Lying flattened in the weeds, shards of asphalt like a bed of knives slicing into him, he calculated his options. His internal clock told him he had about twenty minutes before the charges went off. He might have been able to slip along a street unnoticed by a dozing guard, but after the inferno of the explosion, no guard would be dozing. His only hope was that this flood of moonlight was errant, that the clouds, like the scum that covered the brackish waters of the ponds near his home, would rally and converge on the gap that wind had torn open, sealing it, inviting cool darkness to descend. But the clouds had vanished. Only a few scattered patches intruded on the sky with its moon and its universe of stars.
He could not stay here nor could he leave. Either option meant death—probably meant death. What were his best odds? In this light, he would almost certainly be spotted if he moved. The Peaks were on their guard against the resistance. If they even glimpsed him, they would flatten him with an immobilizer. On the other hand, once the blast went off, perhaps the fire and the destruction and the screams of death would draw the outlying Peaks to their compound. Maybe that would give him the chance to escape while they were panicking, wondering what to do, awaiting orders. Neither choice was appealing but staying until the blasts came and slipping away in the confusion seemed the better chance. Ignoring the pain from the biting edges of shattered asphalt cutting into his chest, he pressed himself even deeper into the weeds.
A change came. The world darkened. A coolness. He turned his face sideways, opened one eye in a tight slit, and peeked at the moon. A cloud covered it. Insubstantial, temporary, but the slight darkness changed the odds.
He eased himself up and slid his way to the shadow of the nearest tower. He dared not run. That risked attracting attention. Planning his route, he slunk along in the shelter of buildings, looking for intersections that gave him the least exposure. He slipped along the streets past cracks in the pavement where weeds and a scattering of shrubs were reclaiming their natural space. He crawled around the ruins of the elevated walkways, crumbled heaps of metal and glass that once connected the towers and carried streams of people blind to the events that were about to end their lives. He climbed over fallen girders from buildings that were giving up their fight against wind, rain, and time. When he had to sprint across a street, he made no attempt at evasive running. He had never heard of it. The Peak immobilizers emitted a field that didn’t require accuracy. The only way he would know if one hit him was when he awoke on a slab in the detention centre. Or maybe he’d become one of the Vanished. One who had never existed.
He reached the remnants of a park, reclaimed by trees, weeds, and vines. In its shelter, he scrambled down a hill to the concrete support for a bridge. A lower deck across the river had collapsed years ago, but the upper deck still carried a straggle of oxcarts, horses, peasant wagons going to a threadbare market, and the occasional Peak rover on its way to the dirt farms to extract tithes or, from young girls, other forms of tribute.
He retrieved his escape pouch from its hiding place and pulled out a rubber wet suit. It had been patched in places where the rubber was thinning, but it was still serviceable. He pulled the suit on and slipped into the river, the glacier-fed water causing him to gasp. The landing was two hours away, but this was not his first escape from the city. He could last that long.
He moved into the middle of the river where the channel was deeper, the flow faster. His internal clock ticked down. He looked toward the glow of lights from the compound. Nothing. If the charges failed, the Peaks would find them, would find the tunnel. The effort of years and the sacrifice of scores of resistance fighters would be wasted. But it was impossible that all the charges would fail. Give it time, he berated himself.
The rushing of the water blocked out the sound of the explosions, but the riverbank around him flared, bathing the trees near the shore, illuminating the night sky. Blowing up the fuel tanks wouldn’t be visible from this distance but igniting the fuel as it poured into the buildings, setting ablaze the wood walls, the dry beams, the tarred roofs, the screaming, twisting bodies, would be. In the rushing water, Darius couldn’t hear the blasts, but they echoed off the hills around him into the dirt huts of the peasants. He knew these people. They would pull their worn blankets closer, resigned that tomorrow, retribution would come, but tonight there was sleep.
The current carried him downstream, past a sign he had seen many times before. The sign had been painted, although the words were just stains on the wood where the paint had once been. He had always intended to ask someone what it meant. It read “Calgary Freight Yards.” Curious. He had heard of freight, he knew what yards were, but the combination made no sense to him.
2
TODD BAXTER
From the patio of Todd Baxter’s twenty-fifth-floor apartment, frozen breath wreathing his face, the lights of Calgary spread farther than he could see. Seven construction cranes were decorated in Christmas colours, an inflated Santa perched on one, plastic reindeer rising from the end of another. Even in the night, some of the cranes twisted as if they were corkscrews extracting new towers from the frozen prairie earth. The malls had just closed creating a mini rush hour, headlights and taillights pulsing along the streets to the rhythm of the traffic signals.
A prick of heat stung his hand. His cigarette had burned to the filter, still a pure white. He flicked the butt over the patio and watched the ember disappear toward the snow-covered lawn. He didn’t smoke, but stepping outside for a puff allowed him a break, an excuse to be by himself, especially in the winter when nobody else would want to join him. He slid back the French door and pushed his way past the drapes into his apartment.
The warmth embraced him, reminded him how cold he could get even from the few minutes one cigarette would take to burn. Four faces stared at him.
“You’re nuts,” said Ross Candale, one of his closest friends. “You’re going to freeze your balls off.”
“Hardly.” Ellen Sangster laughed. To some, she was his girlfriend, although they had decided long ago that their occasional nights together were just camaraderie. “His balls are the only things he covers up.”
“He didn’t cover his head. Proves he knows what’s important.” Bert Tallman, another friend, chuckled.
The fourth man scowled. “This is precisely the type of idiocy I’d have expected you to avoid.” His name was Warren Fraleigh, and he was not a friend. He was shorter than Baxter by several inches, his face a permanent pinch as if some brain defect had robbed him of the ability to smile.
Baxter poured himself a drink from a decanter of scotch and took a swallow, allowing the liquid to slide into him, to warm him. “What do you mean?”
“This. This is your home. Why do you have to go out on the balcony in sub-zero weather to have a smoke? You’ve bought into the political correctness crap that smoking indoors is bad.”
Baxter shrugged. “I smoke on the balcony because I don’t like the smell of cigarettes on my furniture or in the house. Besides, as you said, it’s my home. What I do in it shouldn’t concern you.”
Fraleigh scowled. “Coming here was a complete waste of my time. I expected some cooperation. Some common ground. After all, your organization has similar goals to mine. I thought we’d be able to work together.”
“Our organization? I told you when you phoned. We’re not an organization, just a group of friends who decided to take some action. As for common ground, if you thought that, we failed to present our ideas effectively.”
Fraleigh stood, his face tight. “Change is coming. You can either be part of it or be flattened by it. If you choose wrong, it won’t be anything to laugh about.” He strode out, slamming the door behind him.