Talon said, “Listen to me, Jenny. I know that you’re frightened. You have every reason to be. You are here to help heal people, but you can’t do your job if you are dead. Take it. You may never need it, but it is better not to need it and to have it than to need it and not have it.”
Marik took the weapons from Talon. He stuck them both in his belt and said, “She shall be with me anyway. I will carry it for her.”
Jenny gave him a grateful smile but Talon’s forehead wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed. “That will do her no good at all if something happens and you are not near her.”
That was just one more reason not to stray far from her side, wasn’t it? Marik said, “I intend to stay close to her. I will take care of her.”
Talon opened his mouth to say something else but shut his lips abruptly. His head nodded, and he said, “Well, let’s go then. There’s a sort of hospital set up near the center of the city, but it’s a hard fight to get there.”
Jenny asked, “What do you mean?”
Talon did not try to soften the blow for her. “They are still fighting here. They’re fighting each other now more than anything else. If they think you have something that they can use here, then they may go after you. Unfortunately, it’s not just those who lived above ground who are desperate to regain the system that used to be in place. A lot of those from Below are equally determined not to have the system back in place, and they are fighting for their very lives. Then there are rovers.”
Marik’s head lifted. His eyes went to Jenny and then back to Talon. “Rovers? Here?”
Talon said yes, “Human Rovers but Rovers. That’s what we’ve taken to calling them because that is precisely how they behave. They don’t care whose side you’re on. They don’t have a side either. They just take advantage of anyone and everything they can. They will shoot first and ask questions later. We are carrying a lot of valuables. That medication is incredibly valuable. So are the food supplies. If we are attacked by Rovers, all of us will have to fight.”
Marik looked at Jenny. “Stay very near me.”
Her face held a look of sheer terror. She said, “I will.”
They set off. The streets appeared to be deserted, but Marik’s senses told him that they were not. Sure enough, they had only gone a few dozen paces when he spotted a male human sliding around the side of a building, shrinking away from them. Talon, right beside him, muttered, “Look up, but carefully.”
Marik’s eyes went upward and then back down in a seemingly casual sweep of the terrain. It was not casual. He had seen exactly what Talon had wanted to show him. There were people up on a roof of a building far down from where they were walking. Again, not a good sign.
Marik asked, under his breath, “Rovers?”
Jessica, walking behind him and right beside Jenny who was flanked on the other side by a very large crew member loaded down with weapons, said, “It looks like it.”
Talon said, “Keep walking, but be cautious.”
Marik did keep walking, but his eyes were continually moving. He spotted several more people huddled in the burned out shell of a hovercraft that had crashed onto a street, one wing still pointing skyward.
The whole place was blasted and broken. Rubble crunched underfoot. He could hear the sound of voices coming from somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. The broken buildings and the heavy wind that had picked up and had begun to whip along the destroyed cityscape made sound distort and sharpen all at the same time.
The grit, blown about by the wind, stung his exposed skin. His eyes watered when a particularly nasty little chunk whizzed by and scraped across his eyelid. If he had not closed his eye in time, it would’ve gone right across the surface of his eye, and he knew it.
He made a mental note to try to find some goggles or some other kind of eye protection before he had to go out on the streets again.
They made it past the buildings, but Marik knew better than to be relieved. Rovers often traveled in large packs that broke off in two small hunting parties. If these humans were behaving like Rovers, the ones that had been on the buildings that they had already passed were just the flanking section. A flanking section that would eventually come back around and circle them from another side, and probably while they were engaged in battle with another part of their pack.
Talon said, “We have to take this street.”
The street was in less disrepair than the others but the buildings, what remained of them, stood silent and haunted. The air of abandonment and desperation hung over everything.
The door of one of the buildings burst open and a woman, very disheveled and clearly distraught, rushed out onto the street. Immediately weapons were pulled and pointed in her direction. She fell to her knees, her hands up in the air. Her hair, long and a solid gray color, flowed over her shoulders and back and her face, shockingly unlined and a striking contrast against her hair, looked up at them. Her face was dirty, but her tears had cut clean channels down her cheeks. Talon spoke, not unkindly. “You should not be on the streets right now.”
The woman screamed out, “They have destroyed my home! My husband is dead, and the government has fallen! The Federation said they would help, but they have not come back! They have abandoned us here and those… Those creatures from Below… Those unworthy… Things! They are everywhere! I ordered someone to bring me food earlier, but nobody has come. They ignore me and laugh at me and disregard my station!”
Marik sighed. It was clear that the woman had always lived in the above ground and was used to having servants and having everything done for her. She was shocked to the point of insanity at the moment.
Talon said, “Go back to your home. Go back. We cannot stop to help you now; we have other things to do. Somebody will come.”
Marik did not have to look around to see the bitterness coming from some of those on Talon’s crew. Jessica and Jenny were both from the Below. Several of his crewmembers had come from the Below; they had signed on during the rebellion and had proven themselves to be good at the tasks that Talon had set for them.
Their simmering resentment against this woman, who was clearly confused and upset and frightened, was understandable but it was also dangerous at the moment. They were all heavily armed and on edge because of the Rovers that were probably stalking them.
The woman clambered to her feet. Her eyes, a faded blue, went from face to face. “Are you from the Federation? If so, I demand, I absolutely demand, that my house be stockpiled with food and water. That my building be repaired immediately. That you give me new servants to replace those who either ran off or died and that you do it immediately. I am the wife of the All-High Commander Marks.”
