I saw the security part of him tick off that I wasn’t in any immediate trouble, and then his eyes drifted over the apartment. For just a second, irritation flared up on his face, but it died just as quick, even as he spoke.

“What the hell did you do to this place?” His voice sounded far off, though, his words forgotten as soon as he said them. He wiped his face with his hand and stared out the big window, off toward the force field dome and the ship on the other side.

“Dragan…”

“She’s dead,” he whispered. There were tears in his eyes.

“Who?” I asked, but he just shook his head.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

“What?”

“Now,” he said. “Take only what you need.”

“We can’t just leave, D. What’s wrong with you?”

“Listen,” he said, raising his voice. “Take just what you need and—”

Tānchi squawked from the other side of the room, and at the sound Dragan’s eyes went wide. He stepped back, crashing into the wet bar and knocking glasses down to shatter on the floor. He turned to the crib, and I saw his hand move toward his gun.

“Dragan!”

He eased his hand back down, still not taking his eyes off the kid.

“Now,” he said. “We’re leaving here in five minutes.”

His boots crunched through the broken glass as he crossed to the doorway and down the hall to his bedroom. I went to Tānchi and stroked his cheek, humming softly until the mewling stopped. His slack limbs twitched as he metabolized, still warm to the touch, but when he looked up at me from the crib, his flame orange eyes were alert. His growing fear seeped through the mites, like a spastic electric current that sent jolts through my forehead.

“It’s okay,” I told him. Dragan came tramping back into the living room, and I saw he had a second gun in his hand, which he slipped into his belt just behind the first.

“Leave it,” he said.

“What… Tānchi?”

“Leave it.”

“Dragan, we can’t just leave him here. If he doesn’t get fed he could die—”

“Don’t argue with me, Sam!”

The front door’s knob turned, and the door thumped as the bolt kept it from opening. Dragan spun around and drew his pistol as something pounded against the other side, hard.

“Dragan…”

“They tracked me,” he said to himself.

A loud boom shook the apartment and sent an avalanche of paper trash sliding off the kitchen counter. A second crash came as the front door’s bolt tore loose from the jamb and it blew open in a shower of splinters and drywall powder. Tānchi screamed as Dragan grabbed my wrist and pulled me close, hissing into my ear.

“When I say run, you run,” he said. I nodded. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour, I’ve arranged a transport out of the country to Duongroi. Go to Central Transport and-”

“Duongroi? D, why?”

“Please, Sam, just—”

He stopped short as several figures came tromping through the doorway.

“Nobody move,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.

Dragan put his hand on my cheek.

“You’re going to hear some things about me,” he said. “Don’t believe them. I love you like you were my own flesh and blood, Sam. Remember that.”

A lump rose in my throat as two men and a woman, all dressed in black body armor, came marching into the room with us through a haze of dust. Their scaly, formfitting combat suits hummed, creating static that made my hair stand on end, and their faces were shielded by light disruptors, giving their hooded heads the look of empty black eggshells.

Dragan turned, standing between us and facing them. He aimed the pistol, but before he could get a shot off, the closest soldier lashed out in a blur and clamped down on his wrist. Dragan fired twice, the bullets thudding into the far wall before the suit whined and I heard the crack of bone. He grunted, and the gun clunked down onto the floor between them. The goon stomped on it and kicked it back behind him with his boot.

Still pinned, Dragan reached back with his free hand and drew the second pistol he’d tucked in his belt. He plowed into the guy who had his wrist, and fired two shots into his side while the other soldiers piled on.

“Now!” he yelled. “Sam, Go!”

Across the room I could see the front door hanging from one twisted hinge, offering a clear path to the hallway outside.

“Go!”

The two men held Dragan while the woman stepped in. A round red stamp stood out on her armor’s right shoulder plate, marking her as the ranking soldier. She took two steps toward Dragan, and as he struggled against the men she fired the heel of her boot into his chest. His eyes bugged, and his face turned purple as blood coughed from his mouth and his legs dropped out from under him.

I looked to the open doorway again and then back at Dragan, bouncing between decisions like an ignition that wouldn’t quite catch. Fear cut deeper and deeper through the Zen fog until my brain felt like a fuse inside was threatening to trip.

Do something.

Spotting Ling’s bottle of shine on the floor in front of the wet bar snapped me out of it. I snatched it up and stormed toward the woman, wielding the bottle like a club. She looked over just as I swung the bottle into the blur that covered her face. The glass broke, splashing liquor, and several scaleflies buzzed away from her shoulder plates as she staggered back. I whipped the jagged neck around, spraying alcohol and blood as I slashed at her again.