Jay Posey - Three

Three forced his feet up the steps, a slow, painful plod at first. Feeling worked its way back through his legs, and not a good one. He pushed on, brought himself to a weary jog. As he climbed, he looked up, spotted the landing at the top. Three more flights. A yellow-green light glowed there.

He hurried as best he could, reached the landing, stopped to take stock of the scene. The chemlight lay in the middle of the floor, showing it all.

Too late. He was too late.

The Weir was gone. Cass lay slumped against the wall, her shirt stained crimson from neckline to navel. A limp arm dangled over Wren, who sprawled motionless in her lap. The first graying light of morning slipped through the cracked door, and fell like a ribbon of mist over Cass’s pale form.

Three clenched his jaw, swallowed what felt like emotion crawling up his throat. Foolish. Too risky, bringing a woman and her child out beyond the wall at night. He should’ve known better, should’ve thought it through. Seeing those first rays of morning made him angry, reminded him of just how close they’d been to making it. He thought back over what had happened, tried to figure out where he’d made the critical mistake. He should’ve trusted the kid more, gone hunting for that second Weir. Or maybe they should’ve just stayed in the city, holed up and waited it out. Most likely, he just should never have gotten involved in the first place.

He slipped his blade back into its sheath, ran a hand over his scalp, down over his face, closed his eyes. Gathered himself. He’d have to find a place to bury them. A quiet place. Where they could rest. Three opened his eyes and forced himself to look again at the silent and grim monument to what the world had become. All widows and orphans, with no one to defend them.

A twitch. Three blinked, and refocused.

Fool! , he cursed himself.

Not dead. Unconscious. Or asleep. He’d let himself see what he expected to find, instead of what was there. Yet another mistake that could’ve gotten him killed. He’d lost count of how many of those he’d made in the past two days. Too many to still be alive, that was certain.

He crept to the pair, knelt at their side, placed his hand on Wren’s back. It rose and fell steadily. Three took a closer look at Cass, brushed the hair back from her face. She was drawn, pale, damp with a cool glisten of sweat. High cheeks, olive skin, full lips rimmed in white. From here he could see the split in her chin, still oozing, the source of the blood on her shirt. A welcome relief. He’d feared her throat had been cut. The knuckles and back of her left hand were spattered and crusted with a dark, drying fluid, and a quick inhale told him at least part of the story. Wherever the Weir was now, it wasn’t happy.

Three placed a hand on her arm, and squeezed gently. Cass jerked awake with a sharp inhalation, pulled back, stared at him with wild eyes. Recognition finally came, and she glanced down to check on Wren. Still sleeping, undisturbed.

“Are you hurt?” Three asked. The woman’s hand went gingerly to her chin, but she shook her head no.

“I’m fine,” she said. She looked at him with concern. He wasn’t sure why. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Yeah,” he answered, with a half shrug.

Cass reached up and touched the side of his face, high on the cheekbone, near his eye socket. The light brush of her finger felt like a blowtorch across his skin. Three jerked away with a hiss. He grimaced. More damage than he’d thought.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cass said with a pained expression. “I thought maybe the blood wasn’t yours.”

“Well,” Three replied, testing the wound with his own fingertips. The whole left side of his face was crusted. “I guess it’s not anymore, huh?”

The flesh around his cheekbone was hot and puffy. He pressed into it, ignored the sting, probed the bones beneath. His cheek was lacerated, and would bruise deeply, but otherwise the facial structure seemed to be intact.

“Where’d the Weir go?” Three asked, gritting his teeth through the ache that now radiated through his face and jaw.

“Back downstairs,” Cass answered flatly.

“It ran away?”

“Not exactly.”

“It fell,” said a sleepy voice from Cass’s lap. “Mama knocked it over the edge.”

Wren sat up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Three gave Cass another look. She certainly didn’t look like one to take down a Weir. Slight of frame, maybe a hundred and fifteen pounds by Three’s estimate. Sure, she was juiced, but it took a lot more than a little chemical boost to deal with something that dangerous. Under his gaze, she just shrugged.

“Can we go now?” Wren asked.

Three didn’t take his eyes off Cass.

“Sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah,” Cass said, too quickly for Three’s liking. “Just tired. That was a lot of stairs.” She added a throwaway smile.

Lying. But she didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. Probably exhausted; hungry, thirsty. Three chalked it up to her being brave. He stood, and held out a hand to her.

She accepted the help, got to her feet with forced ease. Wren stood as well, and Three knelt beside him.

“You want a ride, kid?”

Wren looked to his mother for a cue. She nodded. Relieved. Wren clambered up onto Three’s back, and Three regained his feet, shifting Wren around to a comfortable spot.

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“Three.”

“Three? I’m Cass. My son is Wren.”

“Mister Wren,” Three said with a half-nod, “and I already met.”

“Where are we going?” Cass asked, picking the chemlight up off the floor, and extinguishing it.

“Somewhere you can rest,” Three said. Then caught Cass’s eye. “And we can talk.”

He gave the door a yank, and it swung open with a jarring screech. He didn’t bother to close it as they set out in the weak light of the early dawn.

Cass had made some early attempts to start idle conversation, but by mid-afternoon, the trio had fallen mostly silent, save for the sound of their footsteps on the dusty concrete. They pushed northward through the decaying sprawl, passing countless buildings; towering headstones in an unbroken urban graveyard, empty shells of life disappeared. Many shone with dull or flickering light from signs or rooms, half-lit by technology that long outlasted its creators and carried on ignorant or indifferent to their absence. Three kept a steady pace, slowing rarely, stopping less, and only when Cass or Wren absolutely required it. He himself seemed tireless.

Cass couldn’t help but wonder at the intensity of Three’s focus and concentration. Even after these hours, his eyes constantly roamed, scanning, searching out tracks of previous travelers, signs of passing scavengers, or worse. At first, Cass had thought it obsession on the verge of paranoia. Then Three had steered them clear of the first of the traps.

“Deadfall,” he’d said, flicking his head towards what looked to her like any of the other innumerable piles of scrap metal and abandoned scaffolding they’d already passed without concern. As they worked their way around it, though, Cass looked closer, saw the thin filament running across what had been their path, saw what it would’ve triggered had they tripped it.

“Why would anyone do that?” she’d asked.

“People gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but what could you catch out here? A Weir?”

Three shook his head grimly. It took a moment for Cass to understand. That’s when she’d stopped trying to make conversation.

The journey had been a slow, long march, punctuated by Three’s occasional forced breaks, when he would insist she and Wren wait together while he scouted ahead. Once in a while he would point out what had caught his attention: a steel-cable snare, or a deadly spring trap, one time even an improvised explosive. More often though he would just reappear, gather Wren upon his back, and wordlessly return them to their march, making any necessary adjustments to their path.