Chapter 3
Camino led the way into the city. They followed the standard procedure when entering dangerous terrain, not hostile like on the I-5, but dangerous because the flora and fauna of the Southern Wildes tended to have a mind and will of their own, and that mind and will wasn’t always kind towards human hunter-scavengers like them.
When Jay had convinced Camino that her leg was more than up to the task of finding a little hidey hole for them to hide in and wait out “the storm,” each of them broke a glow bug and marked the sides of each boot with two lines. They also covered the insides of each palm with the remains as well. The phosphorescent bile of the glow bug wouldn’t go away for days unless they washed it off, and it was dim enough to be missed if you weren’t looking for it. With these markers, they separated, and keeping low, ducking behind cover and keeping the street between them, they made their way down what must have been Jay street, not knowing exactly what they were looking for.
Camino made the folk hand gesture to stop, and because of the glow-bile, he saw Jay’s two little lines, just visible over the dark of the city, come to a stop.
The reason for the distance was simple. If something were to happen to Camino right then—if he was snatched into the air by a wraith fiend or lassoed by a Gawth in man-made overalls—his apprentice would have the opportunity to keep her head down and try to make it home to safety without him or keep her head down and do the noble and downright stupid thing of trying to save him without no one from the civilized world having any clue as to where they were going and what they were dealing with. But the distance gave each of them time to think and time to act whereas if they stayed close, they’d have to react together without time for thought and under the influence of adrenaline, the sometimes savage killer of man as it was known on the I-5.
Camino made the folk hand for leg, and in response he saw the underside of a blue, bioluminescent thump hover in the air about a foot above the ground, and that was good, it was something less to worry about for the time being.
He looked around the dark roadway of the ancients and he felt as though his eyes were adjusting, and they shouldn’t have been. A think sheet of clouds had floated in from the deltas to block out the moon and the stars, and the glow bugs didn’t really give off any kind of light that he should have been able to see by. I need a test. He waved his hand to get Jay’s attention and then made the folk had for what and see?
From across the road he saw Jay respond, nothing. No see.
So why am I able to see then? This turn of events gave the Gawth a distinct advantage. They were said to have an incredibly strong sense of smell, much more developed than any human’s sense of smell. Looking around he saw a small dome shaped building that loomed above the sometimes flat and sometimes slanted rooftops of the ancient city of Sacramento.
There was a stairwell of some kind just past Jay that seemed to run down into an underground structure that might have gone on and on until it ran beneath the structure of the dome itself. Camino had head of such things before, and if the rumors we’re true they had once functioned as a kind of stable for the old derelict vehicles that frequented the city streets like husky roaches.
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On his other side he saw a balcony overlooking their location. Red letters adorned the bacon spelling out the word C I N A M—R—…Maybe an ancient word for cinnamon, otherwise its meaning had been long forgotten.
He made the hand sign for come, and Jay shuffled over, keeping low. When she was next to him, she whispered, “what is it?”
“We’ll stay here.” Camino pointed at what must have been just another looming shadow to her. “It’s some kind of market—” but even as he said it he knew that it hadn’t been a market, and the thought disturbed him with the potency of its confidence. He let the thought go as quickly as it came, and motioned for Jay to follow.
They entered through a long shattered set of windows, the glass long salvaged except for the thick slabs that were too well buttressed in their settings to be removed easily. Once inside, Camino saw a wide open lobby and a hallway leading past a row of machines and a counter that bore the word concessions, or perhaps confessions. But even then, he knew which of those words would have to be the true interpretation, it had been confessions of course. And the knowledge felt like something in the back of his mind whispering hello.
On the I-5 he’d had anxiety like that before, anxiety that felt like an old and cold voice whispering to him when no one was looking, and always, it had gone way with a full night’s sleep and a warm meal. Always. Camino cursed himself quietly. I don’t have time for this.
Forgetting the fear as best he could, and of course there was a lot to be lost if he made the wrong choice, he lead Jay down a dark hallway through which he was able to make out paper images pinned to the walls, a strange diamond pattered floor torn in places with concrete showing beneath the wear, and sets of doors lining each side, one reading This Way to Safety and another reading 51 Second Dates.
In the end he lead Jay into an alcove bearing the title Fast XII, and lead her into a large dark room bearing a single flat curtain that rose from the floor to the ceiling.
“What now,” whispered Jay? I can’t see a damn thing.”
Camino scanned the room. At the top of a long staircase were two sets of holes that seemed to lead to a small room. “This way.” He lead Jay up the stairs, “Through here.”
He could see Jay frowning in the dark and he guided her hands along the frame of the opening. “Right here, you can use the ledge just here,” and he guided her other hand along a ledge set into the wall.
“Alright, here goes nothing.” Jay hoisted herself up and through the small opening with a grunt and a soft thud on the other side.
Camino pushed his pack through the adjacent opening and then pulled his body through after. He landed beside Jay and wiped his hands on the seat of his pants before pulling himself up to a seated position.
“What’s that smell, you think?”
Camino knew exactly what she was talking about and he’d hoped she wouldn’t have noticed. “Honey.”
Jay’s eyes went wide. “Honey?”
The scent of honey in the wild, no matter how faint, was the calling card of one animal, and one animal alone, the gargantuan—a spider with lints the size of a human torso, and with fangs as big as a grown man’s head, and said to be agile and often angry…especially around humans or ships of the line within the circle’s fleet. And of course, the sweeter the smell, the closer the danger, but this smell was only a hint, and perhaps hint enough to keep the Gawth away.
Camino opened his pouch. “Your leg.”